Assignment 11: Analysing the information (Interview summary)

Since the course started, we had two interviews and a brief get-together with our Spanish client. The first interview, was at the end of September via Skype with the client. In mid-October, we had a brief meeting with the Spanish delegation at the University updating them on the current status. Just recently, at the end of November, we had an interview with Javier Orozco, lecturer at the UPV at our University Campus to prepare for the following two weeks, in which we will work on different tasks for the project. As our assignment demanded the last interview was recorded and provided on Moodle and the blog.

The first interview was very interesting for us, since we got first real information about our project and especially the place of our operation, Alcoy. For this interview, we prepared a few questions about the project. What has been done already? We found out that there are already some technical solutions, but a consistent strategy is needed. Our focus should be on finding social solutions, rather than technical ones. “Be creative!” was the request.

Further restrictions and a concrete budget were not available at that moment. Obviously, it should be something feasible and if possible including business partners for funding.

Overall, we got a first good impression of the current situation and what will be expected of us.

While working on the assignments, more questions came up. We wanted to address them face to face and took the chance while Javier was visiting Utrecht for his lecture on Life Cycle Analysis.

Firstly, we wanted to know Javier’s opinion about where he sees the highest potential in CO₂ reduction. He told us that he thinks that the highest potential is in changing the habits of the people. We could achieve that by making better behaviour more attractive for example. In the current situation, the people in Spain are using the cars for everything, also for short distances. Alcoy is an old city with small streets and an unsatisfying public transport system. So, there is potential in improving the public transport, for example by making it more economic and increasing its frequency and connections. Nevertheless, there is no sense in providing an expensive service without it being used. The bigger problem might be people seeing cars as status symbols. It will be hard to change the mind of people and to convince them to use public transport. We should start with students and young people to change their minds.

An approach could be targeting students first, so that their parents can learn from them afterwards. Students usually have a limited budget and are therefore more likely to use public transport when it is more economic. Introducing electric cars would just be semi sustainable, because the current origin of the energy is not renewable.

The only benefit would be, that no direct carbon dioxide emission would be emitted in the city. Anyway, electric vehicles could also be used for energy storage e.g. in the municipality fleet.

The next question was about his opinion on the carbon tax. Javier was much in favour of this measure, thinking that this might be the only way to make people understand. If there was a tax on greenhouse gas emissions, people would start to worry about it. It should not be like a punishment and a further load though. The taxes could be cut down in a different area in return.

The following question was not clear to answer as being dependent on many details. It asks whether it is better to replace old inefficient cars or exploiting their entire life cycle. There are at least two controversial perspectives. Considering the emissions, a replacement could be reasonable but looking at the resources it might be better to “consume” it. Anyway, it will be difficult to determine the clear threshold when a car is old and there is a need of replacement. In any case the consumer’s behaviour needs to be included.

In our first interview, we spoke about the traffic data, which Alcoy started to record recently, but at this moment they seem not to be available yet.

For the question, which kind of energy will be dominant in the future and which one is the most sustainable, he talked about hydrogen. Javier said it would be the best solution, even if the storage is complicated. A combination with other energy carriers could be a possibility e.g. fuel cells and hydrogen.

Finally, we talked about the target group we should address. In Javier's opinion, students might be the proper ones, not having their minds set too much and having a great impact on their families and friends. So, the best way to change the behaviour might be through the education channel.

After this interview, we are quite satisfied with our insights and opinions we could gather from a specialist and got inspired to further ideas. We are looking forward to work on the project full time.