Novel holistic intelligent tools for variable retrofit and decarbonised scenarios (ZEWT Partnership)

Topic updates

16 September 2025

The call for proposals HORIZON-CL5-2025-04 closed on 04/09/2025. 167 proposals were submitted to the call. The breakdown per topic is:

HORIZON-CL5-2025-04-D5-13 (IA): 5

Novel holistic intelligent tools for variable retrofit and decarbonised scenarios (ZEWT Partnership)

TOPIC ID: HORIZON-CL5-2025-04-D5-13

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme:

Call: Cluster 5 Call 04-2025 (WP 2025) (HORIZON-CL5-2025-04)

Type of action: HORIZON-IA HORIZON Innovation Actions

Type of MGA: HORIZON Lump Sum Grant [HORIZON-AG-LS]

Status: Open for submission

Deadline model: single-stage

Opening Date: 06 May 2025

Deadline dates: 04 September 2025 17:00 (Brussels time)

Topic description

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Novel holistic intelligent tools for variable retrofit scenarios and new operational modes will be developed and then demonstrated by the application to a retrofit ship test case;
• Measures to overcome the limitations of current generation of design tools will be proposed which currently do not account for the interferences and mutual influences among the various retrofit systems installed on board;
• Contribution to the retrofitting of existing aging fleets in the EU;
• Increased competitiveness of European shipyards, marine equipment providers and repair yards in the maritime green technology sector through the development of cost-effective solutions, that support ship-owners in making the European fleet climate neutral and still competitive;
• Accelerated regulatory approval processes, best practice guidance, and easy-to-customise strategies for retrofitting by reducing the commercial risk of deployment for ship owners.

Scope:

In the quest to get energy reductions from retrofitting, new design requirements and constraints are emerging, e.g., due to the introduction of new low-carbon fuels, and new added propulsion systems (e.g., wind assisted systems). Furthermore, other technical measures are not yet “standardised” for retrofitting existing ships, due to other difficulties or high costs.

There is also a lack of design/retrofitting experience in applying these new solutions. A practical example is the space rearrangement in the electrification of the ship, including the installation of heavy battery sets, a solution that uses space: but changing ship’s volume and weight distribution along the beam might have a strong effect on the dynamic stability of the vessel.

The realisation of ad-hoc web tools and guidelines to help with the retrofit task is currently under development, based on the limited number of new small-scale demonstrators within ongoing projects (e.g., Green Marine, RETROFIT55, etc.).

These approaches combine mature and new technologies creating a decision-support system (DSS) that integrates these solutions. However, even if the final results have not been delivered yet, these projects are considering the retrofit problem in a silo-based mode, that is not including a full multidisciplinary design optimisation with the mutual interactions among the technologies. This might lead to difficulties in achieving overall optimal goals, therefore resulting in a limited impact on the transition to zero-emission waterborne. These simplified strategies are indeed not accounting, in a full coupled mode, for the interferences and mutual influences among the different retrofit systems installed on board (i.e. available space and payload, safety constraints, electrical constraints, etc.): in other terms, they are not considering the global problem of retrofitting in a holistic way, which is a major objective of this call. Also, the holistic intelligent tools could explore possibilities for modular or serial solutions which reduce costs of retrofitting.

Furthermore, in the short and medium term we are and will be observing multiple ongoing regulatory processes (by IMO, EU, UNFCCC, ES-TRIN) developing frameworks and standards that will shape waterborne transport in the next decades. This further element of variability, i.e. the uncertainty in decarbonisation ambitions as well as on the variability in cost and availability of carbon-neutral fuels, not considered yet in the current approaches, claim for a large effort for new holistic retrofit intelligent design tools for exploring multidisciplinary solutions in variable decarbonisation scenarios.

Innovative holistic intelligent design tools, with a multi-objective strategy and AI simulators, have to be developed rapidly and tested if we want to significantly contribute to the transition to zero-emission waterborne transport, and this has to be done by integrating the many sectors involved in the design.

Proposals are expected to address all the following aspects:

• The development of a novel intelligent design digital tool which can fully integrate decarbonising concepts (e.g., alternative fuel propulsion systems, auxiliary propulsion systems, renewable energy sources, etc.) and can be used for retrofit concepts;
• The design digital tool should have the capability of considering together multiple decarbonisation solutions for operating vessels, accounting for reciprocal influences, and be able to integrate existing loading instrument (software or data package) for stability, weight and hull strength control;
• Retrofit configurations might include changes in operational modes (e.g., slow steaming, weather routing, etc.) which should also be evaluated against human and organisational risk factors introduced;
• The design tool should also include a life-cycle perspective from design to scrapping;
• Preliminary (intermediate) validation of the design tool by testing at model scale original versus refitted ship solution, also assessing the environmental impact of the solutions, including on biodiversity, air quality and aerial and underwater noise;
• Final demonstration, applying the tool in six virtual demonstrations, one for each one of the six ship types detailed in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of the Zero-Emission Waterborne Transport Partnership, considering together multiple decarbonisation solutions and producing final optimised refitted designs to be tested in operational environment conditions with a given operational profile. Participation of ship owners and operators to these virtual demonstrations should be ensured to pave the way to further market deployment of the solution and real retrofitting operations.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Zero Emission Waterborne Transport’ (ZEWT). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on results to the European Partnership ‘Zero Emission Waterborne Transport’ (ZEWT) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

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