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According to Lloyd’s Register there are some 100,000 ships with more than 100 gross register tons plying the seas.
The increasing globalization of the economy, and the exchange of goods that goes along with it, brought the maritime industry high rates of growth in the past, which were always above those of the global economy. Accordingly, the capacity of the world's merchant fleet rose by 5.7% in 2005 compared to a growth rate of 3.1% for the global economy.
Experts expect the capacity of the world's merchant fleet to grow 75% by the year 2020.
Cargo shipping is the most efficient transportation of the world. However cargo shipping is now considered one of the primary causes of climate-damaging emissions and as such contributes significantly to the pollution of our environment. According to a study by the University of Delaware (11/2003), shipping generates as much nitrogen oxides as the entire United States. Research by the scientific publication Bild der Wissenschaft 1/2006 also shows how maritime shipping is the third-biggest source of climate-change-related pollutants after industry and motor vehicles.
Experts from Lloyd´s Register Quality Assurance (London) estimate that shipping, with a total of 10 million tons per year, is responsible for more than seven percent of the worldwide emissions of sulfer dioxide.
Even a special expert opinion prepared in 2002 by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WGBU) reaches the same conclusion: The worldwide shipping industry is responsible for approximately 7% of all SO2 and 11-12% of all NOx emissions.
Dr. Veronika Eyring from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the German Center for Aeronautics reports the following global emissions of pollutants for the shipping industry for the year 2002 (Journal of Geophysical Research, volume 110/2005):
CO2: 813 million tons per year (in 2001)
NOx: 21.4 million tons per year (in 2001)
SO2: 12.0 million tons per year (in 2000)
Martime shipping, with its output of 813 million tons of CO2 per year, is responsible for almost 3% of worldwide CO2 emissions (ca. 30 billion tons in 2005). Meanwhile, other studies consider the figure to be more like up to 5% (The Guardian).
Based on computations by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (Prof. Hartmut Graßl, 11/2005), the climate will change more rapidly in the coming hundred years than ever before. This finding stems from the latest climate model calculations for different scenarios up to the year 2100. The consequences of global warming caused by climate change can be felt throughout the world even today in the form of weather extremes, an example being hurricane Katrina in the United States. Expert opinions foresee such weather extremes, which include severe heat, drought and precipitation, occurring with greater intensity and more often in the future.
In the last 650,000 years the concentration of greenhouse gases has never been as high as it is today. This conclusion was reached by a European team of researchers assisted by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. Prof. Dr. Thomas Stocker from the Institute of Physics at the University of Bern summed the matter up more specifically: "The analysis underscores the fact that today's atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration of 380 ppm is already 27% higher than the highest level recorded during the past 650,000 years."
From a climate-policy perspective, maritime operations have so far been overlooked even though more than 90% of the world's commercial goods are transported by sea and shipping's emissions are considerable. Thus shipping, like aviation, is not yet included in the Kyoto Protocol.
Now that the media and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have exposed the shipping industry as one of the biggest causers of climate-damaging emissions, this industry too is now moving to the center of the political climate-change debate.
The greatest environmental problem facing maritime shipping is that 90% of ship diesel engines (slow-running, two-stroke diesels are the standard powertrain for medium and large tankers, bulk carriers and container ships) burn comparatively cheap heavy fuel that contains a lot of pollutants. This low-quality heavy fuel is a viscous substance and a residual waste product of petroleum distillation. It contains all those components of crude oil that are unusable for making gasoline or diesel fuel.
Large amounts of pollutants are released into the air when heavy fuel is burned. And compared to other types of fuel it has characteristics that are vastly more harmful to the environment. Heavy fuel oil can also contain up to 4.5% sulfur depending on its source. A smaller concentration of sulfur would entail factoring in a cost of at least some 100 euros per ton and percentage point.
In addition to CO2, the burning of heavy fuel produces mostly nitrogen oxides (NOx). Nitrogen oxides react with hydrocarbons (HC) in sunlight to form ozone and can lead to smog. Sulfur oxides can exacerbate respiratory disorders and are considered one of the contributing causes of acid rain. Ozone causes respiratory problems in humans and damages plant life.
In April 2008 the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency responsible for maritime safety and protecting the seas - approved a reduction in sulfur emissions for the shipping industry. From the year 2020 shipping companies either have to use destillate fuels with a limited sulfur content of 0.5% instead of heavy fuel oil or have to use scrubbing technology to clean their exhaust gases. For shipping companies using distillate fuels means a doubling of fuel costs in the future, since refined products such as MGO and MDO are considerably more expensive than highly sulfurous bunker oil.
Already today shipping companies must use “clean” fuel having a maximum sulfur content of 1.5% when operating their fleets in what are called SECAs (Sulfur Emission Control Areas) on the North Sea and Baltic Sea. This threshold will drop to 1% starting in 2012. This is nothing more than a requirement to burn MDO/MGO, since it is not possible to reduce the sulfur content of heavy fuel oil to this level. The result will be higher fuel costs from having to convert from heavy fuel to diesel, and from price increases in combination with what will be a greater demand for MGO and MDO. Starting in 2015 the maximum allowable sulfur content in marine fuels within these regions will be reduced once more to 0.1%, which will set off another rise in prices.
Scrubbing as the end-of-pipe alternative leads to high investments in cleaning technology and an increase in fuel consumption of about 2% due to the higher resistance in the exhaust gas stream. It remains to be seen whether scrubbing will be allowed in the long term as it is counterproductive in view of international climate politics: when discharging SOx into the sea, large quantities of CO2 are being released.
Besides the expenses for maintenance and operation, the cost of procuring such catalytic converters runs about 40,000 euros per 1,000 kW of ship's power. What's more, the highly toxic residues from the cleaning systems then have to be disposed of at great expense in port.
In addition to the regulations already passed, the IMO is currently preparing a regulation on the reduction of CO2 emissions from shipping in the form of a CO2 indexing scheme. Experts assume that corresponding regulations will be implemented in a timely manner. Thus, shipping companies will also be burdened with emissions-based levies in the future. CO2 emissions can only be effectively reduced by burning less fuel, e.g. by using SkySails.
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