Construction work has commenced to build
Costa Cruises's first LNG-powered vessel after a steel-cutting ceremony was held at the Meyer shipyard in Turku, Finland, on Wednesday.
The vessel, which is to be named the
Costa Smeralda, will have a gross tonnage (grt) in excess of 180,000 tonnes and is scheduled to enter into service in
October 2019, operating in the Western Mediterranean.
LNG bunkering to the ship is to be provided by
Shell Western LNG B.V. (Shell),
as announced last year.
Meanwhile, a second vessel, sister to Costa Smeralda, is slated for delivery in
2021.
The two new Costa Cruises ships will be powered by LNG both in port and on the open sea. LNG is to be stored in special tanks on board and used to generate 100 percent of the energy required for navigation and onboard services, thanks to dual-fuel hybrid engines.
Carnival construction programme
Construction of the Costa Smeralda and its sister ship forms part of a strategic plan by parent company Carnival Corporation to build
seven cruise vessels that will be fully powered by LNG.
Carnival announced the order of
four LNG-powered ships from Meyer Werft in the summer of 2015, two of which are the aforementioned Costa Cruises vessels, with the other two ships scheduled to join the
AIDA Cruises fleet in the autumn of 2018 and the spring of 2021 respectively.
Carnival celebrated
the keel-laying of the first of the two AIDA ships, the
AIDAnova, in a ceremony last week to mark the official start of construction of the fully LNG-fuelled cruise ships.
A deal to build another
three vessels - two for
Carnival Cruise Line (scheduled for delivery in 2020 and 2022) and one for
P&O Cruises UK (due to be delivered in 2020) -
was announced in September 2016, and brings Carnival's total number of orders for vessels fully powered by LNG to seven.
Neil Palomba, president of Costa Cruises, said: "The two new Costa Cruises ships are a true global innovation and set new standards for the entire sector. They will be among the first cruise ships powered by LNG, spurring the development of this green technology, especially in the Mediterranean area, and they will be
the world's first LNG-powered ships that will be marketed to consumers from multiple countries, including Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland."
Image: Steel-cutting ceremony of Costa Cruises' first LNG-fuelled ship, the Costa Smeralda, held on September 13, 2017.
