Breakthrough LNG deployment in Inland Waterway Transport

The mission of the consortium is to reduce the investment barrier for the ship owners with the aim to facilitate large scale implementation of LNG in inland navigation, thus forcing a breakthrough in the LNG market. This will be done by the following targeted activities:

• Study on standardisation and type approval of the most common components and configurations (tank, tank connection space, engines/engine rooms) resulting in an absolute reduction of the investment costs itself (estimated impact after project 20-30 % reduction);
• Application of innovative financial constructions in the business client relationship to avoid the need of capital investments by ship owners (e.g. by means of operational leasing, pre-financing and renting equipment) and safeguard the benefits for the operator by securing a fixed price gap between diesel and LNG;
• Elaboration of a robust business case;
• Study identifying the best locations for LNG bunkering stations.

Moreover, by means of pilots with 6 vessels and ship owners those standardised and type approved configurations will be validated and innovative business-client approaches will be tested and validated, and communicating the potential of LNG. In addition it is planned to develop four bunkering stations for LNG in order to increase confidence that the required fuel infrastructure will be available for LNG.

To reach the overall and specific objectives on time and on budget and to ensure that the outputs are widely shared, the Action includes an activity dedicated to project management, evaluation of results and dissemination. The Action is a follow-up project of the currently running TEN-T LNG Masterplan project and will also create synergy with the Horizon 2020 project planned in MG 4.4 “Topic: Promoting innovation in the Inland Waterways Transport (IWT) sector”. The Action will thus pave the way for LNG uptake in IWT and demonstrate its potential through real life deployment.