Port energy models alignment with real port activities, their coverage of hydrogen technologies, and as tools for decarbonisation

Ports have significant emissions from using carbon-based electricity and fuels. This paper presents a scoping literature review of port energy models, providing interpretations of the models capabilities and limitations in representing activities, coverages of hydrogen technologies, use as decarbonisation prediction tools, and to highlight research directions. Three model categories were assessed. The Conceptual-Driven use a top-down analytical structure for objectives optimisation. Recent publications have increasing coverages of port activities by electrical with hydrogen technologies, but limited representation of diesel equipment. The Data-Driven represent entire ports as top-down, or focus on electrical mobile equipment in bottom-up, data-only abstract structures for algorithm analysis. Both model types omit coverage of hydrogen powered mobile equipment at temporal resolutions representing typical duties and measured emissions for weighting predictions. A Hybrid-Driven model is proposed as a decarbonisation assessment tool for, improved representation of diesel mobile equipment duty-profiles, referenceable baselines, and matching with hydrogen technologies characteristics. • A summary of hydrogen, energies, and technologies coverage within port energy models. • An interpretation of port energy models representation, capabilities and limitations. • The energy model improvements proposed for representing port vehicle duty profiles. • Port energy model research directions for assessing hydrogens’ decarbonisation role. • A scoping literature review of 35 journal published energy models representing ports.