Welcome to WasteCon 2009 SEPTEMBER 22-24, 2009
Talking CNG Today... NGVAmerica is hosting nearly a dozen CNG/natural gas vehicle equipment companies at WasteCon 2009. The NGVAmerica-coordinated display is at Booth 1353, next to Autocar toward the rear of the exhibit hall. NGVAmerica Booth 1353 ANGI Energy Systems Chart – NexGen Fueling Emission Solutions, Inc. Freightliner Truck (Daimler) Gas Equipment Systems, Inc. GreenField Compression Luxfer Gas Cylinders Sempra Energy Utilities – SoCal Gas Trillium USA Westport Innovations
Other NGV Offerings at WasteCon AFV Fleet Service – Fab Booth 927 Autocar Booth 1359 (hosting Enviromech) Clean Energy Booth 1326 Crane Carrier Booth 1209 Cummins Westport Booth 803 FirmGreen Booth 1246 McNeilus Booth 1032 U.S. EPA (Landfill Methane Outreach) Booth 943 Waste Management, Inc. Booth 5151
McNeilus is showing this Peterbilt 320-based CNG refuse truck at WasteCon 2009.
The Promise of Cheaper Fuel The U.S. natural gas vehicles industry has watched the use of methane expand by millions of vehicles in recent years, with Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan and Iran emerging as world leaders, and China and India
taking the clean fuel seriously indeed. Now a convergence of factors — environmental- and energy securityrelated — is making methane look good in America. Refuse trucks, with their high fuel use, low range
Get Ready for Biomethane
T. Boone Pickens has been putting his money where his mouth is in natural gas vehicles for decades, and over the past year has taken his campaign for the clean domestic fuel national. Now the Pickens Plan is on the American agenda, and Pickens himself will give the WasteCon Presidential Keynote address here Wednesday at 10am. —Page 3
—Page 6
demands, central fueling and operators who need protection from diesel price swings, represent a standout market opportunity. Which is why the U.S. NGVs industry is at WasteCon 2009, in force.
Europe is far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to biogas — refined for vehicle use, it’s biomethane. Some cities in Sweden run their CNG refuse trucks entirely on biomethane, and a successful trial of biomethane in England this year prompted an Italian OEM to offer a line of CNG Waste Management-Linde at Altamont. trucks with right-hand drive for the UK market. The U.S. opportunity is huge. New processes are helping drive down the cost of purifying landfill gas, yielding biomethane that’s chemically identical, and in some cases more reliable, than conventional (fossil) natural gas. Garbage trucks operate at landfills, and it’s inevitable that biomethane will play a larger role in fueling them. Waste Management and Linde have just opened a landfill gasbased LNG facility in California they say is the world’s largest. It will support an estimated 300 trucks. “We can go larger on the next one,” Athens has deployed 108 CNG-fueled says Linde energy segment manager Bryan Luftglass. —Page 4 Mercedes-Benz Econic NGT refuse trucks.
Clean Energy
速
“We’re going to be brought to our knees if this continues.” T. Boone Pickens has been making the natural-gas-as-domesticsolution argument for many years, and last year stepped up the pace by investing a widely reported $68 million to publicize the Pickens Plan, whereby wind power for electricity and natural gas for vehicles — especially heavy vehicles, like garbage trucks — could wean America from its overseas dependence. The U.S. spends some $700 billion a year that could better be spent here, Pickens says. He recently pointed out that the U.S. spent more money on oil imports in August than
Keynote Talk on Wednesday Boone Pickens, described by the Solid Waste Association of Nor th America as “a true energy pioneer,” will give Swana’s Presidential Keynote address at WasteCon 2009 on Wednesday morning at 10:00.
