Picking a cruise by environmental concerns

[retireandgo]

I love cruising but am concerned about the environmental impact.  Venice, Italy has halted cruise ships and Londoners are protesting cruise ships on the Thames River. We folks who love cruising should be in the forefront of getting our favorite cruise lines to begin to do right. I have Elite status on Celebrity and while I thought that they, and Royal Caribbean, were doing well environmentally, I came across the report card, below, that dismayed me!  They must begin to use cleaner fuel, for one.

 

Cruise Ship Pollution Is Causing Serious Health And Environmental Problems


https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/04/26/cruise-ship-pollution-is-causing-serious-health-and-environmental-problems/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/04/26/cruise-ship-pollution-is-causing-serious-health-and-environmental-problems/amp/

 

Also note this information.

Cruise-Ship Report Card 2019.pdf

 

[Essiesmom]

This topic has been beaten to death recently.  There are multiple threads on multiple boards here.  EM

[chipmaster]

2 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

This topic has been beaten to death recently.  There are multiple threads on multiple boards here.  EM

 

Can I reply with my gif 😁 I'm told to find something more creative 😏

 

On a serious note, best thing is to choose with your $, that is the only time any company notices, or bring out the pickets and start an online and in person movement.    Sadly discussion in the internet doesn't to a thing till it results in people standing outside the companies HQ or at the dock.

[CruiserBruce]

4 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

This topic has been beaten to death recently.  There are multiple threads on multiple boards here.  EM

Absolutely agree. There are many crusaders who don't have a real grasp of what can realistically be done, and what is absurdly out of touch with reality. 

 

And they decide to post on the first timers board, to sort of say,  "we have done this,  but you don't get to".

[mom says]

 OP, if you're that dismayed  then  by all means stop cruising and find another type of travel that you enjoy. Of course, that means not flying, too. Or using a non electric car. But I'm sure you can find something.

[SRF]

3 hours ago, mom says said:

 OP, if you're that dismayed  then  by all means stop cruising and find another type of travel that you enjoy. Of course, that means not flying, too. Or using a non electric car. But I'm sure you can find something.

 

Hmm, where does the electricity come from???????

 

And if solar, what is the environmental impact of making solar cells??????

[donaldsc]

I would suggest a cruise on a sailboat which does not have an engine therefore having almost no environmental impact.

 

Try the Lewis R French - https://schoonerfrench.com/.  

 

"The French is still operated much how she would have been during the age of sail. She has no inboard engine, relying on 3,000 square feet of sail to propel her. She has four lower sails and two topsails. If the wind dies, a push from our yawlboat "Greyhound" will help her along. All the sails are still raised and trimmed by hand, and the anchor is manually raised each morning using our windlass. There are no engines on deck or below to spoil the serenity."

 

DON

[retireandgo]

As I stated at the outset, I love cruising.  I posted in First Time cruisers to give them ANOTHER way to pick a cruise.  Frankly, I think the best option  is for the cruise lines is to be prevented from docking in more cities, which might then encourage them to do a better job on the only planet that we have life on.  Some ships are now switching to plugging-in while in port, like you do with your RV, or just using the clean fuel.  Will it cost more?  Yes.  Which means the cruise might cost more.  So what. I think we can agree that we all could afford it.

Do I sense an attitude from other posters that they couldn't care less about the polution from ships, airplanes and cars?  The Scandinavians have begun to take more trains and less planes, precisely what someone, above, suggested (perhaps sarcastically)!

 

Question:  It was noted, above, that this topic has been "beaten to death recently", yet when I did a search I couldn't find a discussion.  Please point me to where it has already been discussed.  Thanks.

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by retireandgo
Add question

[Langoustine]

23 hours ago, retireandgo said:

Venice, Italy has halted cruise ships

 

Well, uh, no, they haven't: https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/no-cruise-ships-have-not-been-banned-from-venice/ar-AAFRy5J?li=AA30Mu

[Essiesmom]

 

Just a few previous threads on this subject, only going back into June...

[RocketMan275]

4 hours ago, retireandgo said:

As I stated at the outset, I love cruising.  I posted in First Time cruisers to give them ANOTHER way to pick a cruise.  Frankly, I think the best option  is for the cruise lines is to be prevented from docking in more cities, which might then encourage them to do a better job on the only planet that we have life on.  Some ships are now switching to plugging-in while in port, like you do with your RV, or just using the clean fuel.  Will it cost more?  Yes.  Which means the cruise might cost more.  So what. I think we can agree that we all could afford it.

