Winds Change for the Maritime Industry with New Climate Change Legislation
Written by Barry M. Hartman (Washington, D.C.), John F. Spinello (Newark), Susan B. Geiger (Washington, D.C.), and Akilah Green (Washington D.C.)
Climate change negotiators from around the world met in Bonn, Germany this month to begin hammering out a global strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which many believe contribute to climate change.Discussions in Bonn included strategies for reducing GHG emissions that result from maritime shipping.
At the same time, in the United States, the maritime industry finds itself the target of a new congressional effort to reduce domestic GHGs. Specifically, the Waxman-Markey discussion draft of the "American Clean Energy and Security Act," released on March 31st, would mandate a reduction in domestic GHG emissions by 83 percent below 2005 levels over the next 40 years. To accomplish this, the proposed legislation would amend the U.S. Clean Air Act to give the federal Environmental Protection Agency sweeping new authority to regulate GHGs, including mandatory changes in marine fuel and engine standards, and the discretion to extend these requirements to oceangoing vessels.
These new mandates on marine fuel and engines would be in addition to the major changes adopted by EPA and the International Maritime Organization last year to reduce vessel emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides.
