AENEAS aims to contribute towards climate-neutral and environmental friendly water transport through three new next generation clean energy storage solutions. Eventual impact is an increase of the global competitiveness of the EU waterborne transport sector by European technology leadership for energy storage solutions for diverse waterborne applications. It will focus on increased and early deployment of climate neutral energy storage solutions and significant electrification of shipping. AENEAS will provide solutions to improve overall energy efficiency and drastically lower energy consumption of waterborne transport vessels, founded upon innovative electric energy storage, which is safe and cost competitiveness compared to traditional batteries. To achieve this, AENEAS will develop three innovative electric Energy Storage Solutions (ESS) for waterborne transport, which are advanced beyond the traditional battery systems: - Solid-state batteries (SSB) for constant load waterborne transport applications. - Supercapacitors (SC) for water-borne transport applications for shaving of power peak demands and peaks during loading. - Hybrid system, which combines SSB and SC for waterborne transport applications requiring high energy and power density energy storage solutions The solutions enable (partial or full) electric shipping, taking into account conditions specific ships might encounter, including adverse conditions outside sheltered waters or going upstream on rivers. AENEAS will evaluate them for a range of applications and end uses in short-sea shipping and in-land waterways. For each of these three ESSs, one use-case will be demonstrated at TRL 5. At the same time AENEAS will define the pathway for the three ESSs for application in different ship types, achieving a comprehensive understanding of the ESSs and their applicability for diverse waterborne transport. Finally AENEAS will define a roadmap for full scale on-board demonstrators of two ESSs by 2027.

The FOR-FREIGHT project aims to maximise the utilisation of multimodal freight transport capacity and reduce the average cost of freight transport through the development of novel solutions and their integration with legacy logistics systems. This will enable more effective and sustainable management of goods and freight flows in airports, ports, inland terminals and various logistics nodes, taking into account the requirements of all involved stakeholders, and accounting for economic, environmental and social aspects. Through the FOR-FREIGHT solutions the following functionalities will be delivered: i) real-time door-to-door tracking and status monitoring & control of cargo, ii) Decision Support Systems for the optimization of resource utilization based on Digital Twin concept, iii) Increased resilience against large scale disruptive events and increased security of information based on Blockchain technology, iv) Increased sustainability through the implementation of a carbon footprint assessment framework and use of alternative modes of transportation (subway). To achieve these ambitious goals, the FOR-FREIGHT project engages world-leading T&L stakeholders specializing in different modes of transportation, such as port and airport authorities, terminal operators, airfreights handlers, train operators and major transport/shipping operators and brings them together with leading SW and technology developers, research organizations and innovative SMEs. This collaboration will drive the deployment of three state-of-the-art multimodal trial facilities, to enable real life trials in operational environments covering heterogeneous multimodal scenarios, namely, seaport to logistics hub and last mile delivery, seaport to airport (airfreight) and river-port to rail cargo. A cloud-based experimentation platform will be offered by FOR-FREIGHT, integrating access to the three trial sites, and offering advanced monitoring and experimentation tools.

SEAMLESS aims at developing and adapting missing building blocks and enablers into a fully automated, economically viable, cost-effective, and resilient waterborne freight feeder loop service for Short Sea Shipping (SSS) and/or Inland Waterways Transport (IWT). Autonomous systems will be integrated to ensure safe, resilient, efficient, and environmentally friendly operation to shift road freight movements to hinterland waterways, while enhancing the performance of the TEN-T network. The service will be delivered 24/7 by a fleet of autonomous cargo shuttles, with humans-in-the-loop located in Remote Operation Centres (ROCs), which efficiently cooperate with automated and autonomous shore-side infrastructure and safely interact with conventional systems. The services will rely on a redesigned logistics system enabling seamless freight flows by minimising delays at intermodal nodes. A digital bird’s eye view of the supply chain allows the exploitation of real-time information for planning optimisation and reconfiguration to support resilient logistics, incl. digitalised administrative procedures. The SEAMLESS building blocks will be verified and validated by conducting full-scale demonstrations in selected real-world scenarios. Transferability will be fully demonstrated in selected use cases that cover a wide range of transport applications and geographical regions throughout Europe. Based on a structured methodological framework evaluating sustainability criteria, they will act as guidance for the replication of the project results beyond the project scope and timespan. Novel business models will be thus developed and provide a framework for implementing the SEAMLESS service to minimise investment risk for first movers. Regulatory gaps and challenges related to autonomous vessel operation (e.g. social aspects) will be identified, and recommendations for policy makers to allow the smooth and safe deployment of fully automated services will be provided.