San Diego helps cruise ships go green

The Port of San Diego has now joined a small group of ports throughout the world in offering cruise ships the ability to plug in to shoreside electrical power. Environmental groups, strong critics of the cruise industry, like this. The new system lets cruise ships turn off their highly-polluting engines while in port.

Providing up to 12 megawatts of much cleaner grid electricity, enough to power a college campus, the Port of San Diego joins Seattle, Vancouver and San Francisco in reducing emissions from cruise ships, the largest single source of harmful emissions.

Holland America Line’s Oosterdam was the first to plug in to “Shore Power”, a system designed to help cruise ships go green. Initially the system can handle one ship but plans are to take on more in the future. Plugging in keeps over a ton of pollutants out of the air.

Earlier this year, Princess Cruises Island Princess plugged in at the Port of San Francisco to a system that was built as a cooperative effort by the Port of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Environmental Protection Agency, Holland America Line and Princess.

Princess’ shore power program made history debuting in environmentally extra-sensitive Juneau, Alaska in 2001, expanded to Seattle in 2005, and then to Vancouver in 2009. Currently nine of the line’s ships have the capability to “plug in” to a shoreside power source, representing an investment for Princess of nearly $7 million in equipment.

Princess ships plugging into shore power to reduce engine emissions in port

Princess Cruises just unveiled a $7 million investment at their San Francisco port facility. The investment makes it possible for their ships to plug into shore power instead of relying on their diesel engines and generators for power.

San Francisco marks the fourth port in the world with this new technology, after Juneau, Seattle and Vancouver. The savings in diesel and the reduction of harmful emissions is obviously quite considerable, since ships are often docked for days in a port with their engines running.

Once at the port, the ships connect through specially designed 3½-inch cables to the shore power grid. The entire procedure takes about 40 minutes, after which time, the engines can be shut down.

Princess Cruises developed the technology almost ten years ago, and nine of their vessels are outfitted with the equipment for shore power.