Aberdeen City Council awarded a contract for a major fleet-wide hydrogen dual-fuel utility vehicle conversion to Ulemco. The contract initially covers 35 vehicles, which, once completed, will be the largest H2 fleet in the UK.
This is not the first such contract for Ulemco, which has supplied heavy-duty vehicles to the Aberdeen City Council previously. The previous orders’ vehicles have now been running successfully for over a year. As a result of the success of the last order, the new order includes has been expanded to include further refuse collection vehicles and road sweepers, as well as a wide variety of other utility trucks including tippers and tractors.
Ulemco advertises that the fleet conversion can save up to 40% of CO2 emissions across the whole fleet. The company further estimates that the converted vehicles will attract enough attention to create “significant demand for the growing Hydrogen Hub in the region, supporting the Council’s commitment to deliver a thriving hydrogen economy in the area, and creating the demand for more highly skilled jobs”.
The company notes that this would be particularly effective for heavy-duty vehicles, such as tractors and tippers, as well as converting further refuse vehicles and sweepers, which do not have much of a zero-emissions market share today.
“We’re delighted to announce our first fleetwide conversion contract with Aberdeen City Council, where, over the next 18 months, we shall be enabling 35 vehicles to run on hydrogen dual fuel, with more in planning”, says Amanda Lyne, Managing Director of ULEMCo. “These include vehicles in the existing fleet as well as some new ones that would otherwise be on the road for the next 10 years or so running on standard diesel only. The Council’s investment in our ‘here and now’ solution will help build significant demand for hydrogen, which in turn creates base load demand for scaled investment for infrastructure suppliers to provide more refuelling etc.”
Keyword: Ulemco to convert Aberdeen City utility fleet to hydrogen