«During a prestigious event like Expo, different international sector operators clearly expressed their interest in Nemo, thus supporting the relevance of a project aimed at getting started on a real, sustainable innovation in urban mobility. And with Nemo, Friuli Venezia Giulia becomes a national laboratory where one can try out innovation in this sector», commented Sara Vito, regional councillor for Energy and Environment, during New Mobility FVG (NeMo) presentation at Expo 2017 in Astana, Kazakistan. Focused on the theme of future energy, Expo 2017 hosted the event during the FVG week at the Italian booth. NeMo project was presented by Vito with the support of a delegation of the dean of the University of Trieste, made up of Paolo Bevilacqua and Giorgio Sulligoi, and of Manuela Masutti from Area Science Park. In this occasion, Vito underlined once again how Friuli Venezia Giulia Region has given rise to a good example of synergism among scientific institutions, universities and research centres: partnership that originated from the idea of enhancing the extraordinary competences characterizing FVG territory.
Indeed, NeMo matured from this collaboration which gave rise to one of the pillars of the regional strategic plan, namely the sustainability of transportation with the transition to electric mobility. More specifically, a major objective of the project is a comprehensive fleet review within regional public administrations (PAs), with the substitution of 800 hundred diesel- or gasoline-driven vehicles, that are obsolete and harmful to the environment, with 560 e-vehicles. As underlined by the FVG councillor Vito and considering that at a EU level 90% of PA fleets rely on fossils fuels, much work does remain to be done. This is one of the reasons why the European Union, thorough its Horizon 2020 Funding Program, decided to finance NeMo with 9 hundred thousand euros. This money will support the activation of 1,7 million euro investments in public-private partnerships for the placement of chargepoints and the substitution of old vehicles by adoption of a new service of electric vehicles’ leasing/car sharing.
According to this new scheme, PA fleets will evolve from a concept of vehicle ownership to a concept of leasing and service. The new scheme will provide advantages in terms of not only reduced emissions, but also of reduced costs, as it will allow to save the costs of maintenance.
By answering to diverse questions from the public, and in particular from reps of Kazak transportation companies, councilor Vito described the public tender procedure NeMo will adopt to select the provider(s) of the services required.
Alongside Region FVG and its Directorate for Energy and Environment, other 5 partners strive to realize NeMo: Area Science Park, for the technical and scientific coordination of the project; the University of Trieste, in charge of surveying the mobility needs of PAs in FVG; Bit-Servizi S.p.A., responsible for the financial aspects; the Associazione nazionale industria dell'autonoleggio e servizi (Aniasa) and Promoscience, which respectively represent the mobility and communication experts of the project.