Martín assures that the Port of Santander is building its future both in terms of energy and space rationalization.
The president of the Port Authority has inaugurated this morning the UIMP Port Week with a meeting on the energy challenge of the ports.
Santander 06/09/2022. The president of the APS, Francisco Martin, has highlighted this morning the "high level of investment" of the port of Santander with works in progress worth 150 million euros and a high level of rationalization of space as "we are growing upwards with the car silo and looking for alternative spaces such as La Pasiega", with the aim of "not filling the Bay". Martin has assured that the Port "is building its future", also from the energetic point of view, with the new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) station that will receive in March the first ship propelled with this fuel "of transition towards other solutions".
This was stated at the Palacio de la Magdalena in Santander during the opening of the meeting of the UIMP 'The energy challenge of ports: Climate change, decarbonization and new business opportunities', where in addition to Martin have participated the Minister of Industry, Tourism, Innovation, Transport and Trade, Javier López Marcano; the president of Puertos del Estado, Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena and the rector of the UIMP, Carlos Andradas.
The Minister of Industry and Vice President of the Port Authority has expressed his conviction that next year there will be machines working on the plain of La Pasiega, the great industrial infrastructure project of Cantabria that will be a basic support for the development of the port of Santander.
Marcano, who congratulated the Port Authority for the organization of the meeting and the timeliness of the subject raised, focused his speech on the importance of the plain of La Pasiega, "the dry port of Santander", with a strategic location between Santander, Torrelavega and the main roads of Cantabria.
Marcano, who has recognized that this project will be his greatest contribution to the development of the port of Santander, also recalled that La Pasiega "meets its deadlines" and yesterday was published in the profile of the contractor the tender to award the engineering project for an amount of just over 90,000 euros, with a period of two months of execution for drafting, "which does not prevent the development of other actions such as the expropriation of land." "We are taking safe and confident steps to meet the objectives committed to Parliament and therefore to Cantabria," said the Minister of Industry.
For his part, the president of Puertos del Estado, Rodriguez Dapena recalled that the approval of the strategic framework of the port system of general interest is near, which in his opinion will have to face the transformation of the fleets worldwide with a demand for alternative fuels. In this sense, he pointed out that ports have the opportunity to set an example and be the first to value certain processes of production and supply of alternative fuels.
Climate change and energy transformation
The meeting was attended by several specialists to address issues related to climate change, port decarbonization solutions and the acceleration of energy transformation.
Miriam Bueno Lorenzo, Deputy Director General for Energy Foresight, Strategy and Regulation and Secretary of State for Energy of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, spoke on 'Climate change and energy transition: policies, strategies and public commitments'. Next, Professor of Hydraulic Engineering at the University of Cantabria and Director of Research at the Institute of Environmental Hydraulics (IH), Íñigo Losada, gave his view on the impact of climate change on ports.
In the block on alternatives to decarbonization through alternative energies, the managing director of TEICAN Medioambiental, Agustín Valcarce, developed his vision on photovoltaic energy, while the dean of the Association of Civil Engineers of Madrid and professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the European University of Madrid, as well as a member of the ECOREL-UPM Research Group, María Dolores Esteban Pérez, referred to wind energy.
Inna Braverman, CEO and co-founder of Eco Wave Power, dealt with marine energy, and Cristina Ballester Sierra, chemical engineer of the Applied Engineering Unit of the National Center for Hydrogen Technology Experimentation, spoke about green hydrogen and ammonia.
In the afternoon, in the block dedicated to the acceleration of the energy transformation, the energetic design of merchant ships will be discussed by the naval engineer Rafael Gutiérrez Fraile, coordinator of the Energy Transition Commission of the Spanish Association of Naval and Ocean Engineers; green algorithms to minimize the carbon footprint associated with maritime transport, which will be addressed by the technical director of NextPort by Moffatt & Nichol, Óscar Pernía Fernández; self-consumption in port energy communities, which will be developed by the president of the Port Authority of Santander, Francisco Martín; and the energy innovation ecosystem of ports, a topic that will be addressed by the president of Puertos del Estado, Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 7, will be the turn of the meeting The Digital Transformation of Ports: new technologies, new ways of thinking and acting that, under the direction of Santiago Díaz Fraile, director of the APS and Óscar Pernía, founding partner and technical director of Next-Port, aims to explore, reflect and discuss some of the key issues around which revolves the design, planning and implementation of digital transformation strategies in ports. In this way, it is intended to give continuity to the one held last year under the title Exponential Technologies and their Impact on Ports and their Logistics Chains.
The content of this course, which has counted with the collaboration of Next-Port, will be divided into three areas entitled The Technological Architecture for Digital Transformation, Investing in Talent and Digital Transformation Strategies.
Finally, on September 8 and 9, the VI Meeting on Port and Maritime Law will be organized by the International Association of Port Law and the UIMP, with the collaboration of the State Ports Agency, the Port Authority of Santander and the Spanish Association of Maritime Law, in law, and directed by José Antonio Morillo-Velarde del Peso, head of the legal department of Puertos del Estado and Fernando Bárcena Ruíz, lawyer and president of the International Association of Port Law. The aim of the course will be to analyze the different aspects that make up the legal framework that regulates and harmonizes port and maritime activities and practices.
The contents will be structured around seven topics that will act as axes of analysis, reflection, dialogue and debate and will address the following issues: the standard specifications of port services, price revisions in government contracts, competition law and public procurement, the case of landfills in the port of Marin, the reform of the Law of State Ports and Merchant Marine, the legal consequences of port congestion and the right to double instance in administrative law sanctioning.