Coordination between stakeholders from various industries is essential to achieve sustainable transport, and complementarity between local and global solutions will be key to success, Frederic Malefant, General Manager of Renault’s EV Business Development, said at the SET-Plan Conference in Luxembourg on September 22.
Reflecting this need for stakeholder coordination, in addition to the automobile industry representative, the panel at the SET-Plan Conference’s session on sustainable energy for transport included representatives from the biofuels, hydrogen and car tyre industries.
Piero Cavigliasso, Director of Institutional Relations at Biochemtex, said that biofuels were currently the first large-scale bio-refinery product and, as such, were essential to bringing economy of scale with all its related advantages. He stressed that advanced biofuels were one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in transport and for air and marine transport they were probably the only way to achieve a reduction in emissions.
To deploy advanced biofuels in the EU, Cavigliasso said that there was a need for consolidated biomass supply chains and additional R&D on process improvement. He said that success would only be achieved by adopting a systemic approach that incudes financing of the first bio-refineries and the creation of conditions for off-take certainty, including mandating the use of advanced biofuels.
Fabio Ferrari, Coordinator of the H2 Mobility France project, said that hydrogen mobility would help France reach its CO2 mitigation targets and support its energy transition plan. Ferrari said that hydrogen would have a major role to play in energy transition as hydrogen can link different energy sectors and energy transmission and distribution networks and can increase the operational flexibility of future low-carbon energy systems. As such, hydrogen is now part of the energy paradigm and will contribute to achieving a low-carbon economy and increasing energy security in Europe, he said.
However, fuel is only one aspect that needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to reducing the environmental impact of the transport sector. Eric-Philippe Vinesse, Senior Vice President for Research and Development at Michelin, said at the conference that, while the transport sector accounted for 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, 20% of transport emissions were related to tyres.
He said that the most efficient tyres today had about half the road resistance of tyres 20 years ago. To ensure that these achievements continue into the future, while maintaining high levels of tyre safety, he said that R&D needed the right talent and new ways of working through open innovation and joint research programmes, which would require taking more risks. Support for this risk-taking from the EU will be important, he said.
Romain Hansen, Director for Technology Products at the Goodyear Innovation Centre in Luxembourg said that the tyre industry would evolve, with investment in new materials to replace natural rubber. With increased connectivity, vehicles will talk to vehicles, tyres will talk to vehicles. Ownership of vehicles will change and these changes will require agility in the tyre industry to develop the tyres of the future, Hansen said.
Magda Kopczynska, Director at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport, said that the SET-Plan had always been designed to look not only at energy efficiency, but also the links with transportation. She said that the Strategic Transport Research and Innovation Agenda (STRIA), which she called a younger sibling of the SET-Plan, would produce a comprehensive overview of all the technologies and research priorities that need to be developed to make all the ambitious targets of Energy Union a reality.
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