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April 2009
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ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
APRIL 24th 2009 - Ships emissions increase coastal acid rains
A new research shows that emissions from ships increase acid rains on the coast and could be responsible of more than 25% of ozone in those regions. the outcomes of the research has been published on the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics magazine.
Previous studies showed that 70% of the maritime traffic is within 400 km from the mainland. A team from the University of Oslo has checked the quantity of pollutant from ships, evaluating data from all over the world in 2004. In 2004 the world merchant fleet included more than 90.000 ships, each of about 101 metric tonnes. The researchers divided ships in 15 categories, with the main scope of calculating the emitted pollutant. The team has assessed emissions that, according to their calculations, should be generated when the ship was in high sea or in port. From this calculation found out that in 2004 ships consumed fuel for about 217 millions of metric tonnes and that the 5% was used in port. The main part of the fuel used was rich in sulphur and so it produced more than 16 million of mt of SO2, that is, together with NOx, the main responsible of the acid rain.
The team of researcher calculated that ships are responsible of about 10% of the acid rains due to NOx emissions and about 5% of acid rains due to SOx emissions. Also important is the fact that in some coastal regions, like North Africa, with no commercial activities but with ships sailing in proximity, about 50% of acid rains are due to ships emissions. Moreover the 5-15% of ozone detected at land level in some West Europe regions is caused by ships emissions.
The most interesting thing is that the results of these studies meet data gathered by IMO.
Ecoblog.it
APRIL 1st 2009 - The International Forum about the Clean Energy in Trieste
Today the International Forum about the Clean Energy starts in Trieste, which join together representatives from 17 different states, with the aim to promote low consumption and low CO2 emission technologies, arranged by the Ministry for the Environment.
The main scope of the forum is to find and set alternative ways for the energy production, and to answer to the rising demand for the next thirty years, without increasing CO2 emissions. Among the most important proposals, there are investments in low carbon content technologies, through appropriate support measures and global standards definition of both price and carbon content, in order to reduce of about 50% the world's emissions in thirty years. At the same time, the forum will debate about the possibility to motivate projects for renewable sources in developing countries.
Ecoblog.it
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