The Danube is more than a river – it is a lifeline, transport axis, economic and innovation area and link between cultures.
Facilitating the modal shift away from road transport towards more energy efficient means of transportation is one of the central issues the EU faces in creating a more climate friendly future. Regarding the transport of bioenergy products, the ERDF co-funded project ENERGY BARGE delivered important contributions to facilitate the modal shift towards inland waterway transport. During the past 30 months, the main achievements included the creation of the Modal Shift Platform (www.energy-barge.eu), the realisation of a series of B2B networking events and the implementation of five pre-feasibility studies for future investments in Danube ports, as well as two pilot investments in the Port of Vienna and MAHART Freeport of Budapest. With this successful track record, the project now comes to an end.
During the latest project period, the ENERGY BARGE Modal Shift Platform for green bioenergy logistics was set up. The platform provides information on national and transnational biomass and bioenergy markets in the Danube region, incl. biomass import and export flows. Further, it provides practical guidance on the transport, handling and storage of biomass and informs how Danube ports can become biomass and bioenergy hubs. The platform enables the user to find new partners along bioenergy value and supply chains and to discover suitable logistics service providers such as shipping companies, forwarding companies as well as port and terminal operators.
The recently published outputs of the project are “Transnational policy recommendations” and “Transnational energy security” can be downloaded.
The aim of the documents is to contribute to better integrated policies and practical solutions to further develop biomass exploitation in the Danube region linked to green inland waterway logistics and to identify barriers regarding biomass transports via the Danube waterway and to suggest potential improvements.
