by Tevva, a British manufacturer of zero-emission trucks, is not just trying to create a replacement for diesel transport. It also serves as a stage for European research.
At least so to speak. As part of a project organized by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s giant scientific research and innovation programme, Tevva is working with scientists and companies from both the UK and the EU to develop the next generation electric truck.
“And they’ve set some really aggressive targets, with tough scope and efficiency targets,” says Stuart Cottrell, head of energy services and government partnerships at Tevva.
Having access to the capabilities of partners in countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Greece has helped Tevva see what is possible to drive towards greater efficiency: transporting more cargo, over greater distances and with less energy. Using its zero-emission trucks as laboratories, Tevva is helping manufacturers demonstrate their capabilities.
“It’s kind of a two-way street. We are developing a product, while some of them are developing tools,” Mr. Cottrell says. What is clear is that together they are pushing the limits. “This consortium could not have been created solely in the United Kingdom,” he says.
Britain’s exit from the European Union strained the bridge between British scientists and their EU counterparts, and cut off British access to Horizon Europe, the EU’s giant innovation funding arm and its €95.5 billion coffer. euros ($104.5 billion). This month, after years of negotiations, the UK returns 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 a single country, says Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s independent scientific academy.
“If you just take the simple problems, pandemics, climate change and net zero, they all require significant international collaboration. Not just in terms of ideas, but it fundamentally depends on the people,” says Dr. Smith. “The point of Brexit was for Britain to go it alone and do its own thing, but high-level science is an area where international cooperation is absolutely essential, and you can’t go it alone and be a major scientific power.”
The Brexit brain drain
For years, the UK was the second-largest destination for scientists carrying out research, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But “that has really been damaged by Brexit and the perception that we are isolated from the world,” says Bob Ward, policy director at 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 the idea that somehow the UK is hostile to working with others.”
With Brexit, the United Kingdom fell behind China and the United States. “That is really anathema to the spirit of inquiry. Politicians need to realize that this is not helping the UK,” says Dr Ward.
The statistics are clear: the UK needs Horizon Europe, which has been part of the UK’s science framework for decades. Collaboration produces results. More than a third of the UK’s leading research papers are co-authored with European partners. By contrast, EU programs are cited three times more than those of the Member States alone.
“It’s a club, a gang you need to be in if you’re the UK. We are not the United States; We are not China,” says the Royal Society’s Dr Smith of Horizon Europe. “The prestige of being associated with things like European Research Council grants, of being evaluated by a huge group of experts, 30,000 researchers in 30 countries… as opposed to the alternative of doing it alone… is quite unthinkable” .
After Brexit, the UK government funded projects “unless and until” it could partner with Horizon Europe again, says Dr Smith. Still, that didn’t stop an exodus of scientists to the EU and the US. Look at those who received European Research Council grants, which require EU residency, he says.
“These are the brightest and the best. [scientists]These are highly prestigious awards and approximately 1 in 6 [pulled up stakes] from the UK and moved to the EU,” says Dr Smith. “That was very detrimental in terms of people’s loss of influence, but also the general vibe of the music in and around the collaboration. Then many researchers in the UK found it quite difficult to recruit postdoctoral researchers from the European Union.”
The EU also needs UK brainpower and institutions. Re-joining the EU is a “true milestone, a clear mutual benefit for both parties and for global scientific progress,” EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Iliana Ivanova said in a statement. . “Together we can move further and faster.”
“The best science is international science”
Perhaps the clearest example of how science requires international cooperation is astronomy and its related fields.
Astrophysicist David Armstrong is leading a Horizon Europe project (which the UK stepped in to fund after 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 location in the Southern Hemisphere, and scientific brains spread across every continent.
“This is all basically international,” says Dr Armstrong, a professor at the University of Warwick. “It has to be that way.”
They use a huge telescopic observatory located in a desert in Chile and take advantage of the experience in stellar parameters from Portugal, spectrographic scientists from Switzerland and other teams from Argentina, the United States and Australia.
How did the field evolve to become so globally intertwined? For one thing, telescopes are expensive and no country would want to shoulder that huge budget alone, explains Dr. Armstrong.
“So you say that if we are going to build this incredible facility, we need to put it in the best possible location, and the best possible location is usually some other country. Then you get the feeling of, ‘Well, if we’re going to do all this, we want to get the best science possible.’ “If you want different skills, you often find the best person for it somewhere else.”
“The best science is international science,” says Dr Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics.
“Back to the territory of collaboration”
Horizon Europe projects have helped zero-emission vehicles, tidal energy and DNA sequencing technology. Scientists are also seeking to restore the health of the oceans and develop climate-neutral cities.
“If you look at all the impacts of science and its applications, some of the most important things that required really large investments and large levels of cooperation, many of them came from originally EU projects,” says Dr Smith.
The collaboration also funds science that would not otherwise be addressed, or not addressed as soon.
Without it, the world might have had to wait a little longer for a hydrogen-electric truck, says Cottrell, Tevva’s director of partnerships. Large companies like Volvo may have flocks of internal researchers, but amid legacy products, shareholders and profit margins, they may not prioritize such ambitious technology.
“Their appetite and pace are quite different,” Cottrell says. “We’re not burdened by any of that, but at the same time, we don’t have the scale to make all of this happen on our own.”
And now that the UK has returned to Horizon Europe, some hope that other corridors to the EU blocked by Brexit will reopen.
“I keep hearing signs that people want to start talking about other collaborations,” says the Royal Society’s Dr. Smith. “Instead of being a bitter confrontation, we are returning to collaborative territory.”
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