Clean Urban Transport
Good practice at local and regional level
Live Chat
| STATISTICS | |
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Duration of Discussion: 1.5 hours Number of Participants: Approx 20 Countries of Participants: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, United Kingdom Total Number of Q/As & Comments: 192 Topics Discussed:
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| BACKGROUND TO THE DISCUSSION | |
| This online chat on Clean Urban Transport was organised by ManagEnergy within the process of facilitating global thinking on strategic, local issues. The aim of the workshop was to support local actors in their capacity building process and in their development of concrete replication strategies.
The chat aimed to cover:
About three-quarters of the EU population live in urban areas. Over 30 percent of all transport kilometres are made in towns. According to estimations, around 80 percent of all external costs of transport in urban areas result from congestion. Energy consumption of transport in cities is rapidly increasing. In the EU, private cars and commercial vehicles are responsible for 98 percent of energy consumption and 10 percent of CO2 emissions in urban transportation. The danger of unsustainable traffic growth and worsening living conditions, as well as political commitments such as the Kyoto agreement and the Europe initiative, emphasise the need for an integrated approach. The need for radical change, based upon a mixture of technology and policy based measures, has been emphasised by the White Paper: European transport policy for 2010: time to decide adopted by the Commission in September 2001. |
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| PARTICIPANTS | |
| European Commission Directorate-General for Energy & Transport | |
| Maria Alfayate | Clean Urban Transport, Unit D4 - Maria.Alfayate@ec.europa.int |
| Marcel Rommerts | Clean Urban Transport, Unit D4 - Marcel.Rommerts@ec.europa.int |
| Mark Major | Urban Freight and Intermodal Transport - Mark.Major@ec.europa.int |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Responsible for ManagEnergy, Unit D3 - tren-MANAGE-ENERGY@ec.europa.int |
| European Commission SCIC | |
| Jukka Savo | Technology Advisor for ManagEnergy virtual events - scic-newtech@ec.europa.int |
| ManagEnergy management team | |
| Anders Berglind | ManagEnergy management team, Sweden - info@managenergy.net |
| Katy Hall | ManagEnergy webmaster, UK - webmaster@managenergy.net |
| ManagEnergy Registrants | |
| <AgEnergia> | Italy |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | FGM-AMOR & NEMO, Graz, Austria |
| <maria> | Local Energy Agency, Toledo, Spain |
| Tomaz Fatur | Institut Jozef Stefan, Slovenia |
| Richard Köhler | Sweden |
| <SE_danhag> | Sweden |
| <eecgeo> | Energy Efficiency Centre Georgia - OPET Network |
| <Brian> | Transport Planner, Municipality of Copenhagen, Denmark |
| <nikolas> | Regional Energy Agency of the Island of Crete, Greece |
| <Pirjo> | LT Consultants, Finland |
| DISCUSSION TRANSCRIPT | |
| Welcome and Introductions | |
| Marcel Rommerts | Good morning from the Clean Urban Transport Unit |
| Anders Berglind | Nice to see that there are OPETs on the chat |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Welcome AgEnergia and Nikolaszo. We'll be starting at 10.00. |
| <AgEnergia> | Good morning. Is this a chat conference only? |
| Maria Alfayate | Hello, welcome everybody! We are going to chat on the conclusions of the transport workshop held 2 weeks ago! |
| Marcel Rommerts | Welcome to everybody. The objective of this chat is the conclusions of the workshop of 13 June in Brussels. We can talk about clean vehicles, alternative fuels, mobility management, urban freight, and any other issue that is relevant. |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | Hello, we are Astrid Wilhelm and Karl-Heinz Posch from Graz. We have been invited to join by Elke Bossaert from Langzaam Verkeer. |
| Marcel Rommerts | Welcome Graz! We have participants from Sweden, Italy, Greece, ... |
| <eecgeo> | ...and Georgia. Hello everybody! |
| Maria Alfayate | Hello Georgia!. We have been told that you are in the OPET network. What are your fields of expertise?
