Opinion: The case for renovating mature liners

Remember the Toyota Prius?

Japan’s hybrid family car was supposedly designed to massage the trees and save the earth. Brainwashed drivers were manipulated into believing the battery-petrol-composite was akin to automotive Jesus, and if you didn’t opt to purchase one, then Mother Nature would destroy us all.

If you owned an older car, you had to adapt or be judged by socialites from the bowels of the Waitrose carpark.

Yet, with that sanctimonious brain fog cleared by time’s onward march, the Prius can now be viewed as God intended – a cynical marketing exercise driving revenue from an implanted sense of historical shame. A huge number of car manufacturers and other industries have since followed suit.

Now, it seems that Prius-syndrome is in danger of creeping across the cruise industry. There’s a polarising vibe where older cruise ships become easy targets for the eco-mob; brandishing their opinions like a weapon and spearheading notions that freshly constructed cruise ships are kinder to the environment, whereas older vessels remain akin to poison.

Others point to research that showcases how ferociously new ships have pillaged the soil for materials, torturing the earth in the process and harming the atmosphere. Renovating an older vessel, they claim, saves all that mayhem and pollution.

Prolonging the lifespan of a ship that’s already been created, and installing a modern, emissions-conscious power plant to match contemporary regulations therefore makes perfect sense. It’s the best of both worlds.

So – what’s the deal?

Green cruising: No longer an oxymoron

Let’s take a quick step back to the Prius. Environmental proclamation over the vehicle sold units that, arguably, caused more destruction than any long-lasting classic car ever could.

From looting the earth of battery-necessary minerals to short-lived vehicular lifespans that failed to counteract large Co2 production footprints, Mother Nature was effectively tormented, rather than cradled by a new generation of clean motorists.

Yet, modern society rarely has time for the luxury of outrage, and instead progressed towards the next environmental fad – ‘green cruising’. An oxymoron? Only if you judge the book by its cover.

The cruise industry has long been lampooned by environmentalists as a cacophony of habitat-abusing toxins and bad attitudes. Cruise lines have been pushed into cleaning up their act courtesy of a changing world, fronted by studies from Friends of the Earth (FOE).

Announcing a ban on plastic straws and following baseline sustainability practices isn’t enough to appease the climate-watching proletariat anymore. Aggressive decarbonisation goals, cleaner alternative fuels, greener port-based infrastructures and technological advancement remain the order of the day. According to the likes of UN research, only ships built to modern regulations can possibly achieve those targets.

Keyboard warriors and inconsequential socialites may pupate with that misjudgment, but we’d argue that it’s one big misconception. All those voices that sneer and mock the decision to keep an older vessel up-to-date completely misinterpret society’s infatuation with ‘new is greener’.

Just like production of the God-forsaken Prius, crafting a new vessel from the keel up is not just heavy on time and cost, but also on resources. More than 25,000 tonnes of steel are required for the construction of a mid-sized cruise ship, calling for raw materials to be extracted from the earth by carbon-spewing mine operations.

It’s a dirty business. Experts suggest that cruise ships need to remain operational for more than 40 years before that carbon sting becomes offset.

Few realistically sail long enough to hit that mark, as ships are dispatched to the breaker’s yard and orders are placed for brand-new examples; all when renovation and upcycling remains more than possible.

The case for renovation

Upcycling used to be a dirty word, but thanks to efforts from the likes of Ambassador Cruise Line, the term has enjoyed a renaissance. Start-up cruise lines over the last century typically renovated older ships to avoid catastrophic financial outlays, but there was a stigma attached.

Aspirational travellers would snort at the concept of sailing aboard a repurposed vessel. That wasn’t the image of travel that old money found alluring.

To capture paying guests who would book a cabin multiple times per year – rather than pre-war immigrants on a one-way trip to promised lands in search of fortune – ships had to be new or famously established. Perfectly useable liners became victims of society. Out with the old, and in with the new. To hell with the environment.

That was then. This is now, and the tourism landscape has shifted towards environmentally-friendly holidaymakers, rather than snobbery-based outriggers of class. Repurposing a mature ship now presents merit rather than dishonour. Nick Hughes, chief operating officer at Ambassador Cruise Line, can attest to that.

He told us: “Huge amounts of resources and materials go into a new build and we are very happy to reduce, reuse and recycle excellent existing ships and make them fit for modern emission standards.”

