LNG barge to power cruise ships in Norway

The technology, which has previously been tested at the Port of Hamburg, meets the strict environmental legal requirements in Norway, while LNG is now recognised as an alternative and clean external supply of power to cruise ships.

“We would like to offer the barge technology, which has succesfully been operated at the Port of Hamburg in the last three years, in a larger design for use in cruise ships anchored in fjords and are already in discussions about this with Norwegian port and cruise ship operators,” said Dirk Lehmann, managing director of Becker Marine Systems.

Mr Lehmann added that the flexible LNG technology had attracted interest from China and Spain, where cruise ships can be operated all year round.

The HUMMEL barge previously helped improve air quality at the Port of Hamburg and supplied low emission power to the AIDAsol cruise ship in 2016.

The barge was launched at Rotterdam in 2015 to help reduce cruise ship emissions by providing clean energy to moored cruise ships, as part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Becker Marine Systems and KOTUG.

It was intended as an alternative for producing electricity in the traditional way by either generator sets or main engines.

In 2015, the barge won the Seatrade Cruise Award for the ‘Environmental Initiative of the Year’, in conjunction with AIDA Cruises.

The first Becker LNG hybrid barge was launched at the Port of Hamburg in October 2014.