The Green Room Article \\

Good afternoon, everyone.

I've now spoken a number of times about both motorsport and mainstream automotive going green.

And on both counts, I'm generally optimistic about the direction we're heading in.

Consider the first round of the American Le Mans Series at Sebring last month.

Peugeot triumphed in the LMP1 category using bio-diesel power, and all 36 entrants ran on E10 or greater.

Sebring witnessed the use of biobutanol for the first time, by Mazda, while several teams – including Drayson Racing – trialled the lithium batteries being developed by Braille Batteries.

The Green Oil from Green Earth Technologies is new this season.

Switching to the UK market, where I continue to have an interest as the UK minister for science and innovation, there are further signs of progress.

The UK Government has committed over £450 million to put us at the forefront of designing, manufacturing and driving ultra-low carbon vehicles.

The world's largest demonstration project is underway.

London, Milton Keynes, and the North East region will be installing more than 11,000 vehicle recharging points during the next three years.  

And from 2011, UK motorists will receive up to £5,000 off the cost of an ultra-low carbon car.

This is all consistent with a broader joint Government-industry strategy to secure a bright future for UK automotive going green. The scale of this challenge – the technology, the investment, the market development – is such that we can only succeed by working together.

The UK Office for Low Emission Vehicles is where much of this work is happening – where government officials are making policy alongside the automotive industry, power generators and infrastructure companies.

Because of such measures, we're at a point – I believe – where going green isn't yesterday's story, but nor has it become today's reality.

Similarly here in the US, over the next few days, green racing at Long Beach won't generate headlines in the LA Times purely by virtue of it taking place. The novelty factor has passed.

But our efforts go on. As I've said before, we race to win.

All race technology is a means to that end – but green engineering isn't a temporary endeavour. So long as the rules create incentives to push the boundaries of clean technologies, teams will innovate. And it's the most promising innovations which will attract media attention and generate coverage.

Right now, however, I don't think the current rules do enough to stimulate the pace of innovation that motorsport is capable of.

Let me give you an example. At Sebring, the Drayson Lola Coupé was allowed to carry 25 fewer kilograms of weight because it runs on second-generation E85 fuel.

Yet, to maximise competition between the two top prototype classes, we're required to operate at the standard 900 kilograms for the remainder of the season, with the exception of the Petit Le Mans.

I understand the need to put on a good show, but – for me – equalising performance by adding weight is contrary to the promotion of energy efficiency, which should be fundamental to ALMS competition; to all racing categories, in fact.

We need regulations that promote that efficiency without harming competition.

Now, some of you may have heard about the idea put forward by Don Taylor. Don has proposed a challenge where teams compete to cover a fixed distance in the fastest time with a prescribed amount of energy at their disposal – a "box of kilojoules".

I think this is a brilliant concept: pure competition which catalyses technological development and which puts the emphasis on efficiency as well as sustainability.

There's another idea that also appeals to me as an example of new-style innovation – and that's the decision taken by TTXGP to create a Wiki where the entire racing community helps to shape the rules for zero-emission motorcycle racing through a Wikipedia style rule book.

Not only is crowd-sourcing itself progressive, but it fits with motorsport's ability to stimulate change. Our image as technologically sophisticated and abidingly cool can change hearts and minds. It can persuade consumers that green cars on the road also have caché.

My sense at the moment – is that motorsport risks losing some of its influence; that, instead of next-generation green technologies emerging from the pit lane, they look like coming from the mass-market car plants.

The big manufacturers are moving forwards. In January, Toyota announced eight all-new hybrid models. In March, Ford announced five full-electric or hybrid vehicles for European customers by 2013, including an electric Ford Focus. Around the same time, Nissan revealed that they will produce the Leaf – Europe's first mass-produced electric car – in North-East England, alongside the new European battery plant they committed to build on Wearside last year.  At the top end of the market the new Ferrari and Porsche hybrids launched in Geneva showed that the premium marks are making the shift too.

I'm keen, therefore, to stress three things to the motorsport community today.

The first concerns science.

The backlash against climate change research over recent months – some of it self-inflicted – is, unfortunately, prompting a number of people to wonder whether it's all phoney; whether, in our case, a prime motivation for green racing is now open to scientific debate. It isn’t.

I'm in no doubt that the scientific argument remains watertight. Carbon dioxide levels have risen 40 per cent since the onset of the industrial revolution. These levels are the highest for at least 800,000 years – in all likelihood the highest in the past 35 million years.

There will be fluctuations. In the Arctic, for instance – where climate change is occurring at a faster rate than anywhere on Earth – this past winter has seen the ice cap cover an area larger than at any time since 2001. It means the cap has recovered from the melt of 2007, when the summer ice shrank to a record low.

Yet short-term changes have never provided the most compelling evidence for the impact of greenhouse gases. You have to look at the long-term trends. Scientists have not revised their forecast that, during the summer months, the Arctic will be completely ice-free by around 2060.

Green racing, in other words, has lost none of its underlying rationale.  

My second point is about the importance of cooperation and dialogue.

It is one of the great strengths of ALMS that the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are closely involved. There were productive talks between them and the race teams at Sebring about how to encourage more green innovation.

We must push on with this agenda. Following my call to the MIA, at the last cleaner racing conference in January,to nominate companies to work with the UK's Automotive Council, I'm pleased that firms have now been invited to participate in key areas of technological development – including energy storage, powertrain structures and power electronics.

But I'm not just advocating motorsport's participation in the race to be green out of altruism. My third and final point is about business.

The number of venture capital investments in clean tech companies hit a record high in the first quarter of 2010 – including $350 million for the electric vehicle company Better Place. While volume of investment has yet to reach the peak levels of 2008, it was nevertheless an 83 per cent improvement on the first quarter of 2009 – and the deal involving Better Place is the second biggest ever for clean tech.  

It's also worth noting that of the 13 clean-tech IPOs in Q1 2010, eight took place in China.

So in this global market and at this very stage in the economic cycle, there are significant commercial opportunities to be seized – opportunities for motorsport to develop funding streams besides sponsorship.

Globally, the low-carbon and environmental goods and services sector was worth £3.2 trillion in 2008/09. It's forecast to grow at approximately five per cent annually over the next five years.

The global market for batteries to power electric vehicles is predicted to grow to $46 billion by 2020.

To conclude, then, motorsport has been at the vanguard of green technology. It must remain there.

To do so is good for business. It's better for the planet. And it can be the best thing for competition across the board.

But the people to make this happen have to be those of us in this room. We're the ones who must seek out investors. We're the ones who must look to develop further partnerships with other sectors, and lobby for rules which accelerate innovation.

Since we're in the US, I reckon I can get away with quoting Ralph Emerson: "Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

So let's seize the agenda and demonstrate that we really mean business.

Thanks for listening.

Credited to Dan R. Boyd, ALMS

 

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