The EU Commission’s has made sustainable transport and the development of a circular economy policy priorities. In practice, this will require EU cities and regions to develop new innovative way of going about their usual work – particularly in urban areas. Every town and city will have unique challenges in implementing EU sustainability policy over the coming years and each will look to cut emissions in their own way. With the EU Commission looking to roll out new initiatives, attention turns to cities and regions running exciting new sustainable projects to demonstrate how Europe can hit future green goals.
Two recent examples of projects being set up involve the use of electric garbage trucks in Rotterdam and electric construction equipment in Oslo.
Rotterdam is seeking to lead the way in its rubbish collection by acquiring a small number of electric garbage trucks to quietly collect the city’s waste. Rotterdam is already well known for its penchant for all things electric and these new garbage trucks will join the already large fleet of electric bikes, scooters and cars dominating the Dutch city’s streets.
Rotterdam is looking to overcome problems surrounding the charging of such vehicles before expanding the fleet and the best practice from this will no doubt be welcomed by other cities and regions looking to go green on their rubbish collection. Rubbish collection has always been viewed as a hard to reach area of sustainability and many will be watching the successes and failures of this current project.
Over in Oslo, the city is trialing the idea of a purely electric construction site. Using green procurement, the city has trialed one such building renovation project with only electric machinery and equipment. Again, the main issues revolve around the ability to charge and keep operations moving, but lessons are set to be learned over the coming months and shared with other regions.
The EU Commission has earmarked 2021 as an important year for developing a truly circular economy and projects such as these are set to become ever more important to demonstrate proof of concept projects.
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