Liquified natural gas
Driving the alternative fuels movement As a substitute to diesel, liquified natural gas (LNG) is proving a popular choice among truck operators. Dan Jones explains more
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The view that gas was just for organisations investing in a bit of greenwash is well and truly out of the window
rojections suggest as many as 39,000 gas trucks could be in operation by 2027 in the UK. The move is being driven by an intense pressure on the industry to reduce its carbon footprint, specifically within the government’s transport decarbonisation plan. The document outlined ambitions to phase out the sale of new diesel and petrol heavy goods vehicles by 2040. Manufacturers’ development plans for the electric and fuel cell trucks of tomorrow might be gathering pace right now, but the reality is that, for regional and long-distance applications, gas remains the only genuine alternative to diesel currently available. “The view that gas was just for organisations investing in a bit of greenwash is well and truly out of the window,” says James Westcott, Chief Commercial Officer of Gasrec, which supplies more than half of the natural gas currently used by the road transport sector. “These companies are now making investments in gas vehicles because they know they work. They’ve done the hard yards and run the trials – the vehicles have got the fleet deployment and infrastructure around them. And this means smaller operators can start to benefit from that and join them too.” The fact that 18 per cent of the UK’s road transport
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32 The Standard Autumn 2021
emissions comes from HGVs, yet they represent just one per cent of vehicles on the road, means that by swapping diesel trucks for gas equivalents, the industry can have a disproportionately large effect on CO2 reduction within a rapid timeframe. “To put this in perspective, if we replace 18,000 diesel-powered trucks with equivalent models running on Bio-LNG (liquified natural gas), this has the same impact as taking 525,000 petrol and diesel-powered cars off our roads and replacing them with electric cars,” reasons Westcott. “When you look at it this way, the impact we can collectively have as an industry is huge.”