Boone Pickens
it did during any other month in 2009. About $25 billion. And, he argues, we’re buying from people who don’t like us, and we shouldn’t count on. “They do not have as much oil as they tell us they do,” Pickens has told Congress. “It isn’t there.” What is here is natural gas, with pricing economics increasingly separated from the global oil market. Methane, in other words, is getting cheaper. Suppliers are willing to extend long-term contracts, insulating users from oil price spikes. While Pickens packs a political
wallop, the natural gas vehicle fueling company he founded continues an aggressive drive to market methane, especially for heavy duty vehicles, with the refuse industry a prime target. Clean Energy Fuels, now a public entity based near here in Seal Beach, is a WasteCon 2009 conference sponsor. Clean Energy fuels some 1,500 natural gas refuse trucks daily for upwards of 50 fleets, says Jim Harger, sales VP. California is important, likewise Long Island, N.Y., where Smithtown, Brookhaven and Huntington are requiring carters to use CNG. CleanScapes in Seattle, with 40 Crane trucks, is a new customer. Clean Energy has nine fueling stations in Dallas and will provide CNG fuel for 26 new garbage trucks being deployed by the city (page 4). They may someday be fueled with biomethane from the McCommas Bluff Landfill south of the city. Clean Energy recently reported a contract with Republic Services and the City of Boise to fuel a new CNG refuse fleet — the first in Idaho.
WasteCon 2009
The Man with the Plan, for Energy Independence Projects close to being announced involve Sacramento-based Waste Connections in San Luis Obispo and Choice Environmental Services in Florida. New business is expected in the San Francisco Bay Area. CalMet Services is a standout customer in Los Angeles County.
Clean Energy fueling station in Hauppauge (Long Island), N.Y.
Clean Energy (Booth 1326) offers refuse fleet operators full fueling station development, coupled with long-term, fixed-price CNG or LNG fuel supply contracts “in a single turnkey package.” The firm offers financing too, and will help secure grant funding and tax incentives. Boone Pickens wants to require that all U.S. truckers use domestic fuel, i.e. natural gas. Clean Energy is working to make them want to.
‘An Area of Special Potential’ Publisher Kirk Fetzer 415-385-0987 Kirk@CTNPublishing.com Editor Rich Piellisch 415-305-9050 Rich@CTNPublishing.com Photographer Mel Lindstrom 415-378-6159 News Coverage by:
Printed by: Pacific West Litho, Inc. ShowTimes is published by Convention & Tradeshow News. Advertising Department: (415) 979-1414 Editorial Department: (415) 896-5988 www.CTNPublishing.com
© Copyright 2009 by Convention & Tradeshow News. All rights reserved. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without permission. Reprints available upon request.
“It is an area of special potential.” That’s the word from NGVAmerica Rich Kolodziej on the subject of natural gas fuel for refuse trucks. “They use a lot of fuel,” he notes, but they don’t clock long distances. They do a lot of idling, and draw a lot of engine power to run compactors. What’s more, Kolodziej notes, many carters work under franchise deals, and are vulnerable to fuel price increases. They took a big hit in 2008. “Natural gas has all the benefits they’re looking for,” he says — with price stability at the top of the list. “The potential for natural gas prices to go astronomical is about zero,” Kolodziej says, while oil prices are almost certain to surge when the reRich Kolodziej cession ends and manufacturing and shipping demand starts to grow again. The environmental argument is icing on the cake, so to speak, while tighter environmental regulations make natural gas more economical. “A whole separate part of this is the biomethane,” says the NGVAmerica chief. “They’ve got this resource that right now in many cases they’re wasting,” he says of the garbage industry.
