In Oakland's port, ships plug in to cut emissions [View All]

Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, May 28, 2011

In a clean-air milestone for the Port of Oakland, the APL Singapore, a 900-foot container ship, plugged into shoreside power Thursday night for its 24-hour stay in port, eliminating the hundreds of pounds of noxious emissions its diesel engines ordinarily would spew into the air.

"This is the beginning of a new era on the Oakland waterfront," said Gene Seroka, president of the Americas for APL, a cargo-ship line based in Singapore.

California has mandated that by 2014 half of container-ship, passenger-ship and refrigerated-cargo-ship fleets must use local power while docked, a process called "cold-ironing" because all onboard combustion is shut down and the ship "goes cold." By 2020, 80 percent of these oceangoing vessels must use cold-ironing.

But the conversion is expensive and laborious.

"You can't just buy an extension cord and plug it in," Seroka said.



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