Nordic heavy-duty road transport entering the age of gas
Demand for cleaner fuel solutions is growing significantly in heavy-duty road transport. To meet such growth Gasum is investing in the construction of around 50 gas filling stations for heavy-duty vehicles in Finland, Sweden and Norway by the beginning of the 2020s. The investment will multiply the size of the Nordic heavy-duty vehicle gas filling station network, enabling considerable emission cuts.
In the Nordic countries, heavy-duty road transport plays a key role in the logistics system while at the same time generating a significant proportion of road transport emissions. For the emission reduction targets set at the national and international levels to be reached, concrete solutions are needed to reduce heavy-duty road transport emissions considerably from the current levels. Among the low-emission fuels, the most competitive alternative for this purpose is liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Gasum’s strategy is based on achieving Nordic gas market growth. In the next few years, Gasum’s gas filling station network serving heavy-duty road transport will become several times larger than today. The coming investments will increase the number of these stations to around 50 in Finland, Sweden and Norway by the beginning of the 2020s. The new filling stations will be located at key transport nodes as regards road haulage, and they will enable significant increases in the use of liquefied natural gas and biogas in heavy-duty transport, the company says in a statement.
The switch of heavy-duty vehicles to liquefied natural gas or liquefied biogas (LBG) will help in the reduction of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate and noise emissions from transport.
- In recent years, we’ve been making purposeful efforts to build the Nordic LNG and biogas infrastructure to improve access to gas. In early 2018, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency granted Gasum an investment subsidy for the expansion of our filling station network as part of the Climate Leap ('Klimatklivet') program. This is key proof of the enormous potential of the gas market and enables the establishment of the role of gas as a low-emission fuel for heavy-duty road transport, Gasum CEO Johanna Lamminen sums up.
The demand for cleaner transport solutions is increasing rapidly as solutions are sought to combat climate change. Delivery and heavy-duty road vehicles are currently responsible for more than a quarter of road transport emissions in the EU. Together with new gas vehicle models, the expanding gas filling station network creates good conditions for road fuel gas market growth and emission cuts.
Nina Garlo-Melkas