“They’re flaring,” he says. They’re wasting gas that could be fueling vehicles. Biomethane remains expensive because of purification costs, Kolodziej concedes. But those costs are dropping, and the littleGet NGVAmerica’s known renewable will likely benrefuse truck reference efit many vehicle operators in the at Booth 1353. years to come. “At the head of that line are the trash truck operators,” Kolodziej says. His organization has put together a 16-page magazine insert that summarizes the advantages of natural gas for waste truck operators, with ample information on fuel and equipment suppliers. Most of them are here. “Down the road,” says Kolodziej, “We’d like to see 90% or 100%” market penetration.” Rich Kolodziej has headed NGVAmerica since 1996. He is the current president of the world organization, the International Association for Natural Gas Vehicles. IANGV will hold the next world NGVs meeting, NGV2010Roma, in Italy June 10-12. Abstracts for technical papers are being accepted until October 30. September 22-24, 2009 Convention & Tradeshow News
3
WasteCon 2009
Beyond FirmGreen for ‘CO2 Wash’ With Help from Clean Cities, Mack Money from the U.S. Department of Energy Clean Cities program — and the backing of Mack Trucks — may help spread the “CO2 Wash” process used by Los Angeles-based FirmGreen to process gas from a landfill near Columbus, Ohio. FirmGreen (Booth 1246) markets the product as “gCNG.” Advocates of CO2 Wash, developed by Cleveland-based Acrion, say it is an “elegant” process by which carbon dioxide itself is induced to act as a solvent to remove other landfill gas impurities. One such booster is Billy Malone of DeKalb County Sanitation, who will seek bids to develop landfill gas for fueling vehicles in the Atlanta area following a $14.98 million Clean Cities award. Other Clean Cities awards will support deployment of clean and efficient refuse trucks in Chicago, Connecticut (18 LNG vehicles), Idaho, New Jersey, and Utah. Mack Trucks said in June that it would offer a CO2 Wash at SWACO in Ohio line of “TerraPro” CNG trucks, beginning with a low-entry vehicle with ISL G engine from Cummins Westport (Booth 803). Mack said it tested the Acrion process at a landfill in Burlington County, N.J., fueling two trucks for 600 hours of operation each over four months. “The results of the test confirmed that the combination of Acrion’s advanced gas purification technology and natural gas-powered Mack refuse trucks was a sustainable and environmentally responsible business strategy for customers with landfill operations,” Mack said. Chicago’s Groot is a lead TerraPro customer, taking 20. A Volvo-Mack affiliate called Terracastus Technologies is working with CNG trucks and landfill gas toward a “total solution” for sustainable operation. FirmGreen took Project of the Year honors for SWACO at the U.S. EPA’s LMOP (Landfill Methane Outreach Program; Booth 943) conference in Baltimore in January. 2010’s LMOP will be held in Baltimore too, January 11-13. Southern California’s Gladstein, Neandross & Associates helped write 11 of the 25 winning Clean Cities proposals.
Biomethane Brings CNG Trucks to UK Great Britain has long been in need of more OEM-built natural gas vehicles. This past spring, Italy’s Iveco decided to offer its wide range of CNG-fueled Daily trucks to British buyers, crediting consistent-quality biomethane fuel, trash truck proven, for the right handdrive launch. Gas quality is a challenge in the UK, as Victoria-era “mains” with seals made of hemp require high moisture con-
Iveco Daily truck operated by the Camden City Council, London.
4
tent gas, which plays havoc with engines. The biomethane from Londonbased Gasrec is based on landfill gas. In league with LNG tanker at Gasrec facility in partner Linde, it’s Albury, southwest processed and of London shipped as “LBM” in cryogenic tankers, but put in vehicles as CNG. There is no moisture issue. A six-month trial by London’s Camden Council saw a Daily 65C14G cage tipper for recycling and street cleaning. Gasrec fuel was delivered by Hardstaff, and Iveco now offers CNG as an option for its full, 28-model range of Daily vehicles in Britain.
September 22-24, 2009 Convention & Tradeshow News
SNAPSHOTS
WM & Linde: Altamont LNG at Last Waste Management, Inc. and purification partner Linde recently detailed their $15.5 million landfill gas-to-LNG project at Altamont, Calif., with target capacity of 13,000 gallons of fuel per day made via a singlestage, mixed-refrigerant liquefaction process licensed from the Gas Technology Institute. The project, said to be the world’s largest, will be able to fuel an estimated 300 trucks. WMI has approximately 700 natural gas trucks in California out of a state fleet of 3,500. The company is at Booth 5151.
