Isra-Mart srl:ETI aims to steer heavy vehicles towards sustainability

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A £40m programme aiming to reduce the eight per cent of global emissions caused by heavy duty vehicles (HDVs) such as ships, trucks and construction equipment will today be kicked off by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).

Under the new project, the government and industry-backed group will issue three Requests for Proposals (RfPs) to manufacturers, small businesses and academics urging them to present technology proposals that could improve HDV efficiency by up to 30 per cent. Further RfPs are expected to be released in the coming months, with the ETI promising to provide funding to the most promising projects.

The organisation hopes to produce full-scale demonstrations of new trucks or ship power components with a goal of incorporating the more efficient technologies developed by the project into the commercial vehicles and vessels by 2020, paving the way for mass take-up a decade later.

Large vehicles and equipment pose a major problem for developers of sustainable transport technologies, as they account for a sizeable proportion of man-made emissions but are generally incompatible with existing battery and fuel cell technologies.

Shipping, for example, currently accounts for four per cent of global emissions - a figure predicted to be anywhere between 150 per cent and 250 per cent higher than 2007 levels by 2050 - but remains outside the Kyoto Protocol. Moreover, EU threats to bring the industry into its Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) have yielded little more incremental design improvements.

Biofuels have emerged as the most popular solution to the challenges presented by large HDVs, and have already been trialled by airlines. But questions remain over the environmental sustainability associated with the mass production of energy crops that would be required to support a global switch to biofuels.

Dr David Clarke, chief executive of the ETI, a public private partnership tasked with developing "mass scale" low-carbon technologies, said the project would look to address the many environmental problems faced by the HDV sector.

"Given the economic, security and climate change benefits of reducing fuel consumption, there is a significant opportunity for early benefits from the introduction of improved vehicles, especially as the focus of European legislation is likely to move from emissions to fuel efficiency over the period required to develop significant vehicle technology improvements," he said.

"There are significant opportunities to accelerate vehicle technology development through investment in a range of platform technologies, which will help enable and support vehicle and vessel system development."

Under the rules of the scheme, entrants must notify the ETI of their intention to submit a proposal by 21 April 2011, and all proposals must be received by 13 May 2011.