The impact of marine shipping and its DECA control on air quality in the Pearl River Delta, China

Huan Liu; Xinxin Jin; Luolin Wu; Xuemei Wang; Mingliang Fu; Zhaofeng Lv; Lidia Morawska; Feifan Huang; Kebin He

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.01.033

The impact of marine shipping and its DECA control on air quality in the Pearl River Delta, China

Sci Total Environ. 2018 Jun 1:625:1476-1485. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.01.033. Epub 2018 Jan 12.

Authors

Huan Liu¹, Xinxin Jin², Luolin Wu³, Xuemei Wang⁴, Mingliang Fu², Zhaofeng Lv², Lidia Morawska⁵, Feifan Huang², Kebin He²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Joint Laboratory of ESPC, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: liu_env@tsinghua.edu.cn.
² State Key Joint Laboratory of ESPC, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
³ School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
⁴ Institute for Environmental and Climate Research, Jinan University, Guangzhou 511443, China. Electronic address: eeswxm@mail.sysu.edu.cn.
⁵ International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia.

PMID: 29996444
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.01.033

Abstract

Marine trade has significantly expanded over the past decades aiding to the economic development of the maritime countries, yet, this has been associated with a considerable increase in pollution emission from shipping operation. This study aims at considering both sides of the spectrum at the same time, which is including both public and shipping business. Of the key significance would be to optimize the operation of the shipping industry, such that its impact on air pollution is minimized, without, however, significant escalation of its cost, and therefore to protect the whole seaborne trade. To do this, we considered the impacts of three control strategies, including the current emission control area (ECA) design, as well two additional ones. Thus the first scenario (DECA1) was based on the China's domestic emission control area (DECA), which was set up in 2016. The DECA1 scale was only 12 nautical miles, which was much smaller than the emission control areas in US or Europe. We defined the second scenario (DECA2), by stretching the zone to 200 nautical miles towards the ocean, modeling it on the ECA in North America. The third scenario (DECA3), on the other hand, expanded the 12 nautical miles control zone along the whole coastline. To investigate the impact of shipping emissions on air quality, a shipping emission calculation model and an air quality simulation model were used, and Pearl River Delta (PRD), China was chosen to serve as a case study. The study demonstrated that in 2013 marine shipping emissions contributed on average 0.33 and 0.60μg·m^-3, respectively to the land SO₂ and PM_2.5 concentrations in the PRD, and that the concentrations were high along the coastline. The DECA1 policy could effectively reduce SO₂ and PM_2.5 concentrations in the port regions, and the average reduction in the land area were 9.54% and 2.7%, respectively. Compared with DECA1, DECA2 would not measurably improve the air quality, while DECA3 would effectively decrease the pollution in the entire coast area. Thus, instead of expanding emission control area far to the ocean, it is more effective to control emissions along the coastline to secure the best air quality and lower the health impacts. By doing this, 19 million dollars of fuel cost could be saved per year. The saved cost could help the ship owners to endure, considering the current low profits of the seaborne trade, and thus to protect the overall growth of the economy.

Keywords: Air pollution; Control strategy; Cost; DECA; Shipping emissions.