Path2Zero: Transition to zero-emission inland shipping

NWO has awarded a research grant to a consortium led by TU-Delft for the project PATH2ZERO: PAving THe way towards Zero-Emission and RObust inland shipping. PATH2ZERO aims to contribute to the transition to zero-emission inland shipping in cooperation with the inland shipping sector. The consortium of researchers, companies and social organisations will start developing sustainable technical solutions and business models. Partners in the inland navigation chain, such as skippers and shippers, can make use of this.

Reason for the project

Waterborne transport is critical to the global economy because ships are the most efficient mode of freight transport supplying about 80% of global trade volumes and consuming less energy per unit of cargo compared to road, air and railway transport. At the same time, shipping accounts for 2.7% of global GHG emissions. As the global economy grows, total shipping emissions could account for at least 5-10% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 if no actions were to be taken. However, the Paris Agreement set an ambition to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urged the maritime industry to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reduce the emission intensity to zero by 2050. However, a low level of urgency is still experienced within the sector towards the issues of climate change and other negative impacts on society.

Aim of the project

The goal of PATH2ZERO is to achieve breakthroughs by developing actions perspectives and sustainable businessmodels for all parties in the inland shipping chain, thus contributing to the transition to emission-free inland shipping. The evaluation of zero-emission strategies, effectiveness of policies, technologies and assessment of the consequences of their implementation on the inland shipping system is a non-trivial task. We propose to develop a data-driven virtual representation of the inland shipping system, that can be potentially used for assessing the efficiency of proposed solutions capturing potential trade-offs of the interventions in the system. This digital twin can represent the system with all relevant components in a realistic way, which is to be validated by real-world data. Subsequently, future scenarios can be imposed on the digital twin, and proposed intervention measures can be applied, based on which their efficiency can be assessed together with the inland shipping sector.

Approach of the project team

Consortium meetings, separate meetings and the personal network is used to work on specific tasks of the different work packages. Teaming up with several PhD and PD students is a good way to further work on the required developments. Furthermore, where applicable student assignments will be extracted and made available for several educational modules.

The project team

The project team, within NHL Stenden, consists of Herbert Koelman (professor Innovative Maritime Techniques) and Jan de Jonge (lecturer/researcher in Maritime Technology), complemented by a large number of external partners. Within the specific work packages, the main collaborators are: