2. EU funded initiatives for energy transition

2.1 Horizon 2020 / Horizon Europe projects for alternative fuels

There are a number of Horizon 2020, and to come Horizon Europe, projects of relevance. Whilst not specific to fishing or aquaculture, there is an overview of Waterborne Transport Projects under Horizon 2020, the results from which might be transferable. Another overview looked at projects developing the use of renewables to power the clean future of inland shipping.

The Horizon 2020 supported European Research and Innovation Platform for Waterborne Industries (WATERBORNE) was set up as an industry-oriented Technology Platform to establish a continuous dialogue between all waterborne stakeholders, including with EU Institutions and Member States. It acts as a hub for all EU-funded research projects that contribute to achieving WATERBORNE’s goals, including on Energy Efficiency and Zero Emissions, addressing several different possible fuel types³. There are no projects specific to fishing or aquaculture, but again the knowledge and innovations arising from the many projects may be transferable.

The Clean Hydrogen Partnership is another initiative whose main objective is to contribute to the EU Green Deal and Hydrogen Strategy through optimised funding of R&I activities. Some of their projects are concerned with shipping, including developing an open standard for heavy-duty fuel-cell modules; development and validation of a 2 MW fuel cell liquid hydrogen ship; and defining a pre-standardization plan for hydrogen-based fuels passenger ships. For example, the project HyShip aims to design and construct a new ro-ro demonstration vessel running on liquid green hydrogen, as well as the establishment of a viable supply chain and bunkering platform.

The Laurelin project⁴ aims to obtain methanol as a renewable fuel via advanced synthesis technologies, as well as to foster breakthrough innovation in advanced biofuels and alternative renewable fuels. Likewise, the project HyMethShip (Hydrogen-Methanol Ship Propulsion System Using On-board Pre-combustion Carbon Capture) developed an approach to ship propulsion that could be based entirely on renewable energy with a solution to the challenges of on-board hydrogen storage. It aimed to innovatively combine methanol steam reforming and hydrogen separation in a membrane reactor with a CO2 capture system and a hydrogen-fuelled combustion engine in one integrated system.

Other, complementary projects include CLean INland Shipping (CLINSH)⁵, which aimed at retrofitting inland waters vessels, identifying potential financial mechanisms and technological solutions, plus putting into place a system to stimulate vessels owners to participate. Again, lessons learned from this project could be transferable to fishing and aquaculture.

An upcoming call for proposals under Horizon Europe will address fishing vessels. Specifically, in the Mission Ocean and Waters Work Programme 2023⁶, it is planned to support research that will identify a set of suitable innovative and sustainable solutions, technologies, practices and processes to be tested, validated and demonstrated in real conditions to reduce emissions and fuel consumption of small-scale fishing vessels (less than 12 m in length).

The EU-funded REFEST project will develop scalable, low-cost solutions for traditional fishing vessels. REFEST aims to reduce fuel consumption and GHG emissions by 40 %. Innovations include improved hull designs, air lubrication systems, hybrid propulsion, and recyclable materials. The project will test these technologies on three fishing ships in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, preparing for wider deployment by 2029.

The EU-funded H2-SEAS project aims to develop a hydrogen-electric fishing vessel for small-scale fishing fleets, powered by hydrogen fuel cell technology, offering increased energy efficiency and zero emissions. The project involves collaboration between the Latvian Maritime Academy, the Latvian shipyard AtoZ, and Genevos, a French SME. Research activities will assess the regulatory and environmental aspects of the initiative. The project aims to promote hydrogen fuel cell technology for small-scale fishing ships in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.

The EU-funded SEAGLOW project aims to demonstrate and compare five innovative technologies designed to reduce the environmental impact of fishing vessels. By equipping boats with hybrid electric drivetrains, methanol-powered engines, advanced polymer-based surface coatings, and low-cost permanent sensors, SEAGLOW will collect data to refine these applications. The technologies will be tested on four vessels ranging from 8.5 to 11.5 tonnes across Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Sweden. The project’s goal is to decrease the ecological footprint of these vessels, promoting sustainable fishing practices in the region.

