Commercial small-scale fisheries along the Baltic Sea coasts have declined over the years although these fisheries are viewed as important for coastal development and food security at the local, national, and EU levels. The viability and future of small-scale fisheries are severely challenged by problems caused by grey seals. The conflict, occurring between Baltic Sea coastal fisheries and conservation of the grey seals, has been severe since the mid-1990s and continues despite attempts to find a more balanced situation. Resting on reviews of multiple material, this paper explores the state-of-the-art opportunities for mitigating the seal-fisheries conflict and asks how these are related to social struggles and social justice. Our paper concludes that co-existence of coastal fisheries and the grey seal is possible but necessitates political will and co-designed seal management plans that help implement context-specific measures. Seal deterrents, for instance, give hope as a supplementary conflict mitigation measure – along with seal-proof fishing gear – but provide only partial relief. From the fisheries sector’s position, influencing the size of the seal population is a logical solution. The lifting of the EU trade ban of seal products as a regional derogation would allow sustainable management of seal populations so that they be used as renewable natural resource. Monitoring changes in the seal population is crucial for maintaining a balanced population. Reaching co-existence is timely, because – unlike the seal – the diverse Baltic coastal fishing culture is increasingly endangered.
This study investigates the critical parameters necessary for evaluating large-scale renewable offshore energy hubs, based on insights from industry experts. Using a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis methodology, the experts emphasized that, in their view, technical and economic parameters rank higher than environmental and societal considerations when evaluating large-scale renewable offshore projects, including green hydrogen production. Environmental and societal parameters should not be neglected, but they ought to be evaluated outside this assessment framework. This could refer to the environmental impact assessment already in use. These findings provide a foundation for evolving the traditional Triple Bottom Line theory into a Quadruple Bottom Line approach by incorporating technical parameters alongside economic, social, and environmental factors, while addressing the specific challenges of offshore energy hubs. Among all the parameters ranked across the four domains, the top 15 were exclusively techno-economic, with technical and economic scores averaging 4.5 and 4.3 out of 5, respectively. In contrast, societal and environmental scores averaged below 3.0. To ensure the successful deployment of offshore energy hubs, a stepwise approach is recommended to manage complexity, reduce risks, and support scalable solutions. This approach aims to align the needed industrial parameters with the demands of the energy transition.
Port Integrated Multi-Energy Systems (PIMES) play a critical role in advancing sustain-ability at ports. Assessing the dynamic contribution of PIMES to port sustainability is essential for guiding future developments. This research introduces an innovative multi-criteria dynamic sustainability assessment framework tailored to evaluate the performance of PIMES. The framework employs a diverse set of indicators covering multiple criteria to comprehensively assess different aspects of PIMES. A game theory-based combined weighting approach is uniquely applied to integrate subjective and objective evaluations, ensuring a balanced and robust assessment. Furthermore, the cloud model is utilized for an in-depth evaluation of the overall sustainability of PIMES, offering a novel perspective on managing uncertainty. The framework's applicability and effectiveness are demonstrated through a case study of the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, with a sensitivity analysis of the indicators conducted to enhance reliability and confirm the robustness of the proposed method. The evaluation results indicate that during the development of the PIMES, the sustainability performance of the studied port improves progressively, with ratings of “average”, “poor”, “average”, “average”, “good”, and “excellent”. The sensitivity analysis shows that the sustainability of ports is most influenced by the failure loss rate and operation & maintenance cost of PIMES. This framework can serve as a decision-making tool for port authorities to enhance energy efficiency, reduce emissions, and achieve long-term sustainability objectives at ports.
Adopting green vehicles in the transport sector is a highly effective policy for mitigating the sector’s carbon footprint. Moreover, the EU transport policy acknowledges the pivotal role of inland waterways (IWW) in decarbonizing Europe, with a strategic objective to enhance its modal share through the transition from road to IWW. This paper investigates the potential of electric autonomous Roll-on Roll-off (RoRo) ships to enhance the competitive edge of IWW as compared to road transport. This paper examines the impact of this innovative transport system on sustainability by analyzing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across economic and environmental dimensions using a comparative case study approach and quantitative analysis data. The main result is that implementing electric autonomous RoRo ships can lead to a 45 % reduction in OPEX (operational expenditure), with profitability expected after about 3.5 years. Emissions decrease by more than 60 %, and by 2030, CO2 emissions in the Well-to-Wake (WTW) cycle are projected to reduce by approximately 77,000 tonnes, aligning with EU transport and environmental policies.
This paper explores the potential of using green, autonomous ships in revitalizing inland shipping in Europe against the backdrop of declining market share and the dominance of "economy-of-scale" in waterborne freight transportation. It assesses the economic and environmental viability of converting freight from road to waterborne modalities in broader business ecosystems, specifically along the Rotterdam-Ghent corridor. The analysis leverages operational and commercial insights from logistics firms, ports and terminal operators, combined with data on European goods flows by road, and accounts for operational, financial and environmental variables including realistic scenario building and ecosystem implications. Findings indicate that inland shipping in general and green, autonomous shipping in particular offer both economically and environmentally viable alternatives to road transport. The study calls for further research into green, autonomous ships from an ecosystem perspective as a potential solution to current challenges in sustainable freight transportation.
