Opportunity Green challenges cruise ship industry’s LNG claims with UK advertising watchdog

London-headquartered non-profit organisation Opportunity Green has pressed charges against several cruise companies for misleading customers about liquefied natural gas (LNG) being a “green or clean shipping fuel.”

PHOTO: Princess Cruises' luxury cruise ship Star Princess. Princess Cruises

The non-profit has made official complaints to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) against MSC Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises and Princess Cruises for greenwashing LNG and “trying to gaslight the public into believing that fossil LNG is a climate solution when it is not.”

In addition to filing the complaint, Opportunity Green has published the report "(Un)Sustainable from Ship to Shore" in which it highlight three “key communication strategies” that several cruise companies use to deceive customers with misleading advertising that “risk breaching advertising rules in the UK”:

• Advertising the use of fossil LNG as reducing emissions
• Advertising fossil LNG as environmentally friendly
• Advertising the use of fossil LNG as a specific initiative to reach net zero by 2050

Opportunity Green has condemned these international cruise companies for investing lumpsum amounts in building LNG-fuelled ships and claiming that they are “green”.

Evidence suggests that LNG consists of methane primarily and can be an “extremely potent greenhouse gas which has climate impacts over 80 times greater than carbon dioxide [CO2] over a 20-year period,” the organisation claimed.

“Sustainability sells, but the climate emergency will not be solved by meaningless marketing that does nothing other than help ensure the sustainability of a cruise company’s balance sheet,” said Opportunity Green’s legal director Carly Hicks.  

The non-profit organisation has called on cruise companies to:

• Stop advertising LNG as a “climate solution”
• Stop investments into LNG as a “purported climate solution”
• Back their decarbonisation pledges with a reliable framework and transition plan
• Remove advertisements that promote the climate benefits of using LNG as a greener alternative to traditional fossil fuels

“Shout out to P&O Cruises who took down their LNG ads after we wrote to them,” said Aoife O’Leary, head of Opportunity Green. “We will not be issuing complaints against them [P&O Cruises],” she further added.

By Aparupa Mazumder 

Please get in touch with comments or additional info to news@engine.online