Ian Adams, Clean Shipping Alliance 2020 Executive Director published a statement, answering to the NGOs and the environmental groups that called the IMO to re-evaluate scrubbers as alternative tool for 2020 fuel standards.
Therefore, Ian Adams replied:
Collectively CSA 2020 is dismayed at media reports from activist groups that are making unsupported statements regarding exhaust gas cleaning systems. Many of these statements are counter-productive and do little to help the global shipping industry’s on-going efforts to prevent emissions of sulphur, black carbon, particulate matter and other substances from having a detrimental impact on the environment and on human health.
In addition, he continued that in a wider environmental perspective, EGCS is a proven, reliable technology and an environmentally proven way of reducing emissions. Thus, CSA 2020 doesn’t understand the motives behind the NGOs’ statements.
Ian Adams highlighted
As such, we find it difficult to fathom the motives behind these statements when there is a clear record of scientific studies – including an accumulation study being presented this week at MEPC74 that demonstrate the many benefits of using EGCS to reduce emissions while having negligible impact on the ocean environment.
Concerning the NGOs’ open letter to the IMO, they called the Organisation to reconsider supporting scrubbers as a way of reducing emissions, setting as an example the illegal activities the Carnival Corporation has conducted in the past.
The letter sent quotes
Scrubbers have been referred to as “emissions cheat” systems and for good reason. These systems effectively turn an air pollution problem into a water pollution and toxic waste problem.
On the contrary to the above opinion, CSA 2020 presented to ports scientific evidence based on which the wastewater produced by the exhaust gas cleaning process was environmentally acceptable and well within regulatory limits.
Concluding, the study that CSA 2020 launched in February, marked the benefits that scrubbers provide in the shipping industry.