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| Using the Chat Facility | |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | Hi, we do not see who is actually participating... |
| Maria Alfayate | Astrid & Karl-Heinz, the computer experts are discussing how they can help you! |
| Jukka Savo | To Astrid & Karl-Heinz: Do you see any participants in the list on left side of your applet window? |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | To Savo: we only see three participants (Karen, Katarzyna and us) on the RIGHT window |
| Jukka Savo | Ok, it's a feature of using the IE chat applet. If you want to see full participant list, meaning five of us from EC and others, you have to install program called mIRC - www.mirc.co.uk. If you want to do that I will tell you how to do it.
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| Sustainable Transport Workshop - Online Proceedings | |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Can anybody tell me if materials from WS on June 13 are available? |
| Katy Hall | We have the information available as PDF files. These will be downloadable from the website later today. If you would like them urgently please let me know. |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Katy: thanks. |
| Anders Berglind | The video recordings from the workshop is available on internet! |
| <AgEnergia> | Can I have more informations about this video? |
| Katy Hall | Video recordings of the conference are available as a link from: www.managenergy.net/conference/transport0602.html - click on "view the webcast" to see the recordings. PDF files containing slides can also be downloaded from the same page.
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| Urban Transport Policy | |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Welcome Astrid and Karl-Heinz. I was really impressed by Langzam Verkeer (see Transport Workshop for further information), I think this behavioural approach would suit well for energy agencies as a local activity? |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | it seems although (as we know) urban transport is very important in terms of life quality, environmental impact and the economy, it doesn't seem to be important to the commission - they even abolished the name urban transport... also in the white paper, there is not much room for urban transport (1 page out of 90)... |
| Marcel Rommerts | Bang! thank you for that question Astrid & Karl-Heinz. In the field of transport the subsidiarity principle is strongly applied. Concerning the name of the unit, we don't know the exact details. |
| Mark Major | There are many areas of the White Paper policies that are relevant to Urban Transport - User needs, CO2 reduction, energy diversification, mode shift, safety etc. etc. There are also important questions relating to security of energy supply, reducing fossil fuel dependance etc. But clearly urban transport is a matter for local and national authorities. |
| Marcel Rommerts | To Astrid & Karl-Heinz: we will continue to support 'local action'. Money is allocated for that under FP6 and the Intelligent Energy for Europe Programme |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | To Mark: Hi! not agreed. If you read those chapters, it's all on interurban and international traffic (rail, highways, waterways, air etc.) - understandable, because EU is more on international dimension. |
| <Maria> | I agree with you Mark. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To continue what Marcel just said, ManagEnergy will help to create efficient European partnerships for joint projects under the IEE programme (e.g. through the partner search function). |
| Mobility Management (Milano, Italy) | |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | I (Karl-Heinz) was recently invited to Milano with a lot of traffic experts, and when they talk about mobility management - they still seem to have only cars in mind. So on the international level, still a lot of awareness raising needs to be done. |
| Maria Alfayate | Yes Astrid & Karl-Heinz. We count on you to do so! |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | To Maria: sure, we try our best! |
| Mark Major | To Astrid & Karl-Heinz - "on the international level" we agree here. This is why a large part of the EC role is to support networks, best practice, conferences, internet chats etc. etc. |
| Marcel Rommerts | To Karl-Heinz: Milano is doing a study on a pricing scheme, but this study was announced wrongly in the press. Also our Information Society colleagues are using mobility management with a different definition.
