EPA, ROC, initiated the “Establishment of Port Air Pollutant Emissions Inventory and Drafting of Management Strategies” project at 2009. The project goal is to improve port district air quality in the nation and also to fulfill the USA and ROC agreements in the “Port Air Quality Partnership Convention“. The project is expected to establish the pollutant emission inventory for 5 major commercial harbors in the nation within 2 years. Additionally, the project will formulate appropriate clean air action plan through research, propose recommendations regarding air pollution control measures in port districts, and reduce pollutant emission within port districts to achieve the goal on air quality protection.
This report documents the progress of the second year of the project. The project has thus far designed methodologies for estimating pollutant emission within port districts and has built an emission estimation model accordingly. This project has estimated emission inventory for Keelung Harbor, Taipei Harbor, Taichung Harbor, Kaohsiung Harbor, and Hualien Harbor using 2010 as basis. Emission sources include ocean vessels, loading/unloading facilities, locomotives, heavy duty vehicles, fugitive emission of particulate matters, etc. Estimation coverage excluding ocean vessels will expand to 20 nm outside the harbor and other emissions will emphasis on pollutant sources inside the port district. The resulted figures suggest that ocean vessels have the largest emission in every port. Among these ports, Kaohsiung Harbor has the largest emission. Emissions of NOX, VOC, CO, SO2, PM10, PM2.5, and DPM in Kaohsiung Harbor port district are 9780, 429, 903, 11309, 828, 644 and 469 metric tons/year respectively. Greenhouse gas emissions of CO2, N2O, and CH4 are 814041, 53 and 39 metric tons/year respectively. The equivalent greenhouse gas is 831264 metric tons/year.
This project also compiles a review on relevant control scheme and regulation strategies within the nation and abroad. Furthermore, this project has compiled a draft Best Available Control Technologies and a clean air action plan for every port district.
This project held 2 forums for the harbor authorities and their tenants at May 2011. And an advisory conference was held with experts in the field of air pollution or harbor issues at Aug 2011. Valuable suggestions and opinions were collected from these forums and conference.
According to the emission estimation results, port district emissions of NOX and SO2 have relatively higher percentages in the total emissions of their region. For Keelung city, 27.9% of NOx emission contributed from Keelung Harbor is the highest percentages among all regions versus harbors. As for SOx emission, Kaohsiung Harbor with 34.0% is the highest percentages of all other regions. Therefore, port district emission control has its necessity. Also, based on the regulation strategy study, there are simple but effective regulation strategies such as reducing vessel speed, switching to alternative fuel, etc. If these strategies set in motion first, it is advantageous for port districts to reach their emission reduction targets early.
