Port decarbonisation is, before anything else, a transition of competences
Short-sea shipping is paying the cost of a poorly calibrated regulatory transition. Eduard Rodés argues that the real test of Europe’s maritime climate agenda will not be settled only in Brussels, but in the classrooms, terminals and engine rooms where the people who make decarbonisation work are being trained — or not.
By Eduard Rodés, Director of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport
“Port decarbonisation is, before anything else, a transition of competences. Without prepared professionals, no policy works — however well calibrated.”
A regime change, not a downturn
The numbers from the 2025 Short Sea Shipping Statistical Observatory leave little room for ambiguity. Between 2013 and 2019, short-sea traffic in Spain grew by an average of 7.8% a year, slightly ahead of road haulage; the correlation between the two modes ran at +0.95. From 2021 onward the picture inverts: short-sea contracts by 2.3% annually while road grows by 2.1%, and the correlation turns negative.
The timing is precise. It coincides with the entry into force of IMO 2020, the maritime ETS and FuelEU Maritime. “It is not a cyclical adjustment,” says Eduard Rodés, Director of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport. “It is a regime change. And denying the correlation would be naïve.”
The reading is uncomfortable but lucid. The maritime ETS is not, in his words, a bad instrument: the principle of internalising the cost of emissions is sound. The problem is asymmetry. The ship already pays 70% of the carbon cost in 2025 and 100% from January 2026, while road haulage still does not internalise its externalities at the same intensity. The mode that is most efficient per tonne-kilometre is becoming the most penalised per regulated tonne of CO2. That paradox, Rodés insists, is what the 2026 ETS review must resolve.
If it does not, sector estimates point to up to a quarter of short-sea traffic potentially returning to the road. “If that happens, the Union’s climate balance gets worse, not better. No sensible policy should allow that.”
The geography moves south
The data also tells a story of redistribution. Belgium falls 26%, France 10%, Italy 6%; Morocco grows 5%. The Atlantic loses more than the Mediterranean because Atlantic distances are longer — and the ETS penalises both distance and consumption. But there is a deeper signal: the southern shore of the Mediterranean is gaining weight because its traffic does not yet enter the same European regulatory cost regime, and because the underlying economic demand is real, tied to near-shoring and to the growth of Maghreb economies.
“Short-sea shipping is not disappearing,” Rodés says. “It is reorganising. The centre of gravity of Spanish short-sea is tilting southward, and for ports that read it well, that is an opportunity.”
That reading is not abstract. The Escola has been building a Mediterranean training network for two decades, with active programmes in Tangier Med, Tunisia, Algeria and Senegal, and a co-founding role in PLIKA — an international collaborative network of training centres anchored in port communities. The Mediterranean is not, in this view, a market to be exploited from the north shore: it is a single basin whose decarbonisation will only succeed if both shores advance together.
“The most fuel-efficient mode per tonne-kilometre is becoming the most penalised per regulated tonne of CO2. That is the paradox the 2026 review has to resolve.”
The point regulation cannot reach
There is, however, a part of the transition that no carbon pricing scheme can deliver on its own. It is the part that happens after the policy is written.
A vessel cannot connect to onshore power supply unless the crew knows how to do it safely. A FuelEU Maritime compliance file does not produce itself: it requires port operators who understand the regulation, technicians who can manage the documentation, and shipping agents who can advise their clients on pooling and banking mechanisms. Alternative fuels — methanol, ammonia, hydrogen — are not deployed by infrastructure alone; they are deployed by people who know how to bunker them, store them, account for them and certify them. Eco-incentives are designed by administrations but applied by professionals who must understand exactly what qualifies and what does not.
“This is what we call, at the Escola, the transition of competences,” Rodés explains. “Port decarbonisation is, before anything else, a transition of competences. Without prepared professionals, no policy works — however well calibrated.”
The phrase is more than a slogan. It is the diagnosis on which the Escola has been building its programmes for twenty years, and the spine of where it is heading now.
Regulation can set the direction of the energy transition, but it cannot implement it alone. The decisive question is whether port communities have the competences to turn climate policy into operational reality.
A training architecture for the transition
The Escola’s response to the energy transition takes shape in PORT2ZERO, a portfolio of four courses designed to prepare professionals for the operational realities of decarbonising ports. PORTPLUG covers onshore power supply. FUELSHIFT addresses alternative marine fuels. GREENPORT OPS focuses on port energy efficiency. PORTGRID tackles the governance of port energy communities and smart grids — the area where ports stop being passive consumers and become active nodes in regional energy systems.
PORT2ZERO does not stand alone. It connects to a wider training architecture that the Escola has been building for two decades: MOST for short-sea shipping, SURCO for rail intermodality, Forma’t al Port for port vocational pathways, Port Virtual Lab for the digital layer that all of the above increasingly require. The logic is to treat decarbonisation not as a vertical specialism but as a competence running across every layer of a port community — from dockers to traffic managers, from customs agents to shipping company directors.
This logic is also the one informing the Escola’s reference framework, the EEIT-CSTP Competence and Skills Training Programme, which maps eight thematic areas across four EQF levels and gives institutional ports, companies and training providers a common language for what a professional should know and be able to do at each stage of their career. Energy transition, connectivity, environment and resilience are not separate silos in that framework — they are the axes along which the same person must grow.
“The Atlantic loses more than the Mediterranean. But the deeper signal is that the southern shore is gaining weight — and Spanish ports that read it well will find an opportunity there.”
The question Europe will have to answer
The European Union has spent twenty years saying it wanted more short-sea shipping. The 2026 ETS review is the moment to demonstrate whether the policies being applied are coherent with that discourse — whether they include a safeguard mechanism against modal back-shift, a visible reinvestment of maritime ETS revenue into port decarbonisation, and a consistency between the cost burden placed on the mode and the strategic role assigned to it in the TEN-T network and the Motorways of the Sea.
But there is a part of the answer that does not depend on Brussels. It depends on whether, when those policies are properly calibrated, there will be enough trained professionals on the quayside, on the bridge, in the control rooms and in the corridors of the port authorities to make them work in practice.
“That is what the Escola can guarantee,” Rodés concludes. “When the policies are calibrated well, there will be people prepared to make them work. The transition of competences is not a consequence of the energy transition. It is its condition.”