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| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | Also try www.epomm.org for info on mobility management |
| Intelligent Transport, Inner City Distribution, Car Sharing (Spain, Denmark, Germany, UK, Sweden) | |
| <Maria> | Hello! I work in a energy local agency in Toledo (Spain). |
| Anders Berglind | To Maria: are you working in any specific area within the transport sector? |
| <Maria> | We are elaborating a document about "AN INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT IN AN OLD CITY" because the urban design in the 2 big cities in the province have this kind of structure. |
| Maria Alfayate | To Maria. How advance are you with this document? It will be interesting to have information on it. |
| Anders Berglind | To Maria: have you seen or heard the presentation from Copenhagen? |
| <Maria> | I heard it. |
| Marcel Rommerts | I think the innercity freight scheme in Copenhagen is a very interesting concept. |
| Anders Berglind | To clarify on Copenhagen. It is a project that works with inner city distribution in the old parts of Copenhagen. |
| <Maria> | I haven´t read anything yet, sorry Anders. |
| Anders Berglind | To Maria: The presentation will be available on line soon (available now - see the transport workshop) |
| Katy Hall | Video recordings of the conference and PDF files containing slides are NOW available at: www.managenergy.net/conference/transport0602.html |
| Mark Major | The increase in larger vehicles in Copenhagen is interesting - the general trend is an increase in smaller vehicles (=more congestion, less energy efficiency etc.) |
| <Maria> | We want to elaborate a system of sharing car like Germans have done but I´m afraid that we Spanish will not answer in the same way as them. |
| <Maria> | Anders, do you you know if this kind of project has been made in another place than Germany? |
| Mark Major | Maria - are you interested in car sharing (new ways of having access to different cars) or car pooling (increasing occupancy of conventially owned cars)? |
| Katy Hall | They have launched a car sharing scheme on the site in the UK where we work. This is a light industrial estate with an "Enterprise Centre" and about 400 companies. Last week they launched a free bus to and from the town centre (Newbury, UK) and they have several cycle routes to the park. |
| Anders Berglind | To Richard. are you working with carsharing in your region of Sweden? |
| <Richard> | To Anders, yes we are working with a new concept in the county of Jönköping. |
| Anders Berglind | To Richard: is it any information available in English? |
| <Richard> | To Anders: No I'm sorry. We haven't yet formed a real project. We are working with the overall concept so far. But I think we have many new ideas. |
| Marcel Rommerts | To Richard: come to one of the workshops and talk about it with us. You can use managenergy to look for contacts. On the eltis website (www.eltis.org) you can find hundreds of transport best practices. By the way, Eltis has last week been expanded and the design has been refreshed. |
| <Richard> | To Marcel: Thank you, I'll do that.
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| Maria Alfayate | Hello Brian, Where are you from in DK? |
| <Brian> | Hello, I'm from Copenhagen. |
| Maria Alfayate | Hello Brian, do you work in a local energy agency or similar? |
| <Brian> | I work within the municipality of Copenhagen as a transport planner. |
| Maria Alfayate | Brian, then are you a colleague of Soren Kjaergard? |
| <Brian> | I know of him, but haven't met him personally |
| Maria Alfayate | Brian, he came to make a presentation on the inner city distribution in Copenhagen at the transport workshop held on 13 June.
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| Software to Analyse Climate (Italian Project) | |
| <AgEnergia> | We are using software to analyse the present situation of Torino's condition climate. |
| Marcel Rommerts | To AgEnergia: what kind of software are you using and what are you exactly analysing? |
| Maria Alfayate | To AgEnergia. Can you give us more information on this project? Torino's climate (especially in winter time with all the smog) is not an easy one! |
| <AgEnergia> | I'm going to propose some soluctions to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere and the use of the energy.
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| City Freight Project (Finland) | |
| Mark Major | Welcome - Pirjo - what are you interested in and where are you come from - do you have a question for us? |
| <Pirjo> | Hello, Mark! Our company, LT Consultants is taking part in a project City Freight dealing with various issues concerning transportation in the cities. At the moment I do not have any questions, I just want to follow what you have been discussing here. |
| Maria Alfayate | To Pirjo. As you can see there is not a single discussion topic today! |
| Mark Major | To: Pirjo - there will be a summary of the discussion as well as a more "readable" version of the full text available before the summer break. Please be sure to share any good ideas and lessons from Finland with us. |
| <Pirjo> | To Mark: Thanks for the information. I do not know if any other City Freight partners have taken part in this discussion, but this project has a homepage www.cityfreight.org where you will be able to get more information about the project. The first reports will be available by end of the summer.
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| Mark Major | To all: Lots of free information about urban freight solutions (best practice, events, contacts, workshops, newsletters etc.) is available from www.bestufs.net - please make maximum use of this big resource which is supported by the EC. |
| Biofuels (Crete, Greece) | |
| <nikolas> | Hi, I am from Crete. I am from the regional energy agency of Crete, in Heraklion. |
| Anders Berglind | To Nikolas: are you working on transport issues regarding tourists? |
| Maria Alfayate | To Nikolas. Which are the main fileds in which your agency is working? |
| <nikolas> | Our fields are: energy, environment, renewable energy sources, energy saving and rational use of energy, as well as European and international cooperation. |
| Maria Alfayate | To Nikolas: Do you have any activity in renewable energies or rational use of energy in transport? |
| <nikolas> | We have already elaborated a project with Austrian Biofuels Institute for the possibilities of producing biodiesel from fried oils and fats in Crete and its possible use in vehicles. |
| Maria Alfayate | To Nikolas. Is the project mature enough to go to into an the implementation phase in the medium term? |
| <nikolas> | We are working on it. This project was a first step.
