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The Port of Houston has been presented with an environmental partnership award by the Houston-Galveston Area Council.

Jack Steele, executive director of the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC), officially presented its highest environmental partnership award to Port of Houston Chairman James T. Edmonds.

Recognized as an air quality leader in the region, the port received the Houston-Galveston Area Council's Best All-Around Clean Air Leadership Award at its 2010 awards luncheon, held in August.

The Houston-Galveston Area Council's Clean Air Action Program aims to reduce air pollution and assist the region in attaining compliance with federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone pollution.

Fuel Switching Project

In April 2010, the Port of Houston Authority authorized the use of nearly $1.5 million from the EPA's National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance program to reimburse Maersk Line for the use of cleaner fuel as part of a fuel switching project, which commenced in August 2010.

Commissioners approved using $1,497,909 of EPA's National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program funds to reimburse Maersk Line for the differential cost of lower emissions fuel on the shipping line's vessels calling at port authority wharves.

19 Maersk Line vessels are expected to participate in the program, which will see the ships switching to lower-sulphur fuel containing no more than 0.2 percent sulphur once they are within 24 nautical miles of the Texas coast.

The fuel-switching program is due to run until March 31 2012.

The total emission reductions from the project are expected to be:

35 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx)

50 tons of particulate matter with a diameter of 10 micrometers or less (PM10)

46 tons of particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5)

441 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)

1,353 tons of sulphur dioxide (SO2)

In November 2009, the Port of Houston Authority and Maersk Line partnered with the EPA on the first-ever low-sulphur fuel switch demonstration on a container ship in the Gulf of Mexico.

The fuel switching demonstration was carried out on the Maersk Roubaix, a smaller vessel which can carry 1118 twenty-foot shipping containers.

The Roubaix’s propulsion engine and auxiliary engines normally run on bunker fuel with a sulphur content of 2.7 percent.