Tevva, a British manufacturer of zero-emission trucks, is not just trying to create a replacement for diesel transportation. It also serves as a platform for European research.
At least so to speak. As part of a project organized by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s massive scientific research and innovation programme, Tevva is working with scientists and companies from both the UK and EU to develop the next generation of electric trucks.
“And they’ve set some very aggressive targets, with tough reach and efficiency targets,” said Stuart Cottrell, Tevva’s head of energy services and government partnerships.
By having access to the capabilities of partners from countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Greece, Tevva has seen what is possible in the pursuit of greater efficiency: transporting more freight, over greater distances, for less energy. Using their zero-emission trucks as laboratories, Tevva helps manufacturers demonstrate their capabilities.
“It’s kind of a two-way street. We develop a product, while some of them develop tools,” says Mr. Cottrell. What is clear is that they are pushing the boundaries together. “This deep consortium could not have been built solely in Britain,” he says.
When Britain left the European Union, the bridge between British scientists and their counterparts in the EU came under strain, and British access to Horizon Europe, the EU’s giant innovation funding arm and its €95.5 billion coffers, was compromised. , broken. This month, after years of negotiations, Britain is back as an ‘associated country’ to Horizon Europe, and the world will be better for it, scientists say.
Today’s most pressing problems require the best-trained scientific minds, and those talents are rarely found within the borders of one country, says Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, Britain’s independent scientific academy.
“If you just take the simple problems: pandemics, climate change, net zero – these all require major international cooperation. Not just in terms of ideas, but it fundamentally depends on people,” says Dr. Smith. “The whole point of Brexit was for Britain to go it alone and do its own things, but top-level science is an area where international cooperation is absolutely essential, and you can’t go it alone and be a major scientific power .”
Brexit brain drain
For years, Britain was the second destination for scientists conducting research, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But “that has been really damaged by Brexit and the perception that we are cut off from the world,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “Not just in terms of funding and visa barriers, but also in the idea that Britain is somehow hostile to working with others.”
With Brexit, Britain has fallen behind both China and the United States. “That is really anathema to the spirit of inquiry. Politicians need to realize that this does not help Britain,” says Dr Ward.
The statistics are clear: Britain needs Horizon Europe, which has been part of the UK scientific framework for decades. Working together produces results. More than a third of the UK’s top research articles are written in collaboration with European partners. Conversely, EU programs are cited three times more often than Member States alone.
“It’s a club, a gang that you have to belong to if you come from Great Britain. We are not America; we are not China,” says Dr. Smith of the Royal Society on Horizon Europe. “The prestige of being associated with things like the European Research Council Fellowships, of being judged by a huge group of experts, 30,000 researchers in 30 countries… as opposed to the alternative of going it alone… is virtually unthinkable.”
After Brexit, the UK government endorsed projects “unless and until” it could again associate with Horizon Europe, says Dr Smith. Yet this has not prevented an exodus of scientists to the EU and the US. Look at those who have received European Research Council grants, which require EU residency, he says.
“These are the brightest and the best [scientists]these are hugely prestigious awards, and about 1 in 6 [pulled up stakes] from the UK and moved to the EU,” says Dr. Smith. “That was very damaging in terms of people’s loss of effectiveness, but also just the general mood music in and around collaboration. At the time, many researchers in Great Britain found it quite difficult to recruit postdoc researchers from the European Union.”
The EU also needs British brainpower and institutions. Bringing them back into the EU is a “real milestone, a clear win-win situation for both sides and for global scientific progress,” EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Iliana Ivanova said in a statement. “Together we can go further and faster.”
“The best science is international science”
Perhaps the clearest example of how science requires international cooperation is astronomy and related fields.
Astrophysicist David Armstrong is leading a Horizon Europe project – which Britain stepped in on an emergency basis to fund post-Brexit – to find Neptune-sized planets in extremely close orbits around other stars. That requires a $1.5 billion telescope facility, the clear skies of a Southern Hemisphere location and scientific brains spread across continents.
“The whole thing is essentially international,” says Dr. Armstrong, professor at the University of Warwick. “It has to be like this.”
They use a huge telescope observatory in a desert in Chile, and draw on expertise in stellar parameters in Portugal, spectrograph scientists in Switzerland and other teams in Argentina, the US and Australia.
How has the field evolved to become so globally intertwined? First, telescopes are expensive, and no country would want to shoulder that huge budget alone, explains Dr. Armstrong out.
“Then you say if we’re going to build this incredible facility, we have to put it in the best possible location, and the best possible location is usually in another country. Then you get the feeling of, ‘Well, if we’re going to do all this, you want to have the best possible science behind it.’ If you want different skills, you can often find the best person somewhere else.”
“The best science is international science,” says Dr. Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics.
“Back in cooperation area”
Zero-emission vehicles, tidal energy and DNA sequencing technology have all been helped by Horizon Europe projects. Scientists also want to restore the health of the oceans and develop climate-neutral cities.
“If you look at all the implications of the science and its applications, you see that some of the most important things that really required big investment and high levels of cooperation – many of them came from original EU projects,” says Dr. Smith.
Collaboration also funds science that might otherwise not be addressed or addressed as quickly.
Without this technology, the world might have had to wait a little longer for a hydrogen-electric truck, said Mr. Cottrell, Tevva’s director of partnerships. Large companies like Volvo may have a slew of in-house researchers, but amid existing products, shareholders and profit margins, they may not prioritize such ambitious technology.
“Their appetites and paces are very different,” says Mr Cottrell. “We’re not burdened by things like that, but at the same time we don’t have the scale to make all of this happen ourselves.”
And now that Britain has rejoined Horizon Europe, some hope that other corridors to the EU blocked by Brexit will reopen.
“I keep hearing signals that people want to talk about other collaborations,” says Dr Smith of the Royal Society. “Rather than being a bitter standoff, we are back in cooperative territory.”
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