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| Local Agencies - Role, ManagEnergy & Online Resources | |
| Marcel Rommerts | To all: during the workshop the Commission said that we would like to work with cities. Agencies are one way of working with cities on transport, but are the agencies ready for taking up this role? |
| Maria Alfayate | Hello, did any of the local energy agencies participating at the chat today followed the transport workshop the other day? |
| <Maria> | No. |
| <AgEnergia> | I'm sorry, no. |
| Marcel Rommerts | The Commission intends to develop a special program to strengthen the knowledge on transport among local agencies. What should be the priority fields for such a program? |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Slovenia has no local energy agencies (although we do have governmental Agency for Rational Energy Use), but we are constantly trying to persuade capital city authorities to establish one (in scope of SAVE agencies). And definitely such agency should and could act also in the field of local transport. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To Fatur, we hope that the Candidate Countries will be very active in making proposals for the creation of local and regional energy management agencies under the IEE programme. These agencies could be a real source for further improved energy efficiency and use of renewables in your countries as they have done in the EU. |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Yes, I got the impression from the Commission that they will force establishing of energy agencies |
| Marcel Rommerts | and to add to Ismo: and in promoting energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels in transport. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Further to Fatur: In the Candidate Countries, for sure, and I agree with you that it would be wise to include local transport issues in to your proposal. This hasn't been really done in the past. |
| <Fatur_Slo> | But there is always a problem how to integrate transport into these agencies...but can there be shown some ideas how to persuade local governments to do so...what are experiences form other countries |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To Fatur and Marcel, for sure, when talking about EE and RES I take granted that transport is part of that. It is a sector too important not to include in energy efficiency and renewables discussions and activities. |
| Marcel Rommerts | To Fatur: transport is one of four sectors of Intelligent Energy for Europe. The name of the sectorial program will be STEER. its the follow up to 'SAVE Transport' and has a proposed budget of 35 Million Euro. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To Fatur: the Commission is there to help you in any possible ways but we need to know what your specific needs are. This is part of the process we launched in the last years conference with you and continue working on within ManagEnergy and Eltis and other similar tools. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Further to Fatur: it is particularly important you communicate us your ideas for Community support as we are drafting the work programme for IEE programme and are happy to take care look at your proposals and ideas. |
| <Fatur_Slo> | To Ismo: I have to admit, that transport is the white area in Slovenia...nobody is dealing really with transport/energy/environment topics, although we tried to stimulate this question many times...it is not only the problem of having prepared EU programmes...we have to go for it...our authorities unfortunately have other priorities. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To Fatur: I think your authorities will start understanding more and more the importance of transport issues and I have a great respect for your struggle to bring this issue to their knowledge. The White Paper and the IEE priorities hopefully help you in this work. |
| Mark Major | To Fatur - good point - maybe we should consider how to encourage operators, shippers etc. to contact their local energy management agencies and ask them to get more involed in urban transport! |
| <Fatur_Slo> | To Mark: well, I guess there are many ways to do it...Slovenia is actually facing huge transport increase (planned from direction Italy to the East) and nobody is aware of energy and environmental consequences. |
| Mark Major | To Fatur - these "other priorities" are probably NOT contradictory with energy/environment/safety aspect - we just need to ensure the energy aspects are considered. |
| Anders Berglind | To Fatur: You can also look on the other accession countries and take on what is happening there! |
| Astrid Wilhelm & Karl-Heinz Posch | To Fatur: also try www.epomm.org for info on mobility management |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Idea to managenergy: could you summarize all interested links in area of urban transport? I have not checked the ME webpages for this...it might already be there :) [Note from ManagEnergy: To find Transport Case Studies go to the ELTIS website: www.eltis.org. A new section on Transport Links has been added to the links page. Reports relating to Transport are listed on the Transport keyword pages.] |
| Marcel Rommerts | To Fatur: the first step could be to bring them together into some form of national network. We could look for ways to help you. Concerning the links for urban transport: go to ELTIS |
