The Banality of Innovation: Mythic Discourse and the Long Road to Shore Power in New York City

By allowing ships to plug into the electrical grid while at berth, shore power installations can drastically reduce carbon emissions and harmful pollutants produced by a vessel’s auxiliary engines (CLIA 2024; EPA 2024; Decker and Sturrup 2024). The significant improvements to local air quality make the technology an imperative for communities living near commercial and cruise ship terminals. Yet despite this clear social benefit, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has for years neglected to make the necessary capital investments in the shore power plug-in at Red Hook’s Brooklyn Cruise Terminal (BCT), a flagrant dismissal of longstanding community demands for increased environmental protections (Brachfeld 2023; Collins 2019; Pacheco 2023). By this inaction, EDC has failed their mandate to provide sustainable infrastructure for New York City communities. Moreover, the Manhattan cruise terminal still has no shore power system to speak of, heightening the contradiction between purported sustainability objectives and concrete investment (Chait et al. 2024).

This dismissal is made worse by EDC’s recent pledge to address the city’s environmental challenges head-on through a just economic transition. In February of 2024, the development corporation published a report titled The Green Economy Action Plan, a 124‑page document outlining their vision for the city’s “green transformation.” Situating current conditions as a unique economic opportunity, EDC frames the city as an anchor for 400,000 green jobs by the year 2040, creating the conditions for a future that will “benefit all New Yorkers—especially communities and neighborhoods that have suffered from historic disparities and environmental injustice” (NYCEDC 2024).

But on February 15, 2024—in the same month the agency published their Action Plan—EDC testified against a City Council bill requiring cruise ships to plug into shore power when docked at local terminals, a glaring contradiction to their stated aims for the green economy (Frost 2024). In taking this position, the development corporation made clear their lack of commitment to mitigating air pollution for impacted communities, resolving instead to rely on rhetoric. [1] Though claiming broad alignment with the council’s goals, EDC pointed to long-term agreements with the cruise operators—which include provisions to use shore power when feasible—as a reason not to pass legislation. EDC representatives’ rationale was that the cruise industry brings enormous economic benefits to the city (New York City Council 2024a, 2024b). This thinking is not new, and consistent with the EDC’s general deference to cruise operators (A View from the Hook 2018). Indeed, the development corporation has been providing statements about using shore power at the city’s terminals as far back as 2009 (Mooney 2009).

Obstacles to a legislative solution

Despite opposition from the EDC, the New York City Council passed legislation requiring cruise ships to use shore power on March 7, 2024. This legislation, however, is only a partial victory, as it is incumbent on EDC to prioritize the necessary capital investments so vessels can use the shore power system at BCT. First, EDC must invest in a mobile cable-positioning device (CPD) to allow more ships to connect to the BCT’s shore power system. Second, they must install a “new pier-side shore power plug-in connection point” and relocate the terminal’s existing plug-in to maximize its usage (NYCEDC 2024). EDC’s own reports indicate that ships docked at the terminal only used the shore power system a third of the time in 2022, largely due to these infrastructural issues (Maldanado 2023). Currently, the CPD is scheduled to be installed at the end of 2024, but no timeline has been provided for the longer-term capital needs. This situation is made worse by the city’s recent contract with MSC Cruises, whose vessels were found to emit as much sulfur in a year as 292 million cars, according to a European study [2] (Dijkstra and Simon 2023). Currently, the company’s behemoth ship, the Meraviglia, which has made Red Hook one of its home ports, cannot plug in to shore power at BCT (Brachfeld 2024; Pierre-Louis 2024).

Most would agree that decarbonizing industry and reducing air pollution would comport with a vision of “sustainability,” “just transition,” or “environmental justice.” Yet the EDC Action Plan makes only passing reference to shore power. Moreover, while the development corporation states that it “will install and mandate the use of the technology at the city’s cruise terminals by 2028, as feasible” (NYCEDC 2024, p. 83) it provides no concrete steps on how they will get there. The City Council has charged that this caveat for feasibility capitulates to the cruise industry’s preferred timeline of 2035, nearly 20 years after shore power was first introduced at BCT.

Innovation fetishism: contradictions of municipal climate policy

Simply put, EDC could have used its Action Plan to make a robust commitment to clean air for communities impacted by cruise pollution. But cleaning up the cruise industry, it seems, isn’t a priority for their green economy. Instead, EDC is primarily concerned with facilitating and guiding investment to “catalyze” the so-called green transformation, rather than directly committing their capital to more tangible environmental justice efforts.

Some of the agency’s “marquee initiatives” illustrate this general point. One of these is the Climate Innovation Hub sited at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, a 100-million-dollar investment aiming to “accelerate commercialization pathways for climate tech startups and incumbent businesses.” Another is the Habor Climate Collaborative, a collective 725-million-dollar investment to build a “climate innovation ecosystem in the New York Harbor” totaling “six million square feet of space for climate research, innovation, and training” (NYCEDC 2024, p. 11).

