WE ARE PARTNERS OF:

In order to combat marine pollution, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted new limits of SOx emissions, dividing the world into Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) and the rest. The Baltic Sea, which forms a SECA together with the North Sea and the English Channel, may have a hard time ahead, trying to adjust to its requirements.

MARPOL Annex VI Regulations for the Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships was adopted in 1997. Its most important – and most controversial – regulation sets limits on sulphur oxide (SOx) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from ship exhausts and prohibits deliberate emissions of ozone depleting substances. Annex VI entered into force in 2005, and has so far been ratified by 53 countries, representing 81.88% of the world’s merchant shipping fleet’s gross tonnage. This is when the sulphur limits in the fuel oil started to bind: 4.5% globally and 1.5% for SECA. What is worth underlining, the limits were adopted before any Sulphur Emission Control Area was established…

Decade of uneven growth is over. From the mid 1990s to 2007, the Baltic Sea region (BSR) as a whole witnessed enormous growth in maritime transports. Between 1997 and 2007 the aggregated volume of cargo handled in the BSR ports grew from approximately 580 mln to 825 mln tons, resulting in an increase of 42%, or an average of 3.6% per annum.

This was a result of many parallel developments largely comprising three key factors: growth in Russian oil exports, advancing globalisation with the related increase in trade and intensifying trade integration between the BSR countries, and favourable economic development in the region itself, especially in its eastern reaches. Between 1997 and 2008, real GDP per capita grew on average by almost 10% (8.4-9.7) per annum in the Baltic States and Russia, by almost 7% in Poland and 3.6-5.3 in Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden...

Instead of tightening IMO Marpol regulations, Emanuele Grimaldi calls for new legislation forcing European shippers to compulsory scrap all ships older than 30 years and banning the overaged units from the EU ports.

Grimaldi warns that pushing further sulphur emissions reduction will have an opposite effect, generating huge extra costs for shipping companies and consequently raising the tariffs. This might shift a number of trucks presently transported by sea back to roads, and result in closing many Motorways of the Sea services. Paradoxically, even though maritime SOx emissions could drop practically to zero, the negative externalities of the European Transport System would actually grow…