On December 3 and 4, the European Green Deal projects – MAGPIE, PIONEERS, OLGA, STARGATE, and TULIPS – jointly organized a conference to present their mid-project findings to the European Commission as well as to relevant stakeholders. This conference was an important and valuable moment for the projects to exchange lessons learned and results found so far as well as present their advancements to a European stakeholder audience, who are key players in the topic.
The Brussels Airport, part of the STARGATE project, hosted the first day of the conference, which was focused on digitization in ports and airports for greener mobility. On this day, the MAGPIE project presented two of its demonstrators. Celeste Mulwijk, from the Port of Rotterdam (Netherlands), presented Demo 10 “Spreading Road Traffic” during a session titled “Digitising Mobility in ports and airports”. She focused her presentation on explaining the digital tools developed to help assess the peak hours of traffic and shift the port’s truck traffic to off-peak hours while also proposing the fastest way possible between the terminal and the customers. Thierry Verduijn, from Port of Rotterdam discussed MAGPIE’s autonomous e-barge from Demo 6 during the “Decarbonising modes of transport” session. He presented the solution of the autonomous and electric barge and how it can help decarbonize inland waterway transport. Jaco van Meijeren, from TNO, also presented Demo 9, which focuses on Green and Autonomous Trucking.
On the second day of the conference, which was hosted by the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, leader of the PIONEERS project, at the Antwerp Zoo the topic revolved around clean, alternative fuels being explored by the 5 projects. Larissa van der Lugt from Erasmus UPT was able to present the non-technological solutions being explored by the MAGPIE project to facilitate the implementation of the technological solutions during the “Common Drivers and Barriers for the energy transition in ports and airports” session. Koen van Eig from Zero Emissions Shipping, presented the Green Energy Container Solution from Demo 7 during the “Clean and Alternative fuels” session. He dove into the subject of using green hydrogen and li-ion energy packs to provide electricity to an e-barge. Jorrit Harmsen from TNO spoke during the “Novel ways of monitoring GHG emissions and ultra fine particles” session. He introduced the GHG emission tool, which allows ports and related stakeholders to manage and plan their operations for lower environmental impacts.
During both days, a marketplace took place. In the MAGPIE stands, other MAGPIE demonstrators and Work packages gained visibility. Martijn Streng, Erasmus UPT and Work Package 8 leader, presented a visualization of the MAGPIE monitoring strategy and efforts. The model of the e-buoy was also on-site and was presented by Blue Water on the second day. Demo 3, which is focused on shore-power peak shaving, was also presented by Kennard Brandenburgh from Distro Energy. The MAGPIE consortium looks forward to more knowledge exchange moments with other European projects in the future. We also hope to present more of our solutions and results to the European port ecosystem in short.
