Maritime shipping and emissions: A three-layered, damage-based approach

Abstract

a b s t r a c tPolicy emphasis in ship design must be shifted away from global and idealized towards regional based and realistic vessel operating conditions. The present approach to reducing shipping emissions through technical standards tends to neglect how damages and abatement opportunities vary according to location and operational conditions. Since environmental policy originates in damages relating to ecosystems and jurisdictions, a three-layered approach to vessel emissions is intuitive and practical. Here, we suggest associating damages and policies with ports, coastal areas possibly defined as Emission Control Areas (ECA) as in the North Sea and the Baltic, and open seas globally. This approach offers important practical opportunities: in ports, clean fuels or even electrification is possible; in ECAs, cleaner fuels and penalties for damaging fuels are important, but so is vessel handling, such as speeds and utilization. Globally we argue that it may be desirable to allow burning very dirty fuels at high seas, due to the cost advantages, the climate cooling benefits, and the limited ecosystem impacts. We quantify the benefits and cost savings from reforming current IMO and other approaches towards environmental management with a three-layered approach, and argue it is feasible and worth considering.

Environmental regulations in shipping: Policies leaning towards globalization of scrubbers deserve scrutiny

“…Second, the present approach to NOx emissions through technical standards neglects that the reductions come at the cost of higher fuel consumption (Lindstad et al, 2015a) and, thus, CO2 emissions. Third, stricter SOx rules also tend to raise fuel consumption on a well to propeller basis, i.e.…”

The Effect of Vessel Speed on Fuel Consumption and Exhaust Gas Emissions

“…After ignition in the engine, air and fuel mixture releases energy to be harnessed mechanical propulsion systems and produces hot flue gases as a byproduct. Lindstad et al (2015) stated that exhaust gasses, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) only has the effect of climate, while carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur oxides (SO X ), nitrogen oxides (NO X ), methane (CH 4 ), carbon black (BC) and organic carbon (OC) has the impact on the climate and the environment both locally and regionally harmful, for example on human health. Similar results were reported recently (Eide et al, 2013).…”

Batteries in Offshore Support Vessels - Pollution, Climate Impact and Economics

“…We need assessment of costs, fuel consumption and emissions as function of power demand (see Lindstad et al (2011Lindstad et al ( , 2014Lindstad et al ( , 2015), limiting our attention to the vessels and their use. The model consists of five main equations where the first calculates the power requirement.…”

“…For the cost of the operation, this increase in specific fuel consumption at lower loads makes a small impact compared to the total cost of the operation. In contrast, for emissions, low loads yield a greater increase in emissions of exhaust gases such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) (Duran et al, 2012;Ehleskog, 2012) and aerosols such as black carbon (BC) (Kasper et al, 2007;Ristimaki et al, 2010;Lack and Corbett, 2012;Lindstad et al, 2015). Complicating matters, emissions in one region may lead to a direct climate forcing that differs in magnitude to the same quantity emitted in another region (Corbett et al, 2010; …”