Air quality is everything for Camden. London's air pollution is among the worst in Europe, and it is the issue that gives the borough's senior sustainability officer, Gloria Esposito, the most sleepless nights.
As most of Camden's fleet of vehicles, which are used for everything from waste collection to mayoral duties, run on liquid petroleum gas, switching to more environmentally friendly fuels was imperative for the green-minded council.
After Esposito's team did a lifecycle analysis of all the available options two years ago, they compiled a hierarchy of fuel and vehicle choices for the fleet.
No prizes for guessing electric vehicles came out on top. More surprising is number two, a fuel that is largely unknown in Britain though it is widely used on the continent: compressed biomethane (CBM).
Esposito explains that CBM is a fuel derived from methane. It is released when waste decomposes in landfill sites. The gas is upgraded to a liquid and can be used in vehicles as a substitute for compressed or liquid natural gas. Not only does CBM produce vastly lower particulates and nitrogen oxides, which are found in fuels such as diesel, it boasts CO2 savings of up to 55%.
"The beauty of biomethane is that we are doing something useful with municipal waste that would have gone to landfill and we are doing something useful with the methane that would otherwise have gone into the atmosphere," says Esposito.
Her interest in biomethane developed about the time when Volkswagen, Mercedes and Iveco were preparing to bring into the UK commercial vehicles capable of operating on either natural gas or biomethane fuel: the VW Caddy, Mercedes Sprinter and Iveco Daily.
Camden trialled a 3.5-tonne Iveco Daily for waste collection for six months alongside waste management provider Veolia and Gasrec, the UK's first commercial producer of liquid biomethane. Esposito and her team were so happy with the results that Camden placed an order for 13 VW Caddy vans and two Mercedes Sprinters.
In 2009 Camden became the first local authority in the country to install a CBM refuelling station. The new refuelling station, at its transport depot in York Way, serves Camden's own fleet, which includes the mayor of Camden's dual fuel (biomethane and petrol) Saab, as well as two Mercedes Sprinters operated by John Lewis Partnership, and one VW Caddy owned by neighbouring Islington council.
"This fuel is in its infancy in terms of public awareness," says Esposito. "We want to encourage other users to purchase biomethane vehicles and use our depot to refuel."
Doug Leaf, operations manager of Gasrec, says he hopes Camden's pioneering move will be copied by other local authorities. "The public sector is a market that can benefit most from utilising biomethane. Along with the other climate benefits, it goes a heck of a long way towards improving air quality."
Esposito's biggest hope is to lure food retailers and freight operators to buy CBM vehicles so the ones that rumble through the borough leave behind a more benign legacy. "Freight transport has one of the biggest impacts on air quality and also CO2 emissions," she says.
