- Expecting to have more participation from shipping companies by immediately confirming their compliance -

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF; Minister MOON, Seong-Hyeok) announced to facilitate ‘VSR Program’ to reduce air pollutants such as fine dust and toxic substance emitted by vessels. The Ministry also plans to introduce an automatic program to monitor the lower speed of vessels aiming to provide better convenience for shipping companies, starting Monday, August 2.

The VSR Program, initially started in Los Angeles port and Long Beach port, United Sates in 2001 to improve the marine environment, provides discounts on port use to vessel operators entering the VSR zones with the recommended speed or lower.

In Korea, staring December 2019, the VSR Program has been operated at Busan Port, Incheon Port, Yeosu-Gwangyang Port and Ulsan Port, on ocean-going ships over 3000 ton in weight. As of December 2020, the participating rate stood at 33%, engaging 11,164 ocean-going ships out of 33,039 ships, following a dramatic decrease both in CO2 and PM2.5 emission, by 186,500ton and 335ton respectively. Meanwhile, the participating rate on the program has continuously increased to 48% as of the first half of 2021.

Against this backdrop, MOF announced to introduce an automatic program to monitor the lower speed of vessels starting August 2 via improving ‘PORT-MIS’ to actively utilize the VSR Program. Thanks to the introduction of such automatic program, it is now much more convenient to confirm whether vessels enter the VSR zones with the recommended speed or lower based on the locational information of the vessels, compared to the past where the Ministry and port authorities had to confirm each case of compliance then inform results to shipping companies.

From now on, the shipping companies no longer have to inquire relevant port authorities after signing for lower-speed operation, yet they can be confirmed with their compliance to the program directly via POST-MIS. It used to be a time-consuming process which took almost months just to confirm the compliance of shipping companies, but the whole process now takes less than a day, bringing much more convenience to the shipping companies.

Meanwhile, MOF has previously expanded the applicable types of vessel to the VSR Program including car carriers as well as streamlined the register procedure, planning to develop more precise algorithm to track reduction of carbon emission along with rewarding exemplary cases within the second half of 2021.

JUNG, Kyu-Sam, Director of Port Operation of MOF citied, “The purpose of the revision is to best practice the conventional policy and ease the burden of shipping companies.“ He also added, “MOF promises to stay committed to constantly revising the policy to actively reduce toxic emissions in port area as well as increase participation of shipping companies.“