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Officials from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are due to hold a public hearing later this week to discuss its plans to implement tougher emissions controls for ships.

During the meeting, scheduled to take place in Long Beach, the EPA is expected to go through its plans to put strict limits on the sale of marine fuel with more than 1,000 parts per million sulphur, stiffer emissions controls on all newly manufactured marine engines in U.S.-registered ships from 2011 and to designate a North American Emission Control Area (ECA).

The US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) announced its submission of an ECA application to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) at the end of March this year.

According to the EPA’s data, the creation of a North American ECA would save up to 8,300 American and Canadian lives every year by 2020 by imposing stricter standards on ships that emit harmful emissions into the air near coastal communities. The United States is proposing a 230-mile buffer zone around the nation’s coastline in order to provide air quality benefits as far inland as Kansas.

Under the program, large ships that operate in ECAs would face stricter emissions standards designed to reduce the threat they pose to human health and the environment. These standards would aim to cut sulphur in fuel by 98 percent, particulate matter emissions by 85 percent, and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 percent from the current global requirements.

To achieve these reductions, ships will be required to use fuel with no more than 1,000 parts per million sulphur from 2015, and new ships would have to use advanced emission control technologies from 2016.