Results from life cycle assessment (LCA) studies are sensitive to modeling choices and data used in building the underlying model. This is also relevant for the case of fisheries and LCAs of fish products. Fisheries' product systems show both multifunctionality because of the simultaneous co-catch of multiple species and potential constraints to supply due to natural stock limits or socially established limits such as quota systems. The performance of fisheries also varies across seasons, locations, vessels, and target species. In this study, we investigate the combined effect of modeling choices and variability on the uncertainty of LCA results of fish products. We use time series data from official Danish statistics for catch and fuel use of several fisheries disaggregated using a top-down procedure. We apply multiple modeling approaches with different assumptions regarding the type of partitioning, substitution, and constraints. The analysis demonstrates that, in the presence of relevant multifunctionality, the results are substantially affected by the modeling approach chosen. These findings are robust across years and fisheries, indicating that modeling choices contribute to uncertainty more than the variability in fishing conditions. We stress the need for a more careful alignment of research questions and methods for LCA studies of fisheries and recommend a very transparent statement of assumptions, combined with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. This article met the requirements for a gold-gold data openness badge described at http://jie.click.badges.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, its impacts on the maritime transportation and logistics field have been multi-dimensional. In addition to the green shipping corridor proposed by the Clydebank Declaration in the United Kingdom in 2021, port digitalisation and decarbonisation of the maritime industry have become focal issues in the field. The industry needs a new framework to offset the negative impacts of the pandemic and to accommodate integrated technologies comprising of artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud systems, internet of things (IoT) and others, which have been applied to the industry. Having considered these circumstances, this paper aims to propose the 6th-generation ports model with smart port (6GP) as a new framework for the port logistics industry in the post-COVID-19 period. The proposed 6GP contributes to providing business development strategy and port development policy for stakeholders in the industry in the post-pandemic era reflecting focal challenges such as digitalisation, decarbonisation, sustainability and smart transformation. It also contributes to expanding port devolution theory from the fifth-generation ports (5GP) to 6GP.
Life depends on healthy oceans that provide ecosystem services (ES) to humans, including provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural ES (Kovalenko et al., 2023). However, biodiversity, habitats, and the delivery of marine ES and resources are increasingly threatened by growing human activities in the oceans (Worm et al., 2006). Blue-growth activities, such as shipping and energy, eutrophication, and climate change represent major pressures that affect marine ecosystems (Halpern et al., 2008; Ehlers, 2016). Over the past two decades, increasing scientific attention has focused on the need to preserve and restore healthy marine waters and their role in adapting to climate change (Santos et al., 2020). This challenge calls for holistic approaches that advance our knowledge. Within the contributions to this Research Topic (see Figure 1), three themes are central to driving further research to expand our understanding in this interdisciplinary field.
This report includes a broad description of the findings from work package 2 in the EFFORT project and is made as the fulfillment of delivery L2.1 in the project. First an overall description of the Port of Hirtshals together with its infrastructure is given in chapter 1 together with some background aspect for the development of the Port of Hirtshals. In this chapter also the 5 companies who had shown their interest in participation in the project are described in more detail. Based on this as outcome of task 2.1 and described in chapter 2 an overall system architecture is set up for the existing industries at the Port of Hirtshals and next for the future expansion of the port. Based on the overall system architecture an adaptation of the system to the EU SGAM model is performed and explained. Then the overall set up of the data hub is briefly introduced, to see how it is related to the overall energy system set up. The final part documented for task 2.1 is two examples of sequence diagrams for first the processes in Forskerparken and next one which is valid for both the Fish Terminal, Lineage as well as Danish Salmon, since many of their electrical consuming processes here in an overall manner look the same.
In chapter 3 the base scenarios for the existing industries at Port of Hirtshals are set up. This is done based on information and wishes from the industries and the local Distribution System Operator (DSO), which is gained partly by bilateral discussions as well as on a workshop held with all the involved industries present at the same time. The scenarios will be described according to the IEC standard 62559-2, to ensure better utilization of the ideas in other projects, by applying a standard template known in this area.
Finally, in chapter 4 scenarios for the future expected extension of industries and activities at the Port of Hirtshals are set up. This is based on inputs from GPN, HH, NEN as well as Hjørring Municipality, Hirtshals Fjernvarme and from inputs from workshops with the existing industries at the port. Also here the IEC 62559-2 standard will be applied when describing the use cases.
The scenarios set up will later be used for the further development of the data hub, which is to be set up in the project, as well as for the model set up and control perspectives in the later WPs.