Brooklyn cruise ships to plug in, finally

When cruise ships come in to the Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal they bring a lot of business, tourism dollars and people to town. They also brings some 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide, 95 tons of nitrous oxide, and 6.5 tons of particulate matter annually when they park and burn their diesel engines. That is about to change as Brooklyn becomes the first east coast cruise operation with the capability to let ships “plug in” to clean shoreside electrical power instead.

By 2012, cruise ships at will be plugged in with shoreside electrical power rather than running on diesel gas while docked.

“It will be the equivalent of removing 5,000 cars per year from the road annually,” Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation told the New York Times.

Its been a long time coming on that too. As Gadling revealed in January, it has been two years since Carnival Corp, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Brooklyn cruise terminal port authority agreed to enable cruise ships to plug in to green shore-side power. West coast ports were doing it already with San Diego going online last December.

It seems while all were in agreement, nobody wanted to pay for it.

In an agreement made this week, the $15 million project will be funded with $12 million from the Port Authority and nearly $3 million from a US Environmental Protection Agency grant. Carnival Corporation will spend $4 million to retrofit their Princess Cruises and Cunard Line ship that dock in Brooklyn.

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Flickr photo by greenbk