Voluntary Commitment of the Agricultural and Construction Machinery Manufacturer - Continuous Efficiency Increase to Reduce Fuel Consumption and CO_2 Emissions

摘要

The efficiency increase of machines and vehicles follows the demands for increasing productivity as well as reducing emissions and resource consumption. The last points especially serve the legislative targets. Current regulations for passenger cars provide exhaust-gas legislation as well as the limitation of fuel consumption and greenhouse gases. Similar regulation applies for light commercial vehicles and is foreseeable in future for heavy-duty vehicles. The Ecodesign Directive creates guidelines for reducing energy consumption for all Energy Related Products and Product Groups; cf. electric motors. Discussions on respective regulations of greenhouse gases and limitations of energy consumption for agricultural and construction machinery are ongoing. However, the procedure cannot be identical for all products. In contrast to passenger cars a product-focused approach with dedicated testing cycles for estimating greenhouse gases cannot be successful in the sectors of agricultural and construction machinery. Besides driving mainly the working process is crucial for such machines. That's why the process as well as the process chains of the production system must be taken into account. Individual considerations will not bring success, because the performance of the process chain depends on the mutual interference of the machines. Also the output must be taken into account for real evaluation of consumption and emissions, which is for agricultural machines e.g. g CO_2 per ton grain equivalent unit. The manufacturers of agricultural and construction machinery are currently working on an initiative to commit to a continuous efficiency enhancement. The developed concept will determine effects of individual measures itself as well as in process chains. It contains also a verification procedure for. For an objective assessment simulation models are required. For those models input-data like saving potentials of machines and model farms or construction sites are needed. Supportive models to estimate future developments of greenhouse gas savings will be build up. The model takes into account operating conditions, machines in process chains and improvements in organizational processes. On this basis calculations for defined time periods of the past, presence and future will be performed.