The Swedish Government has commissioned the Swedish Maritime Administration to assess the consequences of the new rules for airborne emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from maritime transport, adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in October 2008.
On behalf of the Swedish Maritime Administration, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) has shed light on whether the IMO’s more stringent emission requirements in the SOx Emission Control Area (SECA – covering the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the English Channel), will lead to transfer of freight transport from maritime to other modes of transport.
Model calculations have been made with the aid of the new national Samgods logistics model Version 2.0 for three of the alternatives examined by the Swedish Maritime Administration.
In Alternative 1, a calculation is made on the effect of a reduction in the maximum sulphur content of marine fuel from the current 1.5 weight per cent to 0.1 weight per cent by 2015 within SECA on transport performance’s extent and distribution for different modes of transport. It is assumed to entail that fuel costs will rise by 12 per cent for ferries, 72 per cent for ro-ro ships, 81 per cent for container ships and 36 per cent for other ships. Everything else is assumed to be the same, e.g. fuel costs for other modes of transport are assumed to be unchanged.
The model calculations indicate that there will be a transfer of maritime transport to land-based modes of transport. It is estimated that there will be a marginal increase of transport performance on land and a reduction of maritime transport performance of around one billion tonne kilometres (compared with the current approximately 40 billion tonne kilometres) within Sweden.
This transfer is expected to take place mainly to road transport in Sweden and to rail transport outside Sweden. The greatest single effect is the transfer from routes via the port of Göteborg to routes via the Öresund Bridge. The transfer to road is expected to take place mainly in southern and central Sweden.
For maritime transport, the results show a transfer from the east coast to the west coast of Sweden. With the assumed costs, it will also be advantageous to avoid SECA, i.e. to use, for example, the port of Narvik instead of ports in northern Norrland. It is also expected that there will be transfers from ports in northern Sweden to ports in central and southern Sweden, which will lead to longer connecting transportation on land.
In Alternative 2 and Alternative 3, it is assumed that the fuel costs for maritime transport will increase by an additional 75 per cent and 150 per cent respectively due to higher crude oil prices within and outside SECA. The model calculations show larger transfers from sea to land. In these alternatives, maritime transport to/from the Mediterranean area is also affected while the effects of Alternative 1 are largely limited to northern Europe.
It is estimated that the sulphur emissions of marine transport will decrease sharply due to the more stringent emission requirements. Shippers are expected to be able to avoid the higher costs for marine fuel to a limited extent by choosing transport solutions that include land transport. However, these solutions may entail unwanted external effects with regard to emissions, road safety etc. It should be possible to carry out a socio-economic analysis with a more detailed analysis with the new logistic model.
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