Efficiency vs pollution

This article is on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. There are errors, as seems to be the case always when journalists write anything about maritime subjects, but the studies quoted raise serious concerns. Lazeyjack pointed out on another thread that large diesels are among the most efficient of all combustion engines now, so use less fuel and emit less exhaust per unit of power developed. On that basis, they would be less a part of the problem, except that the contaminants in heavy bunker fuels add even more pollution. I think the article raises some good questions.

Ships Draw Fire
For Rising Role
In Air PollutionAs Global Trade Grows, So Does the Spewing Of Noxious Emissions
By BRUCE STANLEY
November 27, 2007; Page A1

As air pollution rises on the global political agenda, pressure is mounting on a largely hidden and proliferating source of dangerous emissions: the shipping industry.

The corpuscles of the global economy, ships carry more than 90% of the world's merchandise by volume, and the tonnage of cargo sent by ships has tripled since 1970. Yet the fuel propelling them is cheap and dirty and produces an especially noxious exhaust.

Ships release more sulfur dioxide, a sooty pollutant associated with acid rain, than all of the world's cars, trucks and buses combined, according to a March study by the International Council on Clean Transportation. That study also found that ships produced an estimated 27% of the world's smog-causing nitrogen-oxide emissions in 2005. Only six countries in the world emitted more greenhouse gases -- which trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the globe -- than was produced collectively in 2001 by all ships larger than 100 tons, according to the study and United Nations statistics.

The global shipping industry is mired in an internal struggle over how to cope with its emissions problem, and no simple strategies have emerged for regulating the open seas.

But demands for solutions are intensifying. Assertive governments and a few ports that wield substantial commercial power are proving that local action can reverberate internationally. Since Jan. 1, the state of California has required ships sailing within 24 miles of its shores to use cleaner-burning fuels in their auxiliary engines. Similar to a 2005 measure governing Europe's Baltic Sea region, the California law restricts access to America's two largest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach. Ships that don't comply can be fined or impounded.

Different Standards

The prospect of authorities around the world adopting different standards for fuel and emissions worries many in the shipping industry. For commercial reasons, most ship owners and operators prefer burning less expensive, if dirtier, fuel when sailing outside a protected zone. Yet the procedures for switching back and forth between different types of fuel are complicated and potentially hazardous.

Container ships and most other oceangoing vessels burn a low-grade fuel that releases a higher concentration of pollutants. So a few of shipping's largest players are making an unprecedented proposal for a single, strict limit on sulfur emissions in all oceans.

"The general population of the world would have to pay an extra one or two cents for their beer, but you'd solve the [sulfur] emissions problem," says Pradeep Chawla, an executive of Hong Kong-based Anglo-Eastern Ship Management Ltd.

Yet the ravenous appetite of consumers for imported goods is growing so fast that marginal cuts in emissions would likely make no difference. Even a 30% decrease in carbon emissions from ships could be offset by the expanding size of the world's fleet, says Russell Long, vice president of environmental group Friends of the Earth, a respected authority on the subject.

A U.N. study concluded that a 10% reduction in sailing speeds could cut ships' carbon-dioxide output by 23%. But slower speeds would likely prompt shipping lines to deploy more ships to satisfy their customers. "By adding vessels, you'd burn more fuel and generate more pollution, and the benefit of going slower might be canceled out," says Stanley Shen, a spokesman for Orient Overseas (International) Ltd., a shipping concern based in Hong Kong.

One big culprit is the industry's favorite fuel. Most ships rely on residual fuel oil, also known as bunker fuel, to power their huge engines. Bunker fuel is a tar-like sludge left over from the refining of petroleum. It often contains toxic heavy metals such as lead and vanadium and is collected from the bottoms of the distillation towers in which refineries process crude. Raw, unheated bunker fuel has the composition and consistency of asphalt.

"You can walk on it," says Claus Jensen, the fleet manager at Torm, a shipping company based in Copenhagen.

It also is cheap. A recent spot price for intermediate-grade bunker fuel traded in Singapore averaged $505.50 a metric ton, less than two-thirds the rate of marine gas oil, a distillate similar to what diesel trucks use.

"Ship owners have had a very cheap fuel that's packed with energy, and the refiners have had an outlet for their waste product," says Ian Adams, secretary-general of the International Bunker Industry Association, a group of firms that supply and trade bunker fuel. "Ship owners and refiners have had a perfect relationship."

That synergy has come at a cost. This month, a peer-reviewed study in the American Chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology estimated that underregulated air pollution from ships is causing 60,000 cardiopulmonary and lung-cancer deaths annually, mostly along trade routes in Asia and Europe.

