To reduce the societal and climate impacts of transport, AUTOFLEX will develop solutions for enabling a modal shift from trucks to inland waterway transport, and for electrification of both modes. The key is to acknowledge that electrification of transport has an impact on vessel and vehicle operations and must therefore be tightly integrated with the transport operations by both modes (integration of cargo and energy distribution). The AUTOFLEX scope is therefore to: 1) Develop small autonomous un-crewed zero-emission inland vessels that can operate on underutilised waterways, that are resilient towards low water events, and are competitive. 2) Develop transport system components and an architecture that enables transhipment between modes, urban distribution, and strong competition with road transport. 3) Develop a combined cargo and energy hub (Stow&Charge) for generating and distributing electric energy for the transport system. 4) Develop new business models for operating the transport system, providing services for the transport system, and for offering services based on the transport system (e.g., energy and urban logistics). 5) Validate the ship concepts and transport system through simulation and quantitative analysis, scale model testing and demonstration, and full-scale demonstration. 6) Develop a roadmap for exploitation, recommendations to policy and industry, steps towards realisation, and propose KET interface standards. AUTOFLEX enables zero emission transport (waterborne and road), innovative port infrastructure, climate neutral and climate resilient waterway vessels, integration of shipping into logistic chains, safe and efficient fully automated and connected shipping, and competitive waterborne European industries.

The European maritime transport policy as well as national governments recognizes the importance of the waterborne transport systems as key elements for general and sustainable growth in Europe. In line with the EU Transport White Paper 30% of road freight over 300 km should shift to other modes such as rail or waterborne transport by 2030, and more than 50 % by 2050. So far, this ambition has failed spectacularly. In the period 1995 to 2016 total freight increased with approximately 30%. The share of road transport in intra-EU ton-km increased, whereas the share of short sea shipping (SSS) dropped. Inland had a slight decrease. Waterborne transport has a great potential to reduce road congestion as well as pollution from the transport sector. When used correctly, it is very energy efficient and new ship types can operate with a combination of electric batteries, fuel cells and, when necessary, highly efficient combustion engines, e.g. powered by LNG. The main objective of AEGIS is to develop a new waterborne transport system for Europe that leverages the benefits of ships and barges while overcoming the conventional problems like dependence on terminals, high transhipment costs, low speed and frequency and low automation in information processing. AEGIS intends to use new innovations from the area of connected and automated transport, including smaller and more flexible vessel types, automated cargo handling, autonomous ships, new cargo units and new digital technologies to regain the position that waterborne traditionally had in cargo transport. Ships are most efficient when the cargo holds are full. AEGIS will look for ways to attract new cargo, inbound as outbound, to waterborne transport. This requires new types of services, new business models and better logistics systems.

The main aim of RH2IWER is to create a solid basis for the acceleration of hydrogen fuel cell powered vessels in inland waterway shipping by demonstrating six commercially operated vessels. These vessels are of varying lengths and types – 86m, 110m and 135m; container, bulk and tanker vessels with installed power ranging from 0.6 to ~2 MW. The project will also work with standardization of containerized fuel cell and hydrogen solutions. With the demonstration, standardization work and multi-level analysis, combined with vigorous dissemination and communication measures, RH2IWER project will create a basis on which the shipping industry can significantly reduce their environmental footprint and remove emissions from their entire fleet in the future. The inland waterway fleet comprises a total of more than 15,000 vessels and the vessels within RH2IWER are representative of the typical dry and liquid cargo vessels in the Rhine and Danube fleets, amounting to 12,800 vessels or roughly 80% of the inland waterway fleet. The lessons learned from developing fuel cell and hydrogen solutions for the vessels in this project could be applied more or less directly to these vessels, which would then immediately reduce the GHG emissions from these ships to zero. The consortium includes 14 European partners, with five shipowners Future Proof Shipping, Theo Pouw, VT Shipping, DFDS and Compagnie Fluviale de Transport with its affiliated entity Sogestion. The shipowners are supported by two of the main maritime fuel cell manufacturers Ballard Europe and Nedstackl, as well as world leading gas company Air Liquide and its affiliated entities Air Liquide Belge and L'Air Liquide SA. Lastly, highly respected knowledge institutions VTT, Stichting Projecten Binnenvaart and University of Genova with their affiliated entity H2Boat, will assist the companies in successful deployment as well as the dissemination, replication and exploitation of these demonstrations and technologies.

CLARION gathers a strong multidisciplinary team of 21 partners with complementary research, technical and business profiles, including four ports with inland waterway connections, the top-3 in Europe, in terms of container throughput, namely Rotterdam, Antwerp/Brugge and Hamburg in the North Sea and Constantza, the largest European port in the Black Sea. CLARION ports handle 35.5% of the total container traffic in European ports as per EUROSTAT published 2021 data and provide access to the major inland waterways of the Rhine-Main-Danube axis, Scheldt and Elbe, ensuring significant impact of the application of results on the European maritime ports industry. 10 pilot demonstrations focused on making port infrastructure and hinterland transport resilient and sustainable. CLARION pilot demonstrations will focus on going beyond the SotA to test and deploy smart and sustainable quay walls, monitoring and management system for the corrosion of port infrastructure with an automated floating mobile measuring system, shore tension applicability for RORO and CONRO terminals during storm conditions, flood impact control DT, dredged sediment reuse in port infrastructure, NBS applicability in maritime ports, DT to support the resilience of connected inland waterways infrastructure, a DT for extreme weather forecasts, federated learning using aerial drones/satellite data/in-situ sensors for cadastral measurements and response to extreme weather, and an EMS for extreme weather events. Though each pilot demonstration will be carried out in one of the CLARION ports, achievements will be shared among them and beneficial results will be adopted in the short-term. International stakeholder communities will be engaged to create an Open Innovation Ecosystem that will promote collaboration and sharing of experiences supported by an AB consisting of experts in climate resilience in ports to ensure that transferability of CLARIONs results will not be limited among CLARION ports.

Delays within the maritime supply chain can lead to a “hurry-up-and-wait” syndrome of vessels sailing at a predetermined speed to their destination port to find the terminal or port not ready thus waiting at anchorage in the port area. Updated information about current states are not communicated to all partners in the different port call phases. This makes traffic of vessels waiting, entering, and departing from ports challenging. Communicating terminal or port readiness earlier to vessels allows them to adjust speed and save fuel of up to 23% of the overall voyage including the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions. The average annual waiting time at anchorage is found to be ca. 9% for wet bulk, ca. 9% for dry bulk, ca. 7% for LPG tankers, ca. 7% for dry breakbulk, ca. 5% for container ships, and ca. 4% for LNG tankers. RoRo-vessels benefit from less traffic-condensed port entries and seaways as well as transparent real-time communication of readiness levels regarding ports and terminals as well as multi-modal hinterland transportation critical for RoRo-port departures. MISSION will develop an interoperable digital real-time-based optimization and decision support tool enabling coordinated port call operations planning and execution in terms of time, fuel consumption, environmental impact, and safety spanning the overall maritime supply chain. Stakeholders benefits from increased transparency and information sharing between shipping companies, terminals, ports, and service providers, enabled to optimize their resource and capacity planning including port’s hinterland modalities in compliance with the Maritime Labor Convention.