Moderator Anna Bertills opened the Kvarken Council’s event on Saturday August 13th at Wasa Innovation Center. The first presentation was held by Emil Sandström from Tyréns. He presented what has been done in the FAIR project after last year’s event. The FAIR project aims to prepare the Kvarken region for an early introduction of electric aviation.
– There are multiple opportunities with electric aviation. But of course, there´s challenges as well that need to be addressed, Sandström said.
Zero emissions, lower costs for aviation, and increased connectivity are the arguments used when supporting electric aviation. As challenges Sandström mentioned the demand for and attitude towards regional electric aviation, lack of charging infrastructure and limited network capacity, and that today’s airports are not optimized for short flights.
Emil Sandström from Tyréns told moderator Anna Bertills, that the driving factor for electric aviation is the green emerging industry and new job creation.
Next up Isak Brändström, also from Tyréns, held a presentation of the Nordic Battery Belt Logistics project and reported on what has been done in the project lately. Transport and logistics services are needed in various parts of the supply chain when producing batteries to the emerging green energy field. Adequate logistics infrastructure and services would provide an efficient battery cluster to the Kvarken region.
Brändström described that there’ll be a need of different kinds of transport solutions in the future. The transport at sea will be very crucial because a lot of the materials that will be needed for the batteries will come from other countries. Not all materials are available in the Kvarken region yet. Therefore, the ports will be important.
– There will be a growing transport demand in this region. It’s hard to say exactly which parts of the transport system will be most affected but we need to continue focusing on this issue, Brändström explained.
Both the FAIR project and the Nordic Battery Belt Logistics project will end in October. The projects will have a joint final conference in Skellefteå September 20th–21st, where research results from both projects will be presented. Read more about the final conference HERE.
You can watch the Wasa Future Festival livestream on Youtube HERE.
Emil Sandström held a presentation about the electric aviation project FAIR and Isak Brändström presented what has been done in the Nordic Battery Belt Logistics project. Heidi Hansson from Umeå University talked about university collaboration in the Kvarken region.
FAIR is an Interreg Botnia-Atlantica financed project developing a methodology to support an early and efficient commercialization of electric-powered regional flights in the Kvarken region.
Nordic Battery Belt Logistics is a project focusing on enabling sustainable and cost-effective cross-border logistic solutions based on the value chains and needs of the growing battery industry in the Nordic Battery Belt area. The project is a collaboration between the Kvarken Council EGTC, VASEK, KOSEK, Skellefteå Municipality and Rana Utvikling. It is co-financed by Interreg Botnia-Atlantica, Region Västerbotten and the Regional Council of Ostrobothnia.