“We know that our guests enjoy the size and layout of more traditional ships and these also give us great opportunities to visit a wider range of port destinations. Why use even more resources while there are excellent options already available?”

Then there’s the benefit of time scale. Crafting a cruise ship from scratch takes years of planning and construction. While Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 was officially ordered in November 2000, the maiden voyage wouldn’t occur until January 2004.

Ambassador’s revamped Ambition (originally built as MS Mistral in 1999) went from planning in May 2022 to her maiden voyage only one year later, cutting the schedule by almost 66 percent. Not to mention avoiding the subsequent carbon output of opting for a new build.

Although it would be impolite to ask for exact figures, we reckon the cost of renovation was far less than ordering a fresh craft. When we asked Hughes, he simply responded “Indeed”. That says it all, really.

Concerns about running an older ship

So, what about the big question – pollution? Repurposing is all well and good for the cruise line’s bank balance, but are these second-hand ships spewing excess toxins into our oceans? We’ll cut to the chase. The answer is ‘no’.

“We are happy to report that we are on track to maintain a CII rating of C for the next three years and that we have a good EEXI rating. We continue to work with the Norwegian Maritime Authority in reporting our NOx emissions and are comfortably meeting the Tier III emission requirements”, explained Nick Hugh. And there’s no arguing with that report card.

Sewage treatment, maintenance and safety fall into the same argument. It's societal nature to assume contemporary attributes cannot be achieved by anything built prior to new legislation, but that’s another misconception.

RWO, a supplier of intelligent water management solutions, worked with Celebrity Cruises to retrofit next-generation water treatment systems onboard Celebrity Silhouette and Celebrity Reflection – both over a decade old.

The unique CS-MBR system employs submerged membranes and sustainable biological treatment technology to filter more than 99% of solids, microplastics, viruses and bacteria from anything fed into the sea.

Royal Caribbean took a similar approach way back in 2009, installing advanced wastewater purification technology in the entire fleet. Carnival established a similar mantra when upgrading its global armada with contemporary energy-saving technology. Everyone is at it.

Concerns for safety and maintenance also enter a dead-end argument. All face-lifted ships trading between brands have to meet strict and prudent regulations regarding flame-retardant textiles and lifeboat procedures, alongside austere and regulated maintenance schedules. Everything is legal, everything is safe, and nothing detracts from the cruise experience.

A dose of realism

There’s one unanswered question regarding ocean-going upcycling. How long can it continue to adapt until ratification ensures an older vessel doesn’t meet lawful regulations?

As world powers establish ever-tightening blanket emission targets, it feels illogical to keep pouring money into a ship that can only be upscaled to a point, before serious powerplant upgrades amount to the financial equivalent of doomsday.

As anyone who understands the construction process of a cruise liner will tell you, the ship is built around its' engines – rather than installed once the hull has been constructed. It’s the only way to feasibly fit the colossal drivetrain without compromising the liner’s structural integrity.

As such, while those engines can be modified to run on better fuel, operate with modern exhaust systems and perform with up-to-date efficiencies, it’s a finite time before designs and fuel changes leave older engines behind. And it’s not as simple as removing one drivetrain for another.

That’s where the new ships come into play. You cannot run Windows 11 on a ZX Spectrum, and you cannot run a medium-speed MAN L58/64 nine-cylinder turbo-charged diesel engine on Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). And that's a comparison that's likely never been said before.

Cunard’s upcoming MS Queen Anne will propel herself forward with Caterpillar-MaK 12V43C units, which will provide bandwidth for further-reaching upgrades as time and politics push forward.

Taking a dose of future reality, it may sound unsporting to suggest that the current fleet of renovated cruise liners are sailing on borrowed time, but that doesn’t mean the ideology is unsound. Upcycling an already manufactured product makes a tonne of sense, both financially and environmentally. As one generation of liner gives way to another, we should expect the operation to continue.

There will be no Prius syndrome here. No shaming of heritage or judgment calls. No cynical marketing exercises. Older ships can easily run alongside fresher constructions without societal prejudice.

The dated outer aesthetics may not be to everyone’s taste, but the environmental argument has been debunked. Perhaps it’s time to move on to the next fad - such as feeding each and every Toyota Prius into the shredder.