March 10, 2025
This information is adapted from a webinar held on June 27, 2024. For more information, watch the webinar recording.
Part 1: Green Cruise Corridor 2024 Progress Report
Part 3: Methanol study; Coming April 2025
Part 4: Global Green Corridors; Coming May 2025
Part 5: The Future of Green Corridors; Coming June 2025
Participants:
- Vesa Koivumaa, Head of Customer Delivery Wartsila North America, Inc.
- Stephanie Jones Stebbins, Managing Director, Maritime Division, Port of Seattle
- Bob Alton, Senior Director Technical Programs and Decarbonization, Princess Cruises
- Mark Stark, Sustainability Advisor at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping
Q: The project for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska is a feasibility study. What are we doing within a feasibility study?
A: Mark Stark, Sustainability Advisor at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping
The Center has seven work streams within our methodology for these studies.
Workstream 1: Corridor Baselining
Here, we look to put real numbers into the project. We start with the following questions:
- What fuel are we using?
- How many vessels will be on this corridor?
- What size will they be?
- How much fuel do they require?
Workstream 2: Fuel production
- What is the technical and regulatory feasibility of producing a green fuel?
Workstream 3: Port storage and bunkering infrastructure
- What infrastructure do Ports need to store and bunker a green fuel?
Workstream 4: Vessel Decarbonization Pathway
- Are ships ready to consume a green fuel?
- What’s the technical and regulatory feasibility of retrofitting or building a new vessel capable of running on a green fuel?
Workstream 5: Cargo Demand Dynamics
- How will the additional cost of a green fuel impact the cost of cargo – or in the context of cruise, the cost for passengers?
- How much are passengers willing to pay to travel on a greener cruise?
Workstream 6: Consolidation of Findings
- What’s the total incremental cost of a green fuel on the corridor?
- Consolidating findings from all of the workstreams, is the green corridor feasible from a technical and regulatory standpoint?
Workstream 7: Roadmap and Commitments
- Based on findings of the analysis, what options exist to close the incremental cost gap?
- What funding opportunities could be leveraged?
- Are stakeholders willing to put in additional funding to cover the incremental cost?
Here’s the work in progress on the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Green Corridor:
Vision:
Accelerate the decarbonization of cruise operations between Washington and Alaska.
Project Goal:
Assess the feasibility of four cruise vessels powered by green methanol fuel to operate full Alaskan itineraries by 2032. Evaluate bunkering in the home ports of Seattle and Vancouver, BC and the feasibility of the first methanol-powered vessel in the water by 2030.
When:
There are no hard commitments within a feasibility study. But the reason that we use 2032 as a target is there's no use in assessing the feasibility if we say it's by 2045, because that's far too late to meet international targets to decarbonize shipping. To make a real difference, we need to assess the feasibility of these projects happening here and now — within the next decade. And that's why we add dates such as 2030 to have the first vessel in the water and 2032 to have all four vessels in the water.
What:
- Within workstream 2, we will investigate the feasibility of producing 120,000 tons of green methanol and how much that would cost
- Within workstream 3, which is led by the home ports, we will detail the technical feasibility, regulatory feasibility, and cost of bunkering and moving green methanol from the point of production to the port. We will also investigate the feasibility of green methanol cruise ships calling at Alaskan ports while using green methanol
- Within workstream 4, we’ll detail the technical feasibility, regulatory feasibility, and cost of building and operating four methanol cruise vessels between Seattle, Vancouver, and Alaska
- Within workstream 5, we will assess what passengers may be willing to pay for as a premium for taking a greener cruise
It's a tremendous achievement to get to this stage, particularly with the breadth of stakeholders. We have more than nine stakeholders, which is a lot bigger than the normal green corridor projects that [the Maersk Center] is running. And what we've seen in the scoping phase is a tremendous will to collaborate to create a difference. This openness to collaborate is not just with other parts of the value chain, but also with competitors. It’s super exciting to see these companies commit to that. And it gives me a lot of confidence that we can go and take this feasibility study right through to completion.
Q: Why did you choose to focus on cruise and what have you accomplished over the last year?
A: Stephanie Joan Stebbins, Managing Director of the Maritime Division, Port of Seattle
We launched the Pacific Northwest to Alaska green corridor in May 2022. And we were able to gather interest from partners in this region under the commitment to explore the feasibility of a zero-emission cruise corridor between Seattle, Vancouver, and Alaska. The Port of Seattle has greenhouse gas goals with targets to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
We also have a long history in this area of early environmental action and adopting new technology. The very first shore power for cruise happened in Juneau, and then Carnival Corporation also helped us lead the way in putting two shore power connections here in Seattle almost 20 years ago now.
Our partners in this effort are ports, communities, and cruise lines. They all have similar decarbonization emissions and we know that we can't achieve these goals without working together across the whole value chain with both ports and industry to solve the challenge.
Establishing a green corridor and changing the way we're fueling everything works across the whole value chain and all the partners along that value chain have to collaborate together from zero emission fuel production and delivery, to storage and bunkering, and having vessels that are ready to use the fuel.
We really need to support a regulatory and policy environment as well. So it's a really complex process that won't happen overnight and has a lot of different elements needed to make it successful. The good news is that if we're successful, we believe the solutions we identify for crews in the Alaskan market can be applied to cruise routes around the world.
By doing this work, we really have an impact on accelerating crews and maritime decarbonization globally. As well as here at home. There’s been so much behind the scenes work to get us here over the past couple years:
- Building a strong foundation of partnership. We developed a project charter early on
- Scoping a feasibility study
- Launching into the technical work around the feasibility study working with the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping. To be efficient, we had to agree to focus on one fuel, so we narrowed it to green methanol. We're currently working with the center to scope the project evaluation criteria and agreed to look at four cruise ships running on green methanol by 2032. And we’re examining the feasibility of getting the first methanol ship in the water by 2030. Then we develop estimates on how much green methanol that will need to be produced and bunkered
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Focusing on fuel production. We didn't have any fuel providers engaged in the partnership and so now we've identified a fuel provider who will lead the feasibility analysis on green methanol
Q: If the first ship of the feasibility study won't hit the water until 2030, what is your realistic timeline? And if the fuel studied isn’t found to be feasible, how long until a meaningful greenhouse gas reduction can be expected?
A: Stephanie Jones Stebbins, Managing Director, Maritime Division, Port of Seattle
We will implement the green corridor when it can actually be implemented to produce a meaningful reduction in greenhouse emissions, including life cycle emissions of the fuel.
To get the most meaningful greenhouse gas reductions, we need zero emission fuels, and this study helps us understand what we need to bring those fuels to this route. And it's going to give us a roadmap that we need for implementation. So we'll be able to answer those questions. And just to be clear — we know issues will come up. But we're not expecting to take no for an answer.
We're expecting that the issues that come up in the feasibility study will be applied to what we learn to viable solutions. We have to get there and we will. And this feasibility study is an important step in telling us how to do that.
