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November, 2011:

Port of LA introduces Carbon Calculator

30th November 2011 19:47 GMT

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Helping ports reduce their carbon footprint

The Port of Los Angeles has announced that it has introduced a tool to assess global warming at port facilities.

The port has worked with technical experts and other ports worldwide to develop a Carbon Calculator for ports which estimates greenhouse gas emissions from their operations in an effort for ports to explore reduction strategies.

According to a press release, ports can use the free Carbon Calculator to to compute the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from sources associated with their operations, including port-specific sources such as cargo handling equipment and harbour craft.

The Calculator’s Reduced Emissions Scenarios feature will allow ports to develop strategies on how best to reduce their carbon footprint.

The calculator is a software package that lets ports estimate their existing carbon dioxide emissions from direct, port-owned sources such as fleet vehicles, cranes, harbour craft and cargo handling equipment, and also indirect sources such as electricity purchased for the port-owned buildings and operation.

“The Carbon Calculator is a powerful tool to help each port chart its own course toward reducing greenhouse gases,” said Port Executive Director Geraldine Knatz, who also serves as President of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH). “A consistent methodology among ports will help us assess our global impact.”

The Carbon Calculator is a project of the World Ports Climate Initiative (WPCI) – an IAPH collaboration which was launched in 2008.

The initiative is dedicated to identifying and promoting effective, sustainable practices and strategies for ports and harbors to improve air quality while remaining vital economic engines.

The Port of Los Angeles is one of 59 WPCI members and has taken the lead in developing the calculator.

Samantha Cacnio, Vancouver News Desk, 30th November 2011 19:47 GMT

Comments? Email editor@bunkerworld.com.

How come Hong Kong does not publish this kind of data ?

http://www.portoflosangeles.org/environment/studies_reports.asp

Ship pollution still high despite pact

Sulphur dioxide pollution has dropped slightly since the signing of the Fair Winds Charter, but the industry is still the city’s No 2 emitter, seminar told
Keith Wallis
Nov 13, 2011

The Fair Winds Charter, a voluntary fuel-switching scheme introduced by shipping lines nearly a year ago, had improved local air quality, but the shipping sector was still the second-biggest emitter of sulphur dioxide in Hong Kong, environmental officials told a seminar yesterday.

Despite the impact of ship pollution on public health, campaigners and government officials at the Civil Exchange event said it could take months if not years before tighter local and international legal controls on ship emissions were in place.

Joanne Ooi, chief executive of the Clean Air Network, said people were not aware that exhaust from ships was “affecting a huge swathe of the public in some of the poorest districts” of the city.

She was commenting after Simon Ng Ka-wing, visiting scholar at the Institute for the Environment at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said there were several hot spots for marine sulphur-dioxide emissions.

Ng, who is leading a team working on a government study on ship emissions, said Kwai Chung and main shipping routes, including the East Lamma Channel, to Shenzhen’s Yantian and Shekou ports had high sulphur-dioxide concentrations. He said 79 per cent of the sulphur-dioxide emissions from ships in Hong Kong came from oceangoing vessels, while 21 per cent came from fast ferries serving Macau and Pearl River Delta cities and river-trade ships.

Tony Lee Yu-tao, senior environmental protection officer with the Environmental Protection Department, said a “preliminary assessment reveals a slight improvement” in air quality since 18 shipping lines switched to using low-sulphur diesel in while berthed in Hong Kong.

This improvement was achieved even though the number of oceangoing ships arriving at the Kwai Chung container terminal had increased, Lee said. There are about 300 ships, including oceangoing and river-trade vessels, ferries and government vessels, at any one time in Hong Kong.

The carriers, which include the Tung family-controlled Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), Cosco Container Lines, an offshoot of the mainland’s largest shipping company, and Danish giant Maersk, agreed to use low-sulphur diesel for two years from last January when they signed the Fair Winds Charter.

Teddy Fung, managing director of OOCL’s Hong Kong branch, said switching to low-sulphur diesel had increased the firm’s fuel bill by US$1.4 million. Other container lines that signed the charter and switched fuels faced a similar increase, giving a cost advantage to firms that did not sign the charter.

Environment Secretary Edward Yau Tang-wah said the maritime sector was second only to the power sector in the amount of sulphur dioxide that was pumped into the city’s atmosphere.

Yau confirmed talks had started with mainland authorities to establish a control area for ship emissions in the Pearl River Delta, which was one of the key objectives by the shipping lines when they signed the charter.

