ETA is participating in its first EU-funded project, Greenport Alliances, which is funded under the ERASMUS + programme. This EU action will support universities, maritime academies, and other vocational training providers in the definition and testing of new educative materials and assist seafarers and prospective marine personnel in developing new skills, which will help them reduce emissions and save energy in daily port operations.
The EU project, conceived by the European Tugowners Association, was one of the few applications selected in the last Alliances for Education and Enterprises call. It is one of the actions included in the ERASMUS + Programme.
The project is now underway, having had its kickoff meeting earlier in the year in Turkey. The ETA Secretariat has been busy with the work package it is leading, which involved carrying out a needs analysis and identifying the gaps between what industry wishes and what academia offers. More information on this will be posted later once the report is published.
The GREENPORT´s consortium consists of 10 organizations from 8 European countries which bring together the port services sector, educational institutions, port authorities and research organizations:
Universities and educational institutions, Piri Reis University (TR) will be the project coordinator. The other institutions are the Maritime University of Constanta (RO), Antwerp Maritime Academy (BE), Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy (BG) and University of Rijeka (HR);
A research organization, MAR.TE (IT);
A port authority, Port of Aveiro (PT);
Two industry Associations, ETA and EMPA (BE);
The Maltese consultancy Across Limits will be in charge of most of the communication and dissemination tasks.
“This is a very important step for ETA, for the first time in the Association´s 60 years of history we are part of an EU-funded project. With this initiative we want to probe that the European port towage sector takes the emissions reduction efforts seriously by adopting a comprehensive and multidisciplinar approach. We have identified a lack of educational materials, courses and training that may address port operations´ emissions. By developing and testing these, we could easily and quickly improve the energy efficiency of tugmasters and pilots operations. These emissions reduction would supplement the intense efforts the industry is taking in order to equip itself with the greenest and most advanced tugs”, says ETA Secretary General Anna Maria Darmanin.
Follow the GREENPORT´s Linkedin and Facebook pages to stay up to date with the project´s developments.
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