The world’s largest cruise line company is responsible for producing more carbon dioxide in Europe than the city of Glasgow, a report has found.
Analysis by the Transport and Environment (T&E) campaign group, provided to the Guardian, found Carnival to be the most climate-polluting cruise company sailing in Europe in 2023.
The data covered all Europe-bound cruise ships last year, including 53 that belonged to Carnival. The second most climate-polluting cruise company in Europe was MSC, followed by Norwegian Cruise Line, the group found.
Carbon emissions for Carnival’s Europe-bound ships totalled 2.55m tonnes last year. The latest emissions figures for the city of Glasgow, from 2021, with a population of 620,700, were 2.43m tonnes, according to the city council. MSC emitted 1.4m tonnes and Norwegian 0.84m tonnes of CO2. Analysts from T&E used official data on carbon emissions supplied by vessels sailing in the European Economic Area, as required by EU law.
“The larger companies have more vessels and bigger ships,” said Jacob Armstrong, shipping policy manager at T&E. “But bigger isn’t better when it comes to emissions.”
Cruising is one of tourism’s fastest-growing sectors. The number of cruise vessels has grown significantly, from 21 in the 1970s to 515 today, and T&E research shows the world’s biggest cruise ships have doubled in size since 2000.
Carnival Corporation plc, a Miami-based British and US company, made $1.95bn (£1.54bn) profit in 2023, after losses of $4.4bn and $7.1bn in 2022 and 2021, during the Covid pandemic. In 2023, 12.5 million passengers travelled on its 92 ships.
In a separate ranking of environmental harm by cruise companies in 2024, by Friends of the Earth (FoE) US, Carnival and its subsidiaries also emerged lowest among 21 cruise lines.
An annual “cruise ship report card” awarded five of Carnival’s nine lines – Costa Cruises, P&O Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Cunard and Seabourn – the grade of F overall. Four factors taken into account were air pollution reduction, sewage treatment, water quality and transparency.
Marcie Keever, ocean and vessels programme director at FoE, said Carnival’s continued use of “scrubbers” in its fleet, which, while approved by the International Maritime Organization, allows the use of dirtier fuel and causes water pollution.
“Scrubbers allow ships to convert their air pollution into toxic water pollution, and they can use bunker fuel which is dirty and cheap,” she said. This factor, along with a lack of transparency, and not all ships being equipped for shore power, resulted in the F grade, the lowest ranking.
FoE awarded expedition cruise lines Hurtigruten and Hurtigruten Expeditions a B+, the highest score, while Disney Cruise line got a B. Hurtigruten vessels plug into shore power instead of running their engines, thus reducing air pollution at shore power-enabled ports. Neither Hurtigruten nor Disney use scrubbers on vessels, and all three were awarded A for transparency.
“There are more cruise companies getting higher grades than in previous years, so we are seeing some progress,” Keever said.
A Carnival Corp and plc spokesperson said: “We’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental technologies and solutions, which together with our other decisive climate actions are yielding strong results.”
Carnival’s 2023 total greenhouse gas emissions were 9.65m tonnes, compared with 10.9m tonnes in 2011.
The spokesperson said it was on track to cut its emissions per passenger-equivalent by 40% by 2026, compared with 2008 levels.
An MSC cruise spokesperson said improving the environmental performance of its fleet was of “crucial importance”. “We have already made significant progress, and our ships are 40% more efficient than they were 10 years ago.”
A spokesperson for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said: “We are proud of the progress we are making towards our goal of reducing greenhouse gas intensity per capacity day by 10% by 2026 and 25% by 2030, using a 2019 baseline.”
