Towards the decarbonization of the maritime industry: Design of a novel methodology for the sustainable strategy assessment

• A novel methodology to classify sustainable actions carried out in EU ports is presented. • New indicators and have been designed to evaluate the impact of sustainable actions undertaken in ports and terminals. • A metric to evaluate the fulfillment of net-zero IMO targets in the maritime sector is presented. • OPS supplied by RES is the primary action adopted by largest EU ports. • OPEX, lack of infrastructure and a favorable pricing system are identified as the main barriers to further deploy OPS. The growing concern about the increase in European Union (EU)’s total CO 2 emissions due to maritime activities and the ambitious goal of net zero emissions they are asked to fulfil by 2050 are leading the way to the adoption of new sustainable strategies. In this article, a novel methodology for the classification of the sustainable actions is proposed. Moreover, new indicators have been designed to compare the level of sustainable development of each port. Among them, a new coefficient for the assessment of the Ports’ Potential Sustainability (PPS) have been designed. Main results showed that 56% of the actions were in the improvement and environmentally sustainable group while 19% were shift-economic actions related to the installation of technologies. As a matter of the fact, all European ports under analysis have adopted cold ironing system, which can reduce up to 4% of the global shipping emissions. Similarly, 50% of them have already integrated renewables energies and prioritize equipment electrification in their processes. Finally, the most relevant projects to optimize the energy consumption of daily operations and the main challenges that still need to be addressed have been analyzed, showing the current trends maritime sector is undertaking to advance towards the sustainable development.