The government is to contribute £11m to a scheme that aims to encourage road haulage operators in the UK to buy and use low carbon commercial vehicles.
Tesco, John Lewis, Robert Wiseman Dairies and Howard Tenens are among the thirteen companies leading trials in the £23m programme, which will be managed by the Technology Strategy Board in partnership with the Department for Transport and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles.
Freight minister Mike Penning said: “These trials will reduce CO2 emissions from freight and provide important information from a range of real-life situations that will increase industry confidence in low carbon trucks in the long term.”
The trials include:
* The John Lewis Partnership working with partners to demonstrate a 70 per cent reduction in carbon emissions in a wide range of articulated vehicles.
* A project led by G-Volution that will trial ten 44 tonne dual-fuel commercial HGVs using a patented dual fuel technology ‘Optimiser’ and bio-methane.
* United Biscuits collaborative project, which proposes to exploit the value in used cooking oil by creating a renewable fuel for use in 44 tonne articulated vehicles.
* JB Wheaton and Sons will trial, with other fleet operators, the use of 28 vehicles that will be fuelled from compressed natural gas or liquid natural gas blended with renewable bio-methane to run dual fuel gas converted trucks.
* Robert Wiseman Diaries, collaborating with Chive Fuels, Cenex and MIRA, will trial the use of 40 new warranted dual fuel 40 tonne articulated trucks substituting diesel with natural gas.
Other demonstrator trials swill be carried out by: Ascott Transport, Brit European Transport, CNG Services, Howard Tenens, T Baden Hardstaff, Tesco, The BOC Group.
More than 300 low-carbon commercial vehicles will be involved in the demonstration programme. The demonstration trial fleets will be run for two years, during which time usage data will be gathered and analysed by the Department for Transport.