| Maria Alfayate | To Fatur-Slo. Not everything, but you will find a lot in ELTIS (www.eltis.org). ELTIS stands for 'European Local Transport Information Service'. |
| Mark Major | To all in Slovenia - The University of Maribor should soon be joining our network on "BEST Urban Freight Solutions" see - www.bestufs.net the contact name is Prof. Dr. TRAUNER Tel +386 2 2294 300
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| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To Fatur and other CEEC participants: What would you think if the Commission made a 'ManagEnergy Road Show' in the Candidate Countries tackling among others the issue of clean urban transport? |
| Marcel Rommerts | Ismo: This could be a good idea? To all: what should be the key messages of such a road show? |
| Anders Berglind | Or is the need of roadshows something that is needed also outside the CEEC? |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Regarding initiative for clean urban transport in CC...it depends...for my country I only see couple of cities who need such initiative, other initiatives should go hand in hand with national policy |
| Marcel Rommerts | To Fatur: which are those cities? are they part of some kind of network? |
| <Fatur_Slo> | Ljubljana 300.000 inhabitants, Maribor 150.000, Celje 75.000, Koper 30.000, Kranj 30.000...cities are not connected in any networks regarding transport.
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| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To Marcel, I'd like to hear what chat participants think of possible key messages; at least they should be very concrete and closely related to the opportunities that ManagEnergy and IEE programme provide for local and regional energy and transport actors (financing, networking, European partnerships, learning and promotion of good practice e.g. )
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| Funding Opportunities | |
| Maria Alfayate | Keep your eyes open for Intelligent Energy Europe / STEER ! In principle, the programme should be in place early 2003. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | We will be closing the Chat in a few minutes but will continue our discussion during the coming events as mentioned earlier. Please keep yourself informed through the managenergy web page and let us know your input to the work programme for IEE and future ManagEnergy activities : we will present the IEE programme in the annual conference. By the way, please feel free to use the discussion board facility on the ManagEnergy web site to further advance thinking on these issues. |
| Anders Berglind | IEE and STEER is a good suggestion for all the participants! |
| Marcel Rommerts | Message to all: The clean urban transport unit will continue the coming months to prepare the workprogrammes for FP6 and STEER. First calls for proposals are expected late 2002/early 2003. We plan an important CIVITAS conference on 9 October 2002 in Brussels, where our future plans will be presented, the CIVITAS city Forum will be launched, and a number of other new activities of interest for local actors presented. |
| Closing Comments | |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | To remind you all, the next ManagEnergy workshop will take place in October and the annual conference on 28-29 November where we will be able to continue discussing these issues. We will also have a detailed look at financing possibilities then. A question, do you think this way of communicating has its place in our cooperation and in what kind of further support would you expect from ManagEnergy? |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Ten more minutes left, I'd like to ask you about how many of you have participated in the virtual ManagEnergy activities in the past? |
| <Richard> | To Ismo: I did not participate in activities like this before. But I will in the future. |
| Ismo Gronroos-Sakkala | Welcome to the team Richard. I think we are in a process of creating a very new new and efficient way to coopearate.
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| <nikolas> | Goodbye and hope to chat with you again in the future |
| Marcel Rommerts | To all: anybody with a last question, remark, comment, suggestion before we close?
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| Katy Hall | Welcome SE_danhag - we are about to close. Do you have a quick question before we go? |
| <SE_danhag> | I just wanted to test, It is the first time a chat here. |
| Maria Alfayate | To SE-danhag. We hope to have you on board next time! |
| <SE_danhag> | Richard Köhler and I are on the same host so we cant participate at the same time |
| Katy Hall | The conclusion of this discussion and the conference will be available on the web. |
| Participants signed off | |
| <SE_danhag> | [Asked after the board had closed] I had one main question: When is the parliament supposed to ratificate the fuel-directive that demands 2% Renewables from 2005 and after that an increase of 0,75 % per year until 2010? |
| Maria Alfayate | It is always difficult to make an estimate when the European Parliament and the Council are involved. However, according to my colleagues it could be expected that the Directive is approved in the first half of next year. |
Mobility Management