The world’s only French-owned cruise line, Ponant is bringing out the first icebreaker vessel to be powered by Liquefied Natural Gas.

With just 135 staterooms and a luxury service, the ‘clean ship’ will be ‘certified and environmentally friendly’. The ship will take passengers to rarely-explored polar destinations, such as the true geographic North Pole (90 degrees North Latitude), the Weddell Sea, the Ross Sea and Peter I Island.

The announcement was made this week, after a public tender led by Barry Rogliano Salles, which top European shipyards took part. The unit will be built by VARD, a Norwegian subsidiary of Fincantieri, with delivery expected by 2021. Ayer Artic will develop the vessel, Wärtsilä will design Dual Fuel diesel engines, while GTT will supply the innovative storage technology for LNG Fuel.

Cruise lines and LNG

Cruise lines are among the early adopters of LNG technology, which is a very low polluting alternative to usual high-emitting fuels which chuck out sulphur dioxide. The trend is being driven by environmental rules designed to reduce sulfur emissions from ships’ exhausts, and will bite by 2020. Natural gas produces almost no sulfur when burned, which affords LNG its clean status.

The biggest challenge for the growth of LNG-powered cruising is the basic infrastructure for distributing it at ports.

“We have to build it,” Tom Strang, senior vice president for maritime affairs at Carnival, said at a recent CLIA conference. Strang emphasised that shipping contributed to 2% of total adverse emissions and within that cruise was only less than 0.1%. “Some ports are not ready to receive ships with this technology, but so far those such as Hamberg were deemed clean ports already, and Rotterdam and Southhampton are primed”.

“The world cruise fleet is 300 ships out of around 60,000 ships… but we need to make sure people know what we’re doing. And why,”

Of the cruise line industry, he said: “We will have to deal with this reduction as legislation comes in line, so we need to have the technological maturity to do it and future proof all of our new ships and be ahead of the game.”

He confirmed that the costs involved in making the upgrades and changes would not be passed on the customers.

Encouraged by the potential for cost savings and the ability to meet pending air quality regulations, the maritime industry expects the number of LNG-powered ships to more than double by 2020. Cruise lines have committed to using this clean alternative, including Carnival’s AIDA brand, Costa as well as Carnival Cruise Line and P&O Cruises. Similar plans for Disney Cruise Lines and MSC are also in the pipeline.

The launch of AIDAnova by AIDA, under the Carnival group, in December 2018, will be the first cruise ship in the world to be able to operate in ports. and at sea, powered by LNG during its voyage around the Canary Islands.

Sulphur cap 2020

Cruise lines are readying themselves for Marpol VI (around sustainability) regulations as the 2020 sulphur cap looms. A 28-member coalition (multi-sector industry  coalition aiming to accelerate the widespread adoption LNG as a marine fuel) said port state authorities have a clear obligation to ensure even-handed and consistent enforcement of the International Maritime Organization regulations.

The regulations relate to compliance with the global sulphur cap of 0.5% from 2020, and shipowners need to make decisions to choose between options to reduce their sulphur output, which include LNG, scrubbers or low sulphur fuels.