Smart partnership provides a sustainable fuel solution

Innovative CNG refuelling station brings together waste management company and infrastructure provider for a sustainable fuel solution.

Scania has often referred to the importance of smart partnerships in bringing about a sustainable transport system, and we need look no further than Ireland for a recent, perfect example.

A CNG first in Ireland

There, a forward-thinking waste management company, Clean Ireland Recycling, has partnered with Gas Networks Ireland, the owners and operators of the Irish natural gas network, to set up the country’s first privately-owned fast-fill compressed natural gas (CNG) refuelling station. The station is sited at Clean Ireland’s depot in Shannon, County Clare and is being used to fuel two of the company’s trucks that run on CNG; the vehicles are Scania P 340s.

The natural gas is compressed at the refuelling station and also on the trucks, so they are able to carry as much fuel as possible. CNG has the advantage of improving air quality, and also lowers CO2 emissions.

Denis Naughten, Ireland’s Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment was there for the opening of the refuelling station. “What Clean Ireland are doing here is an example of what’s going to be replicated across this country,” he says.

Ambitious expansion plans

Neither Gas Networks Ireland nor Clean Ireland Energy want to stop there.

“Gas Networks Ireland plans to deliver large fast fill stations in the next 10 years,” says the company’s Commercialisation Manager Daniel Fitzpatrick. “We’re expecting at least a thousand trucks to transfer and a thousand buses in that 10-year period. And that’s being conservative.”

Clean Ireland Energy’s General Manager Brian Lyons adds, “In a few short years, we are quite hopeful that we will be able to have our own gas produced from our own waste powering our own trucks.”