Electric bin lorries, biofuels and solar panels part of Peterborough City Council’s £14m fleet overhaul

Peterborough City Council is to invest heavily in electric dust carts and street sweepers as part of its commitment to eco-friendly solutions.

The move was announced last week and Cllr Marco Cereste, Cabinet Member for Waste, Street Scene and the Environment has expanded on the plans to buy more electric vehicles and use biofuels in a major overhaul of the local authority’s fleet.

He said: “We’ll be spending a part of £14m of capital money over the next few years to update the fleet of vehicles used by Aragon to keep Peterborough clean and tidy.

“Technology moves at such a fast pace now that even the vehicles we looked at back in mid-2019 when Aragon Direct Services took over the contract from Amey have been updated and superseded.

“When Aragon took over, they agreed to deliver a breadth of services including street cleansing, waste management and recycling, grounds maintenance and arboriculture, home to school transport and property maintenance.

“Some of those vehicles, freighters, vans, minibuses and other equipment like lawnmowers are no longer serviceable and have little commercial value to the council, so they will not be purchased.

“The new vehicles we want to buy, some of which will be electric, will be purchased alongside those having a viable, serviceable lifespan.

“That means we must get up to speed with the latest technology, testing it out as soon as possible and then deciding which will be the most cost-efficient, fuel-efficient, and cleanest in terms of biodiversity for us to buy.

“Wherever possible, and certainly before the end of 2021, we will be looking to procure electric vehicles as part of Peterborough’s commitment to the climate emergency and becoming carbon neutral by the year 2030.

“In addition to electric vehicles, while we’re only at the ‘talking stage’ at the moment our ambition is to put stand-alone, battery-powered charging points all over the city.

“The infrastructure for an all-electric fleet of council-owned vehicles isn’t in place yet, but we want these new pieces of equipment to be genuinely self-sustaining so, for example, we could add solar panels to the vast roof-area we have at our waste recycling plant.

“That would easily generate enough electricity to power and charge all the new electric vehicles; but before that, we have also looked at other options as a stop-gap including the use of biofuels.

“Just this week we’ve been talking with a very reputable UK biofuels company about the possibility of fuelling our existing fleet with bio fuel, cutting carbon emissions enormously and that won’t require expensive and time-consuming modifications to the current fleet’s engines.”

The £14m required to buy the new electric vehicles and other equipment money will be borrowed by the council and paid back in instalments until 2029.

Including interest, the purchases are likely to cost a total of £15.65 million.