Do I sense an attitude from other posters that they couldn't care less about the polution from ships, airplanes and cars?  The Scandinavians have begun to take more trains and less planes, precisely what someone, above, suggested (perhaps sarcastically)!

 

Personally, I couldn't care less.  JMHO, but I believe most environmentalism is just a scam.

[QueSeraSera]

On 8/15/2019 at 4:25 PM, retireandgo said:

We folks who love cruising should be in the forefront of getting our favorite cruise lines to begin to do right

 

Well, I agree with you!  But as I've prepared for our first cruise in September, I've developed a lot of respect for the folks on these boards, including those who have posted above.  And when I clicked on the 1st Forbes article that dismayed you, I was dismayed as well, but maybe in a different way.  Dismayed by the picture showing a cruise ship with air pollution all around it entering a Chinese port (are they implying the ship caused the air pollution?  come on!).  Dismayed that any cruise ship was caught dumping untreated waste, or any trash,  into the ocean.  That's awful.  So we can speak up about this.  A quick check on my & a couple other lines' websites reveals they are 100% in line with this.  I hope you check yours.  I don't want no poop floating out of the back of any cruise ship!

Fuel is a complicated issue.  As a retired chemical engineer, I'm no expert, but I can at least follow some of what is going on.  Cruise lines are in the process of building ships that run on LNG (liquefied natural gas), a much cleaner fuel.  (Google "cruise ship fuel")  Converting existing ships is under study, this in what you should expect, I imagine it is very complex and expensive.  So encourage this, but understand it'll take time to do right, and respect the study required before anybody starts cutting into beautiful cruise ships.

Meanwhile, I'm kind of an old guy, and I intend to start cruising now, guilt-free, while this all gets sorted out!

 

 

[retireandgo]

1 hour ago, QueSeraSera said:

 

Well, I agree with you!  But as I've prepared for our first cruise in September, I've developed a lot of respect for the folks on these boards, including those who have posted above.  And when I clicked on the 1st Forbes article that dismayed you, I was dismayed as well, but maybe in a different way.  Dismayed by the picture showing a cruise ship with air pollution all around it entering a Chinese port (are they implying the ship caused the air pollution?  come on!).  Dismayed that any cruise ship was caught dumping untreated waste, or any trash,  into the ocean.  That's awful.  So we can speak up about this.  A quick check on my & a couple other lines' websites reveals they are 100% in line with this.  I hope you check yours.  I don't want no poop floating out of the back of any cruise ship!

Fuel is a complicated issue.  As a retired chemical engineer, I'm no expert, but I can at least follow some of what is going on.  Cruise lines are in the process of building ships that run on LNG (liquefied natural gas), a much cleaner fuel.  (Google "cruise ship fuel")  Converting existing ships is under study, this in what you should expect, I imagine it is very complex and expensive.  So encourage this, but understand it'll take time to do right, and respect the study required before anybody starts cutting into beautiful cruise ships.

Meanwhile, I'm kind of an old guy, and I intend to start cruising now, guilt-free, while this all gets sorted out!

 

 

Thank you Que Sera Sera.  I cruise mainly with Celebrity and Royal Caribbean and they do a fantastic job with waste, and use clean fuel while in port.  Go listen to a talk by the Environmental Officer if the cruise line offers it.  I don’t want to see port after port closed to cruise lines.  I am also an old guy who has “retired and gone” to 73 countries and expect to see many more.

[retireandgo]

Thank you Essiesmom for the links to other posts on this topic.

 

[ldubs]

6 hours ago, RocketMan275 said:

Personally, I couldn't care less.  JMHO, but I believe most environmentalism is just a scam.

 

Well, I think there are a lot of unnecessary consultants making hay for sure.  At the same time I remember how much oil a 1960's era car burned.   I remember what it smelled like standing behind one.   Compare that to today's cars and I'm glad someone forced the issue.    Same can be said for a whole lot of things that have improved.

[chengkp75]

15 hours ago, retireandgo said:

As I stated at the outset, I love cruising.  I posted in First Time cruisers to give them ANOTHER way to pick a cruise.  Frankly, I think the best option  is for the cruise lines is to be prevented from docking in more cities, which might then encourage them to do a better job on the only planet that we have life on.  Some ships are now switching to plugging-in while in port, like you do with your RV, or just using the clean fuel.  Will it cost more?  Yes.  Which means the cruise might cost more.  So what. I think we can agree that we all could afford it.

Do I sense an attitude from other posters that they couldn't care less about the polution from ships, airplanes and cars?  The Scandinavians have begun to take more trains and less planes, precisely what someone, above, suggested (perhaps sarcastically)!