At current rates of growth, oceangoing ships will generate 53% of the particulates, 46% of the nitrogen oxides and more than 94% of the sulfur oxides emitted by all forms of transportation in the U.S. by 2030, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates. That compares with levels for the same pollutants in 2001 of 17%, 12% and 49%, respectively, according to the EPA.

Innovative Boiler System

A 400-yard ship named the Evelyn Maersk represents one effort to address the problem. Owned by Danish shipping giant A.P. Moeller-Maersk AS, the vessel guzzles 10% less fuel than it otherwise would thanks to an innovative boiler system that converts heat from its main engine into power that helps turn its propeller shaft. Like many ships, the Evelyn Maersk purifies its bunker fuel in a superheated labyrinth of filters, tanks and centrifuges packed into a sweltering room next to the main engine.

Even so, every full day that it cruises at sea, this sky-blue leviathan spews roughly 10 tons of nitrogen oxides plus other airborne contaminants. By comparison, all the road vehicles in London churn out 11 tons of nitrogen oxides every three hours, according to an estimate by conservation group Greenpeace International.

The U.N. agency that regulates shipping, the International Maritime Organization, has a membership of 167 fractious national governments, and its Marine Environment Protection Committee has been slow to make policy. Part of the problem is that shipping representatives, oil companies and environmental groups alike lobby to influence committee decisions.

In addition, splits within the shipping industry itself can slow progress; ship owners, for example, have different priorities than firms that charter vessels for short periods.

When the committee gathered in London in July, its working group on air pollution spent much of a three-day session discussing procedural details, including the punctuation in its final report, according to one of the group's participants.

The Strongest Move

The IMO's strongest move against air pollution was the adoption in 2005 of a 4.5% limit on the amount of sulfur allowable in marine fuel. That measure took 17 years for IMO members to debate and ratify, and by then the average sulfur content in marine oil had already decreased to half the 4.5% level.

IMO spokesman Lee Adamson concedes that the agency has accomplished little so far to curb air pollution but predicts it will agree as early as next April to toughen standards. The IMO "is working to a timetable that's been developed and agreed by its 167 member governments," he says, adding that they have "looked at the [emissions] issue in all its complexities and understood its multifaceted nature."

In December, fuel emissions from the shipping and aviation industries will be on the agenda when world leaders meet in Bali, Indonesia, to begin haggling over a climate-change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty aimed at curbing global greenhouse-gas emissions.

In the U.S., the EPA says it is developing new rules on ship emissions, including one that would apply some of the same standards to marine engines that it enforces already for train locomotives. The agency says it also has urged the IMO to tighten international controls, believing that a global consensus is the best way forward.

Others say the EPA is moving too slowly. California Sen. Barbara Boxer has proposed a bill along with fellow California Democrat Dianne Feinstein that would require ships within 200 miles of U.S. shores to slash the sulfur content of their fuel to a scant 0.1% by 2010. In October, Friends of the Earth weighed in with a lawsuit against the EPA seeking a similar low-sulfur coastal zone. EPA officials say they are considering such a zone in conjunction with Canadian authorities.

As it tends to be on environmental issues, California is out front. In early 2006, the commissions of both the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports held a series of public meetings to address ship-related pollution. Area residents who blamed their cancers and their children's asthma on smog from the ports showed up in force. "In the first meetings, they would come out and say, 'You guys are murderers,'" recalls S. David Freeman, president of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners.

Martha Cota, a parenting instructor in Long Beach, lived for years with her family just 15 blocks from the city port. She and two of her four children are asthmatics. Exhaust from ships and container trucks afflicts them, and Ms. Cota says her own breathing problems vary according to the level of port-related activity. "It gets worse when the traffic is bad -- the wheezing, the pain in my chest," she says in Spanish through an interpreter.

A 2006 California Air Resources Board study found that the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports generated more than one-fifth of all the diesel-particulate matter in Southern California in 2002. The smog from ships, trucks and cranes at the ports caused an estimated 29 premature deaths, 750 asthma attacks and 6,600 lost work days that year, the report said.

In June 2006, the two ports jointly announced a $2 billion plan to slash harbor emissions by 50% over five years by targeting ships and the trucks that shunt freight to and from them. On Jan. 1, the Air Resources Board barred the use of dirty fuels within 24 miles of state shores. In about 60 random inspections of ships this year, officials have found only four violations.

Ambitious Targets

Elsewhere, the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., and Vancouver, British Columbia, have agreed to ambitious targets to reduce air pollution from ships entering their ports by 2010. Sweden, Germany and several other countries along Europe's Baltic Sea turned it into a special zone where ships must cap the sulfur content of their fuel at 1.5%. In August, the European Commission expanded the 1.5% umbrella to include the North Sea and English Channel.

