The Port of Long Beach has received a US$4M air quality grant from US-EPA to replace or retrofit, with less polluting technology, more than 100 FLTs, tractors, tugboats and other older diesel-powered equipment at the port.

The grant is part of US$25M in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding to help California agencies reduce diesel exhaust. The port identified the most cost-effective projects for the grant funds, ranging from diesel-powered cargo-handling equipment and gantry cranes to tugboats and bulk cargo loaders.

The port does not own the cargo handling equipment, so the grant will go to six tenant customers who own and operate it. Some machines will be replaced and others will be retrofitted with cleaner-running engines.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has received two grants from the US EPA totalling US$9.8M and another US$1.8M grant from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA).

NY/NJ’s priority for this funding is clean road drayage trucks. US$7M of the EPA grant and an additional US$21M incentive fund from TNY/NJ itself will enable truck owners serving the port to replace their pre-1994 trucks with newer cleaner burning, less polluting vehicles.

Around 16% of the trucks that frequently call at the port were built before 1994, and they contribute 33% of PM, 14% of the NOx and 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions each year. The programme provides funding to replace an estimated 636 of these older trucks with newer vehicles, resulting in a reduction of around 118t of NOx, 14t of PM2.5 and 1,675t of greenhouse gases per year.

The other US$2.8M from EPA will go toward a “cold ironing” installation at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which will then be the first on the USEC to provide shore power for docked vessels. This program is expected to reduce emissions from berthed cruise ships by 95.3t of NOx, 6.5t of PM, and 1487t of greenhouse gases each year.

Finally, NJTPA’s grant will go to retrofit two diesel switcher locos with ultra-low emitting locomotive technology. Total project costs are estimated at US$3M with the remaining costs shared by NY/NJ (US$0.6), CSX (US$0.3) and NS (US$0.3). The programme is expected to return emissions reductions of 185.7t of NOx, 4.73t of PM, 14t of VOCs and 1935t of greenhouse gases over five years.