External costs from vessel emissions at port: a review of the methodological and empirical state of the art^†

† A review of the material on which this paper is based has been published as Chapter 2 in Ph.D. Thesis: Tichavska, M. (2015). Essays on vessel emissions and externality cost in Las Palmas Port. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.4184.0244. Available online at: http://acceda.ulpgc.es/bitstream/10553/17463/4/0724769_00000_0000.pdf.

ABSTRACT

The accurate calculation of external costs from vessel emissions and shipping (as it happens with transport) strongly depends on parameters such as location, the time of the day and vessel operative. Thus, the use of a full bottom-up approach and granular traffic details is suggested. The latter may represent a substantial improvement in the resolution of shipping activity, energy demand, emissions and cost data being the latter essential for better regulations. The revised work identifies the Impact Pathway Approach (IPA) as the best-practice bottom-up methodology for calculating site-specific external costs derived from shipping air emissions. It has been widely adopted, among others, over major European studies (CAFE, BeTa, NEEDS and HEATCO). Also, it shows that due to costly and complex requirements of creating a shipping and harbour-specific bottom-up approach, external cost calculation based on tonne per euro factors obtained from European Studies (top-down approach) has been widely accepted. Moreover, methodological improvements and the possible achievement of refined estimations (IPA) dedicated to ports and shipping are strongly suggested, as these may improve information quality used for environmental policy and measures that contribute to the internalisation of externality costs.

KEYWORDS:

• External costs
• vessel emissions
• port-city
• environment

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the editor and to two anonymous reviewers for the helpful suggestions, comments and discussions. Addressing the raised points has led to the improvement of this work. Usual disclaimers applied.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

† A review of the material on which this paper is based has been published as Chapter 2 in Ph.D. Thesis: Tichavska, M. (2015). Essays on vessel emissions and externality cost in Las Palmas Port. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.4184.0244. Available online at: http://acceda.ulpgc.es/bitstream/10553/17463/4/0724769_00000_0000.pdf.

1. Primary pollutants are characterised for being released into the atmosphere in the form they are produced (i.e. from vehicle exhausts, or combustion in factories). Secondary pollutants are not released from a source but develop in the air as an interaction result of primary pollutants and environmental constituents.

2. DEFRA (Turner, Handley, Newcombe, & Ozdemiroglu, 2004) carried by the Department for Environmental Food & Rural Affairs Study refers to estimations in the UK and, NewExt (Friedrich et al., 2004) regards Europe (surveys from Great Britain, France and Italy). Both provide figures in terms of the VSL and VOLY.

3. A detailed analysis about the IPA methodology is out of the scope of this article, but could be found in Bickel and Friedrich (2005).

4. Methane, a VOC whose atmospheric concentration has increased tremendously during the last century, contributes to ozone formation but on a global scale rather than in local or regional photochemical smog episodes. In situations where this exclusion of methane from the VOC group of substances is not obvious, the term non-methane VOC (NMVOC) is often used.

5. As stated on their webpage, “The EcoSenseWeb and the calculation of external costs follow as far as possible the so-called Impact Pathway Approach (IPA)” without explaining what is the meaning of “as far as possible”.

6. In order to obtain Information on its suitability to shipping scenarios, the authors have tried to make contact with the EcoSense administrators, over a period of three months and by using the available communication channels but did not receive any response.

7. The Satellite Monitoring of ship emissions in the Baltic Sea (SAMBA) project was aimed at monitoring Baltic Sea ship emissions via satellite. The SAMBA feasibility study, carried out in the framework of the “Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP)” programme of the European Space Agency, called for a combination of earth observation (EO) Instruments, air quality (AQ) and vessel emission modelling based on satellite AIS information.

8. LRIT is a maritime domain awareness initiative to enhance maritime safety, security and protect the marine environment. It allows Member States to receive position reports from vessels operating under their flag, vessels seeking entry to a port within their territory, or vessels operating in proximity to the State’s coastline. SOLAS Chapter V, Regulation 19-1, on LRIT refers to the requirement for specified Convention vessels to automatically transmit their identity, position and date/time of the position at 6-hourly intervals, with an ability to increase the rate to intervals of up to once every 15 minutes when requested. The SOLAS amendment came into effect from 1 January 2008.

9. For emission estimation, a bottom-up approach refers to emission quantification based on fleet activity (vessel tracks or port calls). On the other hand, a top-down approach refers to estimations based on fuel sales statistics. Additionally, a full bottom-up approach is referred as the use of the suggested bottom-up both for emissions quantification and for the geographical characterisation of results (see Tichavska & Tovar, 2015a, 2015b).

10. It should be noticed that all the available port studies have used a top-down approach to calculate external costs from vessel emissions.

11. Based on international studies, Miola et al. (2009) propose a pathway of steps which includes the quantification of emissions produced by vessel traffic in Venice, the use of results from a local dispersion model and the application of exposure-response functions from the CAFE study and risk-response functions from Martuzzi et al. (2006).

12. From several international studies: Funk and Rabl (1999); USEPA (2002, 2010); Gallagher (2005); Sirikijpanichkul, Iyengar, and Ferreira (2006); IPCC (2006); World Bank (2010); Marten and Newbold (2012); Muller and Mendelsohn (2007); Yuan and Cheng (2011); Berechman and Tseng (2012); VTPI (2012); Yang, Teng, and Wang (2013).

13. The lack of taxation on maritime fuel compared with the supply of electricity when at a berth could be a barrier to the adoption of shore-side electricity. However, ports offering economic incentives (i.e. environmentally differentiated port dues) or the undertaking of infrastructural investments, may encourage ship operators to make use of environment-friendly services (i.e. shore-side electricity, LNG bunkering, automated mooring systems, and others). In this respect, the facilitator role played by the EU financial assistance should be identified as a mean to assess, among others, the economic and technical viability of on-shore electricity services offering (i.e. successful “Masterplan for OPS in Spanish ports” project, page 5. http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure/ten-t-guidelines/project-funding/doc/cef/2015-cef-selected-proposals.pdf).

14. http://www.rcem.eu/posts/2014/april/22/assessment-of-external-social-cost-due-to-air-emissions-in-european-ports.aspx.

15. Regarding the geographical characterisation of emissions, the level of detail achieved is also dependent on the approach followed (bottom-up and top-down). Thus, with a bottom-up approach, individual information of vessels and its position is considered, while with a top-down approach, valuation is based without, or with partial information on the position of vessels (i.e. the geographical activity of shipping is estimated based on a single shipping route or a particular geographic activity cell, no matter which vessel carries out the activity).

16. The Second IMO GHG Study (2009) follows a bottom-up approach, while the Third IMO GHG Study (2014) introduces a full bottom-up approach, among others for the stated reason. This being a better characterisation of the shipping activity, possibly due to the greater geographical coverage achieved via terrestrial and satellite AIS receivers and technology which has improved the quality of available vessel traffic information.

17. Weinreich et al. (1998) compare, for passenger road traffic, a route-specific external cost results using both methodologies. They found that, in comparison to top-down approaches, the results obtained through a bottom-up were about twice as high for passenger road transport with regard to external environmental and health costs due to air pollutants.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and, the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). Grant Agreement No. ECO2015-68345-R.