China, China, China

The yellow perils still in action:

Shai Agassi… spoke of the opportunities of electric cars. Referring to the car fleet he said that “Europe will work without oil in less than 10 years, between 2015 and 2020. It is inevitable. We won’t change due to global warming…but because oil will become too expensive”.

He went on to point out that “oil was 10 dollars a barrel at the beginning of the decade…it is almost 100 dollars a barrel now and if China doesn’t stop producing cars it will be 230 dollars a barrel in a few years”.

Turing to the emergence of China he said that it had already started to invest in electric cars. “Europe has two choices: to seize the opportunity to be the first to change, defending its role as first global car producer with 30% of the global market or to wait for China to overcome her in the market.”

I bet against it. STOA was once a European Parliament conference series for the scientific community but deteriorated ever since.

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GM Augmented Reality

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High Level Event on ICT for Energy Efficiency 2010

An EU Commission event second edition of the High Level event on ICT for Energy Efficiency will take place

February 23rd/24th 2010 in

Charlemagne Building
170 Rue de la Loi (Wetstraat)
BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium

gathering policy makers and experts on the ICT for Energy Efficiency field. Registration is required but free.

Following up on the ICT4EE 2009 High Level Event which aimed to accord visibility to the potential of ICTs in enabling energy efficiency, this  event aims to become a vehicle to drive progress in the transition to an energy-efficient and low-carbon economy following the terms of the “Recommendation C(2009) 7604” adopted by the European Commission on October 9th 2009 [1], see also “Mobilising Information and Communication Technologies to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy”, European Commission Communication – COM(2009) 111 – Brussels, 12.3.2009

Through the Recommendation, the Commission calls on the ICT sector to agree on common methodologies for measuring energy consumption and carbon emissions by 2010.

And actually the conference provides a small contribution to the reduction of emissions:  Webstreaming will be provided, so you do not have to be there just to watch the speeches of the programme.

[1]

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Sustainable future for transport: towards an integrated, technology-led and user-friendly system

A new communication from the EU-Commission “Sustainable future for transport: towards an integrated, technology-led and user-friendly system”, outlines the future of the European car industry. Of course Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and car automation are a part of the package. Increasingly the efficiency efforts move to a network infrastructural view:

44. Transport is a network industry that comprises several elements: infrastructure, nodes, transport vehicles and equipment, ICT applications related to the infrastructure and on-board, network services, and operational and administrative procedures. The ability to move people and goods effectively and efficiently relies primarily on the optimal functioning of all these elements in combination.

45. A better exploitation of the network’s capacity and of the relative strengths of each mode could contribute significantly to reducing congestion, emissions, pollution and accidents. This however requires the optimisation and operation of the network as a single entity, whereas currently modal networks are largely separated and even within modes there is a lack of integration between countries.

50. Technological innovation will be a major contributor to the solution of the transport challenges. New technologies will provide new and more comfortable services to passengers, increase safety and security and reduce the environmental impacts. “Soft infrastructures”, like intelligent transport systems for road (ITS[31]) and traffic management systems for rail (ERTMS[32]) and aviation (Single European Sky’s SESAR[33]), backed by Galileo, can optimise the use of the network and improve safety; innovative vehicle technology can lower emissions, reduce oil dependency and increase comfort.

Integrated, technology-led and user-friendly, here the Commission takes an “engineering” view on the future of an industrial sector that is quite unusual in Europe and common in Asian markets.

• Commission Website
• OEIL – EU Parliament process

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