Eco-friendly Peterborough to spend £14m on vehicles for environmental services

The sum will be spent by the city council largely on new vehicles, with some being electric as the authority seeks to become carbon neutral by 2030.

The £14 million to be spent on freighters, vans, minibuses and equipment such as mowers will include two new electric waste collection vehicles for the garden waste service.

Bin lifts will also move from being diesel powered to electric.

The money will be borrowed, with the £14 million paid in instalments until 2029. Including interest the purchases are likely to cost a total of £15.65 million.

The authority said the assets its replacing are “reaching the end or have surpassed their economic life,” with maintenance costs having “significantly increased”.

It highlighted a review from the Department for Transport which concluded that introducing new electric vans and cars brings benefits with regards to carbon emissions and long-term costs, but noted that “electrification of the full collection fleet is not practical at this time given the long working day and distances travelled”.

It added: “Irrespective of electric vehicles being introduced or not, the services emissions across the new fleet will decrease compared to the current fleet as the newer vehicles’ environmental standards will be generations higher than those currently in service.

“Key elements such as bin lifts will move from diesel powered to electric irrespective of the vehicles’ fuelling source as electric bin lifts provide emission improvements and reduced noise for both residents and collection crews.”

Environmental services are currently run by council-owned trading company Aragon Direct Services.

The council has declared a climate emergency and is committed to not operate any fossil fuel powered vehicles past January 1, 2030.

It said its new fleet will lead to a reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions from 3.5g/kWh to 2g/kWh.

The authority added: “When building the business cases, it has been taken into account that the Government has still not published its paper on how they expect waste collection to be conducted moving forwards.

“Whilst this could pose a change in the way we collect waste, given the current age and mechanical standard of our fleet it is deemed that we cannot wait further before placing orders.

“If we failed to move forwards with changing the fleet we would see regular failed collections of kerbside waste due to breakdowns and vast increased costs to the authority in repairs to the point where vehicles would be uneconomical to repair.”