Shipping traffic is set to become the number one source of sulphur dioxide, a dangerous emission which causes respiratory problems and early death. Although the International Maritime Organisation has introduced legislation to cap sulphur in shipping fuels there is a strong financial incentive for rogue ships to cheat and currently no way to monitor ships at sea. Indeed, even at port most coastal agencies lack the necessary equipment to spot check fuel quality. I propose using atmospheric data from existing satellites along with the AIS ship positioning system to flag non-compliant ships before they reach port.
See poster for Geneva Health Conference 2018
Shipping traffic has increased by a factor of 5 since 1970: there are now more than 600,000 large vessels at sea. Boat is the most efficient transport method by weight and distance, but the efforts to curb emissions at sea have not kept apace with the advances on land. Ships traditionally burnt ‘bunker fuel’, a particularly cheap form of diesel with a relatively good engine performance due to a high content of sulphur. In the EU, for example, shipping emissions of sulphur dioxide are set to overtake land based emissions within two years and the total related healthcare cost will be around $60 billion.
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) introduced fuel quality limits in 2012, which included a 3.5% cap on the sulphur content. This cap will be significantly reduced again in 2020, and already in the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) the cap is 0.1% sulphur content. Note this cap of 0.1% is still one hundred times higher than the current EU cap for road vehicles. The main reluctance to move to higher quality fuels is the cost to the shipping industry. Fuel is typically the main expenditure for a shipping company - ahead of crew hire, boat leasing, port fees and insurance - and ultra low sulphur diesel is about 40% more expensive than the lower quality bunker fuels currently used.
The IMO has no direct powers of enforcement and has relied on national governments to apply the standards, but this has been hampered by a lack of effective national regulation. Even in developed countries with strong legal systems such as the UK the port authorities do not necessarily have the equipment needed to spot check fuel quality. Given the lack of monitoring and the price differential for higher quality fuel there is a strong financial incentive for non-compliance, which is magnified by the current depression in freight prices. Indeed, spot checks in the Nordics found 4-6% of ships were non-compliant in 2009, and recently an accurate LIDAR technique found a 10% non-compliance rate close to Gothenburg port.
I plan to use satellite data to monitor ship sulphur dioxide emissions in near real time. I use satellites able to calculate the local amount of sulphur dioxide and the global AIS ship positioning system. There are currently a number of active satellites able to measure atmospheric trace gases due to the increased interest in climate change and the ozone layer over the last twenty years. To avoid marine collisions, all significant ships must have a public AIS transponder which means I can work out which ships are breaking emission limits before these ships arrive at port. This will bypass the current problem of underfunded port authorities who lack the necessary monitoring equipment, like those in the UK.
Currently I have a small proof of concept codebase. I connect to a free NASA database to download hourly data from the OMI instrument aboard the AURA satellite. This is “level 2 data”: the calculated amount of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. I then turn to the AIS ship positioning data, and correlate sulphur dioxide hot spots with the live positions of ships. The AIS data includes the class of each ship so I can look up the documented efficiency given the vessel speed. The speed is also implied from the AIS positioning. Finally, given the emissions detected, these calculations give a lower bound for the quality of fuel being used on board.
In order to achieve global coverage with near real time monitoring I need to expand the project. From a science perspective there are many other satellites to consider , historical AIS datasets to backtest, upgrades for weather conditions (this would improve the implied lower bound on fuel quality), and development time to handle continuous monitoring. Here there is a question of funding: not all of the satellite data which would be useful is free, and neither is the full AIS dataset. I will need support for the weather models (and again the data is not free), and a server is needed to continuously run the system.
But the goal isn’t just to prove that continuous global monitoring is possible: we need to bring down emissions from shipping. One route to this goal could be to bolster a “culture of compliance”. This could be done by working with the industry, e.g. the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, or working with the regulators, e.g. the EU Thetis system which publishes a company performance, or by working with both. Another route could be to partner with well-established charities and NGOs. In either case I need a partner with policy experience and contacts in the shipping world.
Sustainable Shipping Initiative, roadmap for the vision 2040:
Mid 2020s: technology enables real time, remote monitoring of almost every aspect of ship performance, crew activity, efficiency, emissions...