Carnival Cruise Lines is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to expedite a decision on the company’s proposal to install some US$200-million worth of marine-emissions-scrubbing devices on its dieselpowered ships in order to comply with upcoming North America emissions-control-area (ECA) regulations. Stack-emissions scrubbing is contemplated as an alternative to a mandatory switch in 2015 to 0.1%-sulfur marine gasoil (MGO) or marine diesel oil (MDO) in “ECAs.” Scrubbing enables continued combustion of relatively low-cost, but high-sulfur, heavy fuel oil (HFO) in ship propulsion engines, while still meeting the ECA limits. Carnival also won support for its proposal from Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who urged the EPA to approve the scheme in order to ensure that cruise liners can continue to call at the Port of Baltimore by employing scrubbing – a technology that Carnival hopes will be a more economical ECA-compliance option than switching to MDO or MGO.
展开▼
