Analysis and quantification of the contribution of FENIX Project to environmental sustainability

Source: FENIX

The FENIX Project (A European Federated Network of Information eXchange in LogistiX, partly co-financed by the EU in the Connecting Europe Facility) aimed to define methods and tools to create a federation of platforms and/or systems used by the various operators involved in the logistics activities, in order to facilitate the exchange of data. Federation is enabled through the use of specific “connectors” that must be implemented by platform owners.

Among others, some analyses have been developed in FENIX in order to understand what are the benefits that a public administration could have in connecting to the FENIX network through the appropriate connectors. These investigations of the EGTC member organisation Uniontrasporti have revealed that the FENIX Project, initially created to serve exclusively the – entirely private – world of logistics and transport, presents numerous elements of interest also for a public administration, thus promoting synergy and collaboration between the two worlds. Knowledge of the routes and the estimated times of arrival (and of exit) of trucks from a logistics terminal could help the public administration to better manage their territories in the organization of heavy traffic, so that this creates the least possible impact on the overall mobility.

At the conclusion of the analysis, the evaluation of the effects was carried out in terms of the emission differential deriving from an optimization of the routes of heavy vehicles between the port area and the motorway accesses. Overall, the annual CO2 saving in Genoa would be around 120 tons (300 working days per year), accompanied by around 40 tons less fuel consumption. The monetary value of this reduction in emissions has been quantified at approximately 170,000 euros/year, mainly connected to less congestion, greater safety and less pollution. The extension of the methodology and the application of the calculation used for Genoa made it possible to quantify an overall annual saving of further five terminals – Novara in Italy, Strasbourg in France, Duisburg in Germany, Antwerp in Belgium, and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. – of about 351 tons of CO2 and more than 118 tons of fuel. Therefore, at the level of the Rhine-Alpine corridor (including the port of Genoa) the annual saving is more about 471 tons of CO2 and more than 158 tons of fuel.

The full study is available here.