Environmental effects of shipping
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The environmental effects of shipping include
Although ships are the most energy-efficient method to move a given mass of cargo a given distance, the sheer size of the industry means that it has a significant effect on the environment.[4] The annual increasing amount of shipping overwhelms gains in efficiency, such as from slow-steaming. The growth in tonne-kilometers of sea shipment has averaged 4 percent yearly since the 1990s,[5] and it has grown by a factor of 5 since the 1970s.[citation needed]
The fact that shipping enjoys substantial tax privileges has contributed to the growing emissions.[6][7][8]
Ballast water
Sound pollution
Noise pollution caused by shipping and other human enterprises has increased in recent history.[10] The noise produced by ships can travel long distances, and marine species who may rely on sound for their orientation, communication, and feeding, can be harmed by this sound pollution.[11][12]
The
Wildlife collisions
One notable example of the impact of ship collisions is the endangered North Atlantic right whale, of which 400 or fewer remain.[17] The greatest danger to the North Atlantic right whale is injury sustained from ship strikes.[15] Between 1970 and 1999, 35.5% of recorded deaths were attributed to collisions.[18] From 1999 to 2003, incidents of mortality and serious injury attributed to ship strikes averaged one per year. From 2004 to 2006, that number increased to 2.6.[19] Deaths from collisions has become an extinction threat.[20] The United States' National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) introduced vessel speed restrictions to reduce ship collisions with North Atlantic right whales in 2008, which expired in 2013.[21] However, in 2017 an unprecedented mortality event occurred, resulting in the deaths of 17 North Atlantic right whales caused primarily from ship-strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.[17]
Atmospheric pollution
Exhaust gases from ships are a significant source of air pollution, both for conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases.[1]
Conventional pollutants
In 2016, the IMO adopted new sulfur-emissions regulations for implementation by larger ships beginning in January 2020.[24][25][26]
Of total global air emissions, marine shipping accounts for 18 to 30 percent of the nitrogen oxides and 9% of the
Cities in the United States like
In contrast to sulfur emissions (which depend on the fuel used), nitrous oxide emissions are primarily a function of combustion temperature. As air contains over 70% nitrogen by volume, some of it will react with
Other than replacing ambient air with pure oxygen or some other oxidizing agent, the only ways to significantly reduce the nitrogen oxide emissions are via passing flue gasses through a catalytic converter and/or diesel exhaust fluid treatment, whereby an aqueous solution of urea reacts with the nitrous oxides in the flue gas to produce nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water. However, both those options add cost and weight. Furthermore, the urea in diesel exhaust fluid is usually derived from fossil fuels, and therefore it is not carbon neutral.
A third option entails the use of wet scrubbers that essentially spray seawater through the exhaust column as it is pumped through a chamber. Depending on the detailed engineering-design attributes of the wet scrubber, these devices can wash out the sulfur oxides, soot and nitrogen oxides from the engine exhaust, thus leaving a sludge that contains soot and various acidic compounds (or neutralized compounds, if alkaline substances are mixed in with the scrubbing liquid beforehand).[31] This material can then be either treated via an on-board device (closed-loop system), or it can simply be dumped overboard (open-loop system). The discharged material can be harmful to marine life, especially in nearshore settings.
In a recent study, the future of ship emissions has been investigated and reported that the growth of carbon dioxide emissions do not change with most common alternatives such as
In inland-waters-based applications where sulfur cannot (fully) be removed from the fuel before combustion (desulfurization), flue gas scrubbing is commonly employed. However, this would add weight and cost on ships and produce a further waste stream (usually calcium sulfate if flue gases are scrubbed by being passed through calcium hydroxide solution) which would have to be disposed of, adding yet further cost. In addition, calcium hydroxide commonly being produced by calcination of calcium carbonate releases yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. While this stream is comparatively small in relation to carbon-dioxide emissions caused by combustion of fossil fuels, it needs to be taken into account as well, as part of a complete life-cycle assessment.[citation needed]
Localized air pollution
One source of environmental stresses on maritime vessels recently has come from states and localities, as they assess the contribution of commercial marine vessels to regional air quality problems when ships are docked at port.
