Greening Islington’s ‘Arsenal’ of Vehicles

Kenny Wilks, Head of Service, Street Environment Services, at LB of Islington discusses putting sustainability at the heart of transport.

At Islington Council, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We now run over 350 vehicles using ‘green’ fuels and are constantly looking at ways to improve our fleets reliability, efficiency and reduce emissions.

After results from a recent study showed that despite employing alternative fuels and technologies the key factor in having good or poor fuel consumption levels is the driver, the council has been re-edu-cating fleet managers and drivers. We’ve had training sessions in economical and environmental driving techniques and the correct use of LPG and other alterna-tive-fuelled vehicles. As many of our vehicles have GPRS systems monitoring acceleration, braking and speed we can use this information to re-train drivers. At this year’s PSE Green Fleet Fuel Challenge Islington Council won the competition achieving a score of 90.17 MPG thanks to the driving techniques learnt during the training.

We replace between 80 and 90 vehicles each year concentrating on older vehicles that are more polluting and do not reach the latest Euro standards for emissions. Each new vehicle specification is now assessed for environmental impact. By encouraging managers to invest in a slightly higher cost vehicle - that will be cleaner and, over the design life, more cost effective due to fuel, insurance, tax and congestion charge costs - we will see a significant environmental improvement through our ‘greener’ fleet. The entire diesel fleet runs on bio-diesel with the remainder using alternative fuels, including electric.

Successful partnerships

The council will continue to work in partnership with ICSL Accord and KIER to further reduce emissions within their fleet of building maintenance and street cleansing fleets. We have revised replacement programme up to 2010 and various ‘greening the fleet’ initiatives up and ready. We plan to ‘green’ the refuse collection vehicles. These should be the cleanest refuse collection vehicles in the UK and be indicative of the low emission zone proposals. The vehicles will run on bio-diesel, have Euro 5 compliant engines with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) using AdBlue and a further particulate trap to reduce particulates such as PM10s. They will also have remoulded tyres and a GPRS system that will monitor harsh accelerating and braking to improve fuel consumption and reduce wear. The use of split-bodied vehicles will reduce the number of vehicle journey’s meaning less fuel consumption, emissions and noise.

We are also in discussions with a number of manufacturers to retro fit various technologies to ‘green’ the existing fleet including Exhaust After-treatment Solutions, additional fuel filtration and other pollution reducing adaptations. In addition our recent move to bio-diesel across the fleet will ensure that hydrocarbon emissions and particulate matter fall significantly and continue to reduce as the additive blend is increased and we work towards becoming carbon neutral.

Partnership with Arsenal FC

Our hard work has already been recognised. At this year’s London Transport awards we were awarded the coveted ‘Transport Borough of the Year’ award for 2006. And, we were highly commended by EAST and in the National Transport Awards. We will also be hosting the 2006 Green Fleet Awards, in partnership with Arsenal Football Club, Green Fleet, the Energy Savings Trust and Transport for London.

Some more Islington fleet information

Islington Council runs a fleet of approximately 150 vehicles serving over 15 council departments. These include:

• 43 dual fuel LPG cars and car-derived vans
• A number of larger vans currently being converted to run on LPG
• 12 Oxygen and EVT electric scooters
• One electric tricycle
• 3 G-Wiz electric cars
• 1 elec

3 Toyota Prius’s Islington also has a hybrid-electric programme currently with three Toyota Prius’s and are investigating a new-style Honda Civic IMA to test against the Prius and our other alternative-fuelled vehicles. We are closely following the OEM’s development of diesel-hybrid vans and look forward to evaluating one in the near future. The use of fast-charge batteries, integrated motor-assist (which uses batteries to assist the standard engine), brakes to recharge the battery and an engine that turns off when not in use (traffic lights, etc) will all be beneficial to Islington’s air quality and vehicle running costs. Also being considered is the conversion to a ‘plug in’ Prius capable of up to 130 mpg on one of the new models.

Islington Council is involved with the London Hydrogen partnership and with General Motors to ensure that we will be the first borough to benefit from extended test drives when hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are developed. A model is now in place to compare the economic (life cost) and environmental impacts of green vehicles before any purchase is made.

In 2005, the fleet department achieved ISO: 9001 accreditation with accredited fleet processes. Street Environment Services were recently awarded Charter Mark status and are in the middle of obtaining ISO: 14001 accreditation for fleet processes.

Kenny Wilks, Head of Service,
Street Environment Services Contact:
Kenny.wilks@islington.gov.uk