Will the electrification of quays to allow ships at the berth to turn off onboard engines in order to reduce air pollution? The complexity of the implementation of the relevant projects and their effectiveness was discussed during the recent appointment organised by the Propeller Club in Salerno entitled "Cold Ironing and energy transition in ports", in which the subject is been analyzed under the technical, administrative, entrepreneurial aspect.

During the meeting it was specified that the technology to electrify the ports is ripe and, in the Italian case characterized by port scans inserted directly into the urban fabric of the cities, can represent a solution to break down the emissions of pollutants. The same National Retake and Resilience Plan allocates 700 million to 34 national ports to adopt the solution that allows the docked ships to turn off their engines and connect to the ground power grid to ensure the operation of the onboard devices. It was also recalled that, already widely experienced in North Europe, the so-called cold ironing needs particularly reliable ground infrastructure and capable of handling large peaks in terms of energy to be disbursed, depending on the characteristics of the linked units.

"Between a megayatch and a ro-ro," Giuseppe Sachero, vice president of South West Europe Industrial and Marine Solution at Siemens Energy, said in a statement. "There are several orders of magnitude in the amount of electricity and the type of tensions." to be used. Over the medium term, the electrification of quays can be the solution, on the short term they will presumably develop hybrid configurations considering also research on alternative fuels, particularly in the area of cruises and the ferries ".

The "bottlenecks" in infrastructure management spoke Walter Abbondanza, Sales Area South Italy of Siemens Energy-Siemens Spa-highlighting the "upstream" difficulty of supplying the benches with the high tensions necessary but also the issues on the "sea side" : " transferring electrical energy through flexible plug-ins is possible only if the ship is equipped for this type of operation. To date, most commercial fleets are not prepared even because of the dilemma that must be resolved by shipowners compared with the cost of the cost. "

On the economic resources available to implement the projects of electrification of the quays, with delays that are likely to call into question the substantial funding made available to the EU, the Chairman of the Authority of The Port System of the Central Tyrrhenian Sea, Andrea Annunziata, noting that Italian portuality has been activated "in order to put the total of the 400 million allocated to our port system," of which 25 million and 15 million are destined for the cold ironing in the ports of Naples and Salerno, respectively. " Annunziata also made the proposal to take account of the "social costs of pollution" in the determination of future mechanisms capable of containing the greatest energy costs and made it known that in short, with the signing of the tenders for the electrification of the quays last September, will begin in the port of Salerno the first overtures for the determination of operational programs. "Energy is not distributed through a large electric booth but from the Via Ligea electrode," the president of the AdSP said. crosses the galleries of West Salerno. " It will subsequently depart the interlocution with port operators to define priorities and compatibility related to their projects. Among them is the "zero emission" terminal presented by Agostino Gallozzi, president of Salerno Container Terminal, at the centre of a proposed investment plan by the group already started for some years : "We have the ambition," he said. Gallozzi-to achieve this goal within the next five years by taking advantage of the cold ironing but also equipping us with infrastructure and electrified means for all operations at the quay. Environmental sustainability must not be experienced as an additional burden but as an obligation we have with respect to the future. The electrification of benches is right in the ecosustainable waterway of the fifth-generation ports that we are aiming for with determination. "