by British zero-emission truck manufacturer Tevva isn’t just trying to create a diesel transport center. It is also serving as a stage for European research.
At least in a manner of speaking. As part of a project organized by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s scientific research and innovation programme, Tevva is working with scientists and companies from both the UK and the EU to develop a next-generation electric truck.
“And they’ve set some really aggressive objectives, with difficult range and efficiency targets,” says Stuart Cottrell, Tevva’s head of energy services and government partnerships.
Accessing the capabilities of partners from countries such as the Netherlands, Spain, and Greece has helped Tevva see what is possible to push for greater efficiency – transporting more cargo, over greater distances, for more less energy. With their zero emission trucks as laboratories, Tevva is helping manufacturers demonstrate their capabilities.
“It’s a two-way street. We are developing a product, and some are developing tools,” says Mr Cottrell. They are clearly pushing the envelope together. “This depth of consortium could not be built in the UK alone,” he says.
As Britain leaves the European Union, it has strained the bridge between British scientists and their EU counterparts, and separated Britain’s access to Horizon Europe, the EU’s innovation funding arm, and its €95.5 billion ($104.5 billion) coffers. . This month, after years of negotiations, the UK is back as an “associate country” for Horizon Europe, and the world will be better for it, scientists say.
Today’s most pressing issues demand the best-trained scientific minds, and those talents are rarely found within the borders of any one country, says Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, the UK’s independent science academy.
“If you take the simple problems, pandemics, climate change, net zero – all of these require major international cooperation. Not just in terms of ideas, but fundamentally it depends on people,” says Dr Smith. “The whole point of Brexit was Britain going off on its own and doing its own thing, but high-level science is one area where international cooperation is absolutely essential, and you can’t be alone and become a scientific superpower.”
Brexit brain drain
For years, the UK was the No. 1 destination. 2 of scientists who were engaged in research, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But “Brexit and the perception that we’re cut off from the world have really damaged that,” says Bob Ward, director of policy 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 the idea that the UK is somehow hostile to working with other people.”
With Brexit, the UK fell behind both China and the US. “That is anathema to the spirit of research. “Politicians need to understand that this is not helping the UK,” says Dr Ward.
The stats are clear: The UK needs Horizon Europe, which has been part of the UK’s scientific framework for many years. Collaboration brings results. More than a third of the UK’s leading research papers are co-authored with European partners. On the contrary, EU programs are mentioned three times more often compared to the Member States alone.
“It’s a club, a gang you have to be in if you’re the UK We’re not America; we are not China,” says Dr Smith, of the Royal Society, about Horizon Europe. “The prestige of being involved in things like European Research Council Fellowships, being assessed by a huge pool of experts, 30,000 researchers in 30 countries … compared to the alternative of going it alone … is unimaginable enough.”
After Brexit, the UK government underwrote projects “if and until” it was able to re-engage with Horizon Europe, says Dr Smith. Still, that hasn’t stopped the flow of scientists to the EU and the US See those who have received grants from the European Research Council, which require EU residency, he says.
“These are the brightest and best [scientists]these are high grade awards, with around 1 in 6 [pulled up stakes] from the UK and moved to the EU,” says Dr Smith. “That was very damaging in terms of the number of people lost, but it was just the general mood in and around the collaboration. Then many researchers in the UK had great difficulty recruiting EU postdoctoral researchers.”
The EU also needs the UK’s brainpower and institutions. Bringing them back into the EU fold is a “real milestone, a clear win for both sides and for global scientific progress,” said EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Iliana Ivanova in a statement. “Together, we can push further and faster.”
“International science is the best science”
Perhaps the clearest example of how science requires international cooperation is in astronomy and related fields.
The Horizon Europe project is run by astrophysicist David Armstrong – which the UK stepped in on an emergency basis to fund post-Brexit – to find planets the size of Neptune in very close orbits around other stars. That requires a $1.5 billion telescope facility, the clear sky of the Southern Hemispheric location, and scientific brains spread across the continent.
“The whole thing is fundamentally international,” says Dr Armstrong, a professor at the University of Warwick. “It has to be that way.”
They use a huge telescope observatory that sits in a desert in Chile, and tap the expertise of star parameters in Portugal, spectrograph scientists in Switzerland, and other teams in Argentina, the US and Australia.
How has the field changed to become so intertwined around the world? For one thing, telescopes are expensive, and no country would want to accept that huge budget alone, explains Dr. Armstrong.
“Then you say if we’re going to build this incredible facility, we have to put it in the best possible location, and usually the best possible location is in some other country. Then you get the sense of, ‘Well, if we’re going to do all this, you want the best science possible.’ If you need different skills, you’ll often find the best person for that somewhere else.”
“International science is the best science,” says Dr Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics.
“Back in collaboration territory”
Horizon Europe projects contributed to zero emission vehicles, tidal energy, and DNA sequencing technology. Scientists are also trying to restore ocean health and develop climate-neutral cities.
“If you look at all the impacts of science and its applications, some of the big things that required huge investment and huge levels of collaboration – a lot of those grew out of EU projects to begin with,” says Dr Smith.
Collaboration also funds science that would otherwise not be tackled or not tackled as soon.
Without it, the world may have to wait a little longer for a hydrogen-electric truck, says Mr. Cottrell, Tevva’s director of partnerships. Large companies such as Volvo may have large numbers of in-house researchers, but legacy products, shareholders and profit margins may not prioritize such ambitious technology.
“Their appetite and speed is very different,” says Mr Cottrell. “We’re not burdened with any of those things, but at the same time, we don’t have the scale to do this on our own.”
And now that the UK is back with Horizon Europe, some hope that other corridors to the EU blocked by Brexit will open up.
“I keep seeing signs that people want to start talking about other collaborators,” says Dr Smith of the Royal Society. “Instead of being a bitter standoff, we’re back in collaborative territory.”
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