The Port of Aarhus and AIDA Cruises celebrated last week the opening of the first shore power system for cruise ships in Denmark. The AIDA Cruises had the “AIDAmar” successfully supplied with energy from shore in regular operation at the Port of Aarhus the company states.
In April the “AIDAsol” was the first cruise ship to successfully complete the land and ship integration tests, and the AIDA Cruises and its Danish partner therefore already had prepared for the commissioning of the newly built facility.
AIDA state that after Germany, Norway and Great Britain, Denmark is now the fourth European country in which the AIDA ships can reduce their emissions to almost zero while they are at port.
AIDA President, Felix Eichhorn, said that “We are the first cruise line to start using shore power in Europe! We show that we stand by our word, which we gave to our partners from Cruise Baltic 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 set up shore power infrastructure in all major EU ports by 2030.”
The company also states that AIDA Cruises has been investing in a future-proof and sustainable cruise market for many years as part of its Green Cruising strategy, so in addition to using low-emission liquefied natural gas (LNG) as an important bridging technology, AIDA Cruises is expanding the use of alternative energy sources such as shore power or batteries to operate its cruise ships.
The company finally mentions, that as part of Carnival Corporation & plc’s family of cruise brands, AIDA Cruises aims to make its fleet operations carbon-neutral by 2050.
