Carnival Corporation’s Commitment to Sustainability: Carnival Corporation's overall sustainability strategy, including their commitment to reducing carbon emissions and integrating eco-friendly practices across their fleet and operations.
At Carnival Corporation, sustainability is more than a buzzword – it’s a business imperative. As the world’s largest cruise company, we are leading the way toward sustainable cruising with ambitious goals for 2030 and aspirations to reach net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from operations by 2050. We’re working hard to use less fuel, energy, water, food, and other resources and we’re making significant headway in lowering our environmental impact.
In fact, through bold climate actions, we cut our absolute GHG emissions by 10% compared to 2011 (our peak historical year), even though our fleet capacity has grown over 30% since that time.
Carnival Corporation & plc is a recognized sustainability leader, having introduced technologies like Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) powered cruise ships, maritime-scale batteries, fuel cells and shore power to reduce GHG emissions. We also reimagined advanced waste management solutions like biodigesters for the cruise industry, eliminated half a billion single-use and plastic items since 2018, reduced food waste by over 40% in five years, and found many other ways to shrink our environmental impact.
Innovative Green Technologies and Practices: Specific technologies and practices Carnival is adopting to reduce its environmental impact, such as advanced emissions reduction systems, alternative fuels, and waste management innovations.
Thanks to the tireless focus of our 160,000 team members worldwide, we’re lowering our environmental impact by using fewer resources, pioneering new and more sustainable solutions, and cutting waste and emissions wherever possible. Here are some examples:
We cut our absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 10% compared to 2011 (our peak historical year), even though our fleet capacity has grown over 30% since that time.
We accelerated our 20% GHG intensity reduction goal, expecting to reach our 2030 target four years ahead of schedule in 2026 (vs. 2019; measured on a lower berth capacity basis), representing a more than 40% reduction overall vs. 2008 – which will put us ahead of the International Maritime Organization’s 2030 carbon intensity reduction timeline
We introduced Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in the cruise industry as the best currently available mature, scalable, and market-ready fuel to deliver GHG emission reductions. We have 10 LNG ships sailing in our fleet today and six more scheduled to join our fleet by 2033 to collectively make up almost one-third of our global capacity.
We’re exploring transformative solutions to power our fleet and have the first large-scale cruise ships piloting maritime scale battery technology, a fuel cell, and biofuels, among other things.
We pioneered shore power for the cruise industry, reducing emissions and noise by allowing ships to switch off their engines in port and plug into the local electric grid to power onboard systems and equipment. The majority of our fleet is shore-power capable and today we have more ships ready to plug in than there are ports and berths able to provide shore power. As a result, we’re working with communities worldwide to increase port adoption of this important technology.
As of early 2024, we’ve reduced per-person food waste by 42% compared to 2019 by minimizing unused food across every aspect of food purchasing, preparation, and dining services, and we continue tracking toward our 50% per-person reduction target by 2030.
We were the first to use biodigesters onboard cruise ships and today use 600+ of the onboard systems to break down and liquify uneaten food so it can be sustainably returned to nature and diverted from landfills. In 2023 alone, we avoided over 45,000 metric tons of GHG emissions that would have been generated had the food waste gone to landfills.
We’re driving single-use items and plastics out of our business, having eliminated more than 500 million single-use items from our fleet to date (vs. 2018) and finding new ways to cut remaining single-use items completely or replace them with eco-friendly alternatives.
Challenges and Opportunities in Achieving Carbon Neutrality: Challenges Carnival faces in its journey toward carbon neutrality, as well as the opportunities these challenges present for innovation and leadership in the cruise industry.
Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 will require worldwide commitment – across every business, every nation, and every sector of the global economy. We recognize that a clear path to net zero does not yet exist for the maritime industry because low- and zero-emission fuels do not exist in the quantities we need to get there.
In the meantime, using less fuel is the fastest way to cut GHG emissions, so we’re maximizing every energy saving to shrink the amount of fuel we use. We’ve continued transforming to a more fuel-efficient fleet and are investing to make existing ships more efficient throughout their lifecycle – from installing energy-saving onboard equipment to powering onboard systems with shoreside electric power to developing more fuel-efficient itineraries, fine-tuning hydrodynamics, capitalizing on ocean currents, and much more. During the past five years alone, we’ve cut fuel use by almost 11% while increasing fleet capacity by 30%, and we aim to find more fuel savings well into the next decade.
Of course, energy efficiency solutions alone won’t help us reach net zero. Addressing climate change requires energy sources and technologies that don’t yet exist for many industries, including maritime. That’s why we’ve joined forces with companies, universities, research bodies, NGOs, and others – both within and outside the cruise industry – to create solutions to help safeguard the planet for future generations. We also remain flexible to use a range of low- and no-emission alternative fuels as they become available in abundance – in fact, all our existing ship engines can run on biofuel and future synthetic fuels with minimal modification. We’re trialing several forms of biofuels and biofuel blends produced from renewable biological sources, including organic waste, to understand its use in our operations and share our learnings with others to encourage broader production of sustainable fuels.
We aspire to achieve net zero GHG emissions by 2050 and are committed to making significant investments each year to continue working toward this important ambition.
