The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Port Everglades in Florida announced release of a first-of-its-kind collaborative report, describing how EPA and the Port developed baseline and future year emission inventories for NOx and PM, and other harmful pollutants that result from typical port operations.
The report, entitled ‘EPA and Port Everglades Partnership: Emission Inventories and Reduction Strategies’, also evaluates the potential emissions reduction benefits of deploying cleaner technologies and more efficient operational strategies.
In 2016, EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality and Broward County’s Port Everglades announced a voluntary partnership (PDF)(2 pp, 1 MB, June 3, 2016) to study mobile source emissions. Through this partnership that has now concluded, EPA and PEV agreed to work together to develop baseline and future year emission inventories and to evaluate various effective technology and operational strategy scenarios for seaports.
More specifically, the report analyzes how hypothetical voluntary strategies such as reduced idling and deployment of cleaner diesel and electric technologies can cut pollution from existing and expanded port operations.
For example, at Port Everglades, the potential of replacing older harbor craft engines with cleaner diesel engines could result in a 15–25% reduction in PM emissions in 2025, while replacing older cargo handling equipment with advanced technologies or alternative fuels could reduce NOx emissions by 21–76% in 2035.
Key findings
Inventories can help benchmark port and port industry progress.
An emissions inventory is an important benchmark against which to measure progress and enables informed decision making. With this information, a port can examine emission trends by source, identify potential opportunities for emission reductions, and prioritize future investment or operational changes to reduce emissions.
Emissions are being reduced, but more can be done with available strategies.
EPA’s engine and fuel regulations, as well as emerging commercially available technologies, are expected to reduce port-related emissions. However, voluntarily implementing operational strategies or accelerating equipment replacement or retrofit rates could further reduce emissions, or reduce emissions sooner. In consultation with Port Everglades, EPA identified voluntary strategies to analyze.
Strategies and scenarios are effective to reduce emissions.
To evaluate the effectiveness of various strategies, EPA’s analysis explored the potential of hypothetical scenarios, applied at different levels of implementation, to reduce future year emissions. There are a variety of effective strategies available and ports can assess which make the most sense for their specific conditions. For example, this analysis evaluated the effect of hypothetical scenarios such as using alternative fuels and vessel and equipment replacement to cleaner diesel and electric technologies.
Potential actions can have benefits beyond a port’s boundary.
Ports are a nexus between transportation modes and activities that generate emissions at sea and on land, both on the port property and on nearby transportation corridors. As part of its analysis, EPA examined emissions from port-related vessel and vehicle activity occurring on three transportation corridors outside Port Everglades: a marine corridor, a truck corridor, and a rail corridor. For each corridor, EPA developed a baseline emissions inventory and projected future emissions. Hypothetical scenarios were also developed to examine potential strategies to reduce off-port emissions along these transportation corridors. Quantifying mobile source emissions using local data along these types of corridors can help stakeholders identify impacts and opportunities to reduce emissions.
Data and methods are available for developing port inventories.
This partnership provided an opportunity to consider data and methods currently available for developing the emission inventories for port-related vehicle and equipment sectors. Emission estimation methods are currently available for all land and marine emission sources at ports. Partnering with Port Everglades allowed EPA to refine inventory development methods and will inform EPA’s next update of the Port Emissions Inventory Guidance. Lessons learned and methods developed from the EPA-Port Everglades partnership will be incorporated into EPA’s updated guidance and will inform future inventory development and strategy analyses across the U.S.
Through this partnership, Port Everglades developed the 2015 Baseline Air Emissions Inventory, which presents port-related emissions based on 2015 activity levels at Port Everglades that can be used as a benchmark to measure the impact of future port changes. The baseline inventory was also used in EPA’s development of future hypothetical emission inventories and scenarios to evaluate potential new strategies to reduce diesel emissions at Port Everglades.
The BAU inventories show that EPA’s engine and fuel regulations, as well as emerging commercially available technologies, are expected to reduce port-related emissions. For example, new vehicle and equipment emission standards are already reducing NOx and PM emission rates as older equipment is replaced at ports across the country. However, voluntarily implementing operational strategies or accelerating equipment replacement rates, for example, could further reduce emissions, or reduce emissions sooner.
Ocean Going Vessels
- Reduced hotelling time
- At-berth alternative control technology (capture and treat)
- Lower sulfur fuels and alternative fuels like liquefied natural gas (LNG)
- Shore power
Harbor Craft
- Engine replacement (to Tier 3) and vessel replacement (to Tier 4)
Cargo Handling Equipment
- Equipment replacement (to Tier 4) and equipment electrification
- Diesel particulate filters and oxidation catalysts
Further details may be found herebelow:
