Air pollution has become one of the most challenging environmental issues in the shipping industry worldwide. As the marine fuels that ships use are high-sulphur heavy fuel oil and residual oil, shipping emissions typically include greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, as well as sulphur oxide and dioxide, black carbon and particulate matter. As a shipping and port giant, China has realized the necessity of controlling shipping emissions in recent years and put effort into promoting its regulatory system to effectively control emissions from ships in Chinese territorial seas and ports. Specifically, China has already established its own ECAs (Emission control areas), requiring ships in these areas to use cleaner fuels or adopt necessary emission abatement technologies.

In this lecture, Prof. Zhang Qiang, who works for the NGO think-tank Shanghai Institute for International Shipping, will discuss these efforts and the work his organization does to promote pollution reduction and to introduce green technologies to China’s shipping industry.

Zhang Qiang is assistant professor in the College of Transport and Communications, Shanghai Maritime University and a researcher at the Shanghai International Shipping Institute (SISI) focusing on port governance and shipping emission control policies. From 2016 - 2017, Dr. Zhang was a visiting scholar at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) where he conducted collaborative research in this field with colleagues from Netherlands. Currently participating in the EU-China NGO Twinning Programme, he is working with the shipping team at the European Federation of Transport & Environment, an NGO based in Brussels, to facilitate the mutual understanding of European and Chinese shipping emissions control policies.