China Merchants Group has plans to introduce cold ironing at the company's ports

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

18 Mar 2008

China's largest port operator China Merchants Group has plans to introduce cold ironing at the company's ports in China to cut shipping emissions.Dr Fu Yuning president of the group and managing director of China Merchants Holdings (International) Co Ltd will introduce an initiative called 'Alternative Maritime Power', or cold ironing, at its Chinese ports. He was speaking at the second World Ports Summit in Hong Kong last week.''Studies have shown that up to 70% of exhaust emissions at a container port come from idling ships berthing at the terminal [...] China Merchants has now developed a stiff initiative in promoting an Alternative Maritime Power project in all our terminals that come under our management,'' said Dr Fu.''By providing onshore electricity onboard, a mid-size container vessel can save roughly 10 tonnes of fuel a day, resulting in a direct reduction of carbon and sulpher dioxide greenhouse gas emissions at the terminal,'' he said.Dr Fu, however, did not reveal a timeline for embarking on the green initiative.Cold ironing allows a ship to switch off its engines and plug into shore-side electricity, virtually eliminating emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), particulate matter (PM) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) while ships are at berth.Plugging a berthed ship to shoreside power could also reap considerably savings compared to using an onboard generator, Dr Fu told the Summit audience.The Chinese ports operated by China Merchants handled more than 30 million TEUs in 2007.Meanwhile, the installation of cold ironing facilities are underway in South Korea in a move to combat ship-sourced pollution. Busan New Port is set to have eight cold ironing systems in placed by early -2009, according to Busan Port Authority (BPA).In Hong Kong, however, cold ironing plans have been shelved due to the difficulties of installing shore power.