One of the biggest cruise ports in the world is ready to start letting cruise ships plug in to cut down on air pollution.
PortMiami will begin offering shore power for cruise ships, which is a move to reduce emissions.
Royal Caribbean is poised for that to begin, with two of its ships ready on day one when the shore power becomes available.
Both Icon of the Seas and Freedom of the Seas are able to utilize shore power when it's available, and it appears that could come as soon as this week.
Royal Caribbean Group reported in its 2023 Seastainability Report report, 30 ships have shore power capabilities as of year end.
Cruise expert Stewart Chiron confirmed that shore power is coming to PortMiami.
"Ports catching up to cruise industry with ships that can utilize shore power to significantly reduce emissions," he wrote in a post on X/Twitter.
The advantage of shore power is that cruise ships can plug in and shut off their engines, rather than keeping their engines running during turnaround day when a ship concludes one sailing and begins welcoming new passengers onboard for the next one.
Read more: What happens on Turnaround Day on a Cruise?
Terminals AA, A, B, F, and V are equipped with shore power.
The arrival of shore power comes after Royal Caribbean joined five other cruise lines to bring shore power to PortMiami in 2021.
What is shore power and how does it work?
Think of shore power as a way to power cruise ships instead of relying on the ship's fuel and engines.
Up until now, when a cruise ship is docked at a pier, it keeps its engines on and continues burning fuel while docked. This creates emissions, just like any other fossil fuel burning mode of transportation.
Instead, cruise ships will "hook up" to electricity at the port, so that the engines do not need to operate while the ship is letting passengers off the ship and bringing new ones onboard.
There are a number of advantages for both the cruise lines and the local community.
Cruise lines get to save fuel, which means less cost to the cruise line and potentially higher profits.
Furthermore, Royal Caribbean gets closer to its goal of achieving net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
The community endures less air pollution in their skies as a result of the shore power option.
A $125 million investment
Adding shore power to PortMiami was no simple task.
The estimated cost of the Shore Power Program was $125 million, although a portion of that cost came from grants from the Florida Department of Transportation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava celebrated the upgrade to PortMiami, "We continue to implement important initiatives that have kept us ahead of our ambitious goals to reduce emissions, and this new shore power capability will allow our ships to rely on the electrical grid to power our ships while in port."
