In a few days the “Icon of the Seas”, the largest cruise ship in the world, will set off on its maiden voyage. The Royal Caribbean cruise ship’s first official voyage will be a lavish event. The “Icon of the Sea” is more than 360 meters long, weighs 250,000 tons and is home to more than 20 different decks, 40 restaurants, numerous bars and lounges, seven pools, six water slides and an almost 17-meter-high waterfall.
The cruise ship will usher in “a new era of vacation,” announces Royal Caribbean. But the new era of vacation also has its downsides. Because every cruise requires massive amounts of energy, releases enormous CO2 emissions and thereby accelerates climate change.
Bryan Comer, director of the marine program at the NGO International Council on Clean Transportation, examined the greenhouse gases of a cruise trip two years ago and compared it to a hotel trip including a return flight. The result: A cruise causes about twice as much CO2 emissions as a vacation in a four-star hotel, Comer told the news agency. Bloomberg “. And this is under the premise that cruise travelers do not fly to the departure port by plane.
Cruise travel is twice as harmful as a comparable vacation with flights and hotels
Climate scientists and tourism researchers have been criticizing the cruise industry’s environmental footprint for a long time. Stefan Gössling, professor of tourism at Linné University in Sweden, also complained to “t-online” about the enormous CO2 emissions. “For an individual cruise tourist, a trip lasting around a week means around 1.7 tonnes of CO2 emissions. “That’s a third of what a person causes on average throughout the year – around 4.6 tons of CO2,” says Gössling about the last data collected 5 years ago.
It is also exciting that only around 0.4 percent of the world’s population took a cruise in 2019. As a tourism expert, he would like to see a climate-neutral perspective, as many people love cruises. But every “ton of CO2 emitted is one too many”, but “unfortunately many people still don’t understand that”.
After the Corona pandemic, in which cruise ships had to remain in port, the industry worried that the cruise era could now be over and that passenger interest would only slowly grow again. A fallacy.
The Cruise Lines International Association (Clia), whose members operate 95 percent of all cruises in the world, is forecasting passenger traffic of 36 million this year, up from almost 32 million in 2023 and 30 million in 2019. An analysis by The Climate Trace Coalition found that cruise ship emissions are already six percent higher than before the pandemic. Despite the urgency of the climate crisis and the awareness of the population, demand has not decreased.
The cruise industry is working on more climate-friendly alternatives – but they are a long time coming
“It seems out of date that the majority of large ships continue to use particularly toxic but cheap heavy oil,” said Nabu Federal Managing Director Leif Miller at the presentation of the Nabu cruise ranking 2023. Nabu’s shipping expert, Sönke DIESENER, But also emphasized: “It is very welcome that the first ones have finally found a way towards climate neutrality.” However, the pace must increase significantly.
Because: Royal Caribbean Cruises, MSC Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings have committed to producing no more emissions by 2050, while Carnival Corp. plans to become climate neutral by 2050. Clia, on the other hand, sees the shipping companies already on the right track, as they want to offer carbon-free cruises worldwide by 2050. “This industry-wide ambition exceeds the targets set by governments at national and international levels,” the association said in a statement.
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The cruise industry is already making enormous investments to become one of the most sustainable forms of vacation travel, Clia further emphasized. And in fact: When Royal Caribbean’s world’s largest cruise ship sets off on its maiden voyage in a few days, it will no longer be with heavy fuel oil in the tank, but with the lower-carbon alternative LNG. The LNG will power the 300 tonne tank.
Although ships powered by LNG emit around 25 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, some of these ships escape into the atmosphere as methane emissions. A greenhouse gas that is 80 times more effective than CO2 in the short term. For three out of four engine types, a recent study found that LNG is worse for the climate in the short term than conventional fuels.
Even container ships run on less heavy oil than cruise ships
“We are still a long way from it being climate neutral, and we are also a long way from it being environmentally friendly,” emphasized cruise expert DIESENER. Even though emissions need to be drastically reduced, they continue to rise.
He was also annoyed about the heavy oil quota of around 50 percent on cruise ships. The shipping companies could remedy this immediately and without major modifications by using heavy metal-free marine diesel. “Zero understanding,” complained the cruise expert. This puts the industry in last place in all of civil shipping. Even container ships are only powered by 18 percent heavy oil.