Air Pollution from Ocean Shipping a Greater Problem than Realized

Apr 4, 2007 at 2:46 PM
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An article in the latest Business Week Magazine (April 9, 2007) indicates that air pollution from the 90,000 ships plying the oceans is worse than all but 10 of the 39 nations in the Kyoto Protocol seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (the U.S., China, and India are not a part of this). These ships also release more sulfer dioxide than all cars, trucks, and buses on the planet. In addition the ships are responsible for a sixth of all world wide nitrogen oxide pollution.

The pollution for ocean ships is governed by the UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) which has very loose standards. Yet the IMO plans to take up new regulations at a midsummer meeting.

On a personal note when I and my family were on a cruise to Alaska we got off the ship early one morning in the town of Skagway to do some hiking and exploring. On the shore off in the woods I looked back at the bay and mentioned how pretty the fog layer was over the bay. It was a rare sunny morning with not a cloud in the sky and no wind. As my eyes followed the "fog" I noticed it was really smoke from the cruise ships! Needless to say the "fog" was not so pretty after that.

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[this is good]

Something rotten (even) in the state of Denmark

Denmark, well known for its leading role in development and use of wind energy – yes, as a matter of fact, until recently a world leader in that field - now also has become a world leader in pollution.

How did that came about, a Scandinavian county shifted from an invocative leading sustainable developer to an extremely high contributor of greenhouse gases?

It’s due to the Danish International Shipping Industry [DISI] – which now owns and manages a fleet with a gross tonnage of approximately 50 million - equal to ca. 10 percent of the entire world fleet (and with a heavy segment of high-speed container vessels, (Maersk-Line etc.))

In 2006 DISI consumed about 40 million tons of heavy marine bunker oil – more than twice of the country’s entire domestic energy consumption (total domestic fossil fuel consumption 2006; 19, 5 mill. tonnes oil equivalent, according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2007)

That gives a yearly consumption rate of 11 tons fossil fuel pr/capita and a corresponding emission rate of 32, 5 tons CO2/capita – far beyond the figures from US. Furthermore countries like Singapore and Nederland’s are rank as extensive emitter of GHS, despite much of their energy consumption are used in foreign vessels.

It´s seems clear what we need is a much more precise and fair assessment of the factors relevant to human created emissions.