If it reduces fuel consumption by 30%, wouldn't all ships want to have it? Is it too expensive, or what is the problem?
Also the time spent in dry dock might as well cost you more than what you’ll gain through the service time of the vessel since many of these vessels change hands frequently sometimes even several times a year.
Also because how risk is managed in the shipping industry none of these companies is exposed to any actual action, the vessels would almost never be owned by an entity with actual assets and they would essentially be registered to shells holding only debt.
This is done to protect shipping companies from damages in case of accidents but it’s also very convenient to avoid any regulation since if they are caught there will be no legal entity to pay the fine.
Open systems have a sufficiently large capacity to store the contaminated water so they essentially only open the loop in international waters where no one can do anything about it.
But in general it depends on who does it, for the most part if it’s a western country the country would loose in court since it will he sued by multiple parties with interest in the cargo but no actual liability.
If it’s not then it’s either going to be a political waltz or just another act of piracy.
The ship and cargo are insured some parties might make more money on losing the ship than if it had completed its transit including quite possibly its operator.
What about enacting a law that says "if you use cheating devices at all, you can't dock in our ports"?
When 99.9% of vessels are doing the cheating, the shipping companies would say you would really like your people to go on a diet don’t you?
It’s very hard to near impossible to do or enforce all it takes is a country just by you that is willing to accept them.
People aren’t going to take a huge price hike and countries that are dependent on imports won’t ever enforce such requirements which would leave these vessels out there.
At the end of the day unless you are willing to fund a fleet of 1000’s of new vessels and or pay to upgrade existing ones the shipping companies won’t budge and you won’t ever be able to push them into a corner since the economic fallout would be catastrophic for you but not much for them.
You can set up treaties with your neighbors to enforce the same regulations. Also, if your country is sufficiently large enough, it's not really a concern because any savings from not having to follow the regulations will be wiped out by the increased cost in transporting the goods across the border.
You could also impose a tariff/charge on goods that transit through a neighboring country for no apparent reason (eg. China -> Mexico -> LA rather than China -> LA).
>People aren’t going to take a huge price hike
Source on the huge price hike? According to http://www.worldshipping.org/benefits-of-liner-shipping/glob..., the shipping industry contributes 183.3B to global GDP, and transports more than 4T worth of goods. Based on that, shipping accounts for approximately 4.5% of the cost of goods. Therefore, a 50% increase in cost because of emissions controls (very generous estimate) would only cause a 2.2% increase in the price of goods.
>and countries that are dependent on imports won’t ever enforce such requirements which would leave these vessels out there.
If it's announced years in advance, either shipping companies would adapt and get the vessels ready before the regulations take effect, or local manufacturers come online now that they're more competitive. No ships is ever going to be "stuck".
Ending 1: the deadline approaches and nothing has been done, so the deadline is extended, or additional clauses are written to grandfather in the non compliant offenders (who are of course too big to fail).
Ending 2: they find a port that is near the port they want to visit, in a jurisdiction that doesn’t care, and then ship the last mile to the actual destination via other means. More costly and more pollution but technically in compliance with every law.
Ending 3: they learn to game the tests, so they meet the letter of the regulation but not the spirit of it. Much cheaper than actually reducing emissions.
Simply add another annex to MARPOL regarding discharge of sulfur and the industry will follow, penalties for breaking MARPOL are usually personal and not on the shipping company. Though, as always with the maritime industry the international manner makes any change slow.
All it takes is for the US/Europe/China to take a stand. No shipping company is going to ignore those markets.
[1] https://road.cc/content/news/142312-london-ban-hgvs-without-...
https://www.marineinsight.com/maritime-law/ship-arrest-under...
And no, I don't know much about it beyond the term and what's at the link above, but failure to abide by regulations is an allowable condition of arrest.
Ships are flagged and "regulated" in Liberia, Panama or wherever, crews are Filipino or Indonesian, and the officers are from another country (Greece, UK, US, etc). The ownership is always murky and unknown.
The only exceptions are some intra-national shipping. US carriers are required if you're shipping from Alaska to California, for example.
Would there not be a competitive advantage in being able to offer a lower price than your competitors to these customers "down the line" or is there some facet of the pricing practices that I'm missing?
Time to investment payback was longer than many companies were willing to stomach, which was shortened thanks to Norway subsidies.
That said, they’re growing quickly, have a look!
Also from what I know of the shipping industry I would only expect it to be seen on new ships as the cost of retro-fitting would be high even without considering the opportunity cost of the ship needing to be in dry-dock for the operation (and needing to get to and from the dock, if there is not one where the work can be done along its owner's normal routes).
And given ships change hands surprisingly often, how long it takes to hit break even (i.e when the cost of the fuel saved, less any extra maintenance costs the tech may be subject to in that time, equals extra initial outlay) will have a massive effect on whether it is worth it to the initial owner of a new ship.
And a new ship is a huge capital expenditure, with a long lead time from plan to implementation. If the tech is relatively new it may not have existed at all when ships currently rolling into service were conceived, and with that level of capital involved designers are going to be pretty conservative about the risk of trying relatively new tech, so maybe it will become common but at a much later time.