Environmental groups and local residents have high hopes for a shipping-industry initiative that they hope will help clean up Hong Kong's air - and perhaps spur further efforts to tackle the city's growing pollution problem.
Starting in January, 17 shipping lines will voluntarily switch to burning cleaner fuels instead of high-sulphur fuels while their vessels are berthed in Hong Kong. According to Civic Exchange, a Hong Kong think tank, the aim is to cut emissions of sulphur dioxide by 80% or more from participating vessels, which it says will include more than 80% of port calls. Currently, Hong Kong doesn't regulate marine emissions, despite sulphur dioxide emission levels well above the guidelines of the World Health Organization.
Participating shipping lines include giants AP Moeller-Maersk A/S and China Cosco Holdings Co., as well as others that operate car carriers, bulk carriers and passenger lines. Civic Exchange says the switch could reduce emissions by 80%, though it says it is still working with the Hong Kong government to determine how much of Hong Kong's shipping traffic the pact would cover.
The effort holds appeal for those who live close to the container port in Kwai Chung, an area of about 510,000 residents that hosts 12,000 ships a month. The New Territories neighborhood also hosts record levels of pollution the Environmental Protection Department recorded a 64% higher annual average sulphur dioxide concentration in Kwai Chung than Hong Kong's average.
C.K. Wong, who has been a resident of Kwai Chung for nearly 40 years, says that when road vehicles were forced to switch to the use of ultra low diesel in April 2002 by the Hong Kong government as part of a plan to lower emissions in the city, 'the improvement [in air quality] after that was quite obvious. I expect the same will happen with fuel switching in ships.'
The effort comes as Hong Kong's air quality comes under greater scrutiny. According to Joanne Ooi, chief executive of Clean Air Network, a Hong Kong environmental group, the city's air quality is three times as bad as that of New York. According to a recent survey of over 1,000 Hong Kong residents, conducted by Clean Air Network, roughly a quarter of Hong Kong residents are considering moving away because of the polluted air.
Government officials have been criticized for doing too little to clean up the air. 'The government has been careless and intransigent on this issue,' said Anthony Hedley, a professor in the Department of Community Medicine at Hong Kong University's School of Public Health, adding, 'the government has de facto traded off child health and individual life expectancy against other vested interests.'
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department said city officials have prioritized land-based emissions reduction because of their proximity to the population. But she added that Hong Kong has been implementing suphur reduction efforts guided by the International Maritime Organization, which caps the fuel sulphur content of ships and controls their emissions when operating within Hong Kong waters.
City officials are monitoring international efforts and will keep a close eye on the impact of the new shipping industry effort, she said. 'The voluntary switch will offer us an opportunity to assess its environmental benefits and other implications for mapping out a control strategy to reduce the emissions of ocean-going vessels,' she said.
Emissions from ships are a major source of pollution in Hong Kong, one of the world's busiest container ports. The University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health estimates that pollution in the Kwai Chung area causes respiratory problems in an additional 400 children aged 8-12 than is found elsewhere in the city.
The fuel-switch initiative, called the Fair Winds Charter, was spearheaded by the Civic Exchange and the Hong Kong Line Shipping Association. 'We hope that this can be a model for mobilization with regard to other private sector industries,' said Ms. Ooi.
The fuel switch initiative pertains only to ships that are berthed. Once back on the ocean, ships could switch back to using high-sulphur fuel, which is much cheaper. Fuel costs vary, but Mike Kilburn, environmental program manager at Civic Exchange, said that low-sulphur diesel currently costs about twice as much per ton as regular bunker fuel. That points to a shortcoming to the pact: Mr. Kilburn says the pollution could just blow back to Hong Kong─one reason U.S. emissions standards extend 200 nautical miles from the coast.
Still, Mr. Kilburn says the charter is an important first step towards the goal of establishing an emissions control area that covers the entire coast of China. The next step is to mandate the use of low-sulphur fuel for ships as soon as they enter Hong Kong waters and then extend this to cover the entire Pearl River Delta region, he said. The Hong Kong government says it will monitor the impacts of the charter in relation to possible future regulation.
Backers of the initiative hope it will result in cleaner air in the Kwai Chung area in particular. 'The proximity of the port to concentrations of population means that port emissions are still highly concentrated at the time they are breathed in,' Mr. Kilburn said. The hills in the area, he added, form 'a horseshoe shape [that] prevent dispersal of pollutants, especially when the wind is blowing from the south.'
The Hong Kong effort adds to other ports that have lower-emissions agreements, including the Baltic Sea, the English channel and the North Sea, as well as Los Angeles, Long Beach, New York, New Jersey and those covered by the Puget Sound, a cross-border zone encompassing parts of the USA and Canada. |
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