On Tour with the CNG Roadshow

The two companies – service station operators Nijhof Automatisering and Oliehandel H. van Dijkhuizen – are based in the province of Gelderland. They received the awards from the provincial government in recognition of their pioneering work in encouraging the uptake of CNG.

Oliehandel H. van Dijkhuizen operates 17 of its own independent service stations as well as 35 for petroleum giant Total. The company has just invested around €250,000 in a new CNG-enabled service station.

It is possible
Annelies van der Kolk, an executive of the Gelderland provincial authority, explained that the awards were about recognising the good work of encouraging CNG use – and the financial risks these companies took.

“Gelderland wants to take a leading role in bringing about sustainable mobility. Pioneering companies like these two are showing that it is indeed possible to launch successful CNG stations. Others are waiting to take up the baton and follow their lead, once they see that it can be done. Awareness amongst companies is growing, which will hopefully result in an increase in the use of CNG and other solutions,” she said.

CNG Roadshow
The awards were presented as part of a CNG Roadshow which toured the Netherlands as part of European Mobility Week, between the 16th and 22nd September.

The Roadshow featured a convoy of CNG-driven vehicles: cars, buses, trucks, delivery vans and luxury cars. The roadshow visited a number of towns and cities across the country, including Arnhem, Ede, Nijmegen, Eindhoven, Tiel, Leeuwarden, Zwolle, and Maastricht. At each stop, various specialists gave presentations and discussions to local business people about the environmental and financial benefits of CNG.

Workshop
The presenters included Menno Chang and Jorg Raven from environmental consultancy Ecofys. They gave a workshop which outlined the scenarios which made CNG an attractive option.

Chang and Raven explained that CNG cars tend to cost around €3,000 more than conventional cars and can run for between 250 km and 350 km on one tank. With CNG in The Netherlands costing around 53 cents per kg, they explained that CNG cars start to become more financially attractive at around 15,000 km (10,000 miles) per year.

Pilot
One roadshow participant who needed no convincing was a representative from delivery company TNT. TNT operates around 3,500 vehicles in The Netherlands. Recently, it has begun a pilot scheme with five CNG driven vehicles in the country’s northern region.

“They are great. There’s no difference in terms of drive quality or performance compared to the conventional diesel vehicles we use. They are very slightly slower, but much quieter and obviously very much cleaner and more efficient,” he said.

Hopefully not too long, then, before the remaining 3,495 TNT vehicles are converted to CNG!