Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
180-199)
DR TERRY
BARKER AND
DR ALICE
BOWS
18 NOVEMBER 2008
Q180 Mark Lazarowicz: Would that
suggest it would not be such a strong incentive to reduce carbon?
Dr Barker: They may pass on the
cost but it is not going to stop them responding to a price signal
and cutting their costs. They can pass it on but they will still
respond. This is what the Emission Trading Scheme is about. In
the ETS the electricity companies pass on their prices but they
still respond by shifting their inputs to lower carbon fuels.
It is exactly the same with shipping and aviation. Less so in
aviation because aviation tends to be more sensitive to fuel prices
than shipping for obvious reasons.
Q181 Mr Chaytor: Do we know within
a "reasonable" margin of error what the total global
emissions from shipping are?
Dr Barker: It depends what you
mean by reasonable margin of error. I think my colleague is more
expert on this. We are working closely with our Atmospheric Chemistry
Group who have access to data which is quite different from ours,
a different data source. We came up with estimates of emissions,
we were comparing our data sources for the year 2000, and they
were remarkably similar, but then similarity is a 20% difference
and you might not consider that reasonable, I am not sure.
Dr Bows: My understanding is that
there has been great uncertainty but because this issue has come
to the fore somewhat there are more studies going on to try and
look at the total CO2 emissions from bunker fuels. The IMO have
recently released a figure which is somewhat higher than some
of the other estimates. It appears to depend on whether you take
a bottom-up approach or a top down approach, so you either count
the fuel that has actually been sold or you have a look at the
actual activity that is going on, and it would appear that there
has been a significant under-reporting of the fuel being sold.
My understanding is that the estimate base of the International
Energy Agency is too low and the actual figure for CO2 is considerably
higher, but I think more studies probably need to be done just
to narrow down the uncertainty.
Q182 Mr Chaytor: What is your best
estimate?
Dr Bows: My understanding is that
it is something around 800 to 900 million tonnes.
Q183 Mr Chaytor: Does that include
all shipping? Does that include fisheries and domestic freight
as well?
Dr Bows: It is challenging to
separate international from domestic shipping because sometimes
some of the domestic shipping may then go off into international
waters or may have purchased their fuel from an international
source, et cetera. The IMO estimate of around 800 for international
and another 200 or so for domestic does not seem unreasonable,
but I am not collating the actual data so I think more studies
need to be done.
Q184 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the
methodology, if you try and extrapolate from the sale of bunker
fuels how does that deal with the fact that different ships will
be working at different levels of efficiency? It not a simple,
straightforward calculation from the volume of bunker fuels sold,
surely?
Dr Bows: If you are just looking
at the bunker fuels sold you can make some estimate for the emission
factor that would have to be based on an average of the different
types of fuel being sold and how that is used, whereas obviously
if you do activity then you can make more accurate calculations
based on the type of fuel, the type of engine efficiency and the
CO2.
Q185 Mr Chaytor: It is not a totally
scientifically valid method, is it; it is like sticking your finger
in the wind and hoping for the best?
Dr Bows: The thing with the emissions
data is that they are always going to be estimates.
Q186 Mr Chaytor: Is there no other
way? The IMO has a responsibility presumably to produce an annual
report as to what fuel is sold but is anybody else trying to get
a more accurate methodology? Is anybody working on this?
Dr Bows: I am not aware of that,
I do not know.
Dr Barker: Yes, the atmospheric
chemists can get a handle on it just from an observation of what
is in the air. Quite accurately, they can know where the smoke
has come from, which fuels, and which countries are emitting them,
so it is quite remarkable and of course there are great advances
in satellite monitoring of the emissions and the air quality.
I think that was one of the alternative data sources. I am not
an atmospheric chemist so I cannot verify that but I could ask
my colleagues to give some evidence to you if you are interested.
Q187 Mr Chaytor: That would be very
useful to us to have a supplementary note about that aspect, thank
you.
Dr Barker: I think the expert
on this is somebody called Professor David Lee. Have you come
across him? He is the expert on collecting this. He has had a
large project on collecting data on emissions which is just about
to report or has just reported earlier this year.
Joan Walley: We shall look forward
to receiving that. Jo Swinson?
Q188 Jo Swinson: Assuming you can
get an overall estimate for the international emissions, what
is the best way of apportioning that between the different countries?
Dr Barker: Proportioning it in
the sense of allocating what?
Jo Swinson: What the emissions
would be.
Q189 Joan Walley: Apportioning a
national share.
Dr Barker: A national share?
Q190 Jo Swinson: If you have got
some confidence about the amount of international emissions, what
do you think is the best way for estimating how much of that should
go to the UK, how much of that should go to Spain, how much should
go to Russia and America?
Dr Barker: You mean reductions?
Q191 Jo Swinson: Even just in terms
of the emissions.
Dr Barker: I see, I think that
is a hopeless issue, a hopeless question, partly because the emissions
react in the atmosphere to sunlight and all the rest. The thing
about emissions is that they are not just CO2. I think you are
just talking about greenhouse gases. There is a very big scientific
problem about answering that question and that is because we are
talking about emissions, so here we have got a cocktail of some
which are fairly toxic, some which are benevolent and some which
is just dirt and dust that comes out of the tailpipes of planes
and the ships, and this spreads and interacts with each other.
Some of it causes damage to crops and human health, et cetera.
This is in our ports and it is in the air above us and we have
to breathe it in. When you say you are allocating, I am not quite
sure what you are allocating in these emissions and of course
there are different stories attached to each of them. If it is
just CO2 that diffuses throughout the atmosphere, it gets washed
out, so once you are outside the national boundaries and even
within national boundaries it is rather odd.
