On 20th June, the Port of Aarhus and AIDA Cruises celebrated the opening of the first shore power facility for cruise ships in Denmark.
After Germany, Norway and the UK, Denmark is the fourth European country where shore power-capable AIDA ships can now reduce their emissions to almost zero while berthed.
‘AIDAmar’ was successfully supplied with energy from the shore during a regular operation. Prior to this, AIDA Cruises had supported the Danes in the preparations for the commissioning of the newly built plant.
In April this year, ‘AIDAsol’ was the first cruise ship to successfully complete shoreside and shipboard integration tests.
“We were the first cruise line to start using shore power in Europe! We show that we stand by our word, which we gave to our Cruise Baltic partners in 2022, and are pleased that our ships can now also use shore power in a Danish port.
“With our investments in this clean technology, we are actively supporting the European Union’s goals to build a shore power infrastructure in all major EU ports by 2030,” said AIDA President, Felix Eichhorn.
AIDA Cruises has been investigating the use of shore power in the planning and construction of its ships since 2004. On the shoreside, another 10 years passed before the company could start regular operations with a cruise ship at Europe’s first shore power facility in Hamburg Altona in 2017.
Since 2021, AIDA ships have also been able to use shore power from renewable energies in Kiel and Rostock/Warnemünde and thanks to the opening of further facilities in its European cruise destinations, the company extended the use of shore power to ports in Norway and the UK last year.
AIDA Cruises has been investing in a future-proof and sustainable cruise market for many years, as part of its Green Cruising strategy. In addition to the use of low-emission LNG, as an important bridging technology, AIDA is expanding the use of alternative energy sources, such as shore power or batteries to operate its cruise ships.
Together with various partners, the cruise company is working intensively on further solutions on how to use fuel cells or regenerative and synthetic fuels in the future and is evaluating several technologies to put into practice.
As part of the Carnival Corp family of cruise brands, AIDA Cruises aims to achieve net carbon neutral ship operations by 2050 (see separate Germany report, published by ICSI).
