A single container ship may emit as much as 50 million cars
Governments around the world have been cracking down on emissions from cars in recent years trying to reduce noxious and greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, even if all the cars on the planet were completely eliminated from the roads, less than 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and far less than that of other pollutants, would be affected.
As trade has been globalized over the last several decades, most manufacturing has been moved to "low cost" countries in Asia, particularly China. That means goods have to be moved over long distances across the world's oceans. This happens with huge container ships, and there are about 90,000 such ships worldwide. New research indicates that each of the biggest ships emit as much as 50 million cars. That means the 15 largest ships combined may be emitting more than all the world's car put together. Part of the problem is that ships typically run on high sulfur bunker fuel oil.
Some 70 percent of shipping emissions are generated within 250 of the world's coastlines. The U.S. government has announced its intent to impose a 230-mile low emissions shipping buffer zone around U.S. coasts. Governments need to seriously attack shipping emissions in addition to ground transportation if they really want to make a dent in greenhouse gases levels.
[Source: The Guardian]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Yikes 8:39AM (6/02/2009)
I don't feel so quilty running my gas powered blower and weed eater now.
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Peter 8:44AM (6/02/2009)
How do you think that gas powered blower and weeder eater got to your house from Japan?
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Matt 10:09AM (6/02/2009)
Last sentence of the article pretty well sums it up:
"Shipping is responsible for 3.5% to 4% of all climate change emissions"
Conversely, "Shipping is responsible for 18-30% of all the world's nitrogen oxide (NOx)". What this says to me is, they do need scrubbers for their stacks, but shipping is not killing our planet. Where are all the other 96% of climate changing emissions coming from?
brn 11:51AM (6/02/2009)
peter, All of my gas powered yard accessories are made within 250 miles of where I live.
paulwesterberg 2:53PM (6/02/2009)
Where were the motors in your gas powered accessories made?
brn 1:15PM (6/03/2009)
Paul,
The motors were made in this country too. Not all within 250 miles, but some were within 250 miles.
It's not that hard to buy American.
Dave 9:06AM (6/02/2009)
"New research indicates that each of the biggest ships emit as much as 50 million cars. That means the 15 largest ships combined may be emitting more than all the world's car put together."
Thank you for putting things into perspective, at least a little bit.
Its good that we are making efforts to improve automobile emmissions and fuel economy, but cars definitely get a disproportionate amount of attention.
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gorr 9:30AM (6/02/2009)
I have said and i have repeated to power these big ships with gazeous hydrogen made on-board with low tech low cost equipment to save fuel cost and pollution and put on sale one such ship near where i live so i will be able to go see it in a derlership and do a navigation test before saying that i won't buy because i don't have the money. Then after there is airplanes, tractor-trailer trucks, electrical production plant, agricol machinery and construction machinery. Forget the diversion of gm and us goverment that tried to block hydrogen with false proposing of chevrolet volt.
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oldraven 10:52AM (6/02/2009)
Powered by Hydrogen made on board, eh? What's going to power the generation of Hydrogen? Nice Perpetual Motion Machine you're working on there. The rest of the post made that part sound almost smart.
Luke 11:29AM (6/02/2009)
Gorr,
You can repeat it all you want. But go out there and build it if you want anyone to take it seriously. I can recommend a number of great engineering schools which try to connect motivated students with lab space (it's excellent educational and resume experience for the student, and cheap skilled labor for the professor who runs the lab). Virginia Tech (my alma matter) is an excellent engineering school, and it's very reasonably priced if you happen to be a resident of Virginia. There are many others, as well.
However, a lot of smart people have been building hydrogen-powered vehicles ever since I was a kid in the 1980s, and it's never caught on. Mostly because normal people can't afford it. But if you get your hands dirty with the technology, maybe you'll either make it work or change your mind. The resources are there for anyone who can play the homework game, and who can enthusiastically throw themselves at an engineering topic.
Chris M 1:15PM (6/02/2009)
Luke, I'd already suggested that Gorr try building it himself, but it became obvious that he doesn't want to "get his hands dirty", he wants somebody else to do it for him.
I explained to him that engineers just don't believe that a vehicle can be completely self-powered by an onboard electrolysis unit, but he thinks if he keeps pleading and demanding and making wild threats, that someone will eventually make one just for him!
Aint gonna happen.
PeterG 9:35AM (6/02/2009)
Sam. You are one of the top posters at this site so really you should know better than to mix up pollutants and GHGs and post incorrect conclusions.
The article is entirely about pollutants caused primarily by poor quality fuel, zero emission controls and finally the size of the engines.
