Hail the coming of Eco ships

sorry missing words from above...reduced. Not only does this obviously reduce costs for ship operators (and therefore potentially consumers), it reduces the shipping industry’s unmitigated reliance on oil. By improving efficiencies by 40% through the implementation of fuel saving and emissions reduction technologies, the reliance on oil could be reduced by 3 million barrels every day, or 1 billion per year. The means of achieving this goal are already a reality. While progress has been made by the industry in admitting its environmental impact, the process of implementing a solution continues to move at a pace that is simply not fast enough. It is common knowledge that we are at the brink of an acute crisis, where the price of continued and projected procrastination will be paid in military terms. While the war on climate change will be a long one, it is vital that we fight battles that can be won and make a difference. The shipping industry is such a battle. While I have a vested interest in seeing these technologies implemented, it is the environment and my concern over the dreadful impact shipping has on it, matched with the industry's lack of urgency to make simple changes, that has spurred me to seek your encouragement. With kind regards Jorn P. Winkler

A few words on shipping, as you can see the stats are more than frightening...!!! 1 ship pollutes as much as 50 million cars / Proactive Shipping Fuel Control measures of 30% to 40% Can Reduce Oil Consumption by 4.5 million Barrels a day and prevent a Global recession and reduce Global Co2 emissions by 600 Million tons of Co2 pr day = Total the worlds Aviation Co2 output A typical modern larger ships engine consumes abt. 171 gram fuel per kW og emits 9 gram Sox (Sulphur) The biggest ships engine available today is a 85790 kW and the calculation is as flws: 85790 kW X 9 gram x 24 hours = 18530 kilo per 24 hours. These containerships operates abt. 280 days a year generating 5188579 kgs (5188 tons) of SOx a year. The emission from cars we've calculated on basis of Danish company COWI who where commissioned by EU to produce the 'TEMA2000 model'. That report is based on EU2-standard that became law in 1996. In our calculation we've made the following assumptions; that a car drives 15000 km a year, that an average drive is 15 km and that there is 50% petrol cars and 50% diesel cars. In appendix G this is 0,0078g/km SO2/Sox for petrol and 0,0057 g/km SO2/SOx for diesel = average 0,00675 g/km SO2/SOx. The calculation is then 15000 km X 0,00675 = 101,15 gram of SO2/SOx per car per year. If we compare with a containership emitting 5188579 kgs and divide by 0,10125 kgs it gives that one ship emits the same as 51,245224 million cars. EU2 is of course not worldwide standard, but since 1996 the level has been further reduced by 80% in EU, with the US close to same levels, therefore we believe that our figure is plausible as an 'average car' even though SOx level is many countries is much higher. Assuming that there is 750 million cars in the world that would generate a total of 75750 tons SOx. As a large containership emits 5188 tons per year it means that 15 of these ships emit same amount of SOx as the entire fleet of cars in the world. 1 Containerskib 400 TEU 3000 kW = 181440 kgs yearly = 1.796.435 cars yearly SOx emission 1 Containerskib 1000 TEU 8800 kW = 532224 kgs yearly = 5.269.544 cars yearly SOx emission 1 Containerskib 2000 TEU 17700 kW = 1070496 kgs yearly = 10.598.970 cars yearly SOx emission 1 Containerskib 4000 TEU 35500 kW = 2147040 kgs yearly = 21.257.821 cars yearly SOx emission 1 Containerskib 8000 TEU 60000 kW = 3628800 kgs yearly = 35.928.712 cars yearly SOx emission 1 Containerskib 12000TEU 98000 KW = 5188597 kgs yearly = 51.245.224 cars yearly S0x emission I am writing to you to draw your attention to one of the key industrial polluters that continues to harm the environment, but often goes unnoticed, and only serves to counter much of the work that is being done in fighting the war on climate change as well as other health and climatic effects. While the shipping industry is responsible for 90% of global distribution, and is considered an environmentally efficient form of transport, it emits over 1.1 billion tones of CO2 annually, 300% more than the original estimates of The Stern Report and double that of the aviation industry. By 2020, estimates put this figure at over 2 billion tones per year; this is hardly surprising when you consider that the Emma Maersk, one of the world’s largest vessels produces as much CO2 on an annual basis as a small power station. On top of this, the shipping industry emits 20 million tones of Sulphur Oxide (SOx), one of the key components of acid rain, over 250 times the amount of all the cars in the world today; indeed one ship emits as much SOx as 50 million cars. A recent study by the American Chemical Society’s journal, Environmental Science, proved that shipping is responsible (due to the deadly particulate matter emissions) for as much as 60,000 premature deaths from heart and lung-related cancers every year, with a predicted increase of 45% in the next five years. The report did not include bronchitis or asthma-related health issues. And while some regulation is planned to reduce SOx emissions, none has ever been introduced to reduce particulate matter or CO2 from ship emissions. If the impact on human life is derisible, the effect on ecology and nature is disastrous. For example, the rise in CO2 emissions is a predominant catalyst to the colony collapse disorder, which has seen the world’s bee population decline by over 60%. The subsequent impact on global crops, which rely on bee pollination is catastrophic, but also highlights the potential of the unknown devastation to marine life and the associated livelihoods and communities that rely on its natural resources. The increase in acidity and oceanic pollution is also contributing to a dramatic rise in the jellyfish population. In 2008 in Northern Ireland, a 10 mile wide, 13 meter deep swarm of jellyfish attacked a salmon farm, wiping out over £1 million of stock; The Red Cross reported that they treated 50,000 people for jellyfish stings in 2008, three times that of the previous year. From a climate change perspective, soot particles, which are emitted from ships, are landing on the Arctic glacial system, and blackening the white ice required to reflect sunlight (the albedo effect) and consequently contributing significantly to the global warming process; indeed former Vice President Gore stated to the US Senate’s Democratic Foreign Relations Committee on 28th January 2009 that within five years, there is an 80% chance that the polar icecaps will no longer exist during the northern hemisphere summer months. Ironically, fewer ice caps for longer stretches of the year will encourage more ship owner / operators to traverse the globe using shorter – and cheaper – Arctic shipping lanes – exacerbating the threat of black carbon emissions. Also the increased acidity within the world’s shipping lanes is having a ‘pre-trigger’ affect, whereby the clouds are discharging rainwater over the oceans rather than the land, directly contributing to the draughts we are now witnessing around the world. It is abundantly clear that the near 400 million tones of fuel oil that is burned each year by the shipping industry (some 8.5% of all oil production) is having a devastating, and, in many cases, uncalculated effect on the environment. What is startling is that the means of reducing shipping emissions already exist. Great advances have been made over the past five years in developing technologies that significantly reduce emissions and increase efficiencies. By combining technologies that impact ship design, propulsion, machinery, operation and maintenance, emissions can be reduced by 40% on all newbuild vessels – with the effect being a saving of 1.28 million tones of CO2 over the lifespan of a just one newbuild vessel the size of the Emma Maersk. The majority of these technologies work to the basic principle that to reduce emissions, specifically CO2, the amount of fuel that is used needs to be red