But Lee said the creation of an emissions-control area was a long-term goal that would require Beijing’s approval and submission to the International Maritime Bureau.

Instead, Mike Kilburn, Civic Exchange’s head of environmental strategy, suggested a low-emission zone could be set up more quickly.

keith.wallis@scmp.com

Action urged on ships’ carbon emissions

3 November 2011 Last updated at 01:51 GMT

BBC News

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Container ship

Without curbs, emissions from ships will form a larger fraction of the global total in future

Greenhouse gas emissions from shipping should be included in the UK’s climate change budgets, the Committee on Climate Change has recommended.

Under the Climate Change Act, the UK is committed to cutting all its climate-changing emissions by 80% – based on 1990 levels – by 2050.

But international aviation and shipping emissions are not currently included.

If the government agrees, it will mean tighter targets for other sectors such as motoring and electricity generation.

“Shipping could account for up to 10% of emissions allowed under the 2050 target, and that says this is a material issue,” said Committee on Climate Change (CCC) chief executive David Kennedy.

The CCC’s report says there are many ways for shipping to curb its carbon footprint – by improving fuel efficiency, deploying kites or sails, or allocating vessels more efficiently.

Some companies are already developing such techniques.

Tight budgets

UK carbon budget chart

The first four carbon budgets, stretching to 2027, have already been agreed

The CCC has recommended – and the government has adopted – a series of carbon budgets setting down the maximum scale of greenhouse gas emissions that the UK can emit over successive five-year periods.

They are designed as staging posts on the way to the 2050 target.

If the government does agree to include shipping and maybe aviation in the budgets, then constraints on other sectors must become tighter.

“If you include shipping in the 2050 target – especially if you throw in aviation as well – that implies full decarbonisation of electricity, heat and surface vehicles,” said Mr Kennedy.

“And if the ambition is full decarbonisation [of those sectors], then we need to make good progress in the next two decades, otherwise we can’t achieve the 2050 target.”

The committee will put its formal recommendation on shipping and aviation to the government next year, and the government says that it will respond “in due course”. Under law, it must decide by the end of 2012.

Ins and outs

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Any solution must… avoid potentially damaging an industry that is vital to the future prosperity of the United Kingdom”

End Quote David Balston UK Chamber of Shipping

The committee’s analysts spent three months attempting to calculate UK shipping emissions “from the bottom up”, scouring records of 150,000 shipping movements into and out of UK ports by vessels including cargo ships, tugs, fishing vessels, ferries and cruise liners.

It believes the UK should be responsible for half of all the emissions associated with ships entering or leaving national ports – the other half being borne by whichever countries lie at the other end of the journeys.

Having crunched the numbers, the committee concludes that the UK’s share is 12-16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) per year.

Globally, shipping emissions are growing by 3-4% per year, and could account for a quarter of all the world’s greenhouse gas output by 2050.

The International Maritime Organisation agreed earlier this year on a programme to progressively increase vessels’ fuel efficiency.

The CCC is basically saying the UK should lead an international effort to go further and faster down this track.

The UK Chamber of Shipping, which worked with the CCC on its analysis, welcomed the conclusion, but warned of potential impacts on competitiveness.

NYK Super Eco ship 2030 concept

“Eco-ships”, such as Japanese line NYK’s 2030 concept, could cut emissions by 70%

“This work is hugely important,” said David Balston, the organisation’s director for safety and environment.

“We do stress, however, that any solution must be global rather than regional to avoid distorting world trade and potentially damaging an industry that is vital to the future prosperity of the United Kingdom.”

Mr Kennedy also suggested the priority was to end up with a global system of carrots and sticks for decarbonising shipping, and urged UK ministers to press for such a deal at and after the UN climate talks that begin in South Africa at the end of the month.

If international action proved impossible, the European Union would almost certainly introduce measure for traffic in and out of European ports, he said.

Environment group WWF, together with Oxfam, recently issued a report recommending that some kind of global shipping tax be used to raise some of the $100bn per year of climate-related cash that rich countries are committed to providing to the developing world by 2020.

“International shipping has, like aviation, been left out of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for too long, said Keith Allott, WWF-UK’s head of climate change.

“An international deal to address shipping could be a win-win – addressing a rapidly growing source of emissions and at the same time providing a valuable source of funding for tackling climate change in the developing world.”

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15554523?print=true