But the same thing applies when you look at one riding mower producing 34 times as much pollution per hour as car:
http://www.edf.org/pressrelease.cfm?contentID=8370
But it doesn't produce 34 times as much GHGs, it would produce less than the car.
If you burn a gallon of fuel you will get the same amount of CO2 regardless of emission controls. Actual pollutants OTOH can vary by huge amounts.
Likewise we have zero information here to quantify shipping as a GHG source, it may in fact be MUCH less than vehicle transportation. In this case given the absolute horrendous nature of the fuel and total lack of pollution control, I would guess a factor of at least 1000 applies if you want to get back to GHG comparisons, in which case land vehicles become a very significant contributor again.
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Dave 9:35AM (6/02/2009)
The US Navy operates a huge fleet of nuclear powered ships and has never had an accident.
We could eliminate 20% of the earth's greenhouse gas by contracting the navy to convert these 15 ships to nukes and take over their operation.
Of course, that will never happen.
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Matt 10:24AM (6/02/2009)
Only 3.5% - 4% of greenhouse gasses (if you converted every "ship" in the world to nuclear). Read the last bit of the article "Shipping by numbers" to see what I'm talking about. NOx isn't good for you, but I think the author is being somewhat misleading.
Dave 10:48AM (6/02/2009)
"Only 3.5% - 4% of greenhouse gasses (if you converted every "ship" in the world to nuclear). Read the last bit of the article "Shipping by numbers" to see what I'm talking about. NOx isn't good for you, but I think the author is being somewhat misleading."
The article was misleading. Good catch.
why not the LS2LS7? 11:42AM (6/02/2009)
The US Navy has had accidents which involve their nuclear subs. And the Soviet Navy had myriad accidents which involve their nuclear ships.
But the main reason these ships aren't nuclear is because it isn't cost-effective.
Here's the main thing: polluting is free, especially if you do it over the open ocean. So no shipping company would spend more money reducing their emissions, and bunker fuel is cheap enough that the cost of it isn't much of a problem. So we end up with bunker fuel-powered ships.
You're right about the paranoia too, there is always concern that the "bad guys" (pick your favorite) could use nuclear fuel to make a dirty bomb or something.
Chris M 1:54PM (6/02/2009)
The NS Savannah was the first nuclear powered cargo/passenger ship built, for $46.9 million, including the $26.3 million reactor and fuel core that was funded by the government as a demonstration of nuclear power. Launched Junly 1959, it was in service between 1962 and 1972. The ship had a good safety record and excellent fuel economy, but the elegant sleek design was too limited in cargo capacity, loading and unloading cargo was difficult and labor intensive, the specialized maintenance was expensive, and oil was still fairly cheap. For those reasons, it was not considered commercially successful, and was decomissioned. There were a total of 4 nuclear powered freighters built, only one, the Russian built NS Sevmorput, is still operated by nuclear power.
Of course, much has changed since 1972, the cost of oil has increased considerably more than the cost of nuclear power. So, a modern designed nuclear freighter might now be economically competitive.
EV-1 9:41AM (6/02/2009)
Hallelujah !
Within a blink of an eye - without reflection for a fragment of a second -
we rejoice in the good news:
Now we're not guilty !
Now we can use our Gas-Guzzlers as we please !
God Help us...
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Brian 10:43AM (6/02/2009)
Are you serious? You think that the point of this is to make people feel better about driving their cars, that are by the way, about 100 times cleaner than they were just 25 years ago. The point to this whole discussion is that we've taken great strides as a society to address automobile emissions. The automakers have invested heavily over the past decades and made remarkable progress in reducing the tailpipe emissions. There are other industries, however, that have not yet put forth a similar effort that are still producing ridiculously high levels of emissions and contributing to the on-going climate changes. We are at a point of diminishing returns on automobile emissions (this would also apply to heavy duty trucks with the implementation of EPA2010 and Euro VI standards). These large container ships have done virtually nothing to improve their emissions. The same can probably said for coal fired power plants. However, unless China and some of the other developing nations decide to get on board with stricter emission standards, it's like sitting in the non-smoking booth right next to the smoking tables. Many other industries need to get involved in this as well. The auto industry and the heavy truck have done their part to make their products cleaner. We need to put the same emphasis on other GHG producing industries and products.
EV-1 6:50AM (6/03/2009)
*yawn* - really , so unexpected feedback .. (*not*)
Just where do you read I say other polluting activities are free from responsibility ?
[QUOTE ="EV-1"] :
"Now we're not guilty !"
[/QUOTE]
This forum is about cars - not about evey other aspect of environmental issues !
And the Auto Industry certainly have a LOT to account for !!!!!!
You - as well as many others - are spending more energy on diverting attention
from the dirty business in the Auto Industry than on solving the problem by switching
technology.
And I don't buy.