[ILW2] Brussels' good practices on e-mobility

Brussels, 12.12.2018 | The second Interregional Learning Workshop  started with coordinator of the Clean Power for Transport Action Plan for the Flemish government Jeroen Cockx presenting the policy approaches, instruments, stakeholder governance, coordination strategies with other Belgian regions and the federal government. 

A presentation of good practices in Flanders followed:

Bart Dumoulin, project manager mobility for Bond Beter Leefmilieu a Flemish organization collaborating with other organizations, civilians, governments and businesses, with one goal: to make the transition to a sustainable, renewable society. To achieve this goal a change in the areas of energy, mobility, raw materials, food and spatial planning is needed.

Today, the transport sector is responsible for 25% of the greenhouse gasses in Flanders. What would change if the taxi sector would be greener? Taxi’s also have a lot of visibility, this could lead to an increase in trust of the technology. BBL has the ambition to make 10% of the total taxi fleet 100% electric by 2020. Partners of the project are Flanders (CPT) and the Belgian taxi federation (G.T.L.) Bart explained that for taxi companies, the purchase price of the vehicle is not the best measure to predict its profitability. A more representative measure is the total cost of ownership. To allow the taxi sector to make this transition, a closer look was taken at the city of Amsterdam as a benchmark for the electric taxi service.

In the first stage of the project, cities and municipalities were approached to support the project by developing supporting policies that would allow taxi companies to make this transition more easily. Secondly, the taxi sector was approached with the same question: “what can we do that would make this transition easier for you?”. For taxi’s it is really important to have a fast charger network. What has been achieved so far? Willingness of the cities and municipalities and support for the taxi sector (financial and non-financial). At the moment, there are 23 electric taxi’s in Flanders. (www.cleanpowerfortaxis.be).

Associate professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and head of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) TC, Ghent and Aalst Technology Campuses, Jan Capelle focused the following presentation on light electric vehicles, more specific the speed pedelec. 

The first stage of the project consisted in classifying the different vehicles. This wasn’t easy because of the different code standards and if some categories are clearly defined in the transport code, others were less, including some differences according to the technological definition. A flow chart was developed to define the vehicle category and to specify regulation and administration needs.

The second stage focused more on the different types of electric bikes comparing energy efficiency and performance of each category and consumer preferences. A surprising additional perceived benefit were the ability to predict arrival time and the contribution to people’s fitness. Since 61% of the population lives within 15km distance from work and 84% within 30km, there’s a huge potential for these bikes but the lack of proper or un-adapted infrastructure forms a large barrier.

Jochen De Smet is a senior advisor for The New Drive, a platform for zero emission buses and electric company cars, whose role is to ensure the start-up of energy transition related activities. As a former advisor to Bart Tommelein, former minister of Finance, Budget and Energy, Jochem De Smet has worked on the roll-out of digital meters and the action plan for the introduction of electric vehicles. Meanwhile Jochen is also chairman of AVERE, the Belgian federation of electro mobility.

 Since there are few electric vehicles in Belgium, the objective for The New Drive is the increase the sales numbers. After having performed a market pull with fleet owners to work on different tools, 46 fleet owners are now currently participating in the project, possessing more than 31.000 vehicles. To stimulate fleet owners to electrify their fleet The New Drive developed a model e-car policy that companies can implement and a manual on how to use an electric car.