Today, the Port of Seattle celebrated the completion of shore power at Pier 66, which achieves the Northwest Ports Clean Air Strategy goal of electrifying all Seattle cruise berths.

“We applaud the Port of Seattle’s leadership to move cruise vessels off of dirty fossil fuels and mandate them to plug in at the port,” said Jayne Stevenson, State Climate Policy Manager for Pacific Environment. “Ocean-going vessels, including cruise ships, are the #1 maritime polluter in the Puget Sound area. We agree with the editorial board of the Seattle Times, and urge the state of Washington to implement a statewide shore power policy to reduce air pollution from all ocean-going vessels at the ports and protect the health and well-being of portside communities.”

In June 2024, the Seattle Times editorialized about extending this strategy across the port’s entire operations in Puget Sound. The editorial board wrote, “The next challenge for the port is a parallel plugging-in of the container ships and other vessels that call on the Northwest Seaport Alliance’s Seattle and Tacoma ports. A total of 14,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from cargo ships could be removed from the atmosphere if its berths — which welcomed nearly 1,700 cargo vessel visits in 2023 — were electrified while ships were loaded and unloaded. Those emissions have an outsized impact on the port’s surrounding neighborhoods. The 12% or so of Americans who live near seaports suffer higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, according to the federal Department of Energy.”

According to the Port of Seattle plugging into shore power reduces diesel emissions from cruise vessels at berth by 80% on average. During the 2023 season, cruise ships using shore power avoided emitting 2,700 metric tons of greenhouse gases and 0.75 metric tons of diesel particulate matter — the equivalent of nearly 650 passenger cars driving for a year.

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