Royal Caribbean To Pollute Less, On The Average

Worldwide, cruise lines have been working on their ocean-friendly reputation for quite some time. Bucking old stories of dumping garbage at sea, shipboard environmental officers see to it that major cruise line ships have zero emissions into the oceans they do business in. When docked, more and more cruise ships are being equipped to plug in to shoreside electric power too, saving the air from tons of pollutants produced by diesel-burning engines. But new regulations that took effect on August 1 call for a different kind of fuel to be used by cruise lines, reducing the sulfur content of marine fuel.

Last week, the Bahamas Maritime Authority approved a plan by Royal Caribbean International to use an alternate way of calculating its compliance with new air pollution rules. Using a plan called “sulfur average and banking” to comply with the new restrictions, Royal Caribbean might have some ships with higher emissions. But averaged in with ships that exceed the expectations of regulations, the cruise line as a whole would come out in compliance. Its a numbers game that not everyone is happy about.

In an article we posted in our column on Cruise@ddicts, As Cruise Lines Look At Costs, Buyers Should Be Booking, we noted that new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offshore emissions rules have raised fuel costs by about 40 percent. That’s a lot. But that’s not the end of it. By 2015, emission limits get more strict with the cost of fuel for cruise ships estimated to be near 70 percent more than it is today.

This is a big deal to cruise lines. The move by the Bahamas Maritime Authority to approve the Royal Caribbean International sets an interesting precedent too. Surely, if cruise lines come out, on the average, meeting the requirements, that’s a step in the right direction. Possibly more importantly, the Royal Caribbean plan also provides credits for using shore power, exhaust scrubbers and liquid natural gas, things they can do right now that work. That could be huge and surely a step in the right direction.

“The U.S. Coast Guard and Canadian regulators have signed off on the plan, which has also been submitted to Malta, where other Royal Carubbean ships are flagged. ” reports the Royal Caribbean Blog, adding “Royal Caribbean will be able to use the method for five years and can reapply after that. ”