The transition of the North Sea Region’s maritime and offshore industries toward a sustainable“Blue Growth” future is driven by incentives to unlock new growth areas, develop and apply new technologies, and increase productivity. The development and utilization of microgrids provides an opportunity to accomplish these goals. The rapid development in infrastructure and the trend toward the electrification of the seas has provided a context for growth, and microgrids pose a moduleto couple to existing infrastructure; a retrofit to improve the utilization of renewable energy sources. This report presents the outcome and analysis of a survey taken by 22 respondents. Respondents expect microgrids at large ports to emerge in 10 years and respondents rated the business potential at 3,77/5. Political factors are mentioned by most responses (40%), followed by social (30%), economic (16%), and technological factors (14%).
This paper is framed in the context of the EU Interreg IVB North Sea Region project Food Port. In line with this project, this paper aims to define mathematically cost and time models able to provide realistic information about the performances of road haulage and of intermodal chains using short sea shipping (SSS) in the North Sea Region (NSR). The models integrate the necessary variables to establish the impact of different fleets and SSS features on the competitiveness of intermodal chains for the movement of food related goods. The models were applied to evaluate the opportunities for the success of intermodal chains using the Rosyth-Zeebrugge route. The results obtained validate the utility of the models and they suggest possible changes to the current operation of this SSS service in order to increase the marked potential possibilities for the intermodal chains through Rosyth-Zeebrugge.