Freight transport’s answer to the climate crisis and the European Green Deal

Tom Antonissen, our EU Affairs Director at Group level attended the 2020 Ertico congress discussing the decarbonization of freight transport, one of the key challenges addressing the climate crisis.

Part of the Ertico congress’ session on ‘Freight transport’s answer to the climate crisis and the European Green Deal’, Tom’s presentation emphasized the “low-hanging fruit” of technological solutions that already exist to decarbonize freight transport and logistics operations.

By pointing to AKKA’s own digital transformation expertise, Tom described case studies that leverage technology linked to digitalization, automation, connectivity, and electrification to make transport and logistics greener and safer.

These included new vehicle concepts such as autonomous “container shuttles” and lightweight automated electric freight movers for last meter distribution in urban environments.

Tom also presented one of the latest EU-funded projects won by AKKA Research, namely 5G-LOGINNOV (press release here), highlighting the benefits of using closed, complex environments such as ports as living labs for 5G-enabled tracking and tracing solutions and using 5G connectivity to create pan-European corridors which will allow for multi-brand truck platooning.

More about Tom Antonissen

Tom assumes since March 2017 the position of EU Affairs Director at Group level. His role encompasses representing AKKA in Brussels at the EU level towards institutions, associations, partners and other stakeholders. He furthermore supports the AKKA Research team in developing and implementing EU-funded collaborative R&D projects and serves as main liaison with ERTICO – ITS Europe, among others as a member of its Strategy Committee since 2017.

During his 15 years’ experience working on European transport & mobility policies, Tom held senior roles at the Association of European Vehicle Logistics (ECG), the European Road Federation (ERF) and the Washington-based International Road Federation (IRF), with a particular focus on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), technology, multimodal transport, logistics and road safety. He also spent several years as Transport Practice Manager of the consultancy Logos Public Affairs, managing the team with responsibility for clients in the Transport, Energy, Environment, Automotive and Engineering sectors.

As a Belgian national, he studied law at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and obtained a Master in International and European Law (LL.M.) at its Institute for European Studies (IES). He moreover graduated in 2012 from the European Business School (EBS) and the Institute for Supply Chain Management (ISCM) in Wiesbaden, Germany, with a Certificate in Automobile Logistics Management (a course now administered by KPMG Education, where he continues to give an annual lecture on “EU Affairs and Lobbying”).