The 5th edition of the UIC Energy Efficiency Days Conference, jointly organised by UIC, SNCB and Infrabel, was held from 16 – 19 June in the Congress Centre located on the zoo grounds of the historical city of Antwerp in Belgium.
This event was successfully followed by more than 300 participants and covered important issues on the first day such as Energy Efficiency as a strategic driver for Railway Business and the Voice of Members, where discussions were held on best practices in Energy Efficiency from all over the world.
The presence of several CEOs and of a large number of UIC worldwide members in the session IV “The Voice of Members” who discussed the past and future Energy Efficiency questions launched from the very beginning the success of this 2014 edition of Energy Efficiency Days.
During the first session, Didier Houssin, Director Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology, IEA, Holger Dalkmann, Director, Embarq, WRI and Rie Tsutsumi, Programme Officer, UNEP, emphasised the importance of the common vision towards a modal shift.
During the second session, delegates from DG MOVE and DG CLIMA highlighted priorities and challenges that the European transport sector is facing in achieving the 60% GHG emission reduction target.
In the afternoon session a Panel discussion session was held. During the session, high level representatives of railway companies analysed in an open discussion how energy efficiency management positively influences business drivers such as customer satisfaction (punctuality, pricing, service level) together with a balanced financial output.
The MERLIN Mid-Term Conference, the EU co-funded project, was held in a parallel session, dealing with the investigation on the viability of an integrated management system to achieve an optimised energy usage in European mainline railway systems.
The 17 June was dedicated to the technical workshops addressing a wide range of topics: from Green Electricity and Carbon Disclosure, Energy Efficient Rolling Stock, Traffic Management System, Load Factor, to Non Traction Energy Consumption and Energy Efficiency in Electric Consumption, Ecodriving and DAS, the Energy Efficiency in Planning, Rules on Track and the Technical Developments Traction Energy Metering.
The ERESS forum, the European partnership between Infrastructure Managers that deals with metering, billing and energy data exchange was held in a parallel session to these technical workshops.
Before the conference concluded, Mr Sebastiaan de Neubourg, Strategic Sustainability Consultant from Greenloop, highlighted a new way of viewing and valuing nature and talked about the three aspects of biomimicry: form, process, and organisation. As a conclusion he stressed that continuing to live sustainably on our planet is not a dream, it is in fact feasible since it has been done for the last 3.8 billion years. All we need is to look at Nature to find solutions.
Mr Willy Bontinck, SNCB and Chair of UIC Environment Energy and Sustainability Platform, concluded this two-day event, thanking all participants, speakers and moderators, ÖBB the Conference diamond sponsor, the organisers of the side events, and all organisers, namely the UIC Team, the SNCB Team, the technicians, and the Zoo Team.
He focused on the concerns, the ideas and the experience shared by all during the conference that has enabled the Energy Revolution to be achieved.
