New emission rules up shipping costs - Carbon Positive

Posted - Monday, 19 July 2010 Carbon Positive (Telegraph, Alaska Journal 16/7/10, Dow Jones 1/7/10)


Cruise and cargo lines claim that new low-sulfur fuel standards for ships will increase their costs substantially and will have to be passed on to passengers and cargo owners.

New rules that came into force in the Baltic Sea and North Sea this month dictate that the sulfur content of ship fuel must not exceed 1 per cent. The EU has earmarked these heavily-trafficked maritime zones as Emissions Control Areas (ECAs), extending out to 200 miles from coastlines.

A similar North American ECA, along the vast coastlines of the US and Canada, will apply the same low-sulfur standard from 2012. In 2015, both the European and North American ECAs will slash the maximum sulfur level to just 0.1 per cent. The ECA rules also require reductions in emissions of nitrous oxides.

The US Environmental Protection Agency says that the reduced maritime sulfur emissions under the rules could save up to 14,000 lives a year. But low-sulfur fuel is significantly more expensive than the cheap low-quality bunker fuel predominantly used in shipping. With many cruise and cargo services plying coastal routes within these zones, shipping companies say the added cost of using the costlier fuel could amount to many thousands of dollars per day.

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