Keep it clean
It would seem that Portsmouth City Council are still intent on diving into the electricity supply sector, and purportedly at the cost of millions. Figures such as these just seem to slip off the tongue nowadays (Cleaner greener cruise ships could pave the way for dockside’s future, June 30).
The recent visit of Virgin Cruises’ Scarlet Lady has certainly got the pulses racing at the ferryport, but I doubt that the expectations felt when Townsend Thoresen first sailed in will ever be achieved again. (Won’t have dockers on strike at the gates again, for sure.) It must have occurred to any one of the council officials looking at the Scarlet Lady, this represented in terms of lightbulbs and all manner of electrical stuff, many many times the council offices’ requirement in terms of power, indeed I expect you could almost include half of Commercial Road in the calculation, and still come up short.
Scarlet Lady would need a bit more than just one big plug, and that is if Virgin were to agree to spend a huge amount of their money to convert the ship to take on shore supply.
This would be the same for all ships which would potentially berth in Portsmouth. Comparing facilities at Southampton is neither reliable nor realistic.
What would be the benefit for the people of Portsmouth? The clean air thing to my mind is a whitewash. The comment that these ships burn the dirtiest of fuels is incorrect, the days of the really ‘heavy oil’ engine are in no way comparable with modern diesels. The spokesperson for Virgin gives some detail of the ‘scrubbing’ systems used to clean exhaust gases.
Many of these ships can now turn dirty water back to drinking quality.
How long are these ships in port for? To power down all the ship’s generators then switching to shore power for at most about 8-10 hours, I can just imagine what the 1st Officer Engineer would say about that. Main engines are generally powered down but kept turning because temperature is critical.
Portsmouth is kept alive by what flows on and off the island every day by road. What may or may not come through the harbour entrance half a dozen times a year, might in theory bring ‘millions’ into the city, I think that is more of a pipe dream.
Portsmouth deserves better road systems, long-term thought out traffic management, and possibly a park and ride scheme that might have to be mandatory. What it doesn’t deserve is to be sacrificed on the altar of popular short term fixes that sound good, cost a fortune, but probably deliver little in real terms.
BJ Nevill Gosport