12 April 2024 (Lloyd's List) - DENMARK has banned scrubber discharge from ships in its waters, with some vessels set to be impacted as soon as July 2025.

The Danish Ministry of the Environment says the use of scrubbers has contributed to “excessive levels of a number of heavy metals and tar substances such as lead, cadmium, anthracene and benzo(a)pyrene in the marine environment”.

The department said the ban, which will be enforced up to 22 km from its coastline, could lead to a 20% reduction in nickel discharge and 7% reduction in anthracene pollution.

“This agreement is another important step to a better marine environment. Scrubber water emits a number of problematic substances, which accumulate on our seabed and are absorbed into the ocean’s food chains and end up in the fish we eat,” said environment minister Magnus Heunicke.

“The discharge of environmentally hazardous substances comes from many different sources, but scrubber water is a source about which we have a lot of knowledge and data, and therefore I am happy that we are now putting an end to the pollution with scrubber water in Danish territorial waters.”

Open-loop scrubbers will be banned from July 1, 2025, with closed-loop scrubbers also blacklisted from July 1, 2029.

Denmark joins a growing list of ports and countries that have restricted the use of scrubbers in their waters.

In Europe alone, France, Germany, Portugal, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Estonia and Lithuania all have at least some restrictions in place on scrubber discharge, along with some ports in the UK, Spain, Norway and Sweden.

The ban gained support from across the political spectrum in Denmark, although some parties think it is still not ambitious enough.

Socialist People’s Party marine environment spokesperson Marianne Bigum said it was “fundamentally rubbish that the environmentally hazardous substances we remove from ships’ bunker oil and flue gas are simply discharged into the sea”.

The ban too, she said, should be implemented much faster.