CNG Trash Trucks for Dallas The City of Dallas is getting its first CNG refuse trucks, which may ultimately be fueled with gas from a landfill south of the city. “The first stage is getting the customer comfortable with the technology,” says Reagan Noll of Clean Energy, which has nine area fueling stations. They’ll help support 26 CNG refuse trucks purchased by Dallas this year. The vehicles include 20 International Workstar trucks with 7.6-liter engines converted by Emission Solutions, Inc. The other six are Peterbilt 320s with ISL G engines from Cummins Westport. The 26 trucks have Enviromech fuel systems with CNG tanks from Luxfer. Clean Energy has rights to gas from the McCommas Bluff Landfill near Hutchins, and ultimately would like to establish public-access fueling there. Dallas city vehicles and others who use the landfill could fuel there. Suppliers for the Dallas trucks are at NGVAmerica’s Booth 3553 and Autocar’s Booth 1359. Clean Energy is at Booth 1326.
Autocar Fielded 500 in 2008 Indiana’s Autocar built more than 500 Xpeditor brand CNG refuse trucks in 2008, and has just told customers that this year, it “completed the largest single order of natural gas garbage trucks in the Pacific Northwest in U.S. history when the City of Seattle added a fleet of Autocar WXLL natural gas Xpeditors.” The trucks, nearly 100, operated by Waste Management, Inc., have McNeilus bodies and AFV-Fab CNG fuel rigs. Autocar is at Booth 1359 (McNeilus Truck is at Booth 1032 and AFV-Fab is at Booth 927).
Westport and Cummins Westport What’s the difference? Westport Innovations (Booth 803) offers the 15-liter GX engine (formerly the ISX), a compression ignition powerplant for transfer trucks that runs primarily on natural gas with “pilot” diesel, maintaining diesel’s basic efficiency. Vancouver-based Westport will use SCR to meet 2010 emissions limits. The firm offers an entire LNG package, marketed as HD, with GX engine and fuel tanks manufactured by a partner in China. Cummins Westport, Inc. is a joint venture between Westport Innovations and Cummins, Inc. CWI offers spark-ignition, dedicated-natural gas engines, notably the 8.9-liter ISL G (shown). CWI is at NGVAmerica’s Booth 1353.
Trillium provides CNG fuel in Berkeley, Calif.
Salt Lake City-based Trillium USA, which specializes in large-scale CNG fueling, with transit customers including LA Metro, New York City, and the Orange County Transportation Authority near here, is eyeing refuse trucks. “One of my first priorities at Trillium is to expand the brand to new markets like refuse,” says Bill Zobel, the SoCal Gas company veteran (and long-
WasteCon 2009
Trillium Targets Waste Truck Market time CNG advocate) who joined Trillium as business development VP just this month. “The refuse industry needs reliable fueling at fair prices,” he says. We can deliver that.” “We have tremendous experience with highvolume customers,” Zobel adds. “Our record,” he says, “is impeccable.” Trillium is at NGVAmerica’s Booth 1353.
GESI Continues to Grow Gas Equipment Systems, Inc. continues to expand its CNG fueling station business, building facilities in more parts of the country, representing an increasing number of suppliers, and adding personnel at its headquarters in Rancho Cucamonga (Los Angeles) — where it’s moving into bigger offices. Here in Southern California, a GESI station supports 20 CNG refuse trucks and half a dozen street GESI Pasadena sweepers in Pasadena, while another supports 16 trucks in Asuza. GESI has also provided fueling for 40 CNG trash trucks operated by Chicago’s Groot Industries, and built a station in Dodge Center, Minn. for McNeilus. GESI handles Gardner Denver and IngersollRand compressors, Kraus dispensers, and BRCFuelMaker vehicle refueling appliances. GESI is displaying with NGVAmerica at Booth 1353.
AFV-Fab & Enviromech Two WasteCon 2009 exhibitors emphasize fuel systems for natural gas vehicles, and both see increasing promise in the refuse arena. AFV Fleet Services, a unit of Brentwood, Tenn.and Anniston, Ala.-based Fab Industries (of CNG transit bus fame), employs some 63 people at three facilities in South- LNG system by AFV ern California, with Fontana its main location. AFV-Fab is at Booth 927. Enviromech has a new facility right here in Long Beach, where it is working on both International Workstar and Peterbilt refuse trucks for the City of Dallas (page 4). The firm will also furnish CNG systems for factory installation for Freightliner M2 trucks (AFV-Fab has the Freightliner LNG work.) Enviromech (Booth 1359), is setting up a joint venture in Italy with CNG tank supplier Luxfer (Booth 1353).