The Fish-X Project is a 3-year project and is co-funded by the Horizon Europe Programme. The project aims at developing a Fisheries Dataspace (Fish-X), an Insight Platform, and a Traceability Application to support the objectives of Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), EU Green Deal, and Farm to Fork Strategy. It aims at overcoming key sets of challenges including the following points: 1) collection and sharing of data, in particular from small-scale and recreational fisheries; and 2) accessing, managing, and utilising data to strengthen the monitoring and control as well as the sustainability of EU fisheries..

FishEUTrust will establish five Co-creation Living Labs in the Mediterranean Basin, the North Sea and the Atlantic Sea. These will enable innovation and process validation and demonstrate the project's supply chain solutions. Examples of supply-chain innovation include creating sustainable business models, protecting cultural and culinary heritage, short food supply chains, exploiting underused fish species, and innovative engagement activities to stimulate positive consumer behaviour. The project will also develop tools to maximize trust by guaranteeing the quality, safety, and traceability of seafood products based on smart control systems (sensors), metagenomics, genetic biomarkers, isotopic techniques, and labelling/product passport/blockchain). These tools will be integrated into a single digital FishEUTrust data platform.

The NewTechAqua project seeks to expand and diversify European aquaculture production of finfish, molluscs and microalgae by developing and validating technologically-advances, resilient and sustainable applications.

The EU-funded EUAqua.Org project will enhance European organic fish production by developing innovative solutions to address critical challenges in farming Atlantic salmon, European sea bass, gilthead sea bream and rainbow trout. The project will advance phenotyping, genotyping, and genomic prediction technologies, providing essential tools for cost-effective and environmentally sustainable organic aquaculture. It will implement a comprehensive communication and training programme to ensure these tools are effectively used in the industry, including a co-developed online training course for stakeholders like breeding companies and fish farmers.

The EU-funded NOVAFOODIES project aims to yield cutting-edge, competitive functional products for European consumers, sourced from dependable, traceable, and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture value chains. This initiative will showcase economical and sustainable processes for fish, as well as micro- and macro-algae production, all of which will have positive impacts on natural ecosystems. This includes the development of a sustainable microwave-assisted algae drying procedure. Moreover, an enhancement to the biorefinery concept will separate functional extracts from both fish and seaweed.

The INFINIFISH project, starting in mid-2025, will create innovations to mitigate the impacts of fishing on the climate and enable fisheries to adapt to the consequences of climate change. The project will develop and validate technological solutions for the entire fisheries value chain, such as fishing gear with reduced seabed impact, decision support systems for optimising fishing operations, fish processing technologies that increase resource utilisation, and novel products based on currently discarded resources and non-indigenous species. The project will also investigate the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and identify effective climate change adaptations and mitigation strategies in fisheries management.

The EU-funded SEAwise project will address the need to increase benefits to fisheries while reducing ecosystem impacts under environmental change and increasing competition for space. The network of stakeholders, advisory bodies and scientists will improve stock productivity predictions using environmental metrics, density dependence, predation, stock health indicators and habitat extent. In addition, multispecies-multifleet models will provide ecosystem forecasts of the effect of fisheries management measures. SEAwise tools and courses for stakeholders and decision makers will ensure that these methods can be used directly in Mediterranean, Western European, North Sea and Baltic Sea waters. The predictions will inform an online advice tool highlighting stock- and fisheries-specific social and ecological effects and management trade-offs.

The SUSTUNTECH project offers a compact and cost-effective system to improve the energy efficiency of tuna fishing vessels by at least a 25% compared to current practices. Advanced vessel monitoring, Copernicus data and machine learning will be combined to propose strategies to improve the detection of fish distribution, reduce time at sea, save fuel and better route planning. This will fill the current need to reduce emissions of all human activities without reducing production as demanded by the Paris Agreement.

