the European shipowners ask certainties on the use for the scrubber in order to pull down the injurious emissions of the ships



The association of the European shipowners, in a position paper diffused today, asks the Member States for the EU to adopt a position clear, in the long term and, above all, harmonized on the issue of the produced water drainages of washing from systems scrubber to open circuit installed on the ships in order to reduce the injurious emissions.

European Community Shipowners' Associations (ECSA) explains that directive European on reduction of tenor of sulfur in fuel previews that from on January 1°, 2015 all the ships that will journey in areas SECA, where will be in vigor limit severeer on the sulfur content in fuel of the ships and therefore on the sulfate emissions in the atmosphere, that is in the English Channel, the Sea of the North and the Baltic Sea, will have to be used combustible with the maximum sulfur tenor of 0.1% or that the same level of emissions is obtained with the use of alternative fuels and technologies of discouragement ofthe emissions.

The systems scrubber - the ECSA remembers - are devices that use water (the systems to open circuit use seawater) in order to pull down the concentration of undesired substances from a drainage gas flow and are identified as one of the little technologies available in order to allow with the ships to reduce the sulfur tenor in their emissions.

In the diffuse document today the ECSA finds as the European directive 2000/60 that institutes a picture for the communitarian action in water matter constitutes a source of worry for the European shipowners as places limits to the content of polluting in the ports, in the matting and in the coastal zones and this - the association specifies - in its turn it means that it exhaust of waters of washing in some zones will be very beneath of the fixed limits from this directive, while in other zones this exhaust could be prohibited from the legislation of the Member States. "The turning out lack of harmonization and clarity - the ECSA emphasizes - will be without a doubt of obstacle to the adoption of technologies of discouragement of the injurious emissions".

"Moreover - the directive still observes the ECSA- picture on waters previews a progressive reduction of some substances and a complete abolition of others. However, because of the lack of information on the effective composition of exhausts of washing waters, at the moment it is not possible to assess if it exhaust of the scrubber re-enter in these two categories. Therefore - the association evidences - necessary more scientific research on the real ecological effects is deepened of exhausts of the scrubber".

"The current uncertainty - specific the general secretary of the ECSA, Patrick Verhoeven - places to risk the investments already carried out from the shipowners with the objective to on January 1°, 2015 satisfy the criteria of conformity within the more and more near expiration, but the mass hinders above all according to future systems of discouragement. Any restriction to the use of the technology scrubber would have to our warning to be preceded from a scientific appraisal with the eventual modifications in the procedure of homologation of such systems on the base of norms IMO. Moreover - Verhoeven adds - the shipowners that have already adopted a system of discouragement would not have to be penalized in disproportionate way".