The imposition of local restrictions creates a dilemma for ship owners and managers. Many ships now carry different grades of fuel, switching between them as required at various points in a single journey. This practice, however, can be dangerous.

If a ship tries to switch between fuels that are incompatible -- a common risk -- waxes in bunker fuel can separate out like "curdles in milk" and clog fuel filters, says Martin Cresswell, director and fleet general manager at China Navigation Co., a shipping line headquartered in London. Lighter components in incompatible fuels can turn into gas and cause a "vapor lock" that stalls the engine. Mr. Cresswell's nightmare is a big ship adrift without power amid the towering swells of a Force 10 storm at the crowded entrance to the English Channel.

The risks and impracticality of switching fuels have persuaded two big shipping groups to seek a radical solution. Both the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, or Intertanko, which represents 70% of the world's independent tanker fleet, and the Hong Kong Shipowners Association want the IMO to require ships to give up bunker fuel and use only distillates containing no more than 1% sulfur -- far below the current 4.5% IMO standard.

The International Bunker Industry Association calls any proposal to replace bunker with distillates impractical. Oil companies say that if ships burned only distilled fuel, refineries would need to process roughly 12 million additional barrels of crude oil daily -- more than the entire output of Saudi Arabia.

But Intertanko argues that if the IMO set a deadline for ships to adopt distillates, then refiners would have an incentive to invest in new capacity.

Other ideas, meanwhile, draw on ancient seamanship. Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics of Oslo has designed a concept ship that would produce zero emissions by harnessing power from the sun, waves and wind.

SkySails of Hamburg, Germany, is already marketing "towing kite propulsion systems" -- large parasails -- that it claims can reduce a ship's fuel costs by as much as 35%. The first commercial cargo ship to be equipped with SkySails parasails will enter service in December.

 

Big, filthy, but needed none the less

Thanks for the article, Charmac.

This indeed poses a vexing problem. But I don't think in any way it impunes on the efficiency of diesels. It only impunes the idea of burning the cheapest fuel possible.

If cleaner air comes at a cost of mere pennies per beer, then its pennies well worth spending. Perhaps some other use can be found for the sludge we now call bunker fuel.

I also expect the level of shipping to decrease in the next decade. This is because I believe the present economic arrangement of shipping jobs out to bring cheaper products in is unsustainable because the ability to buy such products in the first place depends on the citizens of the consuming countries having a good deal of disposable income. Loss of manufacturing jobs will, sooner or later, put an end to that.

We will still have very large ships, though. This is because a large ship has an enormous cost per ton advantage over a smaller ship. The only possible exception I see to this will be when we start putting sails on the smaller ships. Due to time constraints, this is right now most impractical. But as fossil fuel prices start to soar, which I expect to see happen well within my life time, timeliness will have to play second fiddle to costs.

By then there may be so little shipping going on (due to the extreme loss of incomes due to the loss of cheap energy) that no one will care whether the big boats burn sludge or not.

Bob

 

cost of petroleum

I have to take a different route of logic, Bob. Long-term petroleum prices aren't likely to continue to rise, but rather to stabilize at a price where producing petroleum from such sources as oil shale, tar sands, reinvigoration of present declining fields and deep-water drilling become profitable. This is at the $50-75/barrel mark currently, in 2007 dollars. At this price, there are at least many decades and at most several centuries worth of petroleum still available. The current spike above these numbers reflect the world's inability to quickly change over to these sources, and therefore a very real petroleum shortage. Put another way, Hubert's Peak is, in fact, upon us, but it's not quite as big a deal as it's been made out to be.

The above numbers reflect current political arrangements; if the world's nations successfully cap carbon emissions, for instance, or place onerous safety or environmental protection demands on such "unconventional" petroleum sources, the cost of petroleum will rise higher--in order to pay for compliance, however and whenever that comes about. (I'm being careful not to state my own political beliefs; this isn't about politics, but about the cost of doing business, under politics).

In the meantime, petroleum costs of $50-75/barrel can--and will--lead to many non-petroleum solutions. Biofuel, ethanol, and other forms of alternative energy can successfully compete against $75 oil. So can sail, wind and even some forms of solar power (not current state of the art photovoltaics, IMO, not without ongoing--large--government subsidies)

Because it is my core business, I can tell you that kite wind-power, of the sort proposed by both KiteShip and SkySails (auxilliary power to reduce main engines' consumption) will show significant profit down to oil prices of around $35-40/barrel--so will likely find success. I can also opin that fuel cells--still at an installed cost well in excess of $100/watt (not kilo- or mega-watt, but per WATT) probably will not.

