A five-party consortium has signed off on a pilot project to produce and deploy green hydrogen at the port of Savona, with rail freight operations — including last-mile movements within the port — earmarked as a primary use case for the alternative fuel.

Ports of Genoa, the authority that also oversees Savona, launched the initiative together with FS Logistix, energy company Edison, fuel distributors' association Assocostieri and the Logistics Association of Sustainable Intermodal (ALIS). Deputy Minister of Transport Edoardo Rixi attended the signing ceremony.

"Savona could become a concrete laboratory for the energy transition of Italian ports," Rixi said.

The consortium will work on two fronts. First, it will identify suitable hydrogen users across logistics activities, both on land and at sea. Second, it will define what Port of Genoa described as the "optimal technical-economic configuration of hydrogen production and distribution plants" — effectively working out what size and type of electrolysis and distribution infrastructure the port actually needs to support demand.

Fabrizio Mattana, Executive Vice President Gas Assets at Edison, framed the pilot as a template rather than a one-off. The goal, he said, is to build an environment that meets the specific needs of the port of Savona but can also be replicated across other Italian ports.

Rail freight in focus

For rail operators and their customers, the most commercially relevant element of the Savona project is the plan to use hydrogen as an alternative power source for rail freight operations, including the last-mile legs inside the port. Diesel traction still dominates shunting and short-haul port moves across Europe, and non-electrified last-mile track is one of the hardest segments to decarbonise with conventional overhead wire investment.

If the Savona model proves out, the commercial logic is straightforward: ports gain a replicable blueprint for on-site hydrogen production serving both rail and maritime users, energy suppliers like Edison gain an anchor demand base, and rail freight operators get a route to cutting diesel consumption on segments where battery-electric or electrified options are impractical.

The Italian initiative is not an isolated bet on hydrogen in freight rail. In the UK, GB Railfreight has been cooperating with US-based HyOrc on converting traditional diesel engines to hydrogen power units. China is moving in parallel: last summer, rolling stock giant CRRC unveiled VELFORCE, a new brand of modular freight locomotives built around three power configurations — battery, hydrogen fuel cell and diesel-battery hybrid — aimed at mines and ports.

The trajectory, however, is not unambiguously pro-hydrogen. In CRRC's modular family and in wider industry deployment, battery-electric hybrids currently appear closer to large-scale commercial adoption than pure hydrogen traction, suggesting hydrogen's role in rail freight may initially concentrate in niche applications such as port last-mile operations — precisely the segment Savona is targeting.

What comes next

For shippers and forwarders using Italian gateways, the near-term impact will be limited to a proof-of-concept phase: the consortium's immediate tasks are user identification and plant configuration, not fuel procurement at scale. The concrete milestone to watch is whether the Savona pilot produces a technical-economic model that Ports of Genoa and its partners judge replicable at other Italian ports — the criterion Mattana set as the project's measure of success.