In 2005,
Greenhouse gas emissions
Maritime transport accounts for about 3% of all greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide.[34] According to the World Bank, in 2022, the shipping industry's 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions make it "the sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter worldwide, ranking between Japan and Germany."[35][36][37]
Although the industry was not a focus of attention of the
Decarbonization of shipping
Oil spills
Most commonly associated with ship pollution are
Wastewater
Blackwater is sewage,
Greywater is wastewater from the sinks, showers,
A large cruise ship (3,000 passengers and crew) generates an estimated 55,000 to 110,000 liters per day of blackwater waste.[45]: 13 The cruise line industry dumps 970,000 litres (255,000 US gal) of greywater and 110,000 litres (30,000 US gal) of blackwater into the sea every day.[1]
MARPOL annex IV was brought into force September 2003 strictly limiting untreated waste discharge. Modern cruise ships are most commonly installed with a membrane bioreactor type treatment plant for all blackwater and greywater, such as G&O, Zenon or Rochem bioreactors which produce near drinkable quality effluent to be re-used in the machinery spaces as technical water.
Solid waste
Solid waste generated on a ship includes glass, paper, cardboard, aluminium and steel cans, and plastics.
Bilge water
On a ship, oil often leaks from engine and machinery spaces or from engine maintenance activities and mixes with water in the
Some shipping companies, including large cruise shipping lines, have sometimes violated regulations by illegally bypassing the onboard oily water separator and discharging untreated oily wastewater. In the US these violations by means of a so-called "magic pipe" have been prosecuted and resulted in large fines, but in other countries enforcement has been mixed.[50][51]
International regulation
Some of the major international efforts in the form of treaties are the Marine Pollution Treaty, Honolulu, which deals with regulating marine pollution from ships, and the UN Convention on Law of the Sea, which deals with marine species and pollution.[52] Maritime governance from the 1950s up to the 1980s has been characterized by intergovernmental decision-making centralized around the IMO. However, this picture has been changing since the 1980s when regional initiatives in the EU and its member states began to play a larger role, partly due to an increasing dissatisfaction with the lacking regulation and enforcement efforts of the IMO.[53][54] This has led to a new synergy developing between the EU and the IMO and other regional actors, broadly characterized as a polycentric mode of governance.[53][55][56][57][58] The polycentric synergy of the EU and IMO has largely been driven by the active and leading role taken by the EU in both implementing and influencing IMO conventions.[55] Four regional initiatives in this context are notable: “the use of special areas in IMO Conventions, the adoption of the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Port State Control, the development of the European Union shipping policy domain and the emergence of market-based initiatives by ports and cargo-owners”.[53]
While plenty of local and international regulations have been introduced throughout maritime history, much of the current regulations are considered inadequate. "In general, the treaties tend to emphasize the technical features of safety and pollution control measures without going to the root causes of sub-standard shipping, the absence of incentives for compliance and the lack of enforceability of measures."[59] Where polycentric governance relies on positive relationships between major actors and conventions, one of the largest barriers to an effective environmental regulation of shipping arises from negative relationships between major actors and conventions, where ambiguous or overlapping jurisdictions result in a range of different issues such as a lack of effective enforcement and monitoring, inconsistent and unclear standards, and inadequate supervision resulting in blind spots in the high seas.[58][60]
Effective regulation of international shipping thus requires more international coordination. If states regulate emissions unilaterally, this leads to an overall increase in net emissions, whereas coordinated and uniform regulation between states reduces net emissions.
