Draft amendments to the revised MARPOL Annex VI (Prevention of air pollution from ships) are under consideration this week at IMO which would designate specific portions of the coastal waters of the United States and Canada as an Emission Control Area (ECA) for the control of emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur oxides (SOx) and particulate matter (PM).

The IMO's Marine Environment Pollution Committee's 60th session runs all this week considering this issue as well as ballast water management, ship recycling and garbage disposal. More detail on its agenda can be found at the IMO's website under its

Newsroom

.

To assist our Members with this continually developing issue, we have established a

resources page

on this website which collates together both Club publications and technical and policy documents from other useful sources.

On the 1st January this year the EU implemented its requirement that ships burn fuel of 0.1 per cent sulphur content or less when they are within EU ports or within EU inland waterways. On the same day in the United States, the California Air Resource Board implemented a corresponding directive on low sulphur fuels

These requirements will be extended further by these agencies in future, both in terms of geographic scope and sulphur content limits.