New rules force ships passing through Mediterranean to use ultra low sulphur fuel or scrubbers from May 2025
From May 2025 all ships transiting or sailing in the Mediterranean Sea will have to use fuels that have 0.1% sulphur content or use exhaust cleaning scrubbers.
The Marine Environment Protection Committee has approved draft texts that will designate the whole Sea as an sulphur dioxide emission control area from May 2024, with limits for shipping coming in a year later.
The Mediterranean Sea joins the Baltic and North Seas, English Channel and the USA coastline in being designated ECAs.
The impact on shipping is likely to be a lot less than when these earlier regions became ECAs as the global sulphur cap has dropped from 3.5% sulphur in fuels to 0.5%. Additionally, ports in the European Union also have a 0.1% limit.
Vessel operators and owners have the option to use exhaust cleaning systems, or scrubbers, which can remove the SOx in the exhaust gas of a high sulphur fuel. However, systems capable of cleaning gases to a 0.5% global limit may have to be adapted to meet the ECA 0.1%.
The regulations relating to the formation of an emission control area falls under Annex VI of the IMO’s marine pollution convention and this requires separate ratification by IMO member states. Not all Mediterranean littoral countries are signatories, and the IMO and those countries supporting the formation of the new ECA are urging those that have not done so, to ratify thus bringing Annex VI into their own regulations.
These countries are Algeria, Bosnia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Libya.
