Shipping: Exhaust Emissions

(asked on 20th July 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how his Department monitors and enforces International Maritime Organisation regulation on air quality in cities.


Answered by
Robert Goodwill Portrait
Robert Goodwill
This question was answered on 10th September 2015

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is responsible for enforcing the UK legislation regulating pollutant emissions from ships, which implements Annex VI of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (commonly known as the MARPOL Convention) that has been adopted by the International Maritime Organization. The Agency is not however, responsible for monitoring or enforcing air quality standards in our cities.

Ship emissions are estimated as part of the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI).  The inventory provides estimates of annual emissions from shipping from a range of sources, including domestic coastal shipping, inland waterways, UK fishing (both in UK waters and waters outside the UK), naval shipping, journeys between the UK and overseas territories.

A detailed description of the methodology used to produce estimates of UK shipping emissions can be found in the UK Informative Inventory Report (1990 to 2013), p.138 (http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat07/1508131403_GB_IIR_2015_Final_v20.1_resubmission.pdf).

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