Two EU-funded Horizon 2020 projects, PIONEERS and MAGPIE, have concluded five years of work by delivering a Green Port Master Plan to the European Commission alongside free digital tools available to any European port, extending the benefits of the work beyond the 90 partner organisations in the two consortia.
PIONEERS, coordinated by the Port of Antwerp-Bruges with the ports of Barcelona, Venlo and Constanța, ran 19 demonstrations spanning clean energy, digital innovation and sustainable port design over the programme period.
MAGPIE, coordinated by the Port of Rotterdam with HAROPA PORT, Sines and DeltaPort, tested 14 solutions across the same themes. Both projects were launched under the European Green Deal framework.
The practical outputs are designed for broad adoption. PIONEERS’ Green Port Master Plan Handbook Explorer offers a free five-step methodology covering a port’s current carbon footprint, 2050 vision, external pressures, proven innovations and a transition roadmap, alongside a carbon footprint methodology and a tool for identifying individual ports’ main barriers to transition.
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MAGPIE’s Green Innovation Compass is an open knowledge platform consolidating innovative technologies, operational concepts and digital solutions to support port transformation. Together these tools form the practical core of the Green Port Master Plan presented to the Commission.
Rob Smeets, CEO of Port of Antwerp-Bruges, described the projects as demonstrating that the technologies, knowledge and partnerships exist, with the challenge now being to scale what works across Europe and to address the regulatory, financial and organisational barriers surrounding each innovation.
Boudewijn Siemons, CEO of Port of Rotterdam, called for faster movement from pilot to practice through structured European collaboration, while being direct that the EU cannot be expected to fund innovation programmes of this kind indefinitely, urging ports to explore new mechanisms, including a review of EU financial market regulation, to attract private and corporate capital into port innovation.
