How to Deal with Ship-Port Interface

Reducing the time of ship stay / operation in port: No matter how low or high a ship emits, the absolute total amount of exhaust emissions to the port area will be a function of total time of ship manoeuvring and stay in port area. Thus, staying in ports for an extra 50% of the time is expected to increase the ship emissions to port area by approximately an extra 50%. For this reason, reducing a ship’s time in port could be regarded as one major strategy for improving air quality in ports. This at the same time would help the ship save fuel significantly by running slower due to extra time in passage.

Use of alternative ship technologies and fuels: As discussed, current diesel engines burn heavy fuel oil that is not a clean and low carbon fuel. Additionally, the conventional diesel engines technology on-board ships can be improved to more efficient engines with lower fuel consumption and pollutants. There are options to move away from these technologies and fuels to more energy efficient and clean technologies and fuels. This strategy, in particular new and alternative technologies, may be more applicable to new ships rather than existing ships.

Ship in-port technical operation management: When a ship in port at berth or at anchor, various engines, boilers and machinery still need to be operating and thereby will use energy. Off course, the way these operations take place would impact a ship’s in-port fuel consumption and exhaust emissions.

Switching off the engines in port via shore connection: The next strategy could be to switch of the ship-board engines when in port. This is subject to availability and supply of power from port to ship and the ship has shore connection with enough power for the hoteling services. This is an important development and requires investment both by port and ship and may result in some extra operational complexities.

Environmental oriented incentives: To encourage ship-owners and operators to do their best to reduce emissions, regulations and market incentives could be used to encourage use of the above measures. IMO and regional initiatives have already regulated ships to some extent; for example, with switch over to low sulphur fuel in certain areas and ports. There are financial incentives from certain ports to encourage use of environmentally friendly ships and so on (MariEMS 2017).