The Nautical Congress addresses how to reduce environmental impact with alternative fuels

The evolution of consumer habits, alternative fuels, and artificial intelligence have centered the debate on the morning of the first day of the 12th Nautical Congress organized by the National Association of Nautical Companies (ANEN) in Málaga.

Ander Bilbao, founder of Grupo Sörensen and CKO of Beo Worldwide, explained during his presentation "Trends Shaping 2025: envisioning the nautical future" what the consumer trends have been in recent years and what current consumption habits are. “There are many changes in the world and they occur because humans have a tendency to get bored with everything,” he explained, inviting the more than 400 attendees to be optimistic and more open when making decisions.

During his conference, Bilbao analyzed the current consumer, describing their habits and future trends. According to this profile by Bilbao, when consuming products and services, society currently prioritizes them being practical, comfortable, exclusive, minimalist, and immediate. But above all, they want to live experiences. For this reason, companies that offer exclusive, personalized, sustainable, and community experiences that can be shared with people who have the same interests are the ones that best adapt to the market.

Next, José Luis Fayos, president of the Sustainability Committee of the International Council of Marine Industry Associations (ICOMIA) and internationalization advisor for ANEN, delivered a presentation titled ‘Measure to improve: redefining nautical with Life Cycle Analysis’.

Fayos focused his intervention on sustainability, a "somewhat overused term lately," as he acknowledged. After reviewing the various engines with alternative fuels that several brands have launched on the market, he observed that the challenge now is to achieve more efficient batteries and greener energies so that boats can incorporate these technologies with a lower carbon footprint. "We have an extraordinary opportunity to decarbonize in a short and exhaustive term the fleet," he asserted. However, "there is no single solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the propulsion of recreational boats," he clarified.

On the other hand, he focused on the increasingly demanding European regulatory framework, specified in the ‘Green Deal’. “We need a common approach to reduce environmental impact and meet this conglomerate of standards. And this involves developing a proactive attitude instead of waiting for the administration to regulate,” he insists.

At this point, he presented the Life Cycle Analysis that has been developed for a year by the European Boating Industry, with the collaboration of shipyards and associations from all over Europe, including ANEN. “We are working on a transparent, objective, and harmonized model, created by the industry and with international validity. It consists of a detailed analysis of all the processes and materials involved in a boat, in all phases of its life, from the extraction of raw materials for its manufacture to the management of the end of its useful life, including its use phase and the maintenance and replacement of parts,” he explained.

Environmental impacts that are objective and measurable, such as human toxicity, particle emission, acidification, use of mineral resources, or consumption of water and soil will be assessed. They are classified into five environmental indicators, each with its unit of measurement: climate change; use of fossil resources; use of resources, minerals, and metals; use of land, and marine eutrophication. “The next step will be to determine which calculation tool we are going to develop,” he advanced.

During his speech, Fayos announced that on March 18, the first version of this methodology will be presented through a webinar. “This is unstoppable. Not even Trump will be able to stop it,” Fayos remarked, highlighting that the implementation of these protocols will allow Spain to gain competitiveness in the international nautical market, due to the high availability of renewable energies in our country. “ANEN is at the disposal of all companies in the sector to help them on this path,” he concluded.

To close the morning's round of presentations and after his revolutionary talk last year at the Bilbao Congress, Alex Rayón, CEO of Brian&Code, reviewed how Artificial Intelligence has evolved over the past year, noting that it has been a very rapid evolution. “The capabilities of Artificial Intelligence have continued to improve, and these machines have become multimodal, such as video and audio computing,” he explained.

During his intervention, Rayón gave several examples of how Artificial Intelligence is a very useful tool for automating tasks, performing summaries, creating images from scratch, or analyzing the SEO and GEO of a website. “It is very important to explain well to the AI what we want, to train it,” he emphasizes.