GREEN TRANSPORT CASE STUDIES
- Camden Council - electric, hydrogen fuel cells, LPG
- Courier Systems - LPG & used cooking oil (Biodiesel)
- AV2Hire - high speed delivery bicycles
1. Camden Council
The London Borough of Camden's green vehicle fleet - including three Modec vans - demonstrates and evaluates alternative fuels in real-world applications and their jointly-owned portable hydrogen fuel cell generator is available to hire as a powerful, yet silent and clean power-source. The generator is available for hire.
For six months, a 'rubbish' truck in Camden was actually powered by a fuel derived from landfill waste. Liquid biomethane (LBM) is considered to be a carbon neutral alternative to fossil fuels.
The truck emitted almost 60% less CO2, less noise and consumed less fuel than either diesel or CNG, with no reliabilty issues. It also travelled twice as far as the current CNG fleet between re-fuelling stops. The trial was conducted by Veolia Environmental Services, Iveco and Camden Council using Gasrec’s liquid biomehtane fuel, with funding and evaluation support by Cenex. The next step is to produce the fuel at local landfill sites. Compare with the other Green Motor Expo vehicles.
Camden has been a leading light in sustainable transport for many years. Past winners of "The Most Innovative Transport Project" and "Transport Borough of the Year" in the annual London Transport Awards, plus a 23% reduction in traffic and co2 since 1994. The large fall in car use and resultant increase in cycling has been accompanied by a significant decline in deaths and injuries on the roads. www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/themes/green-camden/
2. Courier Systems
Courier Systems is one of London’s leading same day and overnight despatch companies, to the UK and internationally. Other services include film transportation and baggage repatriation.
3,000 consignments are delivered daily, by a fleet of vans, motorcycles and pushbikes.
Fleet:
140 vans, 90 motorcycles & 40 pushbikes.
12% of vans use diesel (30% will use biodiesel from refined cooking oil by the end of 2009).
75% of van fleet use LPG.
What is working well:
Our fleet cover over 5 million miles a year, making the switch towards alternative fuel LPG in 2001 a major challenge for the company. However, it has paid off by improving our corporate image, being financially viable, and of course providing excellent environmental benefits such as cleaner city air and lower carbon emissions when compared to petrol. Although we began to make the change before the Congestion Charge came into force, there have been clear commercial benefits for maintaining our fleet of cleaner dual fuel LPG vehicles, since these are Congestion Charge exempt. It was not always easy, but our dedicated team of mechanics have now become specialists through on the job training in the servicing and maintenance of the LPG fleet. The LPG fleet have proved so successful, that we recently purchased a new batch.
What needs improvement:
Some vehicles have performed better than others. We decided to experiment with a new manufacturer, and opted for 10 transit size vehicles. Unfortunately they often spent more time off the road than on it, became a financial burden, and severely impacted our operational capabilities. This experience thankfully happened a few years into our LPG journey, and so did not send us off course.
Plans for further development and application:
Short and medium term: Fuel efficiency monitoring and Increasing the amount of biodiesel usage in the diesel fleet.
Long term: Investing in electric vehicles that are operationally viable. Currently most vehicles cannot do more than 50miles, whereas our couriers often require the vans for 100 miles or more per day
Workplace Travel Policy:
Most employees live in the area, so either work, cycle or take public transport to work.
“Greening our fleet has been challenging, yet proving to be an extremely worthwhile endeavour. We look forward to building on our years of LPG experience and reducing our carbon footprint through an array of technologies such as electric, hydrogen and alternative fuels such as biodiesel. This is an exciting period for us, taking the momentum we have built up over the years to continue to drive innovation in the environmental sphere.”
Alexandros Germanis – Environmental Development Manager
3. AV2Hire
AV2Hire is the cheapest projector hire service in the UK. This is in part because of the low running costs of our fleet. We don't use couriers to get your equipment to you, instead we use our own technical staff who can help you se tup the equipment thereby leaving you to concentrate on your presentation. We get your AV equipment to you by the quickest and most effective means possible utilising our fleet of delivery bicycles, this means that you get a working, tested projector at the time that you specify, with no parking problems. Compare with the other Green Motor Expo vehicles.
Fleet:
Load-carrying delivery bicycles designed for us by Mike Burrows.
They are based on the 8-Freight and include a light, aluminium frame, a lockable flight case, batwings to allow us to carry staging flats or 6 foot screens, two interchangable wheels to scoot through the traffic and a pneumatic kickstand.
They are an eye-catching promotional tool and can carry up to 100 kilos excluding the rider.