Though the development corporation claims otherwise, it should be stressed that these colossal plans to restructure the built environment are entirely consistent with real-estate tactics to (re)develop land for future markets. The goal of increased economic activity remains the same; the discourse has merely been updated to fit the historical moment of climate change. Further, municipal strategies of green urbanism almost invariably translate into upward pressure on property markets, creating the conditions for more gentrification and displacement (Dawson and McGee 2019; McGee 2017; Pearsall 2012). And while some of the development corporation’s marquee initiatives relate to more publicly oriented policies such as workforce development, the EDC—as in the case of shore power—does not provide commitments in terms of investment dollars.

EDC aims to evade this critique by situating their initiatives within the context of fighting climate change. They presume a necessity for these investments, as if building “hubs” and “ecosystems” for research address public need. Certainly, climate change and the fight against it implicates the whole of society. But we should not assume that massive expenditures aimed at creating “innovation clusters” will bring New York any closer to meeting its climate goals. Under capitalism, the marker of innovation is profitability, not social use. And technology alone cannot solve crises. To believe that we simply need another round of innovation to stave off catastrophe is to “endow technologies—mere things—with causative powers they do not have” (Harvey 2003). In following such logic, we divorce technological advancements from political economy, and in the end are left only with discursive rhetoric and storytelling. EDC’s Action Plan, with its preoccupation with defining metrics for success, categorizing various job types, and “set[ting] forth the first ever universal understanding” of what the green economy supposedly is, exemplifies this phenomenon (NYCEDC 2024, p. 11).

EDC also attempts to integrate the language of economic impact as further justification for their proposals. Moreover, the Action Plan strategically deploys appeals to our collective future and fate, and even makes passing mention of historical injustices. Through this assemblage of narrative strategies, it embodies what anthropologist Melissa Checker calls a “globally circulating discourse of sustainability,” a powerful set of amorphous ideas and downright myths that, on the one hand, idealize “technological innovation and economic growth” while also drawing on “diverse and even contradictory visions of nature and its value,” on the other (2014). EDC’s ambitious plans to transform New York Harbor and accelerate commercialization pathways for climate tech startups may provide numerous or even hundreds of jobs and help move the needle when it comes to climate. But growth and innovation alone do not determine the outcome, and the net benefit is illusory if it leads to displacement and costs billions of dollars, which could surely be put to more effective social use.

Implementing shore power systems to purify air while also beginning to decarbonize the cruise industry constitutes such a social use. Doing so won’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars, nor does it demand we prop up so-called innovation clusters, which could take year—if not decades—to mature. It does, however, demand a realignment of policy goals, and a genuine pursuit of EDC’s mandate to deliver sustainable infrastructure for New York City. To that end, we need a coherent municipal politics, one that prioritizes communities and health as opposed to the latest startup sector and their speculative adventures.

