Emission impossible

As the world’s shipyards launch ever greater ocean-going vessels from cruise ships to bulk carriers, there’s a commensurate effort in making them less pollutant. Take the Maersk group’s mighty Triple-E class container ships. Behemoths of 397m in length and nearly 171,000 gross tonnage, they are the largest active vessels afloat and, by 2014, there will be 20 of them.
A 20-strong fleet of such ships plying the world’s oceans may sound like an environmental nightmare – and it would be if one of them split its hull on a reef somewhere. But Triple-E stands for economies of scale, energy efficiency and environmental improvement.

Maersk is harnessing the latest pollution-reducing technology to reduce the size of the ocean footprint of these titanic vessels. Engine exhaust is recycled, hull design reduces resistance through the water and, for good measure, the hull’s surface is coated with silicon to reduce any hint of drag.

Although today’s fleet of container ships, bulk carriers and cruise ships may look exactly the same as they did a decade or more ago, a green revolution has in fact taken place below decks. The big boys of the oceans can now showcase a whole range of low-polluting technology such as fast oil recovery systems, the diesel-electric propulsion on Tembek’s latest fleet of LNG carriers boasting their own liquefaction plants, and low-cost gas containment systems on Aker Yard’s LNG carriers.

Today’s ever-bigger fleet of cruise ships has also adopted the green mantle. As well as more efficient propulsion systems, they feature a variety of energy-saving technologies. For instance, tinted windows on Cunard’s new Queen Elizabeth help to reduce the load on air-conditioning systems. Furthermore, the company has even replaced the ice used in its buffet displays with re-usable chilled river rocks. And some lines recycle cooking oil into biodiesel.

As Bud Darr, director of environmental and health programmes for the Cruise Lines International Association, explains: “The reality is that most of our shipboard energy needs are being met by way of consuming fossil fuels. Like most of society, this results in anthropogenic contribution to greenhouse gas loading in the atmosphere.”

The biggest battle is now in the engine room, particularly to reduce harmful sulphur emissions. This is a race against time, with engine-builders in the forefront. Globally, the sulphur content of fuel oil must be down to 3.5 percent by early 2012 and, to 0.5 percent by 2020.

Helsinki-based Wartsila, which has just secured a ¤150m loan from the European Investment Bank to pursue low-pollutant research, didn’t wait for the new standards. In the last ten years the engine-builder has cut nitrogen and sulphur oxide emissions by 25-30 percent over previous generations of engines with breakthroughs such as the scrubber – a system for cleaning exhausts of harmful oxides. Competing engine builders believe a 30-40 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions is possible, even on older engines.

Big shipping’s efforts to clean up its act may however be stymied by big oil. As Francesco Balbi, environmental coordinator for Mediterranean-based MSC Cruises told the magazine, nobody knows how much low-sulphur fuel will be available by 2020 – and at what price – because the refining industry is lagging way behind demand. “The costs involved in the desulphurisation process [are high]. In turn that means extra costs for shipping.” But then big oil has never exactly been in the forefront in the race for low emissions.