We are pleased to announce the closing plenary session for this year's EuroBrake. The closing plenary will consist of two keynote addresses.
“Railways braking emissions and air quality: stakes and challenges ”
Speaker:
Véronique Andriès, Alstom
Keynote address abstract:
The sector of mobility represents a huge challenge regarding climate change and environmental concerns mitigation. Indeed , it accounts for nearly a quarter of the overall GHG emissions in the EU and Rails accounts for less that 0,5 % of these emissions. As the backbone of mobility, EU Railways industry is committed to be a major player of transport decarbonization.
The air pollution level in urban and suburban area are sometimes very high and often well above WHO or regulatory level. The transport sector is a major source of urban air pollution, costing €67- 80 billion in the EU28 in 2016.
At EU level, the different existing and upcoming policies and regulatory initiatives shall allow significant improvement. Even small changes to transport habits and city policies can make a substantial difference to such costs. A 1% increase in the average journey time to work increases the costs of PM10 emissions by 0.29% and those of NO2 emissions by 0.54%.
In underground metro lines, the air pollution level often overshoots the WHO recommendations of PM 10 and PM 2.5. The figures shows that the ratio between inside & outside is sometimes close to 10. These observed levels of air quality could be attributed to various emission source. Among them as recognized being significant the wear emissions such as wear emissions during braking phase.
In that context, addressing braking emissions by mitigation measures is key for railways, especially in urban and suburban area where the air quality is at stakes. The state of the art and the relevancy of different measures is discussed.
A R&D program called BREAQ, “Braking Emissions characterisation & mitigation for Air Quality improvement” is presented.
"Road to Zero / Zero / Zero and how deceleration paves the way"
Speaker:
James Webster, General Motors
Keynote address abstract
As we look across the global automotive industry there are efforts underway to drive to a shared vision on Zero Accident, Zero Fatalities and Zero Emissions, to borrow from General Motors Vision. I see our portion of the industry, deceleration, as being a major contributor to this shared vision. Together we hold the key to implementing solutions that can positively affect society and a shared vision of Zero/Zero/Zero.