Mayor of London Boris Johnson has backed the use of liquid biomethane (LBM) after seeing it in action on Iveco’s natural gas-powered Daily van, at the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership’s exhibition earlier this week.
Iveco and LBM supplier Gasrec displayed a 6.5-tonne Daily at the show, which was hosted in Potters Field Park, alongside the same Daily 65C14G cage tipper which has just completed a six-month trial on recycling and street cleansing operations for Camden Council.
During that time it recorded a 62 per cent saving in carbon dioxide emissions over diesel engine equivalents.
Johnson spent some time viewing the Daily and talking to David Burke, commercial development director at Iveco UK and Doug Leaf, development manager at Gasrec.
Burke said: “The Mayor of London was extremely positive about the potential use of LBM. It’s a technology that he wasn’t fully aware of but was very keen to find out more.
“Our recent trial has highlighted that running a natural gas powered Daily on LBM offers fleet operators a serious and renewable alternative for applications where vehicles operate on a regular back-to-base cycle. As a direct result we are currently in discussions with several key operators about the potential of running gas-powered Dailys on LBM, with right-hand drive production being geared – up at our plant in Suzarra to support the UK market.”
Iveco reckons LBM is a commercially competitive and environmentally sound fuel that can be directly substituted for natural gas and is the most sustainable alternative fuel in terms of impact on resource depletion in relation to alternatives such as biodiesel and ethanol.
It also has the lowest carbon intensity of all commercially available alternative fuels – with one tonne of LBM equivalent to 1,200 litres of diesel, which is enough to fuel a 44-tonne truck for a week.
