A shore-side power plant for large passenger ships. (picture alliance/dpa)
The German government wants to speed up the pace of shore power expansion in the country's harbours with a funding programme for investments and a reduction of the so-called EEG renewable energy levy.
"We aim to make German harbours cleaner," said Economics and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier on Thursday at a meeting with top politicians from Germany's coastal states in the Baltic Sea port city of Kiel. Part of the climate package recently hammered out by the Christian Democrat-Social Democrat grand coalition in Berlin, for example, is a funding programme of 140 million euros (154 million dollars) to build shore power facilities starting next year. In addition, the renewable energy levy for shore power is to be reduced to 20 per cent.
At the European level, the German government aims to push for binding rules for the use of shore power facilities by excursion vessels and container ships. At the Kiel meeting, Altmaier signed a letter of intent for this aim with Schleswig-Holstein Premier Daniel Guenther, Hamburg governing mayor Peter Tschentscher and representatives of the governments of the states of Lower Saxony, Bremen and Mecklenburg-West Pommerania. Altmaier spoke of what he said would be a joint project of the federal government, coastal states and port cities.
Shore power is the supply of shoreside electrical power to a ship at berth while its main and auxiliary engines are shut down. The aim is to save consumption of fuel that vessels would otherwise use for power while at berth, while also eliminating air pollution from the burning of such fuel.
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