Environmental impact assessment of passenger ferries and cruise vessels: the case study of Crete

Year 2020 was a milestone year for shipping both positively and negatively: the insecurity of people to move freely due to the Covid-19 pandemic imposed travel restrictions, while on the other hand the enforced Directives and Regulations (i.e. fuel sulfur standards) contribute to the reduction of harmful air emissions from shipping. The scope of the paper is to present some important findings regarding induced air emissions in ports due to shipping activities. Two Greek major ports have been used as a case study to estimate fuel-energy consumption and air emissions (CO2, SOx, NOx, PM10) due to passenger ferries and cruise ships for three consecutive years (i.e. 2018-2020). Due to the lack of publically available technical data, a bottom-up methodology has been employed for air emissions estimation which is based on the calculation of SFOC values through a regression analysis that leads to accurate and reliable results.