Tomorrow, Friday 26, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will begin in Paris. For the first time, the opening ceremony will take place on the water. In order to pay tribute to climate change, 30 ships are to be converted or equipped with electric drives for the opening ceremony on the Seine.
Overview of the existing fleet
To this end, the inland port operator Haropa Port and the French water authorities VNF have obtained an overview of the decarbonisation of inland shipping in the country. The result: shipping companies are currently working flat out to reduce the CO2 footprint of their ship fleets and switch to more sustainable drives such as electric motors, fuel cells and hybrid drives.
Haropa Port sees the Olympic Games and the transfer of the opening ceremony to the water as a unique opportunity to accelerate this energy transition on French waters. In order to get the 30 ships with alternative propulsion systems on the water, a comprehensive programme has been set up to modernise and build new vessels.
Five million euros in funding
A total of five million euros has been earmarked to finance the programme. This money is currently being used to electrify 20 ships that were previously diesel-powered on the Seine. In addition, eleven new ships will be battery-powered from the outset. According to calculations by the Paris harbour company CPP, this will cost more than 38 million euros. That's 1.2 million euros per ship.
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Of the ships to be refurbished, 60 per cent will be equipped with purely electric drives. The remaining 40 per cent will be equipped with hybrid drives. For newbuilds, 63 per cent of the shipping companies are relying on battery-electric drives and 27 per cent on hybrid drives. The remaining nine per cent of ships will run on hydrogen.
Charging infrastructure is being developed
This programme is part of the goal of making river shipping in Paris completely climate-neutral by 2037. To this end, charging stations for the electric boats are also gradually being installed. The three moorings at Port de Grenelle in the centre of Paris are already connected to the electricity grid. In addition, Haropa Port and VNF have already installed a further 44 charging stations at the moorings along the Seine. A further 82 charging stations will be installed along the Seine and the Oise by the end of 2024. More will follow in the years to come. Haropa Port and VNF are investing a total of 9.2 million euros in the development of the charging infrastructure for electric ships. (su/mfo)
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