Research priorities outlined

By Saffina Rana

Date: 08/07/04

DURING the next 20 years, Europe must halve the number of road deaths, put cleaner vehicles on the streets and develop alternative fuels to run road vehicles. These priorities, to be recommended to the European Commission in September, will inform a research agenda for the transport industry and the priorities of the next EU research programme.

They are being drawn up by the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC), an independent group set up last summer by the Commission to overcome the scattering of resources and the duplication and overlapping of efforts in pre-competitive research.

The group's members include vehicle manufacturers, public authorities, EU and national regulatory bodies, research centres and energy supply industries. The group is chaired by Rudolf Kunze, research director, Ford Europe. The vice chairmen are Jean-Luc Maté of Siemens VDO Automotive and Helmut List, chief executive officer of AVL List. Also on the task force are Isabelle Dussutour, executive director of the POLIS network of European cities and region, Bart van Holk of Shell and Lars-Goran Rosengren, president of Volvo.

ERTRAC's report will argue that road transport safety is an urgent issue to be tackled. ERTRAC is also recommending that the Commission sets a target of running 20% of Europe's road vehicles on alternative fuels by 2020. It would also like to see at least five million vehicles powered with fuel cells by 2015 and development of new materials and manufacturing processes.

On the back of ERTRAC's vision of road transport systems in 2020, the Commission is set to create a road transport "technology platform", a forum to bring together the major stakeholders, including users. The main task of the platform will be to define a strategic research agenda. This will inform transport priorities in the Commission's next research programme, Framework 7, which would command a budget of €30 billion for the four-year period of 2007-10, if EU finance ministers let the Commission have its way.

Technology platforms are mechanisms increasingly used by the Commission to mobilize key players into defining research priorities and participating in EU research.

According to figures from Eurostat, the Commission's statistical office, the automotive industry already invests heavily in R&D. For instance, the automotive supply industry alone invests around €19 billion in research annually.

Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin wants technology platforms to help direct some of this funding into future priorities: "If we don't want to see our cities clogged up with cars and trucks that produce unhealthy fumes, we need forward-looking technology ambitions and more European public/private partnerships to achieve coordinated investments and efforts," he says.

• Saffina Rana is a Brussels-based freelance journalist.

http://www.ertrac.org/ http://www.ertrac.org/

---