Energy Barge — Final Con­fer­ence in Budapest

In his key­note address, Péter Kader­ják, Hun­gari­an Min­is­ter of State for Energy Affairs and Cli­mate Policy, spoke about the import­ance to exploit the poten­tial for green energy in the form of bio­mass in the Danube region in a sus­tain­able way, thereby increas­ing energy secur­ity and effi­ciency in the Danube coun­tries. The first ses­sion of the con­fer­ence focussed on the fur­ther devel­op­ment of inland water­ways and actions to increase cargo trans­port on the Danube, how the EU Strategy for the Danube Region sup­ports the goals related to sus­tain­able energy sources and how the meas­ures imple­men­ted in ENERGY BARGE fit into the transna­tion­al policy object­ives. Dur­ing the latest pro­ject peri­od, the pro­ject part­ners fur­ther improved the ENERGY BARGE Mod­al Shift Plat­form for green bioen­ergy logist­ics (energy​-barge​.eu) that was presen­ted in the fol­low­ing ses­sion. The plat­form aims to enable a bet­ter con­nec­ted and inter­op­er­able envir­on­ment­ally friendly trans­port sys­tem for bioen­ergy products along the Danube. It pro­motes the build­ing of new part­ner­ships, improves cross-sec­tor­al cooper­a­tion and provides inform­a­tion to sup­port the devel­op­ment of innov­at­ive value and sup­ply chains. A review on the series of five busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) meet­ings that were held dur­ing the last six months was giv­en. The use of syn­er­gies between the biomass/​bioenergy sec­tor and the Danube logist­ics sec­tor were an essen­tial ele­ment of the B2B events, offer­ing a neut­ral plat­form for ini­ti­ation of new trans­ports on inland water­ways. Match­mak­ing ses­sions offered a favour­able frame­work for strength­en­ing the Danube as a logist­ics axis for biobased cargo. In total, more than 200 par­ti­cipants vis­ited the B2B meet­ings. This num­ber con­firms the need for neut­ral cooper­a­tion plat­forms in the field of Danube logist­ics to ini­ti­ate new inland water­way trans­ports and to pro­mote a mod­al shift towards the Danube water­way. Thus, the pro­ject part­ners will foster B2B meet­ings in the future and extend this proven concept to oth­er cargo groups togeth­er with inter­na­tion­al part­ners. Five Danube ports (MAHART-Free­port Bud­apest, Port of Straub­ing-Sand, Port of Vienna, Port of Vuko­var, Slov­ak Ship­ping and Ports JSC) are part of the pro­ject con­sor­ti­um. In the frame of the pro­ject, the ports elab­or­ated feas­ib­il­ity stud­ies to become bio­mass hubs as part of a transna­tion­al net­work along the Danube. The res­ults were presen­ted by port rep­res­ent­at­ives dur­ing the after­noon ses­sion. Each port defined spe­cif­ic invest­ment pro­jects, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion mar­ket, tech­no­logy and fin­an­cial aspects. As a res­ults from the pre-feas­ib­il­ity study, Slov­ak Ship­ping and Ports JSC announced to estab­lish a new bio­mass tran­ship­ment and stor­age facil­ity on the port of Brat­is­lava with a total invest­ment of 250,000 €. A work­shop regard­ing the con­nec­tion of ports/​multimodal hubs with the bio­mass sec­tor con­cluded the final ENERGY BARGE con­fer­ence. Three dis­cus­sion groups tar­geted the top­ics ​“Place­ment of bio­mass industry in ports”, ​“Future devel­op­ment of Danube ports” and ​“Deriv­a­tion of policy recom­mend­a­tions for the Danube region”. Users and pro­viders of inland water­way logist­ics must work togeth­er on innov­at­ive, mul­timod­al solu­tions and speak with one voice when it comes to improv­ing the infra­struc­tur­al pre­requis­ites and to uni­fy cus­toms reg­u­la­tions at the nation­al bor­ders. In addi­tion, it will be import­ant to make the logist­ics sec­tor more attract­ive for young pro­fes­sion­als since there is already a short­age of qual­i­fied per­son­nel, which will become an even more ser­i­ous issue in the next years due to the age struc­ture in this sec­tor. More inform­a­tion on the ENERGY BARGE pro­ject and its res­ults can be found here: www​.inter​reg​-danube​.eu/​e​n​e​r​g​y​-​barge. Source: News­let­ter #25, Energy Barge, 28.05.2019