 

Question:  It was noted, above, that this topic has been "beaten to death recently", yet when I did a search I couldn't find a discussion.  Please point me to where it has already been discussed.  Thanks.

 

Lets look at some of the facts that Nobu has forgotten to mention, and which I've covered in previous posts, probably among those linked above.  No ship (of any type, cruise, container, tanker, bulker) can come within hundreds of miles of Germany without using an exhaust scrubber or switching to low sulfur fuel.  That's because the North Sea ECA starts at a line running north from Ushant in France, westward until it meets the Baltic ECA, which covers the entire Baltic Sea.  And, the EU bans high sulfur fuel while a ship is in any EU port.

 

The IMO has moved to limit sulfur content in marine fuels, voluntarily, knowing of the cost and disruption this can potentially cause, by 97% by 2020 (next year), for all ships , not just cruise ship, worldwide.  Why do I go on about "all ships"?  Because cruising accounts for less than 5% of world shipping, and over 80% of the world's commerce travels by ship.  So, this change in fuel requirements can have a significant effect on world commerce (prices), and cruise lines should not be singled out as the major bad player, when they are a small minority of the problem.  No one wants to target the cargo shipping, because that would raise the price of their Iphones and TV's.

 

Shore power is not as simple as "plugging in".  The port has to provide the infrastructure, and has to provide this for all ships, not just cruise ships.  While supplying a container ship with shore power is relatively easy (1-2 Mw at 480 v), doing so for a cruise ship becomes much more problematic (8-10 Mw at 10,000 v), so the price tag goes way up.  Cargo ships are built with shore power connections that are used in drydock to supply their hotel load, so there is no real cost to the shipping company when a port requires "cold iron" operations.  However, no shipyard in the world can supply the hotel load of a cruise ship, so the ships run their own generators even when in drydock, and the cost to install a suitable shore power connection is about $1-2 million per ship.  And that is all if the local inhabitants want to pay for the upgrade to the power grid to allow for shore power or "cold iron" operations in their port.

 

Finally, there is the conundrum of residual marine fuel.  This is not something that is created to provide cheap, dirty fuel to ships.  This is the end product of the refining process for the majority of the world's refineries.  That means that for each barrel of crude oil that is refined, the refinery can only extract about 70% of that barrel as refined product (jet fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel, lubricating oil), and the remaining 30% is residual marine fuel.  Now, if you say ships can no longer burn this, what do you do with it?  How does not being able to sell 30% of your crude oil affect the price of all refined products?  Do you transport this to refineries that can process this into refined product?  How much carbon footprint does that add to the process?  Does the sudden crash in price for residual fuel (since no one can use it) cause power plants in developing countries to switch back from more expensive fuels to residual fuel, and burn them in less controlled environments than the marine industry?  This is a major concern of environmentalists, and the marine industry, yet we have decided to move ahead with lower sulfur fuels, even though there is no proof that the oil industry can supply all the fuel required.

 

The marine industry has made great strides over the 44 years of my seagoing career, and more are coming, and I support all of them, no matter how much trouble it causes me in my daily activities.  I hate groups of all stripes that try to use partial facts to target a particular portion of a problem, when that portion of the problem has the most to lose, but is not the major culprit, and has a high visibility factor to get funding for the group.

[Essiesmom]

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

Lets look at some of the facts that Nobu has forgotten to mention, and which I've covered in previous posts, probably among those linked above.

 

 

Oh indeed, you did contribute to those threads.  That's how I located them, from your posting history.  But I was lazy and only went back ten pages, so missing are the very long threads from months earlier about the court actions against Carnival Corp. which appeared on the boards here of the Carnival brands, and on the boards of the brands that love to bash Carnival...  EM

[SRF]

14 hours ago, RocketMan275 said:

Personally, I couldn't care less.  JMHO, but I believe most environmentalism is just a scam.

 

Agreed.

 

Love this one:

 

[retireandgo]

3 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Lets look at some of the facts that Nobu has forgotten to mention, and which I've covered in previous posts, probably among those linked above.  No ship (of any type, cruise, container, tanker, bulker) can come within hundreds of miles of Germany without using an exhaust scrubber or switching to low sulfur fuel.  That's because the North Sea ECA starts at a line running north from Ushant in France, westward until it meets the Baltic ECA, which covers the entire Baltic Sea.  And, the EU bans high sulfur fuel while a ship is in any EU port.

 

The IMO has moved to limit sulfur content in marine fuels, voluntarily, knowing of the cost and disruption this can potentially cause, by 97% by 2020 (next year), for all ships , not just cruise ship, worldwide.  Why do I go on about "all ships"?  Because cruising accounts for less than 5% of world shipping, and over 80% of the world's commerce travels by ship.  So, this change in fuel requirements can have a significant effect on world commerce (prices), and cruise lines should not be singled out as the major bad player, when they are a small minority of the problem.  No one wants to target the cargo shipping, because that would raise the price of their Iphones and TV's.

 

Shore power is not as simple as "plugging in".  The port has to provide the infrastructure, and has to provide this for all ships, not just cruise ships.  While supplying a container ship with shore power is relatively easy (1-2 Mw at 480 v), doing so for a cruise ship becomes much more problematic (8-10 Mw at 10,000 v), so the price tag goes way up.  Cargo ships are built with shore power connections that are used in drydock to supply their hotel load, so there is no real cost to the shipping company when a port requires "cold iron" operations.  However, no shipyard in the world can supply the hotel load of a cruise ship, so the ships run their own generators even when in drydock, and the cost to install a suitable shore power connection is about $1-2 million per ship.  And that is all if the local inhabitants want to pay for the upgrade to the power grid to allow for shore power or "cold iron" operations in their port.

 

Finally, there is the conundrum of residual marine fuel.  This is not something that is created to provide cheap, dirty fuel to ships.  This is the end product of the refining process for the majority of the world's refineries.  That means that for each barrel of crude oil that is refined, the refinery can only extract about 70% of that barrel as refined product (jet fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel, lubricating oil), and the remaining 30% is residual marine fuel.  Now, if you say ships can no longer burn this, what do you do with it?  How does not being able to sell 30% of your crude oil affect the price of all refined products?  Do you transport this to refineries that can process this into refined product?  How much carbon footprint does that add to the process?  Does the sudden crash in price for residual fuel (since no one can use it) cause power plants in developing countries to switch back from more expensive fuels to residual fuel, and burn them in less controlled environments than the marine industry?  This is a major concern of environmentalists, and the marine industry, yet we have decided to move ahead with lower sulfur fuels, even though there is no proof that the oil industry can supply all the fuel required.

 

The marine industry has made great strides over the 44 years of my seagoing career, and more are coming, and I support all of them, no matter how much trouble it causes me in my daily activities.  I hate groups of all stripes that try to use partial facts to target a particular portion of a problem, when that portion of the problem has the most to lose, but is not the major culprit, and has a high visibility factor to get funding for the group.

Thank you so much for the information chengkp75.  I guess that I should have been more diligent in my search for posts on Cruise Critic.  It appears that most of the information on pollution was found under specific cruise lines and not in a "general" forum.  I'll search better the next time.  Your noting of the fact that while cruise lines get a lot of flack from the public, they account for only 5% of all ship traffic is certainly noteworthy.  I know that Celebrity uses sulphur-free fuel while in port and has gone to great lengths to only use products that can be recycled.  Human waste is biologically treated and more before it leaves the ship.

[clo]

On 8/15/2019 at 5:52 PM, chipmaster said:

 

Can I reply with my gif 😁 I'm told to find something more creative 😏

 

On a serious note, best thing is to choose with your $, that is the only time any company notices, or bring out the pickets and start an online and in person movement.    Sadly discussion in the internet doesn't to a thing till it results in people standing outside the companies HQ or at the dock.

I understand that Twitter gets attention from corporate.  But I don't do that so that's no option.  

[calliopecruiser]

5 hours ago, SRF said:

Love this one:

??? What am I not seeing in the photo that you think is either funny or a scam?

[Aquahound]

1 hour ago, calliopecruiser said:

??? What am I not seeing in the photo that you think is either funny or a scam?

 

I'm guessing its the irony of a massive gas generator powering an electric recharging station.  

[QueSeraSera]

1 hour ago, calliopecruiser said:

What am I not seeing in the photo that you think is either funny or a scam?

 

The full article that includes this Australian charging station is at:

 

https://thedriven.io/2018/12/14/diesel-charge-evs-remote-locations-greener-than-you-think/

 

[calliopecruiser]

4 minutes ago, Aquahound said:

the irony of a massive gas generator powering an electric recharging station.

Ah, I didn't know what that was behind it.  I get it now.

 

[retireandgo]

29 minutes ago, QueSeraSera said:

 

The full article that includes this Australian charging station is at:

 

https://thedriven.io/2018/12/14/diesel-charge-evs-remote-locations-greener-than-you-think/

 

Interesting that as a temporary measure in central Australia, it is actually greener than burning diesel in a car.  But off-topic considering this is a cruise website!