Nordic (Northern Europe and the North Atlantic) countries expand LNG station network for heavy trucks
Gasum is investing in the construction of around 50 natural gas refueling 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 NGV station network, enabling considerable emission cuts. The new facilities will be located at key transport nodes as regards road haulage, and they will enable significant increases in the use of LNG and biogas in heavy-duty transport. In the Nordic countries, heavy-duty transport plays a key role in the logistics system while at the same time generating a significant proportion of vehicle 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 LNG. The switch of heavy-duty vehicles to LNG or bio-LNG will result in significant cuts in carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate and noise emissions from transport. “We’re on our way towards a carbon-neutral society and it’s now time to accelerate the pace. Natural gas plays an indisputably important role in this transition,” said Gasum CEO Johanna Lamminen. “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.”