September 20-22, 2009 Convention & Tradeshow News
5
WasteCon 2009
Crane Likes CNG Prospects, Even Supplies Hybrids “We’ll have the first CNG hybrid in New York by the end of the year,” Crane Carrier VP Glenn Pochocki told Fleets & Fuels ShowTimes prior to WasteCon, noting that the 72,000 lb GVW truck with 8.9-liter Cummins Westport ISL G engine and hydraulic drive from Bosch Rexroth will be the first of two. The New York City Department of Sanitation is also deOne of 40 CNG-fueled LET2 chassis by Crane Carrier for CleanScapes in Seattle
ploying ten CNG Cranes with conventional drivetrains. Crane is supplying 50 CNG trucks 5.9-liter Cummins Westport engines to the L.A. Department of Water & Power. Emissions limits that get substantially lower in 2010, Pochocki says, will raise the cost of diesel trucks, reducing the delta with CNG by about $10,000 per truck, down from about $40,000 today. Crane Carrier is at Booth 1209.
Coming soon to a city near you…
McNeilus Ngen Minnesota’s McNeilus, a division of $7 billion Oshkosh, has launched a program dubbed “Ngen,” for Next Generation Initiatives, “designed to brand and promote industry changing technologies.” One big change is increased use of natural gas fuel. Hundreds of McNeilus CNG refuse trucks have been deployed, and are even the basis of a new line of CNG concrete mixers. Ngen features lightweight composite components for mixers, and the same type of technology is being engineered for refuse trucks, says McNeilus marketing chief Jeffry Swertfeger. “We have moved several hundred CNG products and definitely see that trend continuing, especially as more grant money is made available and legislation for fuel incentives is passed,” he says. McNeilus (Booth 1032) last year put in its own compressed natural gas fueling installation (by California’s Gas Equipment Systems, Inc.) at its CNG Savings Calculator on the Dodge Center McNeilus refuse website factory, allowing its factory-new dedicated-CNG vehicles to be driven off the line. The McNeilus CNG trucks have 2010 emissions-compliant ISL G engines from Cummins Westport, Inc. CWI and GESI are at Booth 1353.
New Factory for Lincoln Lincoln Composites is moving its lightweight CNG and hydrogen fuel tank manufacturing into a brand new, state-of-the-art, approximately 50,000-squarefoot facility in Lincoln, Neb. adjacent to its plant for large Titan cylinders. “We have incorporated automation and enhanced processes to promote greater manufacturing capacity and control,” says Lincoln’s new business development director, Yukari Tanimoto. She is expected to attend WasteCon 2009. 6
September 20-22, 2009 Convention & Tradeshow News
The Clean Vehicle Education Foundation presents
“The Compelling Case for Natural Gas Vehicles in Public and Private Fleets” A Comprehensive One-Day Workshop for Fleet Operators and Clean-Air/Clean-Transportation Policymakers CVEF educational workshops are low-cost, fun, fast-paced and full of practical information covering a wide variety of topics including: � Environmental, energy security and economic market drivers � NGVs 101 basics � Best NGV applications and why � Light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles available from OEMs and SVM “retrofit companies” � Fuel station design, development and ownership/operations options � Federal and state tax credits, grants and other incentives � NGV fleet operator experiences and tips � Calculating fuel cost, simple payback and life-cycle savings � Next steps in implementing a successful NGV program
Upcoming Dates Ann Arbor, MI October 28, 2009 Philadelphia, PA November 11, 2009 Tampa, FL November 17, 2009 Additional 2009/2010 Dates TBA soon! Registration Fee:
$50-65 (varies by location)
For more information, visit www.cleanvehicle.org/workshop/index.shtml