Ship emissions and their externalities for Greece

The existing and emerging international and European policy framework for the reduction of ship exhaust emissions dictates the need to produce reliable national, regional and global inventories in order to monitor emission trends and consequently provide the necessary support for future policy making. Furthermore, the inventories of ship exhaust emissions constitute the basis upon which their external costs are estimated in an attempt to highlight the economic burden they impose upon the society and facilitate the cost–benefit analysis of the proposed emission abatement technologies, operational measures and market-based instruments prior to their implementation.The case of Greece is of particular interest mainly because the dense ship traffic within the Greek seas directly imposes the impact of its exhaust emission pollutants (NOx, SO2 and PM) upon the highly populated, physically sensitive and culturally precious Greek coastline, as well as upon the land and seas of Greece in general, whereas the contribution of Greece in the global CO2 inventory at a time of climatic change awareness cannot be ignored. In this context, this paper presents the contribution of Greece in ship exhaust emissions of CO2, NOx, SO2 and PM from domestic and international shipping over the last 25 years (1984–2008), utilizing the fuel-based (fuel sales) emission methodology. Furthermore, the ship exhaust emissions generated within the Greek seas and their externalities are estimated for the year 2008, through utilizing the fuel-based (fuel sales) approach for domestic shipping and the activity-based (ship traffic) approach for international shipping.On this basis, it was found that during the 1984 to 2008 period the fuel-based (fuel sales) ship emission inventory for Greece increased at an average annual rate of 2.85%. In 2008, the CO2, NOx, SO2 and PM emissions reached 12.9 million tons (of which 12.4 million tons of CO2) and their externalities were found to be around 3.1 billion euro. With regard to shipping within the Greek seas, the utilization of the fuel-based (fuel sales) analysis for domestic shipping and the activity-based (ship traffic) analysis for international shipping shows that the ship-generated emissions reached 7.4 million tons (of which 7 million tons of CO2) and their externalities were estimated at 2.95 billion euro. Finally, the internalization of external costs for domestic shipping was found to produce an increase of 12.96 and 2.71 euro per passenger and transported ton, respectively.