UK Government to Provide £20M for Low Carbon Vehicle Research
21 September 2007
The UK government will provide £20m ($40.4 million) to support UK-based research to develop new low-carbon vehicles that could be on the road within 5 to 7 years. The investment, equally provided by the Technology Strategy Board and the Department for Transport, is intended to assist innovative companies advancing low-carbon vehicle research, development and demonstration projects.
The funding is part of the government’s Low Carbon Transport Innovation Strategy launched in May. Carbon emissions from road transport accounted for more than 21% of domestic emissions in the UK in 2005.
Through our investment in UK-based research and development we want to accelerate the introduction of low carbon vehicles, ahead of what would be achieved by market forces alone. This funding will help companies in the UK to benefit from the growing domestic and international demand for lower carbon vehicles.
—Ian Pearson, Science and Innovation Minister
The funding will be available to support vehicle technologies with the clear potential to be commercially viable within 5 to 7 years. Projects relevant to passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, heavy goods vehicles, buses and taxis are all eligible for support.
The funding, which will be made available through a competition managed by the Technology Strategy Board, will fund collaborative research and development carried out in the UK.
This is the first competition managed by the Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform (LCVIP), which addresses the societal and environmental challenges posed by the need to tackle the carbon impacts of road transport and to achieve substantial reductions in average vehicle emissions.
The competition opened on 21 September 2007 and there will be an information day for potential participants on 4 October 2007. The deadline for companies to register their intention to submit an application is 5 December.
How 20 million pounds compare with money UK spend to wage the war in Iraq? Anyone?
Posted by: Andrey | 21 September 2007 at 07:18 PM
The money UK spent in Iraq is to ensure that BP and the rest of British petroleum industry will get a share of the huge oil reserve in Iraq. GB made a lot of money from oil export in the North Sea, which has been dwindling rapidly, so they will need a new supply. It's all business, ya know.
The 20M lbs is merely a token public show of concern for global warming, since GB is a small island country which will lose a lot of land mass if the sea level will rise 20-30 ft upon melting of artic sea ice within the next several decades.
Oh, life is fully of irony, and conflicting interests.
Posted by: Roger Pham | 21 September 2007 at 10:10 PM
Roger,
Except for the insignificant amount grounded on the continental and island margins, isn’t the sea ice in the Arctic Basin floating already?
The Arctic ice melt’s chief importance comes from changes to the Earth’s energy fluxes (reduced albedo) and resulting sea temperature changes. While those processes will impact the Greenland ice mass, it’s likely that the time scale for sea level changes from Greenland melt gives all of us some period to adjust. That’s not to say that slowing down the climate forcing from fossil CO2 emissions should be the top planetary priority.
A huge and lamentable disruption of the ice dominated ecosystem is advancing very rapidly.
Posted by: WhiteBeard | 22 September 2007 at 12:13 PM
U r right, Whitebeard. Sea ice is already largely submerged.
What I meant to say is that the ice above sea level, since if the sea ice is adjacent to land mass, it too, receives precipitation of snow and ice piling up above it, well above sea level. If this sea ice melt, then the ice and snow piling on top of it will be exposed to warmer sea current and would melt also, thus causing a rise in sea level world-wide. May not as much as 20-30 feet, but how about 10-15 feet? Still enough cause for concern within the next few decades, since sea currents carry a large amount of heat capacity.
Posted by: Roger Pham | 23 September 2007 at 09:04 PM