Alison Austin, environmental affairs manager in Sainsbury’s, is satisfied with its environmental initiative « Run on Rubbish » and declares that Sainsbury’s is the very