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The Port of Baltimore
■
September/October 2012
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Environmental Stewardship at the Port of Baltimore
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Green
Port
BY NANCY MENEFEE JACKSON
A
s part of an International
Maritime Organization
(
IMO) effort to reduce sulfur
oxide emissions from ships
worldwide, diesel-powered ships in U.S.
coastal waters are now required to burn
cleaner fuel.
Although more expensive, the switch
to cleaner fuel — and the resulting
improvement in air quality — is projected
to save lives and reduce health care
costs in the United States and around the
world.
The change began back in 2008,
when the IMO, an agency of the United
Nations, adopted standards concerning
emissions of nitrogen and sulfur oxides,
as well as particulate matter, from ships
operating in an Emission Control Area
(
ECA). In March 2010, the IMO amended
the International Convention for the
Prevention of Pollution from Ships
(
MARPOL) to designate specific portions
of U.S. and Canadian waters as an ECA.
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and Canada’s government
initiated the proposal for the ECA, which
in 2014 will also include Puerto Rico and
the U.S. Virgin Islands. But such efforts
cannot be extended into waters that
are not signatories to the ECA, such as
Mexico or the Bahamas.
The North American ECA mandates
that once a ship is within 200 miles of
the coast, the sulfur content of the fuel
powering the ship cannot exceed one
percent or 10,000 parts per million, and
by 2015 that content must be reduced to
0.1
percent or 1,000 parts per million.
Previously, ships operating around
the coast of the United States and
Canada could burn more inexpensive fuel
and fuel mixes with the sulfur content of
four percent or greater. Today, the sulfur
content in fuel for ocean-going vessels
is capped worldwide at 3.5 percent and
lower within the ECA boundaries.
After a grace period, in part to ensure
sufficient supplies of low-sulfur fuel, the
U.S. Coast Guard began enforcing the
ECA rules on August 1.
“
It represents a new cost of doing
business at ports across the country,”
said Shawn Kiernan, Strategic Planner for
the Maryland Port Administration (MPA).
“
From our perspective, we want to know
what it means to our Port customers and
neighbors and ultimately to the people of
the State of Maryland.”
Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics
(
WWL) has been preparing for this for
more than a decade, voluntarily achieving
a goal averaging 1.5 percent sulfur
worldwide for the last eight years and
reducing sulfur in total by 167,000 tons.
“
We have always believed this is the
right thing to do,” said Michael Derby,
General Manager, WWL North Atlantic
Operations. “The United States and
Canada choosing to align with similar
ECA regulations in Europe is a logical
next step.”
Cleaner Fuel
in Coastal Waters
Diesel-powered Ships Reducing Emissions
By applying the ECA measure to all U.S.
ports, no one port is given a competitive
cost advantage by being exempt from
the new fuel requirements.