EMEA News
"Massive Non-Compliance" with European ECA Predicted
Emissions Control Area (ECA) rules governing the sulfur content of marine fuels will be inadequate to shifting the shipping industry to a less polluting path, according to Aoife O'Leary of environmental group Transport & Environment.
Writing at the policy news site European Voice, O'Leary says that the shipping sector is the only industry that the European Union (EU) has not required to reduce emissions.
"The EU has established goals on the emissions reductions it wants to achieve from the sector, but seems to have no intention of enacting anything that will bring it anywhere near those goals, anytime soon," O'Leary writes.
Starting in 2015, the maximum sulfur content of marine fuel used by ships operating within the ECAs will fall from 1.0% by weight today to 0.10%, but O'Leary writes that "the legislation is missing effective enforcement and it is clear that there will be massive non-compliance in 2015, unless something is done urgently."
A monitoring proposal released in July 2013 could have helped enforce air pollution rules and monitor all types of emissions, she writes, but instead it only calls for vessels to report how much fuel they use.
Speaking about the industry's environmental impact to the United Nations Climate Change Conference earlier this week, Simon Bennett of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) said that the industry will automatically reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants as it seeks to reduce fuel costs, eliminating the need for legal action on the issue.
