Madrid, 23/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - With less than two weeks to go before the start of the UN climate conference (COP 21), France, Spain and Portugal have sent a strong message to the European and international communities in signing a joint statement in Madrid on Monday 23 November on the launch of a Franco-Iberian electric mobility corridor, which should be operational by 2019-2020.
The project is for a section of road some 2,000 kilometres long and will cost a total of between €4 million and €5 million to install 80-90 charging points, said Arturo Perez de Lucia, secretary general of AEDIVE, a Spanish electric vehicle manufacturers' association.
The project derives from an initiative launched by the French embassy in Madrid, said Robert Mauri, energy adviser at the embassy. Electric mobility is one of the priorities for French President François Hollande, Mauri went on. In February, Hollande took receipt of a report on promoting alternative forms of transport produced by Michel Derdevet, secretary general and board member of Électricité Réseau Distribution France (ERDF), in which Derdevet develops the concept of “European innovative mobility corridors”.
“These corridors would more or less follow the lines of the nine corridors already planned by the EU”, the report's author told EUROPE. Derdevet supports and is closely following the Franco-Iberian project. His proposal is for a network of rapid charging points on 70,000 kilometres of European motorways, one every 20 minutes, every 80 kilometres, in both directions.
The aim is to put an end to a situation that at first appears intractable. “It's a bit like the hen and the egg”, said Samuel Furfari, energy adviser to DG Energy at the Commission. He says the sector is not taking off because the infrastructure is not in place and the infrastructure is not in place because demand is low. That is the reason why a boost has to be given to the sector, said Mauri.
“It would cost €450 million across Europe but this should be seen in comparison with a major interconnection project, such as in the Bay of Biscay, which will cost between €1.6 billion and €1.9 billion”, Derdevet pointed out, opining that the obstacle is not financial but political.
The proposed corridors could, indeed, be jointly financed by a range of European financial programmes and instruments, such as the Connecting Europe Facility, Horizon 2020 for research and development, the European fund for strategic investment (EFSI), the financial branch of the Juncker plan, and structural and investment funds. “There you have so many funds that remain unused”, Derdevet said.
The electric vehicle sector is expected, anecdotally, to grow virtually exponentially, thanks to the cost reductions, said Bert Witkamp of AVERE, the European association promoting electro-mobility. He argues that, given current trends, electric cars could provide the majority of car sales by 2030. In addition, in the view of some of the projects promoters, the Volkswagen scandal could speed up the shift to a completely electric vehicle fleet.
The Franco-Iberian project will be presented on the sidelines of COP 21 on 3 and 8 December. The three countries are not alone in taking this route. The Benelux countries signed an agreement on 10 October on the deployment of transnational infrastructure for alternative fuels. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)