The ENGIMMONIA project tackles IMO challenges targeting decarbonization by proving the capabilities and the key role of ammonia as the most promising clean fuel for the future of the shipping sector, demonstrating clean energy solutions for on-board electricity and HVAC, fostering replicability at business, regulatory, policy and naval classification.

The EU-funded ZHENIT project will promote waste heat recovery (WHR) as a ready-to-implement solution to fully untap ‘on-board WH potential’ to achieve 2030 IMO/EU targets for shipping sector decarbonisation. The project will develop and validate WHR solutions and digital tools at different temperature levels for several on-board services like cooling, power and desalination, valorising heat in diverse vessel processes.

The aim of the EU-funded BlueRev project is to encourage innovation in local communities by focusing on “blue” sustainability and creating positive environmental impacts. To that end, it will establish three pilot regions in Europe, where it will focus on introducing meaningful changes across specific value chains in the blue bio-based sector. The project will employ existing or advanced monitoring systems to assess the effectiveness of the value chains and come up with ways to improve governance frameworks and business models in the the blue bio-based sector. Engaging all relevant actors via awareness-raising communication campaigns, BlueRev will promote socially and environmentally responsible behaviour, facilitating the transition of local communities towards sustainable blue economy models that can be adopted across Europe.

The OptiFish project aims to develop, test, and validate technologies that will improve onboard monitoring of catch volumes and fish health, enabling fishers to improve the sustainability of their operations, and better meet control requirements.

2.2 European Maritime Fisheries (and Aquaculture) Fund (EMFF / EMFAF)

There are a number of projects for energy transition supported by the predecessor EMFF and now EMFAF programmes.

One activity within the WestMed Initiative, involving five EU countries and five African Neighbouring countries in the Western Mediterranean, is for green shipping. Via a technical group, it implements innovative projects to support a greener and fully sustainable maritime transport in the Mediterranean. One of its pilot actions is for the adaptation of commercial vessels, which could be expanded to the fishing fleet.

The fishing community of El Palmar in the Albufera lagoon in Valencia, Spain, worried about the environmental state of their fishing areas, wanted to investigate the possibility of moving from diesel engines to engines running on electricity. This would reduce not only direct pollution from fuel leaks, but also carbon dioxide emissions and noise levels around the lagoon. Analysis predicted that if the prototype vessel was replicated for all 1 000 boats in the lagoon, which operate on average 300 days per year with up to four trips per day, then there would be a yearly reduction of some 1 074 tons of CO2 emissions. The overall noise pollution would also be considerably reduced.

Another example involves support and coaching, provided via the BlueInvest programme, to the h2boat start-up company for the development of hydrogen technology that can be installed on smaller vessels, sailing or motorboats. Whilst their current focus is on yachts, they are planning to do a review, with the University of Genova, to assess the number, power, use profile etc, of the EU’s fishing fleet to evaluate the possibility of introducing the technology in this sector.

Cool Blue Baltic is about cultivating community. It’s also about cultivating curiosity in coastal ecosystems and our relationship with the sea. The project comprises co-assessment workshops as input for a regenerative action plan, including regional assessments of socioeconomics, technology, environmental impacts, data sharing, licensing as well as educational needs. These assessments will culminate in a common licensing framework for regenerative ocean farming, a data-sharing network and an MPA stewardship programme for the first ever generation of sea farmers to become custodians of our waters. These results will then be disseminated through 8 events in 8 Member States, to get the conversation started about regenerative aquaculture and what benefits it can bring to local communities, while recruiting community members to take up the challenge.  

The DecarbonyT project aims to define a future direction towards high potential fishing fleet improvement. The overarching goal is to assess to what extent the use of optimized trawling gears in the Mediterranean and Black Sea can lead to lower fuel consumption and contribute to more  decarbonized fishing fleets. The following towed fishing gears are covered: otter trawlers (OTB); beam trawls (TBB); and pelagic trawlers (OTM).

The aim of the POWER4MED project is to drive the transition towards carbon neutrality in shipping. This transition requires, in the short term, the use of transition fuels (LNG), and in the medium term, securing the supply of green fuels, such as green hydrogen, methanol, electricity and wind.