Assessment of COVID-19 pandemic effects on ship pollutant emissions in major international seaports

Jiahui Liu; Adrian Wing-Keung Law; Okan Duru

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2021.112246

Assessment of COVID-19 pandemic effects on ship pollutant emissions in major international seaports

Environ Res. 2021 Oct 23:112246. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.112246. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Jiahui Liu¹, Adrian Wing-Keung Law², Okan Duru¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore.
² School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore. Electronic address: cwklaw@ntu.edu.sg.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic effects and associated restrictive rules on ship activities and pollutant emissions (CO₂, SO_X, NO_X, PM, CO, CH₄) in four major seaports, namely the Ports of Singapore, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Hamburg. We used 2019 as the baseline year to show the business-as-usual emission and compared with the estimated quantity during the July 2020-July 2021 pandemic period. We also project future ship emissions from August 2021-August 2022 to illustrate two potential port congestion scenarios due to COVID-19. The results show that the ship emissions in all four ports generally increased by an average of 79% because of the prolonged turnaround time in port. Importantly, majority of ship emissions occurred during the extended hoteling time at berth and anchorage areas as longer operational times were needed due to pandemic-related delays, with increases ranging from 27 to 123% in the total emissions across ports. The most affected shipping segments were the container ships and dry bulk carriers which the total emissions of all pollutants increased by an average of 94-142% compared with 2019. Overall, the results of this study provide a comprehensive review of the ship emission outlook amid the pandemic uncertainty.

Keywords: COVID-19; Future scenarios; Merchant ships; Port performance; Ship emissions.