Abstract
The changing energy landscape in Europe, marked with the development of the Energy Union in 2015, had a profound impact also on the European port sector. With European ports becoming key points of energy production, but also being prominent energy users, energy consumption has naturally risen into a top environmental priority for port authorities. To this end, the paper provides a pragmatic and comprehensive overview of the main policies, technologies and practices that European ports have adopted to-date for enhancing their energy efficiency. Addressing a gap that has been identified in relevant recent literature, it gathers actual data and port experiences from many different sources in a first attempt to better facilitate knowledge and experience-sharing activities, that will support ports in collectively moving towards a zero-emission and climate-neutral future. Most importantly, it presents an effort to rationalize research findings, assist in aligning them with practice, shed more light on the exploitation path of this line of research and better inform future research efforts.
Highlights
In pursuit of a more sustainable future, energy efficiency plays a key role
Building upon its 2020 Energy Strategy, the European Council agreed on a new 2030 Climate and Energy Framework, setting three main targets: (a) At least 40% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to 1990 levels, (b) at least 27% share of renewable energy consumption, and (c) at least 27% improvement in energy efficiency, with the last target being subject to review by 2020, for a potential increase up to 30% [3]
Often expressed through the certification of ports to energy-specific standards, such as ISO 50001, are still very limited mostly attributed to the considerable investments that are required for setting-up appropriate energy management and monitoring systems, supported by well-structured relevant processes and procedures that need to be in place
Summary
In pursuit of a more sustainable future, energy efficiency plays a key role. With the European Union (EU) importing more than half of all the energy it consumes (53.6% in 2016) and total import costs exceeding €1 billion per day, the European Commission (EC) has naturally set energy efficiency as a high and strategic priority [1,2]. Such a deeper understanding of the industry perspective, along with a comprehensive review of relevant research efforts, can contribute on building a solid foundation to better support port decision-makers into evaluating the transferability of promising policies, technologies and practices, rationalize research findings, assist in aligning them with practice, shed more light on the exploitation path of this line of research and better inform future research efforts Within this context, the rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 addresses the policy level and presents, in a descending order with regard to the associated level of commitment, the main policies, standards and strategies that European port authorities have adopted to-date for setting their energy management vision, specifying reduction targets to be achieved, and determining the procedures that need to be followed for monitoring the progress towards achieving those targets.
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