Bibliography

• A View from the Hook. 2018. “2017 – A Year of Frustration at The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal”,7 January. Available online at the following URL: www.aviewfromthehook.com/2018/01/2017-year-of-frustration-at-brooklyn.html.
• Brachfeld, B. 2023. “Lawmakers Seek to Ban Cruise Ships from Spewing Dirty Fumes at NYC Ports”, amNY, 19 September. Available online at the following URL: www.amny.com/transit/lawmakers-seek-to-ban-cruise-ships-from-spewing-dirty-fumes-at-nyc-ports.
• Brachfeld, B. 2024. “Plug It In! NYC Lawmakers Want Diesel-Powered Cruise Ships to Connect to Shore Power or Leave”, amNY, 18 February. Available online at the following URL: www.amny.com/transit/nyc-lawmakers-diesel-cruise-ships-power.
• Chait, J., deKadt, M. and Murphy, L. B. 2024. “Re: Manhattan Cruise Terminal – Shore Power Update”, letter from Manhattan Community Board Four, 7 August. Available online at the following URL: https://cbmanhattan.cityofnewyork.us/cb4/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/43-WPE-Letter-to-EDC-re-Shore-Power-Update.pdf.
• Checker, M., McDonogh, G. and Isenhour, C. 2014. “Urban Sustainability as Myth and Practice”, in M. Checker, G. McDonogh and C. Isenhour (eds.), Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice, pp. 1–26, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, “New Directions in Sustainability and Society” series.
• Collins, L. M. 2019. “How Cruise Ships Bring 1,200 Tons of Toxic Fumes to Brooklyn a Year”, New York Times, 26 December. Available online at the following URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/nyregion/cruise-ship-exhaust-shore-power-nyc.html.
• Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). 2024. Shoreside Electricity Capability. Available online at the following URL: https://europe.cruising.org/shoreside-electricity-capability.
• Dawson, A. and McGee, M. 2019. “Global Climate Crisis and the City: An Interview with Ashley Dawson”, Metropolitics, 3 April. URL: https://metropolitiques.eu/Global-Climate-Crisis-and-the-City-An-Interview-with-Ashley-Dawson.html.
• Decker, T. and Sturrup, E. 2024. “Nationwide Port Emissions Screening for Berthed Vessels: Prioritizing US Port Electrification to Improve Air Quality for Near-Port Communities”, International Council on Clean Transportation. Available online at the following URL: https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/ID-181-%E2%80%93-US-shore-power_final.pdf.
• Dijkstra, C. and Simon, V. 2023. “The Return of the Cruise. How Luxury Cruises are Polluting Europe’s Cities”, Transport & Environment. Available online at the following URL: https://te-cdn.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/files/The-return-of-the-cruise-June-2023.pdf.
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 2024. Shore Power Technology Assessment at US Ports. Available online at the following URL: www.epa.gov/ports-initiative/shore-power-technology-assessment-us-ports.
• Frost, M. 2024. “Red Hook residents back bill requiring ships to use shore power”, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 February. Available online at the following URL: https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2024/02/16/red-hook-residents-back-bill-requiring-ships-to-use-shore-power.
• Gibbs, D. and Krueger, R. 2007. “Containing the Contradictions of Rapid Development? New Economic Spaces and Sustainable Urban Development”, in R. Krueger and D. Gibbs (eds.), The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe, pp. 95–122. London: Guilford Press.
• Harvey, D. 2003. “The Fetish of Technology: Causes and Consequences”, Macalester International, vol. 13. Available online at the following URL: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1411&context=macintl.
• Maldanado, S. and Poblete, G. 2023. “One of the World’s Largest Cruise Ships Is About to Come to Brooklyn. So Will Its Toxic Exhaust”, The City, 9 February. Available online at the following URL: www.thecity.nyc/2023/02/09/red-hook-eric-adams-cruise-brooklyn-terminal.
• McGee, M. 2017. “Between Green Paris and Immigrant Paris: The Politics of the Jardins d’Éole”, Metropolitics, 21 March. URL: https://metropolitics.org/Between-Green-Paris-and-Immigrant-Paris-The-Politics-of-the-Jardins-d-Eole.html.
• Mooney, J. 2009. “Smoke on the Water”, New York Times, 5 March. Available online at the following URL: www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/nyregion/thecity/08disp1.html.
• New York City Council. 2024a. “New York City Council Votes to Require Cruise Ships to Connect to Shore Power When Docked at Terminals”, press release, 7 March. Available online at the following URL: https://council.nyc.gov/press/2024/03/07/2568.
• New York City Council. 2024b. Requiring the use of shore power by cruise terminal operators and community traffic mitigation plans in neighborhoods impacted by cruise ships at berth, local law no. 2024/054, enacted 6 April. Available online at the following URL: https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6496460&GUID=A9989FB0-74A0-45E7-933E-A19E4231CC8B&Options=&Search=.
• New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). 2024. Green Economy Action Plan. Available online at the following URL: https://edc.nyc/sites/default/files/2024-04/NYCEDC-Green-Economy-Action-Plan-04-29-2024.pdf.
• Pacheco, A. 2023. “Cruise Ships Commit to Shore Power By 2028 – Promise Community Fund Amid Expansion”, W42ST, 7 October. Available online at the following URL: https://w42st.com/post/cruise-ships-commit-to-shore-power-by-2028-promise-community-fund-amid-expansion-plans.
• Pavlenko, N., Comer, B., Zhou, Y., Clark, N. and Rutherford, D. 2020. “The Climate Implications of Using LNG as a Marine Fuel”, The International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT), working paper 2020‑02, 28 January. Available online at the following URL: https://theicct.org/publication/the-climate-implications-of-using-lng-as-a-marine-fuel.
• Pearsall, H. 2012. “Moving out or Moving in? Resilience to Environmental Gentrification in New York City”, Local Environment, vol. 17, no. 9, pp. 1013–1026. Available online at the following URL: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13549839.2012.714762. DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2012.714762.
• Pierre-Louis, K. 2024. “The World’s Largest Cruise Ship Is a Climate Liability”, Bloomberg, 22 January. Available online at the following URL: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-22/royal-caribbean-s-icon-of-the-seas-highlights-climate-impact-of-cruises.
• Uteuova, A., Witherspoon, A. and Waddell, K. 2023. “Noise, Pollution, Danger: How Amazon Warehouses Upended a Sleepy New York Neighborhood”, The Guardian, 16 May. Available online at the following URL: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/16/amazon-warehouse-traffic-noise-brooklyn-red-hook.