EMEA News
ECA Violators Should Be Immediately Detained for 15 Days, Says Danish Ecological Council
Ships caught violating Emission Control Area (ECA) sulfur regulations should be taken to the nearest port and detained for 15 days, recommends Kare Press-Kristensen, senior adviser of air quality to the Danish Ecological Council.
In a presentation given last month in Brussels at an event organised by Transport & Environment (T&E) at the European Parliament, Press-Kristensen stressed that efficient enforcement would be the only way to ensure that the field was even for all players, especially as current lax enforcement measures mean that ships stand to gain from deliberate non-compliance.
As insurance does not cover delay costs if the delay is caused by violating sulfur rules, the added payment would be on top of port fees and existing fines, which in turn would encourage ships to keep within the 0.10 percent sulfur limits which took effect at the beginning of the year.
A more rigorous enforcement scheme could also include initiatives such as mandatory sealed sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide measuring devices aboard all ships with scrubbers, said Press-Kristensen, along with mandatory online emission measurements for all ships within ECAs.
Jan Fritz Hansen, vice-president of the Danish Shipowners' Association, said he agreed.
"The Danish Shipowner's Association fully supports a strict enforcement making everybody obey the decided regulation and introducing a hard punishment for free-riders," he said.
"On-line emission measurements and detaining free-riders in nearest ports could be efficient enforcement tools."
Last year a number of shipowners warned that Europe could see many cases of deliberate non-compliance, especially as fines were too low.
