Carnival Cruise Line Backs the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund

New Carnival Cruise Line / Allen Marine Tours / AK Carbon Reduction Fund partnership brings much needed assistance to southeast Alaska lower income, oil-burning families!

Carnival Cruise Line is offering generous assistance to the regional expansion efforts of Renewable Juneau’s Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund (ACRF) with a $50,000 donation. This relationship has been a long time coming and we’re so excited to see it become a reality! When the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund was started back in the summer of 2019, we reached out to a few cruise lines, met with representatives, and received a pretty solid reality check. What we heard was that this program is a great idea and held promise, but was applicable only in Juneau. Cruise lines serve the region and if the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund could do the same and serve the region, then it would be possible to talk more about potential cruise line support.

Carnival Cruise Line presents a $50,000 donation to Alaska Heat Smart. Pictured (from left to right) are Carnival Miracle Captain Roberto Costi, Alaska Heat Smart Executive Director Andy Romanoff, Carnival Miracle Cruise Director Adam Gilbert, Allen Marine Tours Owner and CEO Jamey Cagle, Allen Marine Tours Vice President of Operations Travis Mingo, and Miracle Shore Excursion Manager Arina Dudarova

Welcome Allen Marine Tours in early 2023. Allen Marine Tours began collecting a carbon-reducing fee from its independent travelers in support of the Fund last summer. Funds raised in each port would remain in that community to directly assist local families with lowering high home oil heating costs. Suddenly, the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund had regional reach. Work is still underway to roll out the Sitka program and work on a Ketchikan arm is now in the early stages. While still in development, this regional work is quickly gaining traction. ACRF currently has fourteen Sitka applicants, and with little marketing to date in Ketchikan, four Ketchikan applicants. Thirty families in all are in the application queue, by far the most ever at one time.

The new assistance from Carnival Cruise Line and continued partnership with Allen Marine Tours is timely and much needed. We’ve estimated that it could take roughly $40M to reduce lower income family, oil-burning home heating costs across southeast. We have a lot of work ahead and we’re thrilled to partner with Carnival Cruise Line to make even greater progress towards our mission! It’s our hope to have an Alaska Heat Smart home energy assessor on the ground in Ketchikan by early 2025 and ACRF program rollout in Ketchikan about the same time. Meanwhile, Juneau’s program is going strong and Sitka’s is coming together quickly.

Read the press releas e from Carnival Cruise line!