British zero-emission truck manufacturer Tevva isn’t just trying to create a product that will replace diesel transportation. It also serves as a stage for European studies.
At least in the way he talks. As part of a project organized by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s giant scientific research and innovation program, 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 really aggressive targets, with challenging range and efficiency targets,” says Stuart Cottrell, Tevva’s head of energy services and government partnerships.
Having access to the talents of partners in countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Greece helped Tevva see what was possible for greater efficiency; More cargo is transported to longer distances with less energy. Tevva helps manufacturers demonstrate their capabilities as a laboratory with its zero-emission trucks.
“It’s kind of a two-way street. While we are developing a product, others are developing tools,” says Mr. Cottrell. What is clear is that together they are pushing the limits. “Such a deep consortium could not be established in the UK alone,” he says.
Britain’s departure from the European Union has strained the bridge between British scientists and their EU counterparts, and Britain’s withdrawal from Horizon, the EU’s giant innovation funding arm and coffers of €95.5 billion ($104.5 billion). It cut off its access to Europe. This month, after years of talks, the UK is returning to Horizon Europe as a “partner country” and the world will be better for it, scientists say.
Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, the UK’s independent science academy, says today’s most pressing problems require the best trained scientific minds, and these talents are rarely kept within the borders of a single country.
“If you take simple problems, pandemics, climate change, net zero, all of these require massive international cooperation. “It’s not just about ideas, it’s fundamentally about people,” says Dr. Smith. “The whole 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 necessary and you can’t do it alone and become a major scientific power.”
Brexit brain drain
For years, the UK was the No. 2 destination for research scientists, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But “this has really been undermined by Brexit and the perception that we are disconnected from the world,” says Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “Not just in terms of funding and visa barriers, but also the idea that the UK is somehow hostile to working with others.”
With Brexit, the UK has fallen behind both China and the USA. “This really goes against the spirit of research. “Politicians need to understand 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 scientific framework for decades. Collaboration produces results. More than a third of the top research papers in the UK are written with European partners. Conversely, EU programs are cited three times more often compared to member states alone.
“It’s a club, a gang you have to join if you’re from the UK. We are not America; we are not China,” says Dr. of the Royal Society. About Smith Horizon Europe. “The prestige of being associated with things like European Research Council Fellowships, of being evaluated by a huge expert pool of 30,000 researchers in 30 countries… as opposed to the alternative of going it alone… is quite unthinkable.”
Dr. Smith says that after Brexit, the UK government is taking on projects “unless and until” it is unable to re-engage with Horizon Europe. However, this has not prevented the migration of scientists to the EU and the USA. Look for recipients of European Research Council grants that require residence in the EU, he says.
“These are the brightest and best [scientists]these are highly prestigious awards and account for approximately 1 in 6 awards [pulled up stakes] It moved from the UK to the EU,” says Dr. Smith. “That was very damaging in terms of the loss of influence from people, but it was also just the general mood music in and around the collaboration. Many researchers in the UK subsequently found it quite difficult to recruit postdoctoral researchers from the European Union.”
The EU also needs the UK’s brainpower and institutions. Bringing them back to the EU is “a real milestone, a clear win-win for both parties and 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 in astronomy and related fields.
Astrophysicist David Armstrong is running a Horizon Europe project, which the UK is rushing to provide post-Brexit funding, to find Neptune-sized planets in extremely close orbit around other stars. This requires a $1.5 billion telescope facility, the clear skies of a location in the Southern Hemisphere, and scientific minds scattered across continents.
University of Warwick professor Dr. “Everything is fundamentally international,” says Armstrong. “It has to be.”
They use a massive telescope observatory located in a desert in Chile and draw on stellar parameter expertise in Portugal, spectrograph scientists in Switzerland, and other teams in Argentina, the United States and Australia.
How did the field evolve to become so globally intertwined? Dr. Armstrong explains that, first of all, telescopes are expensive and no country would want to undertake this huge budget alone.
“So what you’re saying is that if we’re going to build this incredible facility, we need to put it in the best possible location, and the best possible location is often in another country. Then you get the feeling of, ‘If we’re going to do all this, you want the best science possible with this.’ If you want different skills, you can usually find the best person for that elsewhere.
London School of Economics policy director Dr. “The best science is international science,” says Ward.
“We are back in the cooperation zone”
Zero-emission vehicles, tidal energy and DNA sequencing technology have all been helped by Horizon Europe projects. Scientists are also looking for ways to improve ocean health and develop climate-neutral cities.
Dr. “If you look at all the impacts of science and its applications, some of the really important issues that require huge investment and huge levels of collaboration, many of which have arisen from original EU projects,” Smith says.
Collaboration also funds science that might not otherwise be addressed or addressed as quickly.
Without this, the world might have to wait a little longer for a hydrogen-electric truck, says Mr Cottrell, Tevva’s director of partnerships. Large companies like Volvo may have flocks of in-house researchers, but they may not prioritize such ambitious technology due to legacy products, shareholders, and profit margins.
“Their appetites and tempos are quite different,” Mr. Cottrell says. “We don’t bear any of the burden of this, but at the same time, we don’t have the scale to make it all happen on our own.”
And now that the UK is back in Horizon Europe, some hope other corridors to the EU blocked by Brexit can be reopened.
Dr. from the Royal Society. “I keep hearing signals that people want to start talking about other collaborations,” Smith says. “We’re back in the space of collaboration rather than a bad breakup.”
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