STEPs - Scenarios for the Transport system and Energy supply and their Potential effects

Website: www.steps-eu.com

STEPs Project Background

The success of transport has relied on the wide availability of petroleum fuelling the ever-increasing human need and desire to travel. Both factors influence and affect each other; the relatively cheap form of energy supplied to vehicles has helped the expansion of transport and this has driven the need for vehicle fuel. However, over recent years concern for the environment and the knowledge that petrol is slowly diminishing has led to investigations into the use of alternative fuels to power motorised transport. Driven by these issues and a desire to test various methods of reducing overall energy use STEPs was born.

STEPs (Scenarios for the Transport system and Energy supply and their Potential effects) is a project being carried out as part of the European Union Sixth Research Framework Programme, under its "Sustainable Surface Transport" priority. Within this programme STEPs, will:

"strengthen the scientific and technological bases of industry and promote research activities in support of other EU policies"

STEPs Objectives & Targets

The European Commission continues to be progressive in setting challenging targets for future developments in the transport energy system. These derive from:

the need to reduce the use of polluting transport means in populated areas while maintaining the same level of accessibility;
to put on course the transition towards an environmentally harmless transport system based on renewable fuels and reduced environmental noise emissions;

The targets include:

reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and to reach a level of 30% replacement of fossil fuels by 2020;
Objectives like the development of medium term technologies necessary to meet the Euro V emissions standards.

The overall aim of STEPs is to develop, compare and assess possible scenarios for the transport system and energy supply of the future and supports both the overall FP6 programme objective and the specific future needs of the transport energy sector. In doing this it will take into account effects such as: