TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Plug ins for cruise ships?

Does the port have facilities for the cruise ships to plug into the local grid? Is there a plan for this in the future? I was very surprised to learn of the amount of pollution coming from generator exhausts while the ships are docked. I believe this is mandatory in California for docked cruise ships and is being considered in NY.

i would be surprised if SXM had the capacity for 1 cruise ship let alone 9 I have seen in on a Wed. Also the cost of electricity through GEBE vs the ships own generators would be astronomical. You have to remember your not in the USA anymore.

Wendell.

All I know is there have been problems implementing them in New York. I do hope that eventually plugging in becomes the norm, if it reduces the burning of fossil fuel.

The electricity in SXM, as well as most places, is generated from fossil fuels.

Interesting subject. Being an engineer geek, I've done several behind the scenes tours during cruises. I learned that everything on the ship runs off the numerous massive diesel generators, even the propellers are turned by electric motors. Based on this I assumed that the generators ran a constant optimized speed and were quite efficient. Doing a little searching based on this thread, I found that the cruise industry has a long way to go on pollution.

Some ideas are in the works, like running on natural gas while at port or fuel cell technology but these ideas are a long way off.

At peak time sxm cannot even cope with its own power request from the local grid, let alone the one from the cruiseships. It is already a shame that we collect their garbage and dispose of at the already oversaturated dump

Good point enzo

All good points. I would think that the cruise ship companies would share in the costs of infrastructure and also think that the generation of electricity on the island would produce far less pollution than the continuous running of huge generators. Also, if it was mandatory I guess some would just go elsewhere.

Ding, ding, ding!!! This is the Caribbean, not the US. Ships would just go elsewhere.

Do you not understand that the electricity on the island is produced by the continuous running of huge generators?

YES, WE GET THAT! Discussing and hoping for a better future for our planet is a good thing to talk about. There will be many steps to get there and we need to start NOW.

No reason to shout. And my comment was specifically directed to DocBill, who stated (as I quoted in my post) that "the generation of electricity on the island would produce far less pollution than the continuous running of huge generators."

This might be a stretch but....maybe the cruise ship generator s are running more efficent than GEBEs. Because of better maintenance..less pollution

Wendell

Wouldn't surprise me! We can smell the diesel fumes from the GEBE ones at La Vista Beach.

It depends in large part on the fuel being burned. If the cruise ships are burning Heavy Oil then they're filthy. Same for GEBE. If they're burning more expensive Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD, same as diesel cars/trucks in the US) then they're much cleaner. The efficiency of the generators (Tiers 1-4 in the US, Stages 1-5 in Europe) is also a factor, but any generators would likely be grandfathered to whatever the regs were on their install date.

Hmm. Tiers/Stages appear to be largely land-based requirements. I'll have a look at what's in MARPOL, which is marine.

I doubt if it's a stretch.

Look at today's live port cam and maybe you can understand my post. My thought was about long term planning and possibly figuring a way to lower pollution.

GEBE has a difficult enough time trying to keep the lights on on a daily basis. As Georgia pointed out, the electricity gets generated from somewhere using Fossil Fuel.

I am all for saving the planet but I don’t see SXM as being a leader down that path.

I also would be willing to bet that the generators on the Modern Cruise Ships are more efficient. JMHO

The prevailing winds in St Maarten are fairly constant and overwhelmingly from the East so it seem to me that pollution probably does not linger over the island for long. That does not mean that cruise ship pollution is not a global problem. These sources all seem to agree that cruise ship are big polluters. Politically, some are right leaning and some are left leaning.

https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-giant-emits-10-times-more-air-pollution-sox-all-europe%E2%80%99s-cars-%E2%80%93-study

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamese...and-environmental-problems/#e3e3a9537db3

https://www.businessinsider.com/cru...l-caribbean-among-worst-polluters-2019-7

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/c...to-pollution-charges-pay-fine-2016-12-01

Jim

Talk to residents that are down wind from the dump when it burns. It doesn't just blow over.

Cruise Industry are HUGE polluters. They don't worry about pollution, just making big bucks. They pay their fines and off they go again. Ground them and you will see how fast they obey the laws.

Do you have some links on research on this? I'D like to do some reading.

Wendell

Don' t you believe this has been an ongoing problem? Back a few posts to Kim and Laraine, there's some reading material to start. with. Wall Street Journal usually has many articles on the subject. I am sure you are able to find reading material on your own if you are so interested in this subject. I'm aware of where you are going with this LOL

Fear not. Greta's on the job. She'll save us all.

Natural gas combined cycle units are the way to go. Relatively clean and efficient. Just kinda tough to get large quantities of NG to an island without a pipeline.Surprises me is that larger islands, including sxm don't build a garbage burner. Takes care of 2 issues at once. After the initial cost, the fuel is "free".

I checked out the links. The one graded all the cruise ship lones 0 for non poluting. Carnival has some ships using LNG. About 50% set up for using on shore power. Also Carnival stated after the $40mil fine in 2016 for the 2013 in fractions on 5 ships (which wasn't using company policy) they did an internal audit and found a couple of other ships were violating company poluyion policy and was corrected. So to me looks biased (every line haf a 0 rating) and the cruise lines are being pro active on being non polluting.


Also what I don't see is the mention of the passengers are not making a polution in their home town..as they moved to a ship to usr lights,flush the toilet, leave food waste on the table.

Back to the origional statement. I don't see how GEBE could supply powet to 1 cruise ship without sacrificing service to SXM customers. Which then many resorts would have to power up their own diesel generator s
Wendell