Declaration on Pollution Control of Chinese Port and Shipping

Reporter Xu Hua

On Sep. 1stof 2015, the Ministry of Transport issued the Implementation Plan for Special Action on Ship and Port Pollution Prevention(2015～2020), (hereinafter referred to as the Implementation Plan), which proposed the timetable and roadmap for vessel and port pollution prevention in the next 5 years. What profound influences will such a comprehensive pollution control plan bring about?

The Implementation Plan proposed lots of detailed methods of emission reduction. But both the transformation and elimination of old ships, installation of LNG power system, and one-off investment in shore power equipment require large investment and will affect greatly on shipping and port enterprises,especially under such a poor market environment. The Deputy Chief Engineer of the Water Transportation Institute of the Ministry of Transport, Peng Chuansheng believed that environment pollution treatment is beneficial for the whole society, and the cost of control should be borne by the whole society,rather only by the shipping industry. For example, low sulfur oil production needs tens of billions, even large companies cannot bear all the cost since they have just reverted the trend of loss and begun to make profits,only several billions each year. The whole society shall be involved to effectively implement the requirements.

For this issue, the Implementation Plan introduced safeguard clauses and gradually improved supportive polices. Environment protection program implementation involves many departments and can only achieve ideal effects when all departments make concerted effort.The Implementation Plan emphasized cross-department coordination mechanism. For example, the 8th clause"promote the construction of receiving facilities, ensure efficient treatment of pollutants " indicates that oily water,chemical tank washing water, domestic wastewater,ballast water and rubbish which are produced during vessel operation are of large quantities, great liquidity and pollution scope. These pollutants will do a lot of damage to water if discharged directly without treatment. Most of ports in China have been equipped with receiving facilities according to international convention and national law such as Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law and Marine Environment Protection Law.However these facilities are ineffective due to lack of tank washing water receiving facilities, bad connection between the receiving facilities and municipal public treatment facilities. Chemical tank wash water is still discharged directly and furtively. Shipping pollutant receiving units do not operate according to specifications.There is still no joint supervision mechanism for shipping pollutants receiving treatment.

As for the above problems, the Implementation Plan proposed that local traffic management department which takes charge of ports and shipyards should work out construction projects of receiving, transferring and treatment facilities jointly with MIIT, the Ministry of Environment Protection and MOHURD. Pollutant transportation from ship to port and from port to city should be well established. Pollutant receiving capacity should be also improved. At the same time, a joint supervision system should be established for shipping pollutant receiving,transfer and treatment, so that the whole process of ship pollutant can be traced to ensure effective treatment.

Once the emission control Area is set, there would be some supervision problems and some detailed problems about the point when the low sulfur oil should be sued. There is 200 dollar difference between traditional fuel oil and low sulfur oil, and the benefit of illegal oil use is huge. Loose implementation will result in invalidity of the law. How to strengthen supervision? We can use overseas experience for reference. For example, the Unite States require vessels entering the exclusive economic zone(within 200 sea miles) to use low sulfur oil. Through checking refueling record, fuel usage record, vessel oil temperature record,even installing gas detectors along the routes, illegal oil use can be detected. There will be severe punitive measures upon finding out untrue record or illegal fuel use.