Shore power for cruise ships. The ports of Naples and Salerno they will be among the first in Italy to be equipped with “cold ironing” systems which will allow the use of electricity supplied from the ground. The works will begin within a couple of weeks: after the start of the construction site for the extension of the Duca d’Aosta breakwater, another important stage of the Pnrr takes off.
The works must be completed by the end of 2026. For the “cold ironing” plants, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan has financed 25 million euros for the port of Naples and 15 for that of Salerno: 40 million in total. In Naples the electrification will mostly concern the Angevin pier, the one where cruise ships dock, which are the most advanced in the possibility of exploiting energy from land. In Naples three berths will be built at the maritime cruise station, on the Angioino pier with a capacity of 45 megawatts, to recharge up to three ships simultaneously. TO Salernoinstead, the area of the new maritime station will be provided. In the future it will be necessary to provide supply systems for ferries too, given that shipowners in this sector are also starting to invest in new technological processes.
Sustainability
Cruise ships, for now, at least as regards the fleets that call at the ports of NoonI’m ahead. Those that act as a point of reference at the moment use electric motors and power generators that run on LNG, liquefied natural gas. Being able to power these ships from land essentially means turning off the on-board generators and connecting the systems to the dock’s electrical grid. A big leap forward when you consider that we have arrived on a ship with over six thousand passengers and more than two thousand crew members. A real city, in short, capable of remaining illuminated and with all services active even while turning off the on-board generators. Testing of fuel cells has already begun on these ships, pushing them to the point of illuminating small areas of the ship with hydrogen. The ports of Campania and more generally the ports of South have benefited from 43.1 percent of the resources allocated for ports by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: a good result considering that North and Centretogether, they stopped at 56.9 percent. Translated into figures, this means that the ports of Southern Italy have 1 billion and 300 million euros at their disposal. Overall the North and the Center 1 billion and 600 million euros. And, for our ports, these availability of resources for infrastructural and technological modernization as well as for the advancement of sustainability criteria mean that Naples has an endowment of 241 million euros and Salerno 120 million euros. In short, an opportunity to be seized quickly thanks to the impulse coming from the Recovery plan.
Hiring and related industries
We remind you, even net of the benefits that will be recorded once the works are completed, the construction phase (which will last approximately three years and must necessarily end in December 2026) will produce direct employment of no less than 900 units and employment in the local related industries over 2700 employees. These figures were determined on the basis of the mandatory minimum values for manpower adequacy checks indicated by Ministerial Decree 143/2021. But at Adsp they are certain that in reality there will be a much higher commitment of technical staff and manpower if we consider that further construction sites worth over 140 million euros are underway and that the Port Authority has nominated a further 198 million euros for the 2021-2027 ERDF funds. In short – as the general secretary himself has underlined several times Giuseppe Grimaldi – «this is a formidable figure for employment in our region». But it’s not enough. In recent years the Port System Authority, after having developed and brought to the approval of the Ministry of Transport the strategic planning document i.e. the Port System Programmatic Document, is working on the definition of the Port Regulatory Plans for the ports of Naples, Salerno and Castellammare . And even in these procedures there is the broadest involvement of stakeholders who look with growing interest at the prospects for consolidating the Campania port system. Everything is now ready and the technical documents are being sent to the competent authorities, putting an end to an unseemly condition in which planning dating back 65 years is still in force for the ports of Campania.
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