Posted - March 1, 2010, 3:43pm Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation
Emissions from shipping would fall about 20 percent as early as 2012 under proposed rules for 169 nations, the secretary general of the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization said.
New rules for vessels from rich and emerging nations would probably require owners to adopt so-called slow steaming to cut fuel consumption, said Efthimios Mitropoulos, head of the UN shipping agency known as IMO. For new ships, technical measures including new hull designs for improved propulsion would reduce emissions an additional 15 percent, he said.
Mitropoulos said he will spend the next seven months seeking agreement on measures to ensure IMO oversees shippers’ greenhouse gases and to prevent differing rules for vessels from rich and developing countries, he said. Some emerging nations probably will resist his proposals because they want developed nations to act first, said the 70-year-old Mitropoulos, a shipping regulator for more than 40 years. The U.S. and Europe were responsible for more than half of the emissions in the atmosphere since 1850....
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/245648/imo-seeks-emission-cuts-emergingnation-ships
Note for Wordsmith - Based on an article in the The International Herald Tribune, February 17, 2010 Maersk is well on it way to surpassing this -
Several shipping giants help the environment by pulling back the throttle
It took more than a month for the container ship Ebba Maersk to steam from Germany to Guangdong, China, where it unloaded cargo - a week longer than the voyage took two years ago.
But for the owner, the Danish shipping giant Maersk, that counts as progress. In a global culture dominated by speed, from overnight package delivery to bullet trains to fast-cash withdrawals, the company has seized on a sales pitch that may startle some hard-driving corporate customers: Slow is better.
By halving its cruising speeds over the last two years, Maersk has not only cut fuel consumption on major routes by as much as 30 percent but achieved an equal cut in ships' emissions of greenhouse gases.
''The previous focus has been on 'What will it cost?' and 'Get it to me as fast as possible,''' said Soren Stig Nielsen, Maersk's director of environmental sustainability. ''But now there is a third dimension: What's the CO2 footprint?'' Traveling more slowly, he said, is ''a great opportunity'' to lower emissions ''without a quantum leap in innovation.''
In what reads as a commentary on modern life, Maersk warns in its corporate client presentation, ''Going at full throttle is economically and ecologically questionable.''
Transport emissions have soared in the past three decades as global trade has grown by leaps and bounds, especially long-haul shipments of goods from Asia. Container-ship trade grew eightfold from 1985 to 2007.
The mantra was, ''Need it now.'' But the result is that planes, ships and trucks all tend to travel at speeds far above maximum fuel efficiency, the mileage rate that produces the lowest level of emissions that contribute to global warming.
Slowing down reduces emissions because it lessens drag and friction as ships plow through the water.
That principle also holds true in the air and on land. Planes could easily reduce emissions by slowing down 10 percent, for example, adding just five or six minutes to a flight between New York and Boston or Copenhagen and Brussels, said Peder Jensen, a transportation expert at the European Environment Agency.
Driving at 55 instead of 65 miles an hour, 90 instead of 105 kilometers an hour, cuts carbon dioxide emissions of American cars by about 20 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. Many states, however, are raising speed limits, even as policymakers fret about emissions that heat the atmosphere and dependence on foreign oil.
''There's a sense of urgency we've created. It's always faster, faster, faster,'' said Tim Castleman, founder of the Drive55 Conservation Project, a group in Sacramento, California, that advocates the lower speed limit. ''I can drive 55 right now. I believe it will make a profound difference.''
Of course, mile per mile, shipping even at conventional speeds is far more efficient than road travel. Shipping a ton of toys from Shanghai to northern Germany churns out less emissions than trucking them south to Berlin afterward.
Some shipping companies resisted the idea of slowing down, arguing that speed was indispensable to serving their clients.
''There was initially a lot of skepticism,'' said Philip Damas, director of liner travel at Drewry Shipping Consultants of London. ''All ships are built with the expectation they'd have to sail fast.'' But now, he said, shipping companies from Germany to Israel to China are starting to embrace the slow strategy. Today more than 220 vessels are practicing ''slow steaming'' - cruising at 20 knots on open water instead of the standard 24 or 25 - or, like Maersk's vessels, ''super slow steaming'' at 12 knots.
Super slow steaming got its start in summer 2008, when oil prices jumped to $145 a barrel and some shippers and truckers reduced their speeds to economize. With oil prices hovering around $80 a barrel today, there is less direct incentive to cut speeds. But many companies are finding that doing so allows them to cut prices in an ever more competitive market.
Any rise in fuel prices or taxes would enhance the appeal of slow steaming. At the international climate conference in Copenhagen in December, Connie Hedegaard, now the European Union's climate minister, proposed a tax on fuels used in shipping, saying the proceeds could be used to help poor countries adapt to rising temperatures. China and India objected, saying it would increase the price of their exports to the West.
There are practical obstacles to a tax. For one thing, longstanding international agreements intended to promote global trade exempt airline and shipping fuel from taxation. And even if nations were to accept emission ceilings under a cap-and-trade system, there is enormous disagreement over how the accounting would work. Should the Ebba Maersk's emissions appear on Denmark's balance sheet, even though it travels from China to Germany and back?
While slowing speeds is a good idea, said David Bonilla, senior research fellow at the transport studies unit at Oxford University's School of Geography and the Environment, he maintains that it cannot on its own arrest the emissions growth resulting from today's trade patterns, in which vast amounts of goods are produced in Asia but consumed in Europe or the United States.
To make a difference, he said, fuel costs for long-distance shipping must rise to the point where shippers are forced to invest in new, far more efficient boats or shift to shorter routes.
''What you may have to do is change the patterns of industrial supply locations going back towards the 70s,'' he added. ''But it's very difficult to do that.''
Yet in shifting hundreds more ships to its slow steaming program last year, Maersk considered itself prescient: It is convinced that a carbon tax or tighter shipping rules are on the horizon. ''This is not going away, and those of us who are starting now will be ahead of regulations,'' Mr. Nielsen said.
Super slow shipping involves adjustments. Maersk had to prove that slow speeds would not damage engines or require the renegotiation of warranties. Customers have to factor in extra time for delivery, which can be problematic for time-sensitive products like fashion or electronics, said Mr. Damas of Drewry Shipping. Maersk has also shouldered the labor costs of having crews at sea for longer periods and added two ships on its Germany to China route to maintain scheduled deliveries. But those expenses were canceled out by decreased fuel costs, it said.
Now Maersk is contemplating charging customers variable rates, depending on speed. ''They will have to decide what needs to come quickly,'' Mr. Nielsen said, ''and what can go on the proverbial slow boat to China.''
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