European competitiveness and economic impact
ECOQUEST will provide the European automotive and train industry with demonstrated methods to reduce noise at source while increasing energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions. In doing so, it will contribute to achieve European industries’ objectives for greener vehicles to meet society’s needs for more environmentally friendly ground transport of people and goods, and to enhance European global competitiveness.
The economic impact of the ECOQUEST programme on the European ground transport sector will derive not only from increasing European competitiveness but also from contributing to the removal of a potential limit on the natural growth of the sector worldwide. Recent research in the USA and Japan has established a lead in some of the technology areas being considered. The work proposed in ECOQUEST will at least re-establish parity in those areas whilst moving ahead across energy saving and CO2 emission reduction concepts.
ECOQUEST is an essential element in ensuring that ground traffic can grow in harmony with other modes of transport. It has to be assumed that any restriction of this growth due to inability to meet noise and CO2 emission targets will have a detrimental effect on European businesses which would otherwise be using air transport for freight or passengers.
Moreover, the development of innovative modelling approaches and their implementation in sophisticated software tools is meant to enhance system assessment and facilitate decisionmaking in ground transportation, but also in other applications of economical relevance such as
- heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems for any transportation (including aerospace), residences and factories;
- cooling systems for electronic devices, that present strong similarities with the ECOQUEST applications regarding cluttered environments: laptops for example;
- energy processes, being not necessarily confined but that show very similar broadband noise issues such as wind turbines.