Overdue emissions plan

Gary Fooks, chairman of the Blue Sky Alliance, a joint venture between the Australian Marine Engine Council and the Outdoor Power Equipment Association, says the change is critical because, “we have emission controls on cars but we don’t have emission control on other things, like lawn mowers and outboards. A two-stroke lawn mower has 40 times the emissions of a car per hour – an outboard much more.

“These things are highly polluting and Australia is well behind the world in regulating them.”

The legislation will require some boat builders to upgrade hulls to cater for the use of heavier clean engines, which can be up to 25 percent heavier than current two-stroke engines. The industry has known this was coming and has had time to prepare. For example, the Australian Boat Building Standard was updated in 2009, in anticipation of the legislation coming into effect.

The cost recovery measure for compliance of the legislation is a levy on engine imports, which is likely to be under 0.40 cents per $100 on the wholesale price. “On a $5,000 retail outboard, the levy on the wholesale import price, would be around $16, which is actually quite economical per user item,” says Fooks, as he goes on to explain why the levy is necessary.

“When the government puts in new legislation, there are costs associated with its on-going management: enforcement at customs, staff to handle applications for exemptions and investigate complaints of non-compliance.”

The levy also safeguards against the potential for a high rate of non-compliance, experienced in other regions, that have implemented similar environmental policies. For example, when the European Association of Internal Combustion Engine Manufacturers (EUROMOT) advocated a similar policy, there was 42 percent non-compliance across the entire industry because measures like this were not put in place.

“The issue is that if there is not enough investment in enforcement, the big companies will be watched leaving too many loop holes. They [Europe] had rules for small volume exemptions and things were coming in from all the porous borders of Europe, with poor enforcement.”

The news of the new rules sparked fear that it would affect current dealer stock or what the public has in their garage. Fooks clarifies that that’s not the case at all, “The legislation like any new standard will affect new imports or new manufactures. It doesn’t affect what’s in the market already or what people already own. In addition, there will be nine months of notice, so that any final orders of shipment can come in – The last date for imports is planned for 30 June 2018.

Even then if a dealer has stock in Australia of non-compliant product you still have another 12 months to sell it – The last date for sale, for wholesalers and retailers, is June 30th 2019. It’s a very soft entry of the rules and there has never been any talk of banning what people own already.”