In May 2022, the UK Government announced that from 2035, all new HGVs sold in the UK less than or equal to 26 tonnes must be zero emission vehicles meaning that there is now a fixed timescale by which fleet operators will need to transition from their existing diesel fleets to either battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.

Recycling, waste, and street cleansing vehicles are theoretically well suited to transitioning to zero emission vehicle technologies compared to some other applications because most vehicles operate on fixed rounds which makes it easier to understand how much energy is required each day and they normally return to the depot overnight which provides plenty of opportunity for charging or refuelling the vehicle before the next shift starts.

Despite this, several challenges remain that must be overcome before the mass adoption of zero emission recycling and waste vehicles:

• Specialist vehicles: recycling and waste vehicles have specialist bodies and equipment that need to be powered by the vehicle, this additional energy also needs to be considered when sizing the battery or fuel tanks.
• Infrastructure: many fleets will need depot based charging or refuelling infrastructure and to prevent it being prohibitively expensive it is important that this is right sized to match the duty cycles and operating patterns of the vehicles.
• Business case: zero emission HGVs are currently more expensive to buy than equivalent diesel vehicles, but they can provide running cost savings under the right conditions. Fleets also need to procure the required infrastructure, fleet management systems, and potentially electricity grid upgrades so it is currently economically challenging to transition entire recycling and waste fleets to zero emission vehicles without additional funding.

Cenex worked with Joint Waste Solutions and the 11 local authorities to develop a Fleet Decarbonisation Scenario Model. This model can estimate the financial and environmental impacts for each local authority related to different fleet transition strategies.

This was achieved through the following activities:

• Baselining the current fleet composition, costs and emissions.
• Creation of a baseline dashboard, for both the county of Surrey as a whole and each individual local authority separately.
• Compiling a comprehensive report on vehicle technology introduction and case studies to establish a strong theoretical foundation for developing a new transitional strategy.
• Engaging with the different stakeholders involved in the programme, to ensure that all their requirements are met by the tools created.
• Researching the capabilities, costs, and performance of the different technologies when applied in a highly specific environment, such as waste and street cleansing services.
• Designing and building a Scenario Model that has the capability of estimating the impacts of transitioning to battery electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, and renewable fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil and hydrogen diesel dual fuel.

In addition to this, Cenex provided all relevant stakeholders with all the training necessary to utilise the model created to its full extent.