A Full House for OPS at TOC Europe Shows Shore Power Has Moved to the Centre of Port Strategy
A full room for onshore power supply at TOC Europe sent a clear message: OPS is no longer a specialist topic on the margins of port infrastructure. It is becoming central to port decarbonisation, energy resilience and terminal planning.
The TOC Europe session, titled "Plugging in: Shore power's critical role in decarbonising European ports", took place on 20 May 2026 and brought OPS into one of the industry's most practical forums for ports, terminals and container supply chains.
Moderated by Roland Teixeira de Mattos, President of the European Onshore Power Supply Association, the panel brought together Hanno Bromeis, Tim Miltenburg, Jacob Bjarkam and Tarik Rurup for a discussion that reflected the changing status of shore power in Europe.
The significance of the session was not only in the subject matter, but in the room itself. The discussion drew a full house and high audience engagement, a sign that port electrification and energy management have become some of the most urgent questions in the sector.
For years, OPS was too often treated as a compliance or environmental item. That framing is now too narrow. The TOC Europe debate showed that ports increasingly understand shore power as part of a larger strategic system: business case, investment, grid capacity, resilience, terminal electrification and leadership.
The discussion covered the business case for OPS, funding and investment opportunities, ports as energy hubs, grid integration and the leadership needed to move from ambition to delivery. These are no longer abstract policy themes. They are the practical decisions facing port authorities, terminal operators, grid companies, shipping lines and technology suppliers.
One of the clearest themes was port preparedness. Integration of OPS into new infrastructure projects remains uneven across Europe. Some ports are already planning for future electricity demand and multi-berth systems, while others still have significant ground to cover.
That gap matters because shore power cannot be installed as an afterthought once vessels, terminals and grids are already under pressure.
The second theme was innovation. Electrification is no longer limited to the vessels most often discussed in early OPS projects. The sector is seeing new classes of electrified vessels and equipment, including port service boats, autonomous vessels, battery-powered tugboats and other solutions that will increase the energy role of terminals and ports.
The third theme was the emergence of terminals as energy hubs. The journey towards electrified and automated terminals is already underway. The challenge is how to plan that transformation while integrating microgrid management, resilient energy systems and operational flexibility.
Battery Energy Storage Systems and intelligent onsite energy management were also identified as key enablers. BESS can help strengthen the business case for electrification by managing peaks, improving resilience and allowing ports and terminals to optimise how power is stored, distributed and used.
That is why the EOPSA role matters. As an association focused on the OPS ecosystem, EOPSA is helping frame shore power not as a single technology, but as a system of expertise, standards, projects, finance, grid planning and operational know-how.
For DTF Conference readers, the TOC Europe session is a useful market signal. The questions raised in Rotterdam are the same questions DTF has been built to address: how ports prepare, how terminals electrify, how grids support future demand, how the business case is structured and how leadership turns regulation into infrastructure.
The momentum around OPS is growing because the topic has become bigger than emissions at berth. Shore power now sits at the intersection of climate policy, port competitiveness, energy resilience and terminal automation.
A full room at TOC Europe confirmed what many in the sector already recognise: OPS has moved to the centre of the port decarbonisation agenda.
