Shipping: The greening of the ocean waves

Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 22/07/2008

Although not included in the Kyoto Protocol, the maritime industry's CO2 emissions rival those of aviation. But new initiatives from port authorities look set to make shipping more eco-friendly. Jimmy Lee Shreeve reports "Commercial shipping emissions have been one of the least studied areas of all combustion emissions," says Daniel Lack, a scientist at the Washington DC-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

He's right. But it isn't just formal studies that are lacking. Shipping, like aviation, plays a major role in the global economy and is also a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet it has never been included in progammes like the Kyoto Protocol. As a result, its impact on the environment goes largely unreported.Daniel Lack and his team, however, have uncovered damning evidence showing that emissions from shipping are worse than previously thought.
Large cargo ships, for example, merrily emit more than twice as much black carbon (otherwise known as soot, which is thought to be the second largest contributor to global warming, after CO2) than was estimated in earlier studies.
Even the humble tugboat pumps out more black carbon for the amount of fuel it burns compared to other vessels.
"The two previous studies of soot emissions examined a total of three ships, [but] we reviewed plumes from 96 different vessels," explains Lack, whose department's findings were published in the July issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Lack and his colleagues measured emissions from commercial vessels in open sea, channels and ports along the southeast coast of America during the summer of 2006.
They estimate that commercial shipping releases around 130,000 metric tons of black carbon a year, or 1.7 per cent of the global total - with much of it pumped out near highly populated coastlines.
Include the whole gamut of greenhouse gases and the picture is even bleaker.
The commercial or merchant shipping industry shifts about 90 per cent of the world's goods and commodities. These are carried on huge ships that burn low-grade fuel.
According to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), these vessels belch out 3.5 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (some estimates give an even higher figure). Currently, the organisation is drafting new rules to limit sulphur emissions from ship exhausts and is generally trying to get shipping firms to burn cleaner fuels.
But it isn't just the merchant marine that is eco-unfriendly; cruise liners are too. In its annual report, Carnival Cruise Lines admitted that its operations pump out 401 grams of CO2 per passenger. This is 36 times more than the per-passenger emissions of Eurostar, and more than three times that of a passenger on a Boeing 747.
According to Justin Francis of ResponsibleTravel.com, which provides eco-friendly travel information, this is only the half of it. "Some cruises involve a flight to the departure destination, something of a double-carbon whammy."
On top of this, statistics from the United Nation's OurPlanet magazine reveal that a cruise ship passenger produces on average 3.5kg of rubbish every day, compared to the 0.8kg generated by local people on shore.
Despite this, cruise liner companies insist they are working hard to reduce their environmental impact. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, for example, says it is installing smokeless gas-turbine engines on up to six of its vessels and burns biofuel when it is available.
But it's ports authorities that are at the forefront of the race to make shipping cleaner. During mid-July, representatives from ports around the world met in Rotterdam (the world's third busiest port) to draw up plans to cut emissions from shipping.
The World Ports Climate Conference was organised by the Rotterdam ports authority and the Clinton Climate Change Initiative. Although delegates were divided on the exact contribution of shipping to global warming (studies put it at anything from 1.4 per cent to 4.5 per cent), they did agree that the shipping sector is set to grow in "leaps and bounds" and that it is imperative that measures are taken to help save the planet.
"The climate is changing every minute as we sit here," said Ogunlade Davidson, co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Human beings have to solve it [global warming] because we created it. The marine environment has to take its own responsibility as do all of us."
He said the best solutions lay in technologies like the use of hydrodynamics in propellers, which could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 30 per cent on new ships and by 20 per cent on older ones. He added that renewable fuels, speed reduction and fleet maintenance also had a role to play.
Davidson went on to say that the potential is there to cut the global fleet's CO2 emissions by 17.6 per cent by 2010, and by 28.2 per cent by 2020.
"But this will not be enough to offset the projected fleet growth," he concluded.
Just about all the targets put forward at the conference had issues associated with them. The International Maritime Organisation, for example, is pushing hard to put emission targets in place that would come into effect by February 2010.
The problem is, these targets are unlikely to be met unless developing countries sign up to be part of the initiative. This is because the developed world accounts for only 25 per cent of the world's merchant fleet.
"In my view, if reduction in CO2 emissions from ships are to benefit the environment as a whole, they must apply globally to all ships in the world fleet regardless of their flag," said Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary-general of the IMO.
"It seems completely incongruous that two ships carrying similar cargo, loaded at the same port, sailing at the same speed and having the same destination, should be treated differently because they are registered under two different flags."
Although China (which has one of the world's largest ports in Shanghai) didn't attend the conference, the country is onboard for the proposed cleanup plan.
"They're behind us all the way," said conference chair and former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers. He added that China's representatives "couldn't come for budget reasons."
Various measures were put forward at the July conference for dealing with emissions from shipping, including:
Increasing the number of power points for providing ships with electricity when they're in harbour. Currently, the majority of ships burn fuel when idle to generate electricity.
Limiting the amount of containers that can be moved by trucks within a port - and moving more goods to and from ports by cleaner transport such as trains and barges.
Replacing the trucks used to move containers in ports with hybrid vehicles.
Working with "clean coal" organisations to pipe carbon dioxide emissions from port power plants into empty underground gas fields. (Rotterdam and Royal Dutch Shell are to open a test reservoir in 2010).
In a taped message, Bill Clinton told conference delegates that, "If widely implemented, these ideas can have a significant impact."
The conference concluded with the adoption of the World Port Climate Change Declaration, in which delegates from over 50 ports from 35 countries committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality - all of which could mark the beginning of the ocean waves becoming greener.
A follow-up conference is scheduled for November in Los Angeles.