Huge rise in shipping sparks emissions alert

Danny Fortson, The Independent 11 Dec 07;

It is hard to see a way to avoid a huge increase in shipping emissions – more than 90 per cent of world trade is conducted by sea. Unsurprisingly, China is the primary driver. The biggest of the world's ships are getting bigger to feed the massive demand from the country.

Commercial shipbuilding may be a vestige of what it once was in the UK, but it is a different story in Shanghai, where along 5 miles of coastline on Changxin island the China State Shipbuilding Corporation is building the world's largest shipyard. The site is crucial to China's fight to claim the mantle of the world's largest shipbuilder from South Korea.

Yet this is far more than a tussle for regional supremacy. The global shipbuilding industry is in the midst of its biggest boom ever with the numbers of tankers and bulk carriers expected to increase by 50 per cent by 2012.

Huge tankers, bulk carriers and container ships – the largest ships in the world's fleet – are sliding out of the dry docks in Asia at a rate of nearly four a day. They are responding to growing demands for anything from authentic soy sauce in supermarkets to the Chinese steel industry's insatiable appetite for iron ore.

The global order book for container ships, tankers and bulk carriers to be built by 2012 stands at 6,100, according to Philip Rogers, head of research at the London ship broker Galbraith's. "This is the largest volume we have ever seen," said Mr Rogers, "It is unprecedented for the industry."

The coming deluge of new ships has the world's largest ports scrambling to expand capacity, and politicians, finally, beginning to take notice of what environmentalists argue is an industry that is already doing as much damage to the environment as aviation, and which could do much more.

Nearly as many ships will come into service over the next five years as the number of jumbo jets – 6,900 – expected to hit the skies over the next decade. Yet while airlines and aeroplane makers have been pilloried by environmentalists and drawn into the European emission trading sheme, shipping has thus far escaped the controversy. This is despite the generally accepted view that it generates emissions at least equal to the 2 per cent of global emissions generated by airlines.

By several estimates, including that of BP Marine, the shipping arm of the oil giant, shipping emissions could account for more than twice the greenhouse gases that flying does. Like aviation, shipping emissions fall outside the Kyoto protocol.

Later this month, an international panel of academics and industry magnates will make their final submissions in an inquiry, commissioned by the United Nations International Maritime Organisation (IMO), into the pollution caused by the world's 47,000-strong global fleet. Yet by the time their recommendations are implemented, in 2009, they will be in danger of setting targets long since passed.

This has happened before. An annex to its international Marpol treaty regulating air pollution from shipping was passed in 1997 and came into effect in 2005. However, because the targets were eight years old by the time they came into effect, the IMO launched an immediate effort to revise the targets as soon as they became binding, leading to the inquiry now just wrapping up.

The IMO will publish its pollution recommendations in February. Campaigners want shipping emissions lumped in now with aviation. "Emissions from international aviation and shipping are increasing and must be tackled urgently if we are to stop the worst impacts of climate change," said Richard Dyer, transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "The UK Government must also include [shipping emissions] in the new climate change law from the start."

It is hard to see a way to avoid a huge increase in shipping emissions – more than 90 per cent of world trade is conducted by sea. Unsurprisingly, China is the primary driver. The biggest of the world's ships are getting bigger to feed the massive demand from the country. The Chinese steel industry produced 66 million tons in 1990. This year, production is projected to come in at 488 million tons, creating a huge demand for iron ore shipped in bulk carriers.

World Shipping Must Act on Air Emissions - ICS
Stefano Ambrogi, PlanetArk 12 Dec 07;

LONDON - The trillion-dollar shipping industry must set global targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants by the end of 2008 or risk having regional solutions imposed on it, the International Chamber of Shipping said on Tuesday.

Tony Mason, secretary general of the influential industry body, called on the sector that carries 90 percent of the world's traded goods by volume to act in a comprehensive way and as quickly as possible.

"We at ICS believe it is absolutely vital that conclusions are reached and improved standards adopted during 2008," Mason told a ship emissions conference in London.

"If governments and industry cannot between them deliver bankable solutions within this deadline, we shall see a serious disenchantment with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) process, and a proliferation of local regulations, led in all probability by the EU and the United States," he said.

PRESSURE BUILDING

Shipping, unlike aviation, has largely escaped close attention over emissions, but pressure is building. In late November, the European Commission urged the IMO to do more.

Commission Vice President Margot Wallstrom said both shipping and aviation were "lagging behind" and were not helping European Union plans to extend its carbon market.

The United Nations' IMO, the world's top maritime body responsible for regulating the industry, is due to report by the end of this year on a way forward to combat emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas.

The shipping industry, with a fleet of up to 60,000 ocean-going vessels, also accounts for about 10 percent of sulphur dioxide emissions and large amounts of toxic nitrous oxide, gases which cause acid rain and deplete the ozone layer.

Ships also produce particulate emissions.

The IMO is busily reviewing current marine pollution laws, known as MARPOL Annex VI, adopted by countries in 1997, but that only came into force globally in 2005.

Because of the delay the regulations are seen as inadequate and unable to address huge concerns over how much sea-based transportation contributes to global warming, industry experts say. IMO's review is expected to set out far more stringent standards on completion.

One problem the industry has is establishing how much CO2 fuel-burning ships create. A further obstacle is that like aviation, emissions from shipping are not covered by the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

A figure that is frequently cited by the industry is a report by former World Bank chief Nicholas Stern, which estimated emissions at just less than two percent in 2000 compared with 15 percent made by transportation as a whole.

Critics say the level is much higher and figure fails to take account of fast expanding seaborne trade, which by the industry's own admission surged by 50 percent in the last 15 years.

"The worst case I've seen is 3 to 4 percent of emissions, which is credible - there's no scientific basis for the others," Mason said.

"Projections are outside our control and that's half the problem. The weakness that we have as an industry is that we can act to reduce CO2 emissions, but do not have mathematical models to say what they will be," he said.

"It's rather like running on a treadmill and then trying to stand still." (Editing by Anthony Barker)