On 28 March 2023 we will start the Second Short Study Tour, an initiative promoted by NESOI – The European Islands Facility, and it will last till the 31 of the same month. The Study Tour - managed by our partner R2M - will take place in Sicily, more in specific, it will be hosted by the Port Authority of the Strait of Messina with also partnership with the Department of Civil Engineering, Environment and Materials (DICEAM) of the Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, ENEA – the Department of Energy Efficiency, and the CNR – Advanced Technology Institute for the Energy “Nicola Giordano” (ITAE).
Thanks to the participation of outstanding speakers and interesting site visits, participants from six different European nations (Sweden, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Norway, and Estonia) will take part in 4 days of visits and very interesting full-in-immersion sessions on current topics focused on the decarbonisation of ports activities and clean boats. The goal is to provide all participants, technicians, project beneficiaries, and experts with the chance to network, share expertise, and create capacity for investible energy transformation projects on islands.
Among the main topics that will be discussed are:
- Sicily situation, energy landscape
- Opportunities for inversible energy transition projects
- Sicily Strait Energy Planning
- Clean Boats Forum
- Exploring pathways to clean boats
- Energy Planning best practices
- Marine Technologies
- Renewable
- Decarbonisation of the maritime transport
Due to its management of six ports—Messina, Tremestieri, Milazzo, Reggio Calabria, Villa S Giovanni, and Saline—the Port Authority of the Strait of Messina is one of the main hosts of this initiative. It is working to build an interconnected network of ports that will allow for the yearly mobility of 21 million passengers as well as 6 million cars and trucks in the Strait of Messina region.
The major strategic goals for developing practical and secure infrastructures that provide effective and user-friendly services are sustainability, operational excellence, local partnerships, and digital transformation. In actuality, these ports have always served as the focal points of a unified intermodal reality and the last transportation connection in the European Scandinavian Mediterranean corridor.
The program of these four days is based on a continuous synergy work between the different participants, local beneficiaries, and stakeholders, in order to ensure a continuous work of mutual exchange of information and best practices, alternating visits to places of interest for the project. All this is to ensure the achievement of the positive impacts expected by the Study Tour namely well-shaped investible energy projects, improve project development capacity, and, finally, boost the activity of networking among the beneficiaries of the NESOI projects.
More specifically, the purpose of the Short Study Tour is to promote the exchange of individuals who are directly involved in energy transaction projects on the islands. This will not only encourage the sharing of best practices among islands but will also ensure that the many projects that NESOI funds and supports are in direct contact with the community. Additionally, as one of the main goals of NESOI is to attempt to ensure that the projects themselves can be successfully replicated on other islands, we wish to take advantage of this opportunity to strengthen the NESOI methodology's capacity for replication.
The European Islands Facility NESOI aims to unlock the potential of EU islands to become the locomotives of European Energy Transition. To do so, NESOI aims to mobilize more than €100 Million of investment in sustainable energy projects to give EU islands the opportunity to implement energy technologies and innovative approaches, in a cost-competitive way. NESOI has selected 56 such projects across the European Union and provide them with financial resources and technical support.