European Commission’s €4.8 billion net-zero investment benefits maritime sector

The European Commission this week pledged €4.8 billion of emissions trading revenues to fund new net zero projects, including those for transport, which will benefit the maritime industry in particular.

The Commission has selected 85 net zero projects with a cleantech manufacturing focus to receive the grants from the Innovation Fund, which takes the total amount of support from the Commission’s Innovation fund to €12 billion, it said on Wednesday October 23.

The projects span an array of sectors including net-zero mobility such as maritime and aviation and renewable energy and are a mixture of large, medium and small, alongside pilots, located in 18 countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden and Norway.

The selected projects will deliver 61 kilotonnes per year of renewable fuel of non-biological origin (RFNBO), contributing to increasing the use and production of renewable energy in hydrogen in hard-to-abate applications in the transport and industrial sectors.

A range of projects focused on net-zero mobility that were awarded funds will predominantly focus on the maritime sector, the Commission said.

“These projects involve building and retrofitting vessels for RFNBO fuels and electricity use, as well as reducing emissions in road transport component manufacturing,” the Commission said, adding that awarded projects will also support sustainable transport fuels, producing 525 kilotonnes per year of renewable fuels.   

Among the projects targeting the transport sector are Samskip Holding’s H2ydroShuttle project in the Netherlands, which aims to design the first high-speed zero emission short sea container service powered by multi-megawatt liquefied RFNBO hydrogen fuel cells.

Additionally, an Italian project to produce the first hybrid decarbonization platform for passenger ships – dubbed Indigo and run by Princess Cruises – will provide “space, time and cost-efficient retrofitting with improved operational efficiency and reduction of emissions and impacts.”

Additionally, the fund will invest in Evoy’s Norwegian project Cormorant, which is looking to develop a large-scale manufacturing facility for electric motors for maritime transport.

The Hermes project in France, led by Aura Aero, is aiming to produce hybrid electric regional aircraft for sustainable aviation.

The selected projects are all due to begin operations before 2030 and over their first ten years of operation are set to reduce emissions by about 476 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, the Commission said in a statement.

“New projects in the maritime, aviation and road transport sectors will boost efforts to reach clean mobility,” Commissioner For Climate Action and responsible for transport Wopke Hoekstra said.