In a seminar for carriers and companies held today at its Madrid headquarters, GAS NATURAL FENOSA presented an initiative it is promoting, the “BESTWay project: Boosting Energy Sustainable fuels for freight Transport in European motorWays”.
The general goal of this project is to identify, implement, and validate new refuelling solutions for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural gas (CNG) along the Atlantic Corridor, covering issues such as technical and market regulations in the area of safety, standardisation, logistics, public access and interoperability.
Specifically, this initiative is developing nine LNG refuelling stations along the Atlantic Corridor (between Algeciras and Paris) to be able to link up with other sustainable mobility corridors in Europe.
These stations will feature advanced solutions for remote management and operations. An ICT infrastructure will also be developed to provide services and applications that improve interoperability while guaranteeing public access to the stations. It will include payment system compatibility, training and accreditation.
BESTWay will also introduce other technological innovations for the first time in Europe, such as:
- Recovery of boil-off gas from lorry tanks and LNG tanks to produce CNG.
- LNG pumps that can measure P, T, V and flow in real time.
- Analysis of reliably accurate methods for measuring the amount and quality of LNG in the tank.
- Design of a driver training and accreditation system to improve safety measures in LNG refuelling.
This project is funded by the European Union through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme. The implementation will be fully complete in July of this year.
This project is part of the large-scale roll-out of natural gas as an alternative fuel for road transport.
Vehicular Natural Gas
The meeting also included an introduction to vehicular natural gas (VNG).
Natural gas is a real alternative that is helping to improve our oil dependence in all mobility sectors. GAS NATURAL FENOSA is the leading Spanish company in gas mobility services.
Vehicular natural gas in its compressed or liquid form is the most efficient and sustainable type of fuel, and has economic benefits as well as major environmental benefits, like reducing emissions and noise pollution.
Vehicular natural gas is a real alternative that is helping to improve air quality in our cities, given that it cuts nitrogen oxide and suspended particles emissions, the main pollutants impacting human health, by more than 85% and 100%, respectively, and CO2, the main greenhouse gas, by 20%. Moreover, natural gas engines produce up to 50% less noise emission and vibration than diesel engines.
Beyond the environmental benefits, natural gas is a very competitive fuel from an economic point of view when compared with diesel and petrol, with savings of between 25% and 50% depending on the solution chosen.
Vehicular natural gas in its compressed or liquid form is an effective mobility alternativewithout the economic, environmental, and noise pollution inconveniences of oil.
Moreover, according to the Spanish Environmental Impact Study Association (EIA), proven reserves of conventional and non-conventional natural gas will last for 250 years, and in this sense its long-term availability is guaranteed.
Vehicular natural gas is experiencing exponential growth. In the last 10 years, the fleet of vehicles using this fuel has grown sixfold, and increased by 27% in the last year alone.
To support this expansion of natural gas vehicles, GAS NATURAL FENOSA is currently leading two projects: the aforementioned BESTWay; and the ECO-GATE project to build more than 20 refuelling stations along the Atlantic and Mediterranean Corridor motorway networks in Spain, France, Germany and Portugal.
