Safety aspects of new energy sources inland navigation

The policy ambition for inland navigation is to be virtually emission-free and climate-neutral by 2050.

This ambition has been confirmed in the Greendeal Maritime, Inland Shipping and Ports (2019), signed by the government, the business community and research institutes.
Partly due to this impulse, there are numerous initiatives in the sector to bring about a transition to other fuels1 and propulsion systems. These include LNG, hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, hydrogen-enriched vegetable oil (HVO), biofuel blending and various types of batteries.
All alternatives have their own pace of development towards technical and economic maturity and their own specific pros and cons. However, the alternatives mentioned also differ in terms of safety. The objective of this study is to gain insight into the safety aspects of possible new energy carriers and the translation of these into safety risks during navigation, locking, bunkering and immobilisation.