EUSDR priority area 1a – Waterways Mobility aims at improving mobility and multimodality on inland waterways of the Danube Region. Considering that more than 3,000 cargo vessels are operating in Danube countries and the Danube cruise fleet grew by 182 vessels from 2004 to 2017, reaching 346 active cruise vessels, Europe has the largest river cruise fleet in the world.
Therefore, people living along the Danube are confronted with air, water and noise pollution. Also the need of refuelling the ships means a constant supply and storage of large quantities of fossil fuels in the ports along the river.
In 2016 the European Parliament and the Council have adopted the new Regulation on requirements relating to pollutant emission limits for non-road mobile machinery (Regulation (EU) 2016/1628), which applies as well to inland waterway new-built vessels and to the vessel engines for conversion.
Long service life of inland vessels, high investment costs, low re-investment capacity of the Danube fleet operators together with knowledge deficits about green technologies and the lack of public actions & incentives impose severe barriers for the adaption of the Danube Inner Waterways Transport (IWT) fleet to forthcoming European IWT and environmental policy objectives.
Taking into account the requirements for sustainable and efficient water transportation, vessels operators, GRENDEL, a project financed by the Danube Transnational Programme, aims at improving the environmental and economic performance of the Danube fleet.
The new solutions offered by GRENDEL, a project financed by the Danube Transnational Programme, considers establishing a set of new standards and the state of the art technologies in order to design and implement a new type of Danube fleet, more profitable and with less environmental damaging impact.
Hence, GRENDEL helps the Danube fleet operators and their public counterparts in ecological and economic modernization of the sector and in definition and deployment of necessary transition measures. Dedicated activities within the project are meant to raise the awareness of the Danube fleet operators & sector concerning the impact of the advanced technologies which reduce air pollutants and energy consumption of inland vessels and which also improve transport & logistics management processes making use of digitalisation.
The project offers the frame for Danube fleet operators, both private & public stakeholders, to transfer know-how through intensive transnational collaboration, in order to overcome the existing knowledge gap, lack of activities and absence of instruments to deploy innovative solutions GRENDEL also provides the elaboration of innovative technical vessel concepts and improved transport & logistic management processes of fleet operators and sharing these as good practices for wide-scale implementation to strengthen the competitive position of inland navigation and to exploit its market potential.
Also, a major prerequisite in the overall implementation process of the project being innovative financial instruments at the transnational level (Model State Aid Scheme) in the Danube riparian countries.
All these measures are meant to contribute to a greener transportation on the Danube, by using new state of the art standards in building ships, in order to reduce energy consumption and to use alternative fuels (hydrogen, electricity), by enabling new cargo flows and new logistics concepts.
Working for a safer, more efficient and environmental friendly Danube fleet to achieve a GREEN DANUBE!
Photo: GRENDEL project
