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Shipping boom fuels rising tide of emissions

A huge Maersk container vessel in this file photo

When the world’s largest merchant ship ferries its monthly cargo of 13,000 containers between China and Europe it burns nearly 350 tonnes of fuel a day. The Emma Maersk supplies Europe with everything from toys and food to clothes and televisions, but its giant diesel engine can emit more than 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year — equivalent to a medium-sized coal power station.

Until now reducing CO2 emissions from the world’s fleet of almost 90,000 large ships has not been a priority for governments or shipowners. Previously, the accepted figure for shipping emissions - drawn from information supplied by the industry - has been a maximum of 400 million tonnes of CO2, or around 1.8 per cent of global emissions.

But with Thursday’s disclosure that emissions from shipping are three times higher than previously thought, many experts will be asking why the industry has escaped the attention of governments and environmental campaigners alike.

The world’s burgeoning shipping fleet currently emits 1.21 billion tonnes a year, the draft U.N. report says, constituting nearly 4.5 per cent of world emissions.

Whereas the aviation industry has been at the top of the climate change agenda, and is expected to be included in the E.U.’s trading scheme, emissions from ships, which emit twice as much CO2 as planes, have gone relatively unnoticed.

In Britain, ship emissions are not covered in the U.K. climate change bill which commits the U.K. to cutting CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, and there is no plan to control them, beyond suggestions by ministers that they should be included in the E.U.’s emissions trading scheme, along with aviation. Shipping has also escaped the strict E.U. laws.

Part of the problem, experts say, is that the industry has grown so rapidly - it now carries more than 90 per cent of the world’s trade by volume, and has tripled its tonnage carried since 1970 - and the shift of industrial production away from the U.S. and Europe to China and south Asia has meant cargoes have to travel further.

The huge expansion of cargo ships, upon which import-reliant countries have come to depend, has also taken place largely out of sight.

Making matters worse, ships have historically sailed between national jurisdictions; out on the high seas there is little regulation on what a ship can burn, and countries are unwilling to share responsibility.

The British government, for example, has always resisted counting the industry’s emissions as part of the national total, because no international method has been agreed on how the gases emitted by ships should be allocated between countries.

Crucially, shipping exploits a ready supply of the world’s cheapest, most polluting “bunker” fuel. Marine heavy fuel oil, which is burned by all large ships, is the residue of the world’s oil refineries and is so thick that when cold it can be walked on. It is 60 per cent cheaper than cleaner oils and, according to the report, demand for it is soaring.

“Bunker fuel is just waste oil, basically what is left over after all the cleaner fuels have been extracted from crude oil. It’s tar, the same as asphalt. It’s the cheapest and dirtiest fuel in the world,” said Christian Eyde Moller, chief executive officer of the Rotterdam-based DK Group, a leading shipping technology company.

“The world’s shipping fleet has grown very quickly. Ships are getting bigger and bigger, and they are burning more,” he said.

“Their engines are now more efficient, which means they can burn thicker fuels, so they are emitting more pollution. The industry is more efficient per container than ever, but it has been ignoring fuel consumption and its corresponding impact on the environment and health.”

The prognosis for an industry set to expand over the coming decade is not good. More than 3,000 ships, many of which are designed to carry similar-sized cargoes as the Emma Maersk, are expected to be built in the next three years.

Together with the forecast expansion in world trade, the scientists estimate shipping emissions will grow 30 per cent to 1.45 billion tonnes within 12 years. This would make shipping responsible for nearly 6 per cent of global emissions by 2020. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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