Last week I spoke of the increasing risk to tanker operators from environmental regulations. This week I want to look at who sets the agenda, and it is not IMO or the EU.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) was set up in the 1960s. Its remit expanded when the 1969 Santa Barbara oil rig blowout covered Californian surf beaches with crude oil and spurred environmental activists to act.
Since then, and over and above the rules laid down by US federal agencies, CARB has set California's environmental policies, and these policies have a big impact on international trade. As California’s GDP is the fifth largest globally, if you want do business in California, you must work to Californian rules.
Thus, CARB is effectively a global regulator. As an example, CARB imposed most of the requirements of the upcoming 2020 sulphur cap regulations 12 years earlier than the IMO, in 2008.
So what can we expect in the future?
I believe there are two standout CARB policies that could gain global momentum: cold ironing and slow steaming.
CARB introduced regulations for certain ships to turn off auxiliary diesel engines in port and connect to shore-side power, or cold ironing, in 2007. This could be a quick and dirty (pun intended) fix for other regulatory bodies looking for short-term solutions.
So far, CARB has not instituted a regulation on slow steaming, which is advocated by Intertanko, but it may not bee too far away. In partnership with the University of California, the state has begun a study on the effectiveness of reducing commercial vessel speed in Californian waters as an emissions-reduction measure.
In my opinion, if you want to know what nightmares await tanker shipping, keep a close eye on what California's dreamin' up.
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