Meet the Koru: Bezos’ half billion dollar yacht that’s terrible for the environment

How much do you know about the half billion dollar yacht Jeff Bezos had built? You may have seen a few pictures of the Koru online or in the news and thought it was absolutely beautiful. But did you know it's an environmental nightmare?

Before we get into the problems the Koru causes, let's first look at the ship itself since the vessel is one of the most impressive currently sailing the high seas. The Koru measures in at a gigantic 417 feet and is the world’s largest sailing yacht. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Conmat13 - Own Work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sporting three enormous masts, the Koru set Bezos back roughly $500 million according to Bloomberg. You might think that the world’s largest sailing yacht would be better for the environment than the superyachts in the Amazon founder's boat collection. 

When the New York Times ran a story about the Koru in May 2023, some of the experts that the news organization spoke with thought that the sailing vessel might be one of the most ecologically friendly superyachts sailing the high seas. 

“Sailboats are usually greener than most powerboats,” the captain of the former largest single-masted sailboat Don Anderson explained to the New York Times. "I’d like to think that Koru will be one of the most ecological yachts out there.”

Anderson explained that the sails of the Koru coupled with the technology he thought could be aboard the ship might make it environmentally friendly. However, even if the Koru is better than other superyachts, it's still a terribly nasty carbon emitter. 

Don't believe the Koru is bad? You don’t have to take our word for it. Oxfam International researchers put in the legwork to figure out just how bad the Koru was when it came to its emissions in a report on 20 other billionaire boats in 2023. 

According to an analysis from Oxfam’s Richard Wilk and Beatriz Barros that was reported on by The Guardian, the minimum amount of carbon emissions that the Koru is believed to emit is about 7,154 tonnes a year. 

To put the Koru’s carbon emissions in perspective, the average person only emits about 4 tonnes of carbon per year worldwide, while the average American emits 16, according to the UCAR Center for Science Education. 

Luxury Launches writer Neha Tandon Sharma pointed out that Koru produces the same amount of carbon emissions as roughly 1500 people, which might explain why Richard Wilk had a big problem with them when speaking to The Guardian. 

“The emissions of the superyachts are way above anything else,” Wilk said. “They have to have a crew, and they have to be constantly maintained even when they are docked.” But that wasn’t the only thing that made superyachts problematic.

“Then you have the helicopters onboard, the jetskis, the high energy-using luxury items like pools, hot tubs, private submarines, and tenders, all of these require power, the air conditioning, the sophisticated electronic items,” Wilk added. 

Luckily, the Koru doesn’t actually have a helicopter pad on it. Instead, Bezos decided it was best to have a whole other ship shadow the Koru, so he wouldn’t lose access to his helicopter. This ship is called the Abeona, and it is a powerboat.

It isn’t clear if Wilk and Barros factored in the emissions of the Abeona when deciding on the carbon output of the Koru. But it isn’t likely. The Guardian pointed out the analysis noted a superyacht on standby generates about 7,000 tonnes of carbon a year. 

With a single billionaire creating so much pollution, it begs the question: Should this be allowed? It's an interesting question and one that may require an answer soon as the world tries to mitigate the fallout from its rising climate problems. 

The Koru was commissioned by Bezos and built by the Netherlands firm Oceanco. In 2022, the ship was embroiled in controversy when its builders wanted to dismantle the historic Koningshaven Bridge in Rotterdam to test the Koru in the North Sea.