Cheers,

Dave

 

Regarding "efficiency" versus pollution of modern diesel ships. Yes, big diesels excel at converting chemical energy to mechanical energy, compared to other IC engines (Big diesels about 45-50% efficient; smaller diesels maybe 35-40%; gasoline IC's under 35%), but one of the reasons these can be tuned so efficiently is that there are currently NO emissions regulations on big ship engines at sea (Oops, sorry, they cannot burn diesel of higher than 45 THOUSAND parts per million sulfur. The dirtiest fuel available averages less than this). They have horrendously high nitrous oxide emissions (due to lean burn technology), approx 40% more carbon emissions than gasoline (due to the nature of the fuel and the burn chemistry), and, under current regs, the world's ships emit more sulfur oxides than all the world's automobiles taken together (sulfur in diesel fuel acts as a lubricant, allowing ships' engines to run hotter and leaner and to decrease the cost of lubrication oils). The world's oceans are becoming more acidified, which is directly leading to a broad die-off from plankton to whales including every species of fish eaten by humans. Both sulfur compounds and carbon dioxide dissolve in water causing acidification (sulfur oxides cause acid rain which nearly destroyed many American ecosystems before strict sulfur restrictions came into effect for land-based power stations. There are no such restrictions on ships, offshore).

Necessary? Sure. Necessarily dirty? Hardly.

Dave

 

Hi, Dave.

I wish I could share your optimism.

I am by no means as distopia oriented as Professor Hienberg, but I do see serious problems coming down the ways.

The problem I have read about tar sands is they take more energy to extract petroleum from than the energy from said extracted petroleum delivers. My understanding is that this whole process is now subsidized by natural gas. This is not entirely a bad thing. Tar sands may end up being a good way to store energy rather than to produce it. And i see energy storage systems as being very important in the future. If, for example, wind or solar energy could be used to do the extracting, we could still have a winning system, even with a negative payback.

The real problem of 'Hubbert's peak' is the rising cost of producing an energy source. This is counted in a so called 'payback ratio'. That is, how much outside energy must be put into an energy source to get energy out of it. In the old days of oil, the payback was well over ten to one. You just sank your well then counted your money as the oil gushed to the surface. Some say that now days the payback ratio for oil is in the order of five to one. With biofuels, I here the payback is 1.3 to one. I see that as the 'easy oil', ie the stuff in the North Sea, The stuff from Louisiana, and the stuff from the Mid East starts to run down, The substitutes are going to be much more expensive. It must be kept in mind that even wind energy has a payback ratio. Energy must be but into building the wind turban, maintaining it, and replacing it when it wears out. As we go to ever more undesirable places to get our oil, the cost is going to go up. Not only because of getting it in the first place, but because the amount of oil there may be much smaller than that in older finds.

To me, this added to an ever increasing demand for energy from other parts of the world, means one thing: that we are all going to have to learn to live on a much smaller energy diet. For the first time in human history, we are going to be forced to think long term. To see whether we can stand up to this task, thinking in decades and centuries rather than months and years, is to make this a very interesting era to be living in.

I think that oil prices will plateau for a brief while then climb again to ever more dizzying heights. Some have said, and I agree, that much of the remaining 'easy oil' is going to be needed kick start a non oil energy regime, much the way remaining battery energy is used to start a genset. If you run the battery down before starting it or the main engine, you are S.O.L.

I hope you and other readers do not see this as a 'political post'. I definitely do not intend it to be such. I see our present dilemma not so much as political one, but as an engineering one.

As for your kite sail system, I see bright future indeed.

Bob

 

"I hope you and other readers do not see this as a 'political post'. I definitely do not intend it to be such. I see our present dilemma not so much as political one, but as an engineering one."

My belief is the entire "problem" IS a Political Construct.

The Greenhouse gas silliness (97% of greenhouse gas is water vapor) , the Ethinol con, great for farmers but it DOES take more energy to produce ethinol than it returns.

The old "world control crowd" lost out BIG when the "planned economies" of the Soviet world collapsed. So they became Watermelons , GREEN on the outside RED on the inside. Their "solutions" haven't changed .

Still looking for world government , UN taxes on all the productive nations , and industrial policy by burorats , interested ONLY in their own dreams of control.

Global warming IS happening , here and on MARS! , but mans contribution is not measurable in terms of climate change.

The FREE MARKET will (if left unmolested) decide what 6 billion folks will use for energy. And good engineers will make it cheaper and cheaper , so more folks can enjoy life.

FF