From Global to Local Regulation? - Skies Clearing in Hong Kong

This year Maersk Line renewed its commitment to the Hong Kong Fair Winds Charter, extending a voluntary pact to use bunker fuel with a sulphur content of less than 0.5% while in Hong Kong waters, significantly lower that the official limit of 3.5%.

Shipping is now the largest source of SOx emissions in Hong Kong. If all operators switched to using low-sulphur fuels, emissions from shipping would fall by 80%, having a significant impact on overall air quality, a visible problem in the city with more than 300 ‘avoidable deaths’ every year.

Fuel switching in Hong Kong is a local initiative but it is also a part of our global objective of driving down air emissions from our own fleet as well as for the shipping industry as a whole. This sometimes means that we have to go beyond regulation in selected areas in order to drive development towards a more level playing field in the long term. Establishing a level playing field, however, is crucial in order to not financially punish those companies that actually do reduce their environmental impacts.

We are therefore pleased that Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying recently announced plans for tighter regulation, which means there is now hope for cleaner skies in the future of Hong Kong.

Introducing a level playing field would also make an expansion of the Hong Kong fuel switch across the whole Pearl River Delta a feasible option – bringing significant environmental and health benefits to millions of people. Watch this space…