Transport minister John Hayes announced the 20 winners of the competition launched last year for government funding today (11 January 2017) at the Sustainable Road Transport Conference, in London.
CNG Fuels gets £1.96 million to trial a fleet of dedicated biogas HGVs, while G-volution receives £0.82 million to demonstrate 15 Euro 6 dual-fuel diesel-natural gas vehicles.
ENN Clean Energy UK receives the highest funding - £2.57 million – for its biogas project, which will involve 86 trucks ranging from 26 to 44 tonnes. In addition, five refrigeration units will use Dearman’s prototype liquid nitrogen system.
Then Kuehne + Nagel sees £1.13 million across two projects. The first trialling dedicated gas and direct injection dual-fuel biomethane-diesel trucks. The second involves Whitbread, which is to operate four full electric, two range extended electric and two liquid nitrogen-cooled refrigeration vehicles on temperature controlled transport.
Lawrence David is granted £0.35 million to design, build and trial six lightweight aerodynamic double-deck trailers.
Tevva gets £1.1 million for a fleet-wide pilot to prove advanced battery range extending technology, and ULEMco receives £1.31 million to fund trials using hydrogen dual-fuel technology.
UPS gets £1.33 million to invest in smart charging of its electric vans in central London.
“Each one of these successful projects will help cut vehicle emissions, improving air quality and reducing pollution in towns and cities,” states Hayes.
“This is yet another important step towards this government’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions from transport to help tackle climate change,” he continues.
“We are already making headway through our investment in low emission vehicles, greener public transport and walking and cycling, as well as grants for innovative advanced biofuels projects.”
Funding will be delivered by the governments OLEV (the Office for Low Emission Vehicles) and Innovate UK, with the objective of demonstrating new green commercial vehicle technologies and encouraging uptake of low and zero emission fleet vehicles.
“These 20 projects around the UK will spearhead the uptake of the next generation of innovative low emission freight and fleet vehicles,” comments Innovate UK’s manufacturing and materials director Simon Edmonds.
“[They] build on the results of previous low carbon projects with OLEV, and the data collected from this new trial will be invaluable to future development and commercialisation of these vital technologies.”
For the longer term, Hayes also expects the new programme to help the UK meet its CO2 reduction targets – citing the goal of all new cars and vans being zero emission by 2040.
He makes the point that from September this year, new types of diesel cars will have to meet more stringent Euro 6 emissions limits. And he adds that these limits will tighten further early in 2020.