US and Canada near agreement to control pollutants from ships

The United States and Canada are nearing an international agreement to clean up the emissions of ships travelling within 200 nautical miles offshore. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculate that pollution controls will save the lives of 8,300 people each year and help more than 3 million avoid respiratory problems. The biggest health benefits will be in deep-sea ports, but the EPA calculates that communities far inland also will benefit from cleaner air.

The IMO is expected to approve an emission control area for most of the United States and Canada at its next meeting in March. The organization agreed in July that the plan met its guidelines. “I think we’re headed in a very positive direction,” said John Kaltenstein, who oversees the marine program for the environmental group Friends of the Earth in California.

If the IMO adopts the emission control area, ships travelling in a vast region will have to use fuel with a lower sulphur content beginning in 2012, and the sulphur content would be reduced further in 2015. Beginning in 2016, new engines on vessels operating in the area also would have to use equipment that would reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%.

The EPA plans to finalize a rule in December that would ban the sale of high-sulphur fuel in U.S. coastal and internal waters and would require the nitrogen oxide controls on new engines in U.S. ships, in line with the international proposal for a North American emission control area.

The EPA also classifies diesel exhaust from the engines as a likely carcinogen in humans. Air quality advocates applaud the health benefits from tougher ship-emissions rules, but say that there’s more to be done. The nitrogen oxide emissions reductions will apply only to new engines after 2016. The EPA is considering a voluntary program for existing vessels, but environmentalists question whether it would deliver results.

The engine controls to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions and the strictest clean-fuel requirements apply only to the emission control area proposed by the United States and Canada. It doesn’t include Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and the Arctic. It also excludes Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Carbon dioxide and black carbon (soot), two of the main contributors to global warming, are left unregulated. Black carbon is a particular concern in the Arctic, because it settles on snow and ice, reducing their reflective quality and increasing warming. The IMO hasn’t adopted any mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions at sea.

California decided not to wait for federal and international action and passed its own law that applies to U.S. and foreign vessels. Since 1 July, all oceangoing vessels within 24 miles off the state’s coast must use cleaner fuel.