Dublin and Cork, along with 42 other European partners, are set to share in a €24.2m EU fund to develop electric transport, the European Commission announced today.
Ireland will receive €1.5m, which will be shared between Cork City Council, Dublin’s CODEMA, ESB and Trinity College.
The funding is part of a European Commission initiative to co-fund a cross-European electro mobility initiative, Green eMotion, with the value of €41.8m, which will develop knowledge and experience in selected regions within Europe.
About 2,000 electric vehicles and 3,500 charging stations are part of a countrywide rollout in Ireland in a partnership between industry, manufacturers, local authorities and universities.
In Dublin, the project manager, Codema, plans to bring together the four Dublin local authorities and the ESB. They want to integrate electric vehicles within an overall sustainable energy plan for a green and energy-smart city – with possible ‘smart energy zones’.
Vice-president Siim Kallas, responsible for transport, said, “Transport is currently 96pc dependent on oil for its energy needs. This is totally unsustainable. The Transport 2050 Roadmap aims to break transport’s current oil dependency and allow mobility to grow.
“Transport 2050 calls for a reduction of CO² from transport of at least 60pc by 2050. At the heart of this strategy is a major shift in cities to the electric vehicles away from cars with conventionally fuelled engines. The level of EU financial support for this e-motion project shows just how serious we are at EU level about achieving these goals,” he added.
Transport 2050
Transport 2050 is designed to halve the number of conventionally fuelled cars in cities by 2030 and fade them out completely by 2050. The four-year project named ‘Green e motion’ is part of the European Green Cars Initiative. It will be funded under the Seventh Research and Development Framework Programme (FP7) in order to compare the 12 ongoing regional and national electro mobility initiatives in eight different EU member states. It will also compare the different technology approaches and contribute to the identification of the best solutions for the European market.
The project will involve different types of electric vehicles, the development of smart grids, innovative information and communication technologies solutions, and urban mobility concepts.
An interoperable platform will be created to enable the different actors to interact and to allow for new high-value transportation services and innovative billing systems. It will help and develop new and existing standards for electro mobility. Green eMotion will show this interoperable electro mobility framework in all participating regions.
The partners in the Green eMotion programme include the industrial companies Alstom, Better Palce, Bosch, IBM, SAP and Siemens, the utilities, Dansk Energi, EDF, Endesa, Enel, ESB, Eurelectric, Iberdrola, RWE and PPC, the automobile manufacturers BMW, Daimler, Micro-Vett, Renault and Nissan, the municipalities Dublin, Cork, Copenhagen, Bornholm, Malmö, Malaga, Rome, Barcelona and Berlin, the universities and research institutions Cartif Cidaut, DTU, ECN, ERSE, Imperial, IREC, LABEIN, and TCD and the technology institutions DTI, FKA and TÜV Nord.
