RES4LIVE Project

Led by the Agricultural University of Athens (Athene, Greece), the project gathers 17 partners from eight European Union countries.

CRMT is an engineering company with expertise in alternative fuel (BioNGV) engines, it is the only French partner, based in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and CARA member. The key role of CRMT is to convert a diesel farm tractor to biogas.

The tractor is supplied by the Leibniz-Institut für Agrartechnik und Bioökonomie e.V. (ATB) based in Potsdam, Germany, with whom CRMT is collaborating to test the performance of the prototype in real-life conditions.

The other partners are:

In the framework of the “Horizon 2020 (H2020)” programme, the RES4LIVE project aims to imagine fossil fuel-free agriculture. The overall objective is to provide the livestock sector with advanced and cost-effective technologies to ensure the sustainable development of farms and the thermal comfort of animals. RES4LIVE project will allow to reach a better productivity with a reduced environmental impact and act to stop climate change. To achieve this, the project has four main pillars:

Technical partner on the mobility section of the first pillar “Technologies and machines adaptation”, CRMT is part of the working group number 2 (Work Package 2), which gather all technical partners proposing alternative solutions to fossil fuel. CRMT will work on the conversion of the farm tractor in charge of the operation. CRMT’s work will focus on:

The pilot tests will be conducted on four selected farms of three distinct espaces based in Europe.

The farm tractor test converted by CRMT will be realize in Potsdam, Germany, within the institute (farm) Leibniz-Institut für Agrartechnik und Bioökonomie e.V. (ATB).

RES4LIVE was launched on 1^st October 2020 and will run for 4 years until 30^th September 2024.

The first overall project meeting was held on 3^rd February 2021, and the second on 15^th April 2021, both by video conference. The partners are moving forward with their own timetable to achieve their objectives by 2024.

CRMT will continue to develop and design the retrofit solution until summer 2021. The development of the engine and the realization of the prototype will be done simultaneously, with the objective of delivering the converted tractor in the first half of 2022.

Today, intensive livestock farms are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and run almost exclusively on fossil fuels. The partners of RES4LIVE have the mission to think about innovative and promising solutions, adapt and test them to considerably reduce the fossil energy used for pig, dairy, and poultry farming.

The added value of the CRMT in the RES4LIVE project is to provide a solution in a segment of the agricultural vehicle market for which there is no alternative to diesel: small and medium-sized agricultural tractors. In addition to the significant reduction in the environmental impact of a tractor running on biogas compared to its diesel equivalent (neutral carbon footprint, emissions of gaseous pollutants -NOx- and fine particles, etc.), the transformation carried out by the CRMT will encourage the circular economy thanks to the use of the biomethane produced in the methanisation units as a fuel for vehicles (biogas). This valorisation of biomethane will also make it possible, in certain areas, to encourage synergies between different modes of transport which would be supplied with locally produced fuel (heavy vehicles, road vehicles belonging to local authorities, special vehicles, etc.). Finally, CRMT’s work in RES4LIVE to market biogas vehicles in the vicinity of biogas production units will ensure energy independence and job creation on a local scale.

The project received €5.8 million fund from the European Commission, having been judged to be highly relevant to the challenges of energy transition in the agricultural sector. It was supported by CARA cluster, which provided a letter of interest in this context. The solutions that will emerge from RES4LIVE will be demonstrated on four pilot farms and evaluated from a technical, economic, environmental, and social perspective.

For this purpose, the partners will consider the adaptation of promising key greenhouse gas technologies that are best suited to livestock farms and can be directly integrated. The project is based on a long-term test logic to accurately assess performance, sustainability of solutions and end-user acceptance. The set of innovative systems selected, based on applied renewable energies, will be monitored and measured with technical, economic, social, and environmental indicators. Finally, RES4LIVE will implement case studies in many farms in the European Union and will aim to obtain maximum stakeholder engagement to replicate the best results on the largest number of farms.

CRMT has defined three main tasks in the framework of the transformation of the farm vehicle: