Shipping: Exhaust Emissions

(asked on 28th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many merchant vessels on the UK Ship Register have been fitted with exhaust gas cleaning systems; and how many of those vessels have been inspected for compliance with the International Maritime Organisation’s 0.5 per cent cap on the sulphur content of shipping exhaust emissions to be introduced on 1 January 2020.


Answered by
Nusrat Ghani Portrait
Nusrat Ghani
Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
This question was answered on 7th March 2019

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) remains committed to enforce the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) regulations to limit the sulphur content of fuel to 0.5%. To address these commitments, the MCA has already made amendments to its Port State Control regime and will enforce the fuel sulphur limits after 1st January 2020 using the powers in its Merchant Shipping regulations.

These developments have been undertaken as business as usual for the Agency. Should additional guidance be produced by the IMO in early 2020 the MCA will review the funding available and adjust if necessary.

Although the MCA has an interest in the mandatory equipment fitted to individual vessels on the UK Ship Register, the MCA has not identified a need to generate statistical information for the UK Ship Register as a whole, such as the number of vessels which are fitted with exhaust gas cleaning systems.

The sulphur content of a vessel’s fuel is within the scope of the Port State Control inspection regime and therefore vessels on the UK Ship Register are subject to inspection and fuel sampling at such inspections. Again, the MCA has not identified a need to generate statistical information on the merchant vessels which have been subject to these inspections.

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