Nearly Zero Energy Ports: A necessity or a green upgrade?

Ports are situated in susceptible, to climate change, areas. The continuous technological advances on the global market and the growth of the trade activities are forcing ports to find new ways to be both competitive and harmonize with sustainable development's "legislation". Specifically, this actually means to practically evaluate all the possible actions and the mean which can be utilized in order to achieve their optimization and greenification. The main objective of this paper is to investigate, analyse and evaluate, through the proposed methodology, various energy-related data of the port of Rethymno and propose a hypothetic model to achieve the near Zero Energy Port (nZEP) concept and the criteria that have to be fulfilled in order to accomplish such an innovative purpose. The methodology to assess a port into the nZEP's concept is presented, including various crucial guidelines and criteria to define a port as nZEP. Last but not least, the research outcomes specify that there are some curtain gaps and opportunities. Thus, this paper establishes an educational and innovative handbook about an initial attempt to greenify a Mediterranean port and adapt it to nZEP's concept, utilizing good and essential practices and interventions/implementations in order to achieve this intention.