Green and Effective Operations at Terminals and in Ports

This is dependent not only on equipment and operations, but also on the energy mix and the management of energy consumption.

There is also an increasing need to provide carbon footprint calculations to transport service clients, requiring these to calculate and expose their productrelated carbon footprint in order to improve their competitive advantage for the company’s sustainability reports or because their clients ask for it.

Sea and inland waterway terminals are crucial nodes within intermodal transport chains. Sustainable freight transport requires integrating the energy consumption and the emissions caused by the terminal operations into overall chain considerations. While some terminals, mainly the bigger ones, have already started to invest into eco-efficient technologies and handling equipment, this is still an outstanding issue for others.

The reduction of the CO2 footprint in ports and terminals will only be possible through a cleaner energy mix and through reduced energy consumption. Whereas a higher percentage of regenerative energy might raise costs, energy savings by less consumption and more recuperation has the potential to considerably reduce the energy bill.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to develop understandable, practicable and transparent methods and standard which also need to provide the basis for policy-making aiming at the reduction of port and terminal carbon footprint and the strengthening of the competitiveness of this industrial sector. The European Commission under its Seventh Framework Programme now is co-financing the research project Green EFFORTS to contribute to greener terminals and ports and to an improved energy management.

Comprehensive work related to port and terminal environmental issues has been done covering ballast water, waste, scrapping/recycling, emissions (SOx, NOx, PM, VOC) but the CO2-footprint now is pre-eminent on the regulatory and political agenda. Continuously rising energy costs are increasingly coming into the focus of terminal and port operators. This provides a fair chance to achieve lower carbon footprint and a lower energy bill at the same time resulting in an increase in competitiveness by becoming “greener” and more efficient.

From terminals view, the state of the art in development of benchmarking solutions for terminals shows that there is no simple way to compare terminals to each other. Even if container logistics is comprehensively standardised on a global level, the operational conditions can be very distinct. Sometimes processes are all at the same site (e.g. in case of a big transshipment terminal not suffering from space restrictions), in other cases processes are regionally distributed causing additional transport operations (e.g. off-site empty container depot or dry port).

Development work in relation to terminals will include (not yet exhaustive):

• Model(s) to calculate, benchmark and control energy demand and supply 
• Eco-efficient and economic handling equipment, technologies and operation 
• ICT for strategic planning, tactical controlling and benchmarking
• Management of energy demand and supply.

Operational intensity commonly is highest at container terminals, some achieving over 80% berth occupancy which means exceeding 100% yard capacity.

Therefore container terminals are in the focus of carbon footprint considerations. However, there are also other relevant types of terminals, so the project will also cover RoRo-terminals and inland waterway terminals.

On the other hand, seaports, hosting terminals, transport-related services and, in larger ports, production facilities usually are responsible for the port infrastructure (depending on the port model). Hence, a port authority can contribute to reduction of emissions in various ways, such as:

• Reduction of port fees for “green” ships 
• Supporting terminals and other operators to establish “green” technologies 
• Providing shore-based power 
• Energy management for the port as a whole to allow for e.g. load shedding 
• Smart grid (macrogrid) applications 
• “broker” to allow for ecologic (energy mix) and economic contracts with energy providers 
• Energy mix including own energy production by e.g. wind farms, solar panel installations, tidal energy etc.
• Surveillance and control of overall port emissions 
• Facilitating effective and energy-saving hinterland operations.

The Green EFFORTS project primarily aims at reducing energy consumption and improve a cleaner energy mix at terminals (container, RoRo sea and inland waterway) to be controlled in a standardised transparent and easy-to-follow way but the project will also consider the role a port authority may play to achieve these goals.

Current deficiencies for ports and terminals are

• Identification of relevant domains and processes
• Measurement and calculation methods to allow fair and transparent benchmarking and controlling of carbon footprint 
• Comprehensive consideration of opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of ports and terminals by technical, organisational and attitude-related measures maintaining or even improving the efficiency of operations.

Among the crucial research, the main questions are:

• Which operational processes and consumers must be charged to the terminals’ and the ports’ account and which belong to others accounts? 
• Which measures really account to significant energy savings and which are just decoration? 
• Does it pay off to produce energy on site by e.g. solar panels or by using wind energy? 
• Is onshore power supply to ships berthed really the best solution when considering the whole energy production and distribution process chain? 
• How to ensure that technical and operational solutions are really accepted and applied by on site staff and how to implant the “innovators’ gene” to all staff to initiate and maintain a continuous improvement process?

Therefore the research project Green EFFORTS will contribute to greener terminals and ports and to an improved energy management by

• standardised calculation methods and process simulation 
• detailed view on consumption, supply, production and management of energy 
• implementation strategy supported by training and incentive programs.

To achieve a fair and effective model, research work into processes and its context to the cargo handling/transport task, applied equipment, tools and methods and operators’ roles is required. Energy savings from improved operations (effectiveness), reduced consumption (by technical and operational measures) and intelligent sourcing (own energy production and cleaner blending) must be based on detailed knowledge of terminal and port processes to not only improve these, but also to efficiently focus on just the necessary ones resulting in an optimum costbenefit ratio of project funds. The Green EFFORTS processes will be based on the outcomes of the terminal and port processes mapping done in EU FP 6 project EFFORTS (Effective Operation in Ports), which was concluded in 2009. The EFFORTS port domains and process map methodology will serve to make systems and operations complexity transparent, allowing to specify necessary relations (process input, output, equipment and other resources, responsibilities etc.), to model processes and to simulate logical process chains. A detail view on consumption, supply, production and management of energy will be simulated based on the selected captured processes to visualise the ports and terminals level of contribution to CO2 which will then enable them to reduce and manage their energy consumption.

Achieving operational goals in the port and terminal industry requires a well-coordinated and balanced set of technical, operational and attitude-oriented measures. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to also increase the awareness of energy consumption and its environmental and economic effects by the provision of e-based learning materials, to allow flexible learning at any time and at their own pace, as well to increase the motivation to use energy more knowledgeable and responsibly. In this way, port and terminal staff shall contribute finding ways to reduce energy consumption and to use the necessary energy as efficiently and economically as possible. Managers as well as operators shall also develop the ability to create innovative ideas in cooperation with scientists and engineers based on their more detailed knowledge of processes and process conditions. The Green EFFORTS project will therefore develop an implementation strategy supported by training and incentive programs.

The Green EFFORTS project outcomes will be validated based on reliable transport figures covering port calls of vessels, vessel types in relation to carbon footprints, cargo handling volumes, European distribution as well as future scenarios for the transport growth.

Green EFFORTS Project is funded by the EU seventh framework programme and will start as from 1 January 2012.