Emissions concerns rise over ships’ fuel

Shipping traffic at the Port of Boston recorded double-digit growth last year, which Massport is touting as an economic boon for the state. Gloucester is slowly building itself into a regular port of call for major cruise lines.

But along with economic benefits of the steady growth in the shipping industry, environmentalists’ worries are growing about unregulated pollution from the cheap, sulfur-laden bunker fuel oil that powers most large tankers and cruise ships.

The Port of Boston saw a 10 percent growth in container ship cargo and a 12 percent increase in the number of cruise ship passengers last year, and new construction and terminal expansion signify busier days ahead. Four cruise ships are scheduled to make port calls in Gloucester this year, and Cruiseport Gloucester manager Frank Elliott said he is aiming to get 10 into port for the 2009 season.

It’s the kind of economic stimulation that the state desperately needs. But environmentalists are wondering: at what cost?

Large tankers and cruise ships burn the cheapest form of oil: bunker fuel. Also known as heavy fuel oil, bunker fuel is the sludge left at the bottom of a refinery after crude oil has been processed.

“It’s traditionally been a cheap source of fuel,” said John Kaltenstein, program manager for marine vessels at Friends

of the Earth International, an environmental group that advocates a ban on bunker fuel. “It’s kind of the bottom of the bin — whatever’s left over in the distillation process.”

Bunker fuel is a thick, tar-like sludge. Typically, it is practically solid, and needs to be heated or cut with another substance, often a lighter fuel oil, to be used as ship fuel.

By nature, bunker fuel contains a high level of sulfates which are released into the air as grit and can settle deep inside people’s lungs, causing cancer and other diseases. A study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology in November puts the global toll at 60,000 premature deaths from lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses yearly — a number expected to rise by 40 percent by 2012 if regulations for the pollutants spewed by ships at sea don’t change, according to the study. Ships’ emissions, say government officials and environmentalists, are the most toxic source of air pollution in the world.

“The most important implication (of the study) is that it involves all continents,” said James Corbett, one of the study’s lead author and the interim director of marine policy at the University of Delaware’s College of Marine and Earth Studies. “None of the coastal regions are free from impact.”

Gloucester’s current marine traffic is primarily smaller fishing boats and other light vessels, most of which run on light diesel fuel. But the cruise ships that will be docking at Cruiseport Gloucester with increasing frequency may use bunker fuel, and Corbett’s study shows that the closer people are to the path of large ships, the more health effects they experience.

Experts and governmental agencies agree that ships’ contributions to air pollution is significant. A report by Friends of the Earth estimated that ships are responsible for 15 percent to 30 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions, and about 7 percent of sulfur oxide pollutants — despite only burning between 2 percent and 4 percent of the world’s fossil fuels.

“Without regulations, those numbers will triple or quadruple by 2030,” said Bryan Wood-Thomas, associate director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality and a leading national expert on ship emissions.

The bunker fuel burned by most large cargo ships and cruise ships has gone largely unregulated unlike fuels for most other modes of transportation. The average ship burning bunker fuel emits the same pollutants into the air as about 2,000 cars or trucks built under United States emissions regulations.

While federal emissions standards have become increasingly stringent on most sources of pollution, the United States has done little to regulate ships’ emissions. Some states have attempted to set their own guidelines. In California, for example, ships must switch to a lighter, less polluting fuel as they approach shore and docked cruise ships are asked to plug into the electric grid to cut down on emissions.

“It’s a challenge for states to implement on their own,” said David Conroy, manager of air programs for the EPA’s New England branch. “Northeastern states prefer implementation on the national or international level.”

Conroy said that the EPA had made efforts to ensure that new traffic to the North Shore of Massachusetts, in the form of liquefied natural gas tankers that will be visiting two new terminals off the shores of Gloucester and Salem, will not exacerbate air quality issues. The agency built requirements for the tankers to burn either natural gas or lighter fuel into the permits for the sites.

While East Coast ports like Boston are tiny in comparison to the behemoths on the West Coast, the news could be bad for residents living around them if emissions regulations continue unchecked, Wood-Thompson said.

Corbett’s study estimates that up to 30 percent of sulfur dioxide concentrations in coastal regions can be attributed to shipping traffic alone, and experts agree that significant amounts of other pollutants that cause respiratory diseases and acid rain are emitted from the vessels burning bunker fuel.

The EPA believes that shipping, container trade in particular, will experience explosive growth in the coming years — and as other sources of pollution become more tightly regulated, ships will make a larger and larger contribution to the problem. Oceangoing vessels already handle 80 percent of the goods moved in and out of the United States.

“We expect East Coast traffic to grow even more in the future because the capacity of the West Coast will reach saturation,” said Wood-Thomas.

Corbett said that his study showed that slowing down the ships not only reduces the emissions, but also saves energy. He estimates that speed reduction, a policy being set by many major carriers, he said, can reduce emissions by 25 percent.

Some shipping companies make individual decisions to switch to lighter fuels when in port or take steps to reduce their emissions when close to land, officials said. However, few would call it a standard procedure yet.

There are no laws requiring the ships to switch fuel as they move into shore in Massachusetts — plus, doing so would be an entirely voluntary endeavor for the shipping companies, and one that would be costly. Industry groups have complained about the potential cost of a complete switchover to cleaner fuel, gauged at $126 billion over a decade by the American Petroleum Institute.

The institute and much of the shipping industry supports switching over to clean fuel when closer to shore, said Al Mannato, the institute’s fuel issues manager.

The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations branch that controls shipping regulations, is in the midst of hearings for new standards, and the EPA has made a proposal to cut ship emissions by forcing vessels to switch to cleaner fuel or to use technology to scrub out the toxic grit from emissions when they are closer to shore.

While the ships would be allowed to burn bunker fuel while at sea, a follow-up study to Corbett’s says that switching to clean fuel close to land is an effective way of managing the emissions. EPA officials said they’re optimistic that the program will go forward and be implemented in 2011, hopefully as a way to stem the tide of air pollution from ship traffic.

Kristen Grieco writes for the Gloucester Daily Times in Gloucester, Mass. E-mail her at kgrieco@gloucestertimes.com.

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