Environmentally friendly power options
Inland waterway transport is considered as an environmental friendly mode of transport, but it is by far not exploited at its full potential. Moving forward to further improve its performance, alternative fuels and electrification will play an important role. Therefore, the aim of this site is to collect information of environmentally friendly power options (gas and gas-electric propulsion, diesel-electric propulsion, fuel cell propulsion or battery electric propulsion) in inland waterway transport including innovation power configurations.
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Game changer inland waterway transport?
🖊 Silvia Dopler (silvia.dopler@fh-steyr.at) 📅 11.04.2023
90% reduction of transport-related emissions by 2050 is a major goal of the Green Deal, announced in 2019 by the European Commission. Inland waterway transport (IWT) represents an eco-friendly transport mode, besides railway, compared to air and road transport. Borca, Putz and Schreiner (2021) identified 26 European automotive production plants which are located near to a port with access to navigable IWTs. They identified a modal shift potential to the eco-friendly distribution of their cars by RoRo-vessels and estimated a potential reduction of CO2 emissions of up to 60% compared to pure road transport. Find out more about it in our storymap where we answer the question: „How high is the CO2e-saving potential in the EU for the transport of fully assembled cars by a modal shift to inland waterway vessels in the main haulage?”
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E-Ferry – Fully electric into a sustainable future?
🖊 Corinna Litges (corinna.litges@fh-steyr.at) & Herfried Leitner (herfried.leitner@tts-group.at) 📅 29.03.2022
This article presents the exciting Horizon 2020 project “E-Ferry” and explains how an all-electric ferry gives hope to achieve the ambitious UN goals in the transport sector.
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External costs in inland waterway transport: A comparison with road and rail transport
🖊 Florian Hofbauer (florian.hofbauer@fh-steyr.at) 📅 14.12.2020
External costs of freight transport will become much more important in transport mode decisions due to future measures such as CO2 taxes. Inland waterway transport has significantly lower external costs than road and rail transport, thus demonstrating its potential as a sustainable transport mode.
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Innovative engineering ideas and green technologies for inland vessels: a short summary
🖊 Laura Simmer (laura.simmer@fh-steyr.at) 📅 04.08.2020
Theoretically there are many possibilities for alternative fuels (Liquefied Natural Gas, Compressed Natural Gas, Gas-to-Liquid, Biofuels, Methanol, Ethanol, Hydrogen), and also for the reduction of energy consumption (energy efficient navigation and energy efficient ship design), but the long service life of inland vessels, high investment costs, low re-investment capacity of the Danube fleet operators as well as the lack of public actions & incentives impose severe barriers. Although inland waterway transport is considered as an environmental friendly mode of transport, its potential is far from being fully exploited and emissions at local or regional level have a huge reduction potential.
