Pollution from ships vs cars

The shipping stories here are ones where the ships contravened the tight regulations and so were fined. Ships are as tightly regulated as cars, even with low emission zones defined as has been done for cars in London, so ships can't come to the UK/North Sea/Baltic if unless they meet the low emission requirements.

With regard to the comments from Clive and Nigel about Southampton, the engines on ships have much tighter emission requirements than the power stations providing the electricity they would plug into. However the critical factor is that the ships are berthing in the centre of a city while the power station is remote and so while the emissions from a power station are greater, they do not affect anything like the same number of people. Also remember that the installed power on a cruise ship may be high but the majority of that is for the electric propulsion and the load in port is only a few MW.

The exhaust emissions on ships is monitored and recorded while they are in the ECAs (Emission Control Areas) so that they can demonstrate they are meeting the requirements. How many cars have their exhaust emissions measured more than once a year (at MOT test time)?

With regard to Richard's comment that emissions is now a hot topic in Shipping, it has been a hot topic for the last decade. The biggest problem is that being an international trade with free movement in international waters you can't have the UK unilaterally saying ships passing through the channel must meet certain emission requirements - it needs to be agreed at an international forum, which is the International Maritime Organization, a branch of the UN (and has been agreed). This means that things take a bit longer as they have to be discussed. agreed and ratified. One country trying to go its own way would be like UK setting extreme emission requirements to be verified at manufacture and MOT, and then wondering what to do about the emissions from foreign cars arriving on ferries for holidays.....

Alasdair

The shipping stories here are ones where the ships contravened the tight regulations and so were fined. Ships are as tightly regulated as cars, even with low emission zones defined as has been done for cars in London, so ships can't come to the UK/North Sea/Baltic if unless they meet the low emission requirements.

With regard to the comments from Clive and Nigel about Southampton, the engines on ships have much tighter emission requirements than the power stations providing the electricity they would plug into. However the critical factor is that the ships are berthing in the centre of a city while the power station is remote and so while the emissions from a power station are greater, they do not affect anything like the same number of people. Also remember that the installed power on a cruise ship may be high but the majority of that is for the electric propulsion and the load in port is only a few MW.

The exhaust emissions on ships is monitored and recorded while they are in the ECAs (Emission Control Areas) so that they can demonstrate they are meeting the requirements. How many cars have their exhaust emissions measured more than once a year (at MOT test time)?

With regard to Richard's comment that emissions is now a hot topic in Shipping, it has been a hot topic for the last decade. The biggest problem is that being an international trade with free movement in international waters you can't have the UK unilaterally saying ships passing through the channel must meet certain emission requirements - it needs to be agreed at an international forum, which is the International Maritime Organization, a branch of the UN (and has been agreed). This means that things take a bit longer as they have to be discussed. agreed and ratified. One country trying to go its own way would be like UK setting extreme emission requirements to be verified at manufacture and MOT, and then wondering what to do about the emissions from foreign cars arriving on ferries for holidays.....

Alasdair