Yesterday, on the 30th of March, the Climate project workshop took place in Koper.
Climeport is a European project, started within the framework of the Mediterranean Program in year 2008 and encourages Mediterranean Ports to combat climate change reducing greenhouse emissions and fostering a better use of energy in order to achieve sustainable development in port communities.
Within the project six Mediterranean ports (Valencia and Algeciras – Spain, Marseilles – France, Koper – Slovenia, Piraeus – Greece and Livorno – Italy) are cooperating to diagnose port influence on climate change. Their aim is also to create actions plans to reduce ports’ impact on the environment. Among the project partners we can find organizations involved in energy consumption reduction, such as the Valencia Energy Agency (Spain), Goriška Local Energy Agency (Slovenia), Electricity Technical Institute (Spain) which are providing not only know how, but are disseminating the project’s results between peer organizations throughout Europe.
Ports involved within this project represent almost 20% of the total Mediterranean maritime traffic. All participants are aware that the environmental problem is not a matter of a single player but a global challenge, this is why they are working together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are focused on vessel emissions, terminal emissions, innovative transport and energy efficiency. Right now an extensive benchmarking process is being carried out.
Federico Torres, Director of the Area of port services at the Port Authority of Valencia (the Lead Partner in the project) told that in this case we do have a pilot project. The results are going to be very interesting. The methodology for calculating CO2 can be implemented in other ports and also other sectors.
