Australia and Europe tackle cruise ship sulfur emissions

Challenges related to air pollution from cruise ship engines
are cropping up elsewhere in the world, even as they’ve been overcome for now
in waters around North America.

In Australia, a newly elected government ran in part on a
pledge to reduce the amount of sulfur coming from cruise ship smoke stacks to
the same low level as in the U.S. and Canada.

Meanwhile in Europe, some regulators are asking whether a
popular solution to reducing sulfur emissions — exhaust gas scrubbers — might
contribute to water pollution in some areas.

The issues are percolating because of a worldwide effort to
cut pollution from ship engines, which rely on oil particularly high in sulfur.

Since Jan. 1, all ships, including cruise vessels, have had
to meet a much-reduced standard for sulfur in North America and certain other
regions such as the Baltic Sea.

The standard, which remains 3.5% of fuel volume in much of
the world, was reduced to 0.1% in so-called Emission Control Areas (ECAs). The
change will prevent 14,000 early deaths annually by 2020, according to
estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Now Australia is seeking parity with the U.S. In late March,
voters retained the New South Wales state government led by premier Mike Baird,
who campaigned on a pledge to reduce the sulfur content of fuel for cruise
ships in Sydney to 0.1% by July 2016.

Such quick action could disrupt Australia’s cruise sector,
which has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Bud Darr, senior vice president of technical and regulatory
affairs at CLIA, said the industry is “directly and actively engaged” with New
South Wales authorities and the Australian EPA on air pollution issues.

“We are exploring a range of possibilities with those
authorities,” Darr said in a statement. “We encourage those officials to take
into account operational considerations and the results of a science-based
study they have commissioned before taking any unilateral actions locally or
nationally.”

Globally, the framework for air pollution control is set by
the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Sulfur standards are scheduled
to drop to 0.5% worldwide in 2020.

Countries can act earlier by setting up ECAs, such as the
one formed jointly by the U.S. and Canada. The CLIA statement noted that so far
Australia has chosen not to create an ECA.

Because of the expense and time involved in the installation
of scrubbers — Carnival Corp. is currently installing scrubbers on 70 of its
ships in a three-year project that will cost $400 million — the cruise industry
has focused on installing scrubbers for ships with ECA itineraries, not those
sailing in non-ECA areas such as Australia.

Darr said that the sulfur content of fuel has been on the
decline and in most cases is below 3.5%. He said in Australia, which imports
all of its marine fuel, indications are that the content is about 2.5%.

In the past, ships were powered with “residual” fuel left
over from distillation of refined products such as gasoline, leaving behind oil
with particularly high sulfur levels.

In addition to using more refined fuel, ship owners have
turned to exhaust gas scrubbers. 
Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. are among the companies
that have won permission from the EPA to meet lower sulfur standards by
scrubbing it from engine exhaust.

The scrubbers generally fit in a ship’s smokestack and use
either seawater or fresh water augmented with alkaline to create a chemical
reaction that transfers the sulfur from air to water.

The water is then treated and discharged. It can also be
recirculated with a smaller discharge amount. The treated water is generally more
acidic than seawater, although tests have mostly shown it to fall within
parameters set by the EPA.

But some worry that the water, if discharged in certain
vulnerable areas such as ports, estuaries and coastal waters, could harm marine
life and otherwise disrupt the environment.

Regulators in some European countries have questioned
whether discharging scrubber washwater can be reconciled with the European
Union’s “Water Framework Directive,” which gives local jurisdictions say over
water matters in their areas.

A group of ship owners last year petitioned the EU for
clarity, saying the uncertainty over enforcement jeopardizes their investment
in scrubbers as a solution to lowering sulfur emissions.

In its statement, CLIA said about one-third of ships operated
by its members have either installed scrubbers or committed to do so.

In January, many EU states submitted a plan to the IMO to
create an alternate standard for verifying the acidity of washwater. CLIA said
it endorsed the proposal, which is set to go before the IMO’s Marine
Environmental Protection Committee in May.

CLIA added that the IMO global standards should be the ones
used by individual governments to fully encourage development of the new
technology.