The shipping industry has been facing increasing challenges due to the stringent regulations for anthropogenic emissions limits, the new targets for carbon emissions reduction and the potential carbon pricing introduction. These have led to an upsurge of activities towards improving the environmental footprint of cruise ships. This study investigates the impact of carbon pricing on the cruise ships optimal power plant configuration. Mathematical models are used to estimate the performance of the cruise ship energy systems. A novel bi-objective optimisation method for the cruise ship energy systems synthesis is developed, which employs the Non-Sorting Genetic Algorithm H optimisation algorithm and uses as objectives the Life Cycle Cost and the lifetime carbon emissions. Cruise ship configurations that perform optimally under carbon pricing scenarios whilst complying with the existing emissions regulations are identified. The derived results show that the baseline configuration does not belong to the optimal solutions, whereas solutions including carbon capture, waste heat recovery and dual fuel generator sets that operate with natural gas or methanol can reduce drastically the carbon emissions. The optimisation identified solutions that reduce the Life Cycle Cost by 40% compared to the baseline configuration despite increasing their capital cost whilst reducing of the carbon emissions more than 37%. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.