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A statistical report on the amount of emissions produced in United States waters in 1997 by commercial shipping vessels.

Ship activity patterns depicted by the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS), the Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System (AMVER) data set, and their combination demonstrate different spatial and statistical sampling biases. These differences could significantly affect the accuracy of ship emissions inventories and atmospheric modeling. We demonstrate (using ICOADS) a method to improve global-proxy representativeness by trimming over-reporting vessels that mitigates sampling bias, augment the sample data set, and account for ship heterogeneity. Apparent under- reporting to ICOADS and AMVER by ships near coastlines, perhaps engaged in coastwise (short sea) shipping especially in Europe, indicates that bottom-up regional inventories may be more representative locally. Primarily due to the long time series available publicly for ICOADS data, the improved ICOADS data set may be the most appropriate global ship traffic proxy identified to date to be used for a top-down approach. More generally, these three spatial proxies can be used together to perform uncertainty analyses of ship air-emissions impacts on a global scale (http://coast.cms.udel.edu/GlobalShipEmissions/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We model cost-effectiveness of control strategies for reducing SO2 emissions from U.S. foreign commerce ships traveling in existing European or hypothetical U.S. West Coast SO2 Emission Control Areas (SECAs) under international maritime regulations. Variation among marginal costs of control for individual ships choosing between fuel-switching and aftertreatment reveals cost-saving potential of economic incentive instruments. Compared to regulations prescribing low sulfur fuels, a performance-based policy can save up to $260 million for these ships with 80% more emission reductions than required because least-cost options on some individual ships outperform standards. Optimal simulation of a market-based SO2 control policy for ∼4,700 U.S. foreign commerce ships traveling in the SECAs in 2002 shows that SECA emissions control targets can be achieved by scrubbing exhaust gas of one out of ten ships with annual savings up to $480 million over performance-based policy. A market-based policy could save the fleet ∼$83 million annually under our best-estimate scenario. Spatial evaluation of ship emissions reductions shows that market-based instruments can reduce more SO2 closer to land while being more cost-effective for the fleet. Results suggest that combining performance requirements with market-based instruments can most effectively control SO2 emissions from ships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]