Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018 25 acid rain. A single large container ship can, therefore, create as much sulphur pollution as tens of thousands of trucks. Diesels also create various nitrogen ox- ides (NOx) through the combustion pro- cess. Here again, the large slow and me- dium speed marine diesel characteristics are worse than those of smaller land-based engines, and the pace of regulatory control has been slower. SOx, NOx and the other fuel impurities also contribute to emissions of particulates, which are a large contribu- tor to human health problems. Regulatory requirements The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is the United Nations body with the responsibility for the regulation of shipping. Shipping is probably the most in- ternationalized of any industry, with most of the world fleet being registered with the Flag States such as Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands. These rely heavily on the fees from ship registration, and so are very receptive to industry pressure. Regulatory development is generally slow. However, the shipping world has re- cently seen some major changes and is now at a tipping point for emission issues. The IMO International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) Annex VI on air pollution first came into effect in 2005 and has been expanded and tightened over the last de- cade. In 2010, a limit of 3.5 per cent sul- phur was introduced, as were NOx limits for new engines. None of this was very onerous. However, an important aspect of this MARPOL Amendment was the pro- vision to allow for regional agreements to impose much tighter limits on NOx and SOx emissions by setting up Emission Control Areas (ECA). Canada and the U.S. introduced a North American ECA in 2014 (Figure 1). Within this, sulphur content is restricted to 0.1 per cent (2015), and NOx limits for new ships are reduced to "TIER III" levels. Unlike the general MARPOL re- quirements, the ECA SOx and NOx lim- its require fuel switching and/or exhaust gas treatment by scrubber and catalyst systems, or other changes to engine tech- nology. The next major update to MARPOL will be in 2020, at which time the global sulphur limit reduces to 0.5 per cent. This moves most marine fuels from the catego- ry of waste product to become engineered refinery products, with associated major increases in cost. Heavy fuels are tradition- ally significantly cheaper than crude oil. In future, they will be much more expensive. At the time of writing, HFO in Montreal is available at roughly US$400/tonne, while MGO (standard diesel) is over US$700/ tonne. As fuel costs are the single largest component of shipping costs, the impact on the industry will be dramatic. A further challenge for the shipping in- dustry is the need to meet new energy ef- ficiency targets, contained in the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI). Differ- ent ship types – container ships, oil tank- ers, etc. – have different absolute targets, but all new builds must achieve up to 30 per cent reductions from the initial baseline (good current practice) in transportation efficiency by 2025 (Figure 2). Although "Depending on the source of the crude oil, 20th-century heavy fuel oils could contain as much as 5 per cent sulphur by weight. For comparison, current North American ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel for land transport (ULSD) can only contain 15 parts per million, or 0.0015 per cent – thousands of times less." marine fuels Figure 1: North American Emission Control Area.

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