JOEL Katz, Managing Director CLIA Australasia
Backing environmental initiatives
At a time when consumer consciousness is putting more and more focus on the environment, it’s important that we know the facts behind some of the key issues. Not only do we need to make meaningful advances on environmental initiatives, we also need to make sure we’re good at communicating our efforts to the wider community.
For the cruise industry, this is especially important. The high visibility of cruise ships has made them a target for criticism, despite the fact cruising represents only 2% of world tourism and 1% of world shipping. Our industry is taking real and important steps towards reducing its impact in a whole range of areas, so our challenge is to become better at both advancing our initiatives and making them known to the wider community.
Just over six months ago, CLIA announced a historic global cruise industry commitment to reduce the rate of carbon emissions across the industry fleet by 40% by 2030. This reduction will be made possible by advances in ship design and propulsion, including measures such as ships powered by liquid natural gas (LNG), which results is significantly fewer emissions than conventional marine fuels.
Worldwide, cruise lines are investing more than US$8 billion in alternative fuels like LNG. The world’s first LNG-powered ship, AIDAnova, was launched by Aida Cruises in December and is now sailing in Europe, and more than one-third of all new ships being built worldwide will use LNG as their primary propulsion fuel — 25 ships in total.
Other emissions initiatives include exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) that reduce the sulphur and particulate matter in ships’ exhaust.
Currently 111 cruise ships, with a capacity of more than 305,000 passengers, have been fitted with EGCS. Twelve additional ships are currently being retrofitted with EGCS, 30 more are scheduled to be retrofitted, and 27 new ships, with a capacity of nearly 100,000 passengers, will be built with EGCS.
As part of our environmental measures, CLIA plans to enlist the voices of its supporters in the wider cruise community to help share the word on what’s being achieved and inspire further action. For our partners in the travel agency community, this means ensuring the facts are at hand whenever clients’ ask about the environmental issues that concern them.
To do this, CLIA Australasia has added a Sustainability section to its website, with fact sheets, downloads, videos and other information on issues ranging from emissions to recycling and wastewater treatment. For example, did you know cruise ships recycle 60% more waste per person than the average person does on land? There’s a video to explain how cruise lines reduce and manage waste.
We’ll add to these resources over time, to show that not only is the cruise industry taking a responsible approach, it’s also making real and demonstrable improvements.
Visit www.cruising.org.au/Regulatory/Sustainability for more details.
