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Preview of global ballast water treatment markets
Volume 11 No 1 January 2012 Journal of Marine Engineering and Technology
through multiple tanks served by independent sea lockers and
pumps. Other ‘special issues’ under consideration include the
possible use of freshwater or drinking water as ballast in the
case of destinations where potable water or water for agricul-
tural use is at a premium.
Assuming that IMO regulations are ratified in 2012 and
implemented a year later, and that all relevant ships attempt
to comply, the review of the relevant statistics in the Lloyd’s
Fairplay
world merchant fleet database and the tiered IMO
implementation schedule suggests that there will be a large
spike in demand for BWTS around 2016 as vessels attempt
to meet IMO standards for 2016. However, a review of cur-
rent global BWTS supply capacity indicates that it will not
be able to meet this surge in demand unless significant new
investments in BWTS supply capacity are made soon. These
new investments in BWTS supply will depend on investor
confidence in the size of future BWTS markets. However,
these investors understand that the size and timing of BWTS
market will depend on when IMO member nations decide to
enforce IMO ballast water regulations, which will depend in
part on their assessment of whether enough BWTS supplies
are available to allow widespread compliance. This interde-
pendent policy/market loop may need to be addressed explic-
itly by international and national ballast water regulators to
increase the likelihood that IMO ballast water regulations will
succeed and have the intended effect on ocean health.
The success of IMO regulations to reduce the environ-
mental and economic risks from harmful aquatic invasive
species depends on three factors:
(1) The limits they place on allowable concentrations of
living organisms in ballast water discharge water;
(2) The availability of technologies to meet those limits;
(3) The willingness and ability of ship operators to use those
technologies in order to comply with the regulations.
For the past ten years or so efforts to develop ballast
water regulations have focused on the first two factors
which involve science (identifying allowable concentration
standards) and technology (certifying effective treatment
methods). As we approach ratification and implementa-
tion, attention is beginning to shift to the third factor which
involves creating incentives and opportunities for ship oper-
ators to comply. So far this shift has focused on compliance
monitoring, measurement, and verification methods which
are the topics of several recent papers that address how to
define and detect noncompliance.
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However, the most cru-
cial factor in determining the success of IMO ballast water
regulations is the ability of ship operators to comply, which
depends nearly totally on the emergence of adequate and
effective global BWTS markets.
This paper characterises the size and value of the global
BWTS market that will need to emerge over the next few
years to create opportunities for ship operators to comply
with IMO ballast water regulations and to allow those regu-
lations to succeed. The kinds of BWTS supply and demand
conditions described in this report should be viewed as lead-
ing indicators of whether IMO ballast water regulations are
likely to succeed, and what might be done to improve the
situation if they are failing. Over the next few years there will
be nothing more important to the success of international bal-
last water regulations than conditions in BWTS markets. The
kinds of preliminary market measures presented in this paper
should be refined and routinely updated to provide interna-
tional and national ballast water regulators the information
they need to understand compliance problems and to design
fair and effective enforcement strategies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to our colleagues at the Smithsonian Environmental
Research Center for providing data that informed this
research. We gratefully acknowledge Tom Mackey, co-Chair
of the IMarEST Ballast Water Experts Group (BWEG), Capt
David Smith and Jurrien Baretta of BWEG for their input and
perspectives on this subject. Contribution No. 4567 of the
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
REFERENCES
1. King DM, Riggio M and Hagan PT. 2009.
Preliminary
analysis of cost of ballast water treatment systems
. MERC
Ballast Water Economics Discussion Paper No. 1. Available
at www.maritime-enviro.org/reports//Reports.html/
2. Albert R, Everett R, Lishman J and Smith D. 2010.
Availability and efficacy of ballast water treatment tech-
nology: Background and issue paper
. US Environmental
Protection Agency and US Coast Guard. Available at www.
dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.
pdf&AD=ADA526423
3. King DM, Riggio M and Hagan PT. 2010.
Preliminary
overview of global ballast water treatment markets
. MERC
Ballast Water Economics Discussion Paper No. 2. Available
at www.maritime-enviro.org/reports//Reports.html/
4. European Maritime Safety Agency, 2011.
Guidance
on ballast water sampling and analysis for compliance with
BWM convention
. Additional PSC Guidance (in preparation).
5. Frost and Sullivan. 2009. Available at www.frost.com/
reg/file-get.do%3Fid%3D73927%26file%3D1
6. King DM and Tamburri M. 2010.
Verifying compliance
with ballast water discharge regulations
. Ocean Development
and International Law, 1521–0642,
41
[2]: 152–165.
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