What and Why?

Problem:

Faulty “solution”

There are around 90,000 marine vessels currently at sea, and most of them use Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) as their energy source because it’s extremely energy dense and extremely cheap (win-win). It’s cheap because it’s a type of leftover oil from the crude oil mining process, meaning that it’s often contaminated with hard metals and sulfur. Hence, the exhaust from the ship’s engine contains a lot of contaminants, including sulfur. The sulfur alone causes critical issues, such as acid rain and premature deaths due to respiratory complications. To combat this, the International Maritime Organization passed a regulation that set a 0.5% global sulfur cap. This was meant to pressure the industry into using environmentally friendlier fuels, which are often 50% more expensive than HFO’s and less energy dense. To continue using cheap fuel but bypass the sulfur cap, the industry started the rapid uptake of scrubbers.

Scrubbers

Scrubbers hose the exhaust with seawater to strip it of some pollutants and sulfur, leaving the gas to enter the air, bypassing the sulfur cap. While this works great, the exploited loophole lies within what happens to the sludge that’s left (the wastewater with sulfur and other pollutants). This sludge quite literally is dumped into the sea, often with little to no treatment. This is when an open-looped scrubber system is being used. While there are scrubber systems that are closed-looped and hold onto the sludge until the ship can pay a treatment facility to take care of it, they’re expensive and a hassle. Only 2% of all ships use such a scrubber, the rest use open-loop scrubbers, or if they’re extra sneaky, use hybrid scrubbers to bypass new laws that have banned dumping the sludge in certain areas.

The consequences of using closed-loop scrubbers

The main effect of this global discharge is the advancement of ocean acidification. The sludge can be up to 100,000 times more acidic than seawater. The shipping industry dumps a whooping 10 gigatons of it annually. Because of this, the effects of ocean acidification that would have naturally occurred over the course of 4 years are now happening in 1. In some areas, the current effects are what have been estimated to happen over the course of 30 to 50 years from climate change.

  1. Coral reef death. Coral reefs bleach and die out, disturbing the 25% of all marine life that depends on coral ecosystems for sustenance and protection. 33% of all reef-building corals are threatened and/or dying. 50% of all corals have already died. Read the first half of this article to find out more about coral reef death and its consequences.
  2. Rising temperatures. Seawater temperatures rise because DMS emissions lower under acidic circumstances. DMS is a particle released from various oceanic organisms that helps form clouds that shade parts of the sea, a natural defense process that has been proven to cool down the climate regionally.
  3. Declining organism populations. Coral, oysters, clams, and other organisms that use carbonate to grow their shells and exoskeletons start dissolving and are unable to rebuild their bodily structures.
  4. Food insecurity. As smaller organisms start to get affected, biodiversity and food chains are jeopardized, creating food insecurity for shoreline communities.
  5. Money loss. Around [2.7$ trillion annually](https://sdg.iisd.org/commentary/guest-articles/five-as-of-the-coral-reef-indicators/#:~:text=A recent estimate indicates coral,-fishing%2C and destructive fishing.) comes from and depends on the ecosystem service value provided by coral reef ecosystems. The death of corals means the depletion of this money.

Policies

Discussion at the International Maritime Organization’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 79) has brought forth new changes to the old policy to be decided this July. The big change for being that MEPC79 accepted a paper submitted by the Clean Arctic Alliance about how allowing the conversion of policy violates a few UNCLOS articles.

Here is a summary of the IMO paper

Situation Mapping in a Nutshell:

Closed-loop scrubbers = the need for a helpful process to get rid of the collected concentrated sulfur sludge = the perfect opportunity to ideate!

Bottlenecks around using closed-loop scrubbers:

Scrubber sludge is classified as thermal waste and so ports need to house specialized facilities for treating it. Not all ports have such facilities, and in the case that they don’t, they need to let the IMO and associated governance know. It’s expensive for ports to keep these treatment facilities running since they don’t have a return on investment from them, and so it’s expensive for ships to give the sludge to the port. They pay per ton and so separating the wastewater (and dumping it at sea) from the solid contaminants in the sludge is one way they made the load lighter and things cheaper.

Open-loop scrubbers hold minimal waste and so it’s not an industry issue currently, but, as closed-loop scrubbers need to be adopted for both legal and environmental reasons as outlined, the need for a return on investment is more obvious. There needs to be an incentive around holding onto sludge rather than dumping more acidic waste at sea. Ships have continuously proven to skirt rules and regulations, like the famous case of the Cruise ship Princess.

This year in Alaska, 23 cruise ships are using scrubbers on 401 cruises, according to the ADEC. They produce a surprising amount of waste: An average seven-day cruise on a big ship can yield two to five tons of scrubber sludge, said Brian Salerno, senior vice president for maritime policy at CLIA.

For now, at least, that weight has to be carried until the end of the cruise. "I'm not aware of any reception facilities in Alaska," Salerno said. "They tend to be smaller ports, more remote ports. My understanding is [a ship's crew] would retain the sludge onboard until they get to a larger port," such as Vancouver, Seattle, or Los Angeles, he said.