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Clean and efficient heavy vehicles/Stockholm (Sweden)

Stockholm (Sweden)

Optimise the use of biogas locally by fuelling heavy vehicles that are used in sensitive and densely populated areas in the city centre.

Objectives / Innovative Aspects

The project consists of the following tasks:

Purchase of 26 heavy biogas vehicles (distribution trucks and/or buses)
Demonstrate heavy vehicles powered by biogas in normal operation in Stockholm’s transport system
Monitoring and evaluation of biogas heavy vehicles (compared to diesel vehicles)
Survey among the drivers of the vehicles

The Measure

The overall purpose of this measure is to demonstrate that it is possible that in a cost effective way substitute conventional heavy diesel buses and trucks with clean heavy vehicles running on renewable fuels. The local transport company, SL, operates about 1.700 buses through their entrepreneurs who own the vehicles. 250 of these operate in the city centre and are running on ethanol. In 2002 the board of SL decided to replace 125 of the ethanol buses in the central city area with biogas buses. The replaced ethanol buses were moved to areas outside the centre where they replaced 125 diesel buses. The procurement has been completed and the first 21 buses have been delivered 2004. Ten of these are of the brand MAN and 11 are VOLVO buses. After assessment of these 21 buses decision will be taken which brand to chose for the rest of bio gas buses. All 125 buses are to be delivered by the end of 2008. To secure the supply of bio gas SL has signed a long-term contract with the supplier Stockholm Water Company that guarantees supply of gas for the buses for 20 years. The gas is distributed to the bus garage in a pipeline from the production plant at Henriksdal. A local storage and a filling station have been built on the garage premises. This filling station is not open to the public. All stakeholders are satisfied with the new buses. They are functioning as expected and the economy is according to plan. The noise level has been decreased by 50%. No harmful emissions of carbon dioxide, much less emissions of harmful nitrogen oxides and particles.

Recently SL has taken another step to substitute more diesel buses. They have decided to so by buying 100 new ethanol buses within the next few years.
The board of the Stockholm Water Company has decided in 2002 that all the diesel lorries (10-15 per day) used in the work to invest, reinvest and maintenance shall successively be substituted by bio gas lorries. The substitution should be completed within the next five years. So far two diesel lorries have been substituted. Most of the transport services are bought from private transport companies. To stimulate the transport companies to offer clean vehicles Stockholm Water Company offers a better price to those who do so. All the stakeholders are so far very satisfied with the bio gas lorries. They are functioning as expected and the economy is according to plan. The noise level has decreased by 50%. No harmful emissions of carbon dioxide, much less emissions of harmful nitrogen oxides and particles.

Implementation Status

- Environment and Health Administration (MF) will prepare the introduction of heavy biogas vehicles.

Start of integration of the biogas powered heavy vehicles in companies and within the city
Evaluation of the technical performance and user acceptance of the biogas powered heavy vehicles.
During the period September 2001 to September 2004, 24 clean heavy vehicles were purchased. (21 biogas buses and 3 biogas lorries)

Results

The consumption of fossil energy has been reduced by 20.984.412 MJ per year. The emission of fossil CO2 has been reduced by 86 %, equals 1.329 tons per year. Emissions of NOx, particles and CO have been reduced by 50%. However the emissions of HC has increased by 20 times.

The cost of maintenance has increased from 0,033 Euro per km to 0,045 Euro per km. The increase in cost depends on the fact that the biogas engine is an Otto engine, which needs more service and change of spare parts than a diesel engine. The fuel consumption has gone up with 60% in comparison with the consumption of corresponding diesel vehicles. This is due to the fact that the diesel engine is more energy effective than the Otto engine especially when running at low load. The consumption of motor oil has been twice as high in the biogas vehicles compared to diesel vehicles.
The driver acceptance has been monitored and evaluated. More than 90% of them were satisfied or very satisfied with their experience from driving heavy bio gas vehicles and a majority said they would recommend others to drive bio gas heavy vehicles.

The local public transport company, SL, has decided to procure 100 biogas buses to the year 2008. The company has also decided to buy 100 ethanol buses during the same time. In total SL operates more than 1.700 buses and the companies’ ultimate goal is that all buses should be clean. A common co-ordinated procurement of ethanol buses is planned in order to get prices down. Several actors around the world are likely to take part in this procurement process.

Author

Sven Alexanderson

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