Royal Caribbean wants its new mega-liner Allure of the Seas to show that the world's second-largest cruise ship operator is ready to change a dirty business.
Reference:
Behar, M (2012). Onearth. Can the Cruise
Industry Clean Up its Act? online magazine
http://www.onearth.org/article/dreamboatFrom article:
Royal Caribbean's new "green" mega-liner still burns the world's dirtiest fuel. Can the cruise industry clean up its act?
This billion-dollar Royal Caribbean ship boasts a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant and 21,000 square feet of solar panels. It also burns up to 7,200 gallons per hour of the world's dirtiest fuel.
Despite all the posh trappings, Allure is surprisingly planet-friendly, flush with the greenest gadgetry on the high seas. However, her engines still burn bunker oil, also known as bunker fuel, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Today, virtually every cruise ship is powered by this cheap, gelatinous sludge, which presents the single biggest hurdle to an industry that wants to call itself sustainable. As long as Allure guzzles this stuff, she will leave a colossal environmental footprint, regardless of all her shipboard innovations. International regulators recently adopted a tough new set of emissions standards aimed at slashing smokestack pollution from ships. But the industry, citing cost, is fighting these regulations, because they will likely force it to phase out bunker fuel. A fierce political battle is now under way.
My comment:
The Cruise
industry claim it can’t afford a cleaner fuel; of course, they exist to make a
profit. In my opinion, Royal Caribbean
International needs to be given incentives to invest in finding an eco-friendlier
fuel that would be also affordable.
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