Denmark vows to shame sulphur cheats

Cruise ship captain fined for using dirty fuel

The captain of a cruise ship found to be burning fuel with excessive sulphur levels has been fined €100,000 in a Marseille court, the first such ruling in France. According to the prosecutors, the captain knew the fuel was illegal – it contained 1.68% sulphur, 0.18% above the EU limit – and the company was using it to save money. The judge handed the captain a fine of €100,000, but specified that the parent company of P&O Cruises, the US-based Carnival, should pay €80,000 of the sum. The company had “wanted to save money at the expense of everyone’s lungs”, the prosecutor Franck Lagier told the court in October.

Source: The Guardian, 26 November 2018

Denmark vows to shame sulphur cheats

Starting this year, ships and owners that violate sulphur regulations will be publicly named and shamed. In early December, Denmark adopted a new law that allows for increased fines and publication of the names of carriers that violate sulphur regulations. All Danish waters are within Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECA) where only fuel with a sulphur content of max 0.1% is permitted.

Penalties for violating the sulphur limit range from DKK 30,000 to 300,000. The Danish EPA will impose a fine of DKK 200,000 if the sulphur content is between 0.50 and 0.99% and DKK 300,000 where sulphur content is 1% or above. It will be the most serious cases where shipping companies receive fines of more than DKK 200,000, which will be published.

Source: ShipInsight, 14 December 2018

Sweden plots course to zero-emissions shipping

The Swedish Shipowners’ Association is currently preparing a roadmap with the government initiative Fossil Free Sweden to totally decarbonise domestic shipping by 2045, five years ahead of the International Maritime Organization’s deadline for a mere halving of emissions.

The roadmap for domestic shipping will not be published in its entirety until the spring, but the two organisations behind it outlined seven proposals for action, including:

• Create an industry-supported carbon dioxide fund, to support investments in technology that will reduce the climate impact of shipping.
• Improve fairway dues so that they are more clearly differentiated in favour of vessels using alternative fuels.
• Introduce tax exemptions for electricity in ports for vessels whose gross tonnage is below 400 when charging batteries for electrically powered ships and for directly transferred electricity to cable ferries.
• Increase and earmark state funding for a special research and innovation programme for energy-efficient and fossil-free shipping, and to encourage more marine transport.

Sources: Dagens Industri, 8 February 2019 and Ends Europe Daily, 11 February 2019

EU wants urgent clarity on scrubbers

The EU demands clear guidelines on the discharge of washwater from scrubbers, amid fears that the by-product could cause irreparable environmental damage. In order to comply with the sulphur regulations, several shipowners have installed exhaust gas cleaning (EGC) technology known as scrubbers on their vessels. Having a scrubber that reduces the emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO₂) allows a ship to continue to run on cheaper high-sulphur heavy fuel oil.

In a document issued by the EU Council to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), EU countries stress the need for clear regulations on where and how ships can discharge washwater from scrubbers. Critics of scrubbers have pointed out in particular that open-loop scrubbers have created a new environmental problem while striving to solve another. A study from the German environmental agency recently showed that the washwater discharge from scrubbers is a direct source of pollution.

Several countries have already either banned or flagged an upcoming ban against open-loop scrubbers where water discharge is released into ports, including major bunker ports in Singapore and Fujairah.

The EU shares concerns that scrubbers could end up polluting the sea and impacting marine flora and fauna. “The potential toxicity of EGCS water discharges, due to the very nature of the pollutant substances present in the exhaust gases, and the increase in the number of these systems require careful consideration to avoid irreversible pollution of the marine environment,” states the document.

Source: ShippingWatch, 8 February 2019

Emissions from aviation keep on rising

Improving technology, more efficient operations, better airports and market-based measures have not been enough to mitigate the aviation sector’s growing impacts on the environment, climate and people’s health, according to the European Aviation Environmental Report 2019.

Some key findings of the report:

• The number of flights in the EU and EFTA increased by 8 per cent between 2014 and 2017, and is expected to grow by 42 per cent from 2017 to 2040.
• In 2016, domestic and international aviation together accounted for 3.6 per cent of total EU28 greenhouse gas emissions.
• By 2040, emissions of CO₂ and NOx from aviation are expected to increase by at least 21 and 16 per cent, respectively.

Source: EEA News, 24 January 2019
The report: https://www.easa.europa.eu/eaer/

Germany to spend €2 bn to avert driving bans

The German government had previously pledged €1 billion to help improve air quality, but after meeting with municipal representatives in December, Chancellor Angela Merkel said this program would be increased to €1.5 billion by 2020. She said the federal government would also set aside an additional €432 million for hardware retrofits of small trucks with older diesel engines.

One way to clean up older diesel cars is to fit more effective exhaust filters to cars. The issue of hardware retrofits, which municipalities want, was not resolved at the meeting. German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer said his ministry would, by the end of 2018, present new guidelines, and that he expected it to take around six months after that to develop hardware retrofits, which would then need to be approved by the Federal Motor Transport Authority too.

In November, a German court ruled that the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia must ban older diesel vehicles in Gelsenkirchen and Essen. Other German cities also face the risk of diesel driving bans imposed by judges, including Aachen, Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Mainz.

Merkel said 249 German cities had nitrogen oxide concentrations below the EU limit of 40 μg/m³, while 65 cities had higher concentrations than that. Of those 65 cities, 40 had a reading between 40 and 50 μg/m³ and should therefore not have driving bans because the measures already agreed are expected to reduce the concentrations quickly, Merkel said.

Source: Reuters, 3 December 2018

Pastures thrive under solar panels

Solar panels in pastures increased grass feed for sheep and cows by 90 per cent, according to a study done by researchers at Oregon State University. Measurements at a test site on the campus were done over two years. Significant differences in mean air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and soil moisture were observed. Areas under PV solar panels maintained higher soil moisture throughout the period of observation. Besides a significant increase in late season biomass under the PV panels, the shaded areas were also more than three times as water efficient.
“Semi-arid pastures with wet winters may be ideal candidates for agrivoltaic systems as supported by the dramatic gains in productivity,” the researchers conclude and continue, “the agricultural benefits of energy and pasture co-location could reduce land competition and conflict between renewable energy and agricultural production”.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203256

What are the health costs of pollution?

The European Commission has published a Future Brief that explores how to assign an economic value to the health impacts of three types of pollution: air pollution, noise pollution and exposure to toxic chemicals. The report outlines some of the methodologies that have been used to account for health costs, both in Europe and other parts of the world.

Link to the report “What are the health costs of environmental pollution?”: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/healt...