Europe on the road to green transport

Posted on 4 February 2009

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Michael Kenward

By coincidence, within days of suggesting in my last commentary that the EU should "think technology" before bailing out the automobile industry, and that car makers look at the EU's R&D portfolio, some stories came along with more details of what Europe's transport research activities.

One such item was a note about Janez Potocnik, EU's Commissioner for research, addressing the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC).

This note describes some of the things that the EU is backing on the general theme of "Greening road transport". The item has several links to places where you can read about work on biofuels, hybrid technologies and hydrogen as fuel, for example. It seems that the EU has more than €1 billion committed to the European Green Car Initiative alone.

One project in the package, NICE - it stands for New Integrated Combustion System for Future Passenger Car Engines - includes an EU contribution of €14,499,731 in a total budget of €26,351,062. What amazingly precise numbers: not a Euro more, not a Euro less. This project has large ambitions, "to develop a new integrated combustion system that, independent of the type of fuel, achieves the highest fuel conversion efficiency".

Road transport is just a part of the EU's portfolio of transport R&D. Transport projects make up only a handful of the 50 or so examples in "Research for Europe: EU Success Stories" - a glossy new book from Brussels with a fancy 3-D cover.

One project in this catalogue is MODTRAIN, which is supposed to stand for "Innovative Modular Vehicle Concepts for an Integrated European Railway System". (Perhaps it works in another language.) In all, the cost of the four-year effort, which ended last year, was €30.4 million, shared between the EU (€16.9 million) and 37 project partners (€13.5 million).

It is too soon to know if this venture will promote "increased railway competitiveness and interoperability". Fortunately, we already have one example of where R&D backed by the EU has begun to change the shape of railways, not just in Europe, but around the world.

ERTMS, the European Railway Traffic Management System (transport commentary 1 October 2008) set out to standardise signalling so that trains could move freely around Europe, with no need to change locomotives at borders to accommodate the local signalling system. China and India liked the idea and are among the countries buying into the technology.

MODTRAIN dealt with the trains that have to negotiate those signalling systems. It set out "to develop technical specifications to increase the modularisation of rolling stock design and the design of infrastructure components".

ERTMS is also about specifications and standards. They may not be as glamorous as cooking up new car engines, but standards can have a profound impact on what happens in the real world. The people who have a hand in setting them, perhaps by being a part of an EU programme, can find that the financial benefits more than make up for the cost of the bureaucratic hassling that is said to be a part of joining any EU project.