A 27-tonne electric bin wagon has hit the streets of the Lancaster District, the first of its kind in Lancashire to be used by a local authority to deliver a waste collection service.
The arrival of the new lorry, initially servicing the city centre, is part of a much wider project to achieve Net Zero by 2030 for the Council’s entire vehicle fleet, which it aims to achieve through a mix of electric and hydrogen electric vehicles.
The Council already has a number electric panel vans and electric pool cars, with more to come, replacing existing vehicles, part of a wider effort effort to reduce carbon emissions by councils across the country.
Lancaster City Council’s Vehicle Replacement Programme is set to be complete by 2027/28.
The bin lorry, made by Blackburn-based Electra Commercial Vehicles, uses a single overnight charge to its 300kwh battery, and requires only a single overnight charge to complete a typical daily round, which reports from other parts of the country suggest costs under £20, compared to the daily diesel cost of £100 for a traditional vehicle.
Electra has supplied vehicles to councils around the UK, including the City of London, Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Manchester, Brighton, and to commercial companies such as Brewdog and Eddie Stobart.
The City Council’s bin lorry will be joined by a second wagon of the same type and model later this year and replace the two conventional diesel wagons currently used for Lancaster City Council’s Business Waste Collection Service.
The daily service collects more than around 330 tonnes of waste each month from city and town centre shops, pubs, offices and other commercial businesses across the district.
The two fully electric vehicles aim to support the council’s ongoing commitment to tackling the climate emergency by reducing the carbon emissions generated by its operations.
Moving to Electric
After declaring a climate emergency in 2019, Lancaster City Council reviewed its fleet replacement programme and began to roll out a programme of electrification. It has some 176 vehicles in its fleet, ranging from refuse collection vans to tractors. In 2020, the Council’s diesel fleet accounted for 39% of the council’s direct emissions, 60% of fleet emissions generated from just 26 refuse collection vehicles. The council decided that if it was to achieve Net Zero by 2030, they had to reduce their fleet’s footprint as a priority.
The Council buys its own vehicles outright through capital borrowing; replacement programmes are built around the useful economic life of each vehicle type (typically ranging from four to ten years). Using those programmes, they have started to phase out of diesel vehicles in favour of electrification.
Welcoming the bin lorry’s arrival, Councillor Kevin Frea, cabinet member with responsibility for climate action, said: “In 2018 /19, our fleet used 453,130 litres of diesel to deliver vital services to residents, resulting in 1,218 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
“We’ve got a fleet of 176 vehicles of all shapes and sizes and already made significant progress in switching to electric across many of our cars and vans. Even so, of all our vehicles, it is our waste collection wagons which consume the most fuel and emit the greatest amount of CO2, so this further step forward will play a key part in our carbon reduction plans.”
Future Plans
Plans to switch to electric vehicles also include new street cleaning vehicles, but this is dependent on the availability of Electric Vehicles that can do the job, a problem the Council has had to consider across its whole Net Zero program.
In a 2020 article for UK:100, a network for UK local leaders focused solely on climate, clean energy and clean air policy, Councillor Freas noted the benefits and challenges of the program. He revealed that while the Council had sorted the procurement of pool cars, panel vans, electric charge points and costs were within the projected estimates, “It’s clear that there is a problem with the availability of EVs on the market to replace specialist vehicles, and the general perception from operational teams around EVs, charge anxiety, practicality etc.”
Web Links
• Lancaster’s Net Zero commitments (Often updated)
• Lancaster’s Net Zero Report (PDF, 2020)