Sulphur from ships kills more people than cars and power stations Forget car traffic and power stations! Entirely new figures from DMU show that international shipping around Denmark is far more polluting. By Thomas Lemke, Tuesday 24 March 2009 at 09:51 Danish disease and mortality is strongly influenced by the international shipping in the coastal waters around Denmark. The fact is that while air pollution from the whole of Denmark results in healthcare expenditure of DKK 3.9 billion annually, international shipping from the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and Danish coastal waters causes so many illnesses and deaths that the annual bill amounts to DKK 6.1 billion, Jyllands-Posten writes. According to the newspaper, total Danish emissions result in healthcare expenditure of DKK 31 billion annually in the countries around us, but only DKK 3.9 billion in Denmark. By way of comparison, shipping around Denmark results in annual European healthcare costs of DKK 182 billion, of which Denmark accounts for DKK 6.1 billion. The problems caused include cardiovascular diseases, respiratory tract disorders etc. The figures come as a surprise to the head of the National Centre of Energy, Environment and Health (CEEH), Professor Eigil Kaas of the University of Copenhagen. “These are enormous costs caused by emissions from shipping. Ships discharge huge amounts of gases and particles which caused many different diseases among the Danish population, which shorten our life expectancy,” Professor Kaas explains to the Jyllands- Posten. Calculations also come from the CEEH, and senior researcher Jørgen Brandt of the Danish National Environmental Research Institute (DMU) is responsible for them. State-of-the-art calculation model gives researchers the answer According to Jyllands-Posten, researchers have developed one of the most advanced system models in the world for calculating the costs of air pollution. Their system is linked to weather forecasts, so forecasts can be made of the impact air pollution will have over the next few days, and it can also be used to see, for instance, what the consequences would be of setting up an environmental zone in Copenhagen, or making it compulsory to fit cars with particle filters. All the calculations have not been completed yet, but the greatest emitters of air pollution have been charted – i.e. international shipping, car traffic and power stations, but, for example, we have no information on wood-burning stoves. Maersk the cause of enormous emissions Pollution from international shipping is so great a contributor to Denmark’s pollution costs because ships emit sulphur contaminants with sulphate particles from the burning of marine fuel oil. The Ingeniøren journal has previously written about how the Maersk shipping fleet alone emits as much sulphur dioxide as nine billion cars – or 12 times the total number of cars on the planet - all of which comes from the burning of fuel oil by ships, even though there have been sulphur removing filters on the market for the last 20 years. “It is precisely this type of pollution which is associated with some of the detrimental effects on health which cause the greatest impact when weighing up overall healthcare costs," Mikael Skou Andersen explains to Jyllands-Posten. However, Jørgen Brandt says healthcare calculations are subject to a certain amount of uncertainty. “But we are in the right ball park. We have used minimum figures, and some are probably greater than those we relied on,” he says. The calculations here will be used to determine what forms of energy we should concentrate on as far as climate is concerned if one also includes costs relative to the climate. More than 100 Danes die in Copenhagen every year For example, the cheapest source of energy today from the standpoint of direct costs is coal, but if power stations had to pay just a couple of hundred kroner for every ton of the greenhouse gas CO2 they discharge into the atmosphere, suddenly we find that wind turbines and heat pumps are the cheapest source of energy. Steffen Loft, professor of public health at the University of Copenhagen and Kåre Press- Kristensen, external lecturer in air pollution at the Technical University of Denmark, have previously assessed that up to a 1000 people die in Copenhagen each year as a result of pollution from shipping. Every year, some 100,000 ships sail through Danish coastal waters, and in 2006, 36,187 ships passed through the Öresund straits with total deadweight tonnage of 288.2 million. This is equivalent to about 1800 of the world’s largest container ship, the Emma Maersk.