A 2016 journal article recommends that under current circumstances, it is necessary for states, the shipping industry and global organizations to explore and discuss market-based mechanisms (MBMs) for vessel-sourced GHG emissions reduction.[4] MBMs are part of a broader category of mechanisms working through economic incentives “that provide motivation for the adoption of less environmentally damaging practices”, the second most common being “infrastructure investments and informative policies”.[71] The most prominent and promising use of economic incentives are market-based measures (MBMs). The two main types of MBMs used are emission trading schemes and fuel levies. Both work through putting a price on GHG emissions providing economic incentives for taxed actors to improve their energy efficiency.[58] However, these improvements are also accompanied by a short-term decline in industry profit.[72] Some argue that the current use of MBMs in the EU Emission Trading Scheme could serve as a window of opportunity to reduce GHG emissions in the shipping sector without placing an unnecessarily high burden on the shipping sector. The challenges standing in the way of this – the “allocation of emissions, carbon leakage, permit allocation, treatment of the great variety in ship type, size and usage, and transaction cost” – are however hard to overcome without global market-based economies.[73] Others incentive-based schemes for achieving decarbonization include pricing schemes or the incentivization of “front-runner ships that implement decarbonization technologies beyond regulations”.[74][75] However, evaluation of current the incentive schemes reveals that the schemes are onerous and only taken up by shipping enterprises or ports to a limited degree. Further, these incentive schemes are not specifically focused on a reduction in GHG emissions and thus do not support decarbonization.[75]
Further, these approaches are not without their critics. Lars Stemmler is critical towards the attitude that both environmental and social consequences of climate change can be mitigated through “ever more efficiencies in shipping”.[76] Jason Monios similarly argues that the shipping sector generally operate by a business-as-usual logic based on assumptions of uninterrupted growth where actors must only address “incremental challenges that can be adapted to in a piecemeal fashion”. However, the consequences of climate change might instead take place on a disruptive and uncontrollable level, “bringing starvation, destruction, migration disease and war” necessitating much more radical action.[77] While Monios argues that the shipping industry has started to use the rhetoric of a logic of sustainability, the actions of shipping actors are still largely determined by the dominant business-as-usual logic, which block attempts at regulation from the IMO and leads to a loss of trust in and legitimacy of the system.[78] Lastly, When MBMs become the primary means of addressing climate change at sea, Monios argues, this business-as-usual logic is strengthened, since they crowd out non-market norms and render invisible governance alternatives such as direct regulation and supply-side approaches.[79]
Issues by region
Asia
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European Union
- Cruise ship pollution in Europe
- EU Reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions from the shipping sector
- EU Sustainable Shipping Forum (ESSF)
- EC-IMO Energy Efficiency Project. The 4-year project aims to establish Maritime Technology Cooperation Centres in 5 regions: Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific. Through technical assistance and capacity-building, the centres will promote the uptake of low carbon technologies and operations in maritime transport in the less developed countries in the respective region. This will also support the implementation of the internationally agreed energy efficiency rules and standards (EEDI and SEEMP).
- MRV Monitoring, reporting and verification of CO2 emissions from large ships using EU ports
United Kingdom
United States
It is expected that, (from 2004) "...shipping traffic to and from the United States is projected to double by 2020."[29] However, many shipping companies and port operators in North America (Canada and the United States) have adopted the Green Marine Environmental Program to limit operational impacts on the environment.[80]
- Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships
- American Bureau of Shipping
- Cruise ship pollution in the United States
- National Oil and Hazardous Substances Contingency Plan
- Oil Pollution Act of 1990
- Regulation of ship pollution in the United States
See also
- Bottom paint
- Classification society(technical standards NGO)
- Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter
- Environmental impact of transport
- Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef
- International Association of Classification Societies
- List of environmental issues
- Marine debris
- Marine fuel management
- Mobility transition
- North Pacific Gyre
- Oil spill
- Particle (ecology)
- Shipping route
- Tributyltin
- Zero emission vehicle
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Further reading
- Ewan McGaughey, 'Liability for climate damage and shipping' in S Baughan, B Soyer and A Tettenborn (eds), Disruptive Technologies, Climate Change and Shipping (2022) ch 13 and on SSRN
- Copeland, Claudia (6 February 2008). Cruise Ship Pollution: Background, Laws and Regulations, and Key Issues (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: US Congressional Research Service. RL32450. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008.
- Becker, Austin; Ng, Adolf K.Y.; McEvoy, Darryn; Mullett, Jane (8 February 2018). "Implications of climate change for shipping: Ports and supply chains". WIREs Climate Change. 9 (2). Wiley. S2CID 135252051.
- "The First Wave A blueprint for commercial-scale zero-emission shipping pilots" (PDF). Energy Transitions Commission. 11 November 2020. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
- "Charting a Course for Decarbonizing Maritime Transport". World Bank Live. 23 April 2021. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
External links
- Maritime International Secretariat Services - Shipping Industry Guidance on Environmental Compliance
- GloBallast partnership (IMO)
- International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments, 2004 - IMO
- Cruise Ship Pollution Overview - Oceana
- Ecological facts on ballast water
- CO2 emissions calculator for transporting cargo by sea Archived 9 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- The Global MTCC Network