Q192 Jo Swinson: But if countries
are going to take action to reduce emissions or indeed buy credits
to reduce their share of emissions, there needs to be some way
of allocation. I know, Dr Bows, you have outlined various different
schemes in your memorandum. Which do you think would be the best
of those ways? Obviously they all have their plus points and minus
points.
Dr Bows: Just talking about carbon
dioxide I think it is a lot clearer for aviation than it is for
shipping. For aviation you can proximate 50% on departure and
50% on arrival. I think it is really problematic for shipping
and I would not want to push any one method over another. It depends
what you are going to do with the apportionment once you have
done it, so if you are just literally trying to get a handle on
roughly the amount of shipping CO2 emissions associated with the
UK, that is one thing, but if you are going to then use it in
any sort of trading scheme and if there are going to be any incentives
associated with it, then you have to be more careful. It depends
what it is going to be used for. In an ideal world perhaps what
you could have is several tiers where you could suggest that a
certain amount of the journey that you knew was associated with
the UK, say out to a certain particular distance, and then you
could allocate that portion, and then for the rest you could have
some sort of apportionment based on the amount of activity loaded
and unloaded at UK ports or something along those lines, but the
important thing is to consider the distance as well. If you are
just looking at freight tonnes then you are not necessarily accounting
for the fact that it may also be going a very long distance.
Q193 Jo Swinson: One of the issues
here is a lack of information. What can be done to encourage shipping
companies and owners to make sure that they log their fuel use
and their journeys made and that that information is not just
kept within that company but passed up to the international organisations
and the national countries?
Dr Barker: I think it is a great
mistake to try and allocate these international emissions to countries,
which you are suggesting. They actually should be allocated to
the shipping companies and the airlines that are actually doing
it with their ships and aeroplanes. This is international waters
and international airspace and it is genuinely international,
unless you are going to say there is a global authority, in which
case you can allocate it to this global authority. Going down
the route that the European Commission has done in proposing this
50% start of the journey/50% at the end of the journey, it is
a terrible mistake and all it does is give rise to quarrels between
countries. The European Union is quarrelling with the United States
over this. It is really a waste of time and effort and it gives
rise to disputes. This is an international problem and it needs
to be addressed by international consensus.
Q194 Mark Lazarowicz: But it requires
national governments ultimately to enforce any consensus on the
ships or aeroplanes involved? Someone has got to take the action
of enforcing it.
Dr Barker: Yes but someone does
take action. There are a large number of international regulations
which in fact are monitored and enforced by international bodies
to do with safety and health at the moment.
Q195 Jo Swinson: The International
Maritime Organization has not exactly been setting a pace on this
issue.
Dr Barker: Surely it could be
strengthened and its remit could be extended to cover pollution
as well as health and safety? And surely it could be merged into
a global authority to cover both shipping and aviation and to
manage these industries much more effectively than they have been
managed in the past? We see appalling degradation of the environment
and these industries are even proposing, and have started building,
deep water ports in the Arctic to take advantage of global warming
and the opening up of new waterways. I think this has very serious
potential for further environmental damage and acceleration of
climate change by essentially putting a coating of soot on the
pristine Arctic environment by shipping going up for example along
the northern shores of Canada and Russia. We can already see in
Russia examples of great problems, largely, I agree, due to the
Soviet Union but some of them have been perpetuated. Imagine that
going on along the northern shores, which could happen in the
next 50 years if things go on as they have been going on.
Dr Bows: If you are apportioning
or not, I think that we could improve the collation of data from
the international shipping sector and have some sort of reporting
standards and just make the distribution of the data more transparent
and more open and free because I think at the moment, even if
you allocated on the basis of charterers or whatever it may be,
the UN standard or whatever it may be, you need to be able to
say what is the data, how is it collected, what do you actually
need to collect in order to understand the CO2 emissions associated
with shipping, so whether we are apportioning or not we need to
improve the transparency of the data that is available.
Q196 Jo Swinson: What are the barriers
to doing that? Is there anyone standing in the way or is it inertia?
Dr Bows: My understanding is that
one of the barriers is protection of competitiveness. At the moment
that data is confidential and they would rather not release it
just for competitiveness reasons, but I do not know what the legal
barriers are to getting that data.
Q197 Jo Swinson: Just turning to
those emissions other than carbon dioxide which we have already
touched upon. We had some interesting evidence from the IMO Secretariat
where they said the non-CO2 contributions to global warming like
nitrous oxide and black carbon would be being tackled through
the measures they have already agreed to tackle air pollution.
Do you share their confidence in this?
Dr Barker: International measures
to tackle air pollution by the shipping industry? Are you serious?
Q198 Jo Swinson: That is what they
told us.
Dr Barker: That is what they told
you. I have seen no studies of this, I did not even know they
were considering it. I do not want to be rude but it sounds a
bit like a PR exercise. My colleagues are here and I hear some
murmuring behind me. I must qualify this. I am talking about international
shipping. I am not talking about Port of London which of course
is in national waters. Clearly there are major regulations but
I am not sure how effective they are. I was in Hong Kong and I
have not seen such pollution in my life than in Hong Kong Harbour.
"Hong Kong" stands for "fragrant harbour"!
Q199 Jo Swinson: I might guess your
answer to my next question but, just for completeness, there are
some who would say that as a result of some of the aerosol particles
that shipping gives rise to that it actually has a cooling effect
and therefore shipping should not be required to make as deep
cuts as other sectors. What would your response be to that?
Dr Barker: It is true, absolutely,
we can cool the planet by emitting a large amount of sulphur dioxide
pollution. Do we really want that? Do we really want our health
to be damaged in order to save future generations? It seems nonsense
to me; the whole lot should be stopped.
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