December 28, 2023. The municipal street cleaning and waste collection service of the City Council of Avilés, Spain, significantly reduced its emissions into the atmosphere thanks to the incorporation of new less polluting vehicles that use electricity as a source of energy. and compressed natural gas (CNG), replacing diesel engines.
It should be remembered that the new contract for the provision of this service came into force at the end of 2021 and that, since then, the concessionaire company -Urbaser SA- has been implementing improvements associated with it, among which is the progressive incorporation of these new less polluting equipment.
The new fleet is made up of 39 units, of which 30 are powered by CNG engines, and 9 are powered by electric motors. The latter do not generate any polluting emissions during use, while those powered by natural gas combustion emit much less nitrogen oxide (NOX) than diesel engines. Neither electric vehicles nor those that use CNG emit sulfur oxides (SO2).
Although the incorporation of this new equipment has been gradual, since the global situation of the components market in the automotive industry extended the initially planned deadlines, the data extracted from the beginning of its use allows its extrapolation to the period of one calendar year.
Thus, by stopping using diesel engines, the municipal street cleaning and waste collection service has managed to eliminate sulfur oxide (SO2) emissions by 100%, meaning that 867,000 mg of this pollutant have been no longer emitted into the atmosphere per year.
For its part, nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions have been reduced by 97.2%, going from 14,745,606.40 mg to only 274,55.20 mg per year. Finally, emissions of PM 2.5 particles originating from combustion engines have gone from 843,112.62 mg to 277,283.44, which represents a reduction of 54.6%.
