Irish Transport Minister, Michelle McIlveen, has announced the award of a £19m contract to supply a fleet of 30 Van Hool vehicles for the new Belfast Rapid Transit (BRT) system. The Belgian based manufacturer will be supported locally by their long-term local partner, Road Trucks Limited of Larne.
«move» is an Empa demonstration platform backed by numerous partners from research, industry and the public sector. Empa’s main partners here are the ETH Board, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), the City of Dübendorf, Glattwerk AG and the companies AtlasCopco, H2 Energy and Hyundai. These are joined by a series of academic and industrial partners who are involved in individual projects within the scope of the demonstrator.
Empa researchers are to develop within «move» new vehicle drive concepts with significantly lower CO2 emissions and test them in practice. It uses surplus electricity from photovoltaic plants or hydropower stations as an energy source. On the one hand, this enables batteries in electric cars to be charged. On the other hand, the electricity can also be converted into hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles or synthetic methane for natural gas/biogas vehicles.
The transportation sector has the capacity to nearly halve its CO2 emissions by 2050 and, hence, to contribute far more than previously thought to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Realizing this would require further efficiency improvement and, especially, promotion of public transport in cities, alongside with a large-scale shift to electric cars. These are key findings of a study, in which Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was one of the partners and which is now published in the American journal “Science”.
The production of energy from natural gas without generating carbon dioxide emissions could fast become a reality, thanks to a novel technology. Researchers have been researching an innovative technique to extract hydrogen from methane in a clean and efficient way. After two years of intensive experiments the proof-of-principle has now been provided. With the experimental reactor running reliably and continuously, the future potential of this technology has become apparent.
The Indian National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed the state government to explore the possibility of running eco friendly CNG and electric buses, on the ecologically fragile Manali-Rohtang route. The state government has given its consent to the Union Ministry of Heavy Industries for purchase of 10 electric buses and simultaneously hold trial run for maxi cabs made by Mahindra and Mahindra in different terrain of the state.