Introduction

IMMACULATE aimed to promote the improvement of urban environment quality of air and noise levels by an innovative combination of clean vehicle technology for different vehicle types

Objectives and target audience

Project’s objectives:
a)    improvement of urban environment quality of air and noise levels,

b) formulation of an “eco-consciousness” in the citizens of an urban environment.

Target audience: All citizens of the European Union

Financial Resources and Partners involved

Project total budget: 1.273.000 Euros
EU contribution: 570.000 Euros

The IMMACULATE Consortium :

• Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) / Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT), Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute (CPERI)-Greece

• Municipality of Thessaloniki (Mu-The) – Greece

• Transeuropean Consulting Unit of Thessaloniki (TRUTH) – Greece

• nstitute of Accelerating Systems and Applications (IASA) – Greece

• Thessaloniki S.A. (Thess) – Greece

• European Electric Road Vehicle Association (AVERE) – Belgium

Process

In the framework of the project, the following activities were performed:-

• State of the art analysis and definition of the appropriate scenarios of use of clean vehicles in the city of Thessaloniki;

• Definition of the technical specifications for the vehicles and the necessary infrastructure and system development;

• Development of an appropriate training scheme oriented towards the efficient use of clean vehicles;

• Planning and implementation of pilot tests of the clean vehicles and the associated technologies in the city of Thessaloniki, using 1 natural-gas mini-bus, 1 hybrid car, 4 electric scooters and 4 electrically-assisted bicycles;

• Technological and socio-economic assessment, usability and risk analysis of the proposed scheme;

• Review, monitoring and evaluation of the general legal and organisational issues associated with clean vehicles;

• Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) of clean vehicle technologies and cost-efficiency analysis (CEA) of the proposed policies;

• Formulation of application guidelines and policy recommendations;

• Dissemination of the project results on a pan European level, with the assistance of the Electric Road Vehicle Association;

Results

IMMACULATE resulted in the demonstration of an innovative approach for the mitigation of air pollution and noise problems in the city of Thessaloniki – with a projection to other European cities – through the introduction of a system based on the combination of clean vehicles and advanced transport telematics and management technologies. Furthermore, through its dissemination activities and pilot studies, IMMACULATE worked towards formulation of an “eco-consciousness” in the citizens of an urban environment.

Critical Success Factors / Challenges

The project was aiming to targets that hadn’t been reached before, therefore the challenges were important.
One problem was that in Greece there is no natural gas filling station for passenger cars, nor is there a legislation framework for it, therefore one of the targets could not be achieved.