Infrastructure Malta is completing the laying of high voltage underground cables that will power shore-to-ship electricity systems for cruise liners, slashing their emissions in  Grand Harbour by 90%.

During a site visit, Infrastructure Minister Aaron Farrugia said the €50 million investment would alleviate the suffering of families in the area, who had long been plagued by the pollution emitted from cruise ships. 

The project will allow cruise liners and cargo ships to switch off their gasoil- or heavy-fuel-oil-fired engines and plug in to shoreside electricity to energise their onboard systems while they are berthed in port. 

The first shore-to-ship connections of the cruise liner quays at Pinto Wharf, Floriana and Boiler Wharf, Senglea are scheduled to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2023.

Infrastructure Malta said the project will make the country one of the first in Europe to adopt this environmental technology on a port-wide scale.

This week, the agency laid the last stretch of underground cables of the eight-kilometre 33-kilovolt network that will distribute electricity from an Enemalta plc distribution centre at Jesuits Hill Marsa to the project’s two new frequency converter stations at the Deep Water Quay, in Marsa and Boiler Wharf, in Senglea.

This summer, it will be completing this backbone network with the submerging of 800 metres of subsea cables from Bridge Wharf, Marsa to Coal Wharf, Corradino.

Meanwhile, Infrastructure Malta also laid 20 kilometres of another network of 90 kilometres of 11-kilovolt cables and control cables that will connect the equipment in the frequency converter stations with the quayside stations and the 17 ship connection points on the Grand Harbour quays in Valletta, Floriana, Marsa and Senglea.