Project Summary

According to International Maritime Organization (IMO) shipping industry is emitting approximately 940M tons of CO2 annually totaling for about 2.5% of the world’s total CO2 emissions. Whilst most of these emissions are occurring on ships whilst being in motion on sea/rivers/lakes, certain amounts occur upon ships calling/being berthed at ports. In present times, “cold ironing” denotes the process of providing shoreside electrical power to ships berthed at the port while their main and auxiliary engines are turned off. Cold ironing has been recognized as an effective measure for reducing harmful emissions from ships while they are being berthed at ports especially taking into consideration EU-approved Directive 2014/94/EU, which mentions the member states should implement alternative infrastructure like shoreside power technologies by 2025. Shift towards “green” energies with the ultimate goal of decreasing CO2 (and accordingly other Green House Gasses) footprint and achieving carbon neutrality in ports might seem like an easy task but is often faced with challenges. Main objective of project CIRASIM is providing a better insight into cold ironing implementation opportunities and challenges by analyzing specifics of each project's participating partner port – Ploče, Ancona, Durres, Volos and Belgrade with each port being defined by specific set of factors directly affecting its operations and therefore directly affecting its ability to implement appropriate cold ironing solution. One of the most prominent factors on ports’ side is defined by type(s) of vessels calling/visiting port(s) i.e., bulk ships, container ships, ro-ro ships, cruise ships, liner passenger ships, etc. Second most prominent factor is defined by port’s infrastructural elements such as space and/or electricity grid limitations needed for providing plausible cold ironing implementation(s) and overall possibility to provide related services based upon electricity produced from various “Green” sources. Therefore, project CIRASIM aims on providing analysis of selected ports with different specialization set throughout their cooperation in order to define individual/common port challenges and opportunities and define possible ways of solving them. Ultimately, based on state-of-the-art reports provided by participating partner ports an online tool will be produced to help (partner) ports define their cold ironing implementation gains regarding reduction of CO2 towards achieving zero carbon footprint.