Carnival’s Italian brand, Costa Cruises, has announced that its second LNG-powered cruise ship, the Costa Toscana, has started its maiden voyage from Italy.
Costa Tuscany is the latest generation vessel powered by liquefied natural gas. The 185,000 GT cruise ship passed sea trials in October 2021. In December, Finnish shipyard Meyer Turku delivered the ship to Costa Cruises.
On March 5, 2022, the ship left Savona for Marseille.
Costa Group is the parent company of Costa Cruises, based in Italy, and the German company AIDA Cruises. He said he was the first in the world in the cruise industry to use LNG. The company currently has four LNG-powered vessels: AIDAnova, Costa Smeralda, Costa Toscana and AIDACosma. The new ship is the second from Costa Cruises to run on LNG.
“Costa Tuscany is an innovative ship that fully interprets the new cruise experience… The departure of Costa Tuscany also represents another step in the journey that will bring our fleet back to full capacity this summer. Our restart will strengthen an ecosystem that, before the pandemic, generated an annual economic impact of 12.6 billion euros in Europe, including 3.5 billion in Italy alone,”noted Mario ZanettiPresident of Costa Cruises. “I believe cruises will soon return to normal.”
The ship’s first cruise will include a week-long itinerary visiting Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia, Palermo and Civitavecchia/Rome. After its debut, the new flagship will remain positioned in the Western Mediterranean until the end of November.
Thanks to the use of LNG, it is possible to almost totally eliminate emissions of sulfur oxides (zero emissions) and particulate matter (reduction of 95 to 100%), while considerably reducing nitrogen oxides (reduction direct 85%) and CO2 (up to 20%) emissions.
