Following on from my blog about cruise terminals ‘going green’ it has bee announced that more ports are following the trend.
Cruise ships are now plugging in to local power grids once docked. This means that the engines are turned off once docked which is more environmentally sound.
The port on San Pedro in Los Angeles became the latest port to offer the clean air technology. In February it became the first port worldwide to offer the Alternative Maritime Power (AMP) to Disney, NCL and Princess.
Brooklyn is making plans to offer the same in its Red Hook Cruise Terminal. This will reduce the areas air pollution problems as the ships stand idle on their turnarounds. The system will hopefully take place in 2013.
In 2001, Juneau, became the first port to offer this technology. Seattle came onboard in 2005, followed by Vancouver in 2009. Two California ports adopted the program in 2010 — San Francisco followed by San Diego. And now Los Angeles is the newest addition, as of January 2011.
Cruise ships were not previously built with the capability of plugging into shoreside power, so vessels must be retrofitted to access the new systems. Princess and Holland America have taken the lead in this area, with the most ships modernized. These include HAL’s Zuiderdam, Oosterdam, Westerdam, Noordam and Amsterdam, as well as Princess’ Coral Princess, Dawn Princess, Diamond Princess, Golden Princess, Island Princess, Sapphire Princess, Sea Princess, Star Princess and Sun Princess. Eurodam and Nieuw Amsterdam have the internal set-ups for a shoreside hookup and could adapt easily should they call at any of the upgraded ports.