A Review of Best Practices to Reduce the Environmental Footprint of Port Areas in the Adriatic Region

In the past decades, a large number of actions and projects has been carried out to reduce the environmental footprint of port areas, especially in the European Union. This knowledge is a strong basis for future actions and shall be considered by any stakeholder who approaches the topic. In this context, the SUSPORT project involve all major ports in the Italy-Croatia region to build a network for improving ports’ environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. The first step is represented by an analysis of the current situation of the port areas and a review of best practices put in place in other port regions, ranging from new technologies to renewable energy sources and new IT systems. In the present work, the applied methodology and the results of the best practices analysis are presented, reporting the main innovations selected by the SUSPORT ports. This collection, together with an analysis of the current status of each SUSPORT port, will be the basis for planning the next actions during the project in the Adriatic area but can be as well applied in other contexts to reduce the environmental footprint in port areas.