With the pressure to reduce emissions in the maritime industry, there has been an increase in demand over the past years for ports and harbours to provide cold-ironing services so that vessels can stop running their shipboard engines for auxiliary hotel loads when at berth, and in turn reduce emissions. In response to this, numerous solutions for providing shoreside power supply to these vessels have been developed and installed. However, there is no ready solution which provides this option for vessels which are at anchorages. The project involves the technical, economical and operational feasibility study of a near-shore cold-ironing solution, specifically catered for consistent and sufficient power supply to cruise liners in port anchorages, using a relevant case study (such as the Hatston Pier) as a basis. Orcades Marine has been working on a near-shore cold-ironing design using Hatston Pier as a potential use case. Given the rising demand for cold-ironing from cruise liners, and the steady traffic of cruise ships at Hatston, the Orkney Island Council Harbour Authority expressing explicit interest in the concept. It is intended for the solution to sustain the hotel loads of a cruise ship at anchorages, which would require hefty cable management system, making the operation of connecting the cable to the ship at sea to be challenging. Orcades Marine's team which has decades of operational experience with ports and vessel operations, including cruise ships, have devised a technical solution to make this task practical and safe. The project will be carried out by a team of experts from Orcades Marine, Orkney Island Council Harbour Authority, Schneider Electric UK, GAC UK and Aquatera. The team is highly experience in the own fields, allowing for the delivery of a comprehensive project, covering considerations from engineering (both marine and shoreside infrastructure), safety, harbour operations and management, to environmental and stakeholder engagement.

The 'Hydrogen in an Integrated Maritime Energy Transition' (HIMET) project will demonstrate maritime decarbonisation enabling technologies, encompassing the design, development, and demonstration of four solutions: 1.Hydrogen systems and future micro-grid architectures for resilient shore-side power, including testing of a hybrid hydrogen/solar system and deployment of this hybrid system on Orkney; 2.Combustion of hydrogen in a marine propulsion engine, through testing at a dedicated hydrogen test facility in the north east of England; 3.Demonstration of a marinised hydrogen storage container, for the application on board a vessel; and 4. Hydrogen fuel cell demonstration, showing the potential of the technology to safely supply auxiliary power for a vessel. This ambitious programme of activities will focus on the decarbonisation of two key maritime sectors in Orkney: ferry service and cruise terminal operations. These first-of-a-kind demonstrations will build the evidence base needed to enable broader maritime decarbonisation using hydrogen technologies. Although our activities focus on addressing challenges seen in the Orkney context, our findings will be applicable to all island and coastal environments where vessels provide vital lifeline services. After project demonstration activities are complete, HIMET partners will pursue opportunities to develop applications for type approval of the systems demonstrated, in order to facilitate uptake across the UK, and beyond. This will create market opportunities for the integrated HIMET team of UK technology developers and maritime engineering experts. In parallel, we will also carry out research and stakeholder engagement activities to establish how these deployments can best inform the broader maritime energy transition in Orkney and elsewhere. We will draw upon embedded energy system and maritime innovation expertise in Orkney and in the north east of England, both areas identified as centres of excellence in research and development for these sectors. Our consortium is further strengthened by the involvement of leading technology developers from all across the United Kingdom, who will bring their innovative systems and solutions to Orkney for testing in our "living laboratory". This combined work programme will build on Orkney's position as an ideal location to research, develop and demonstrate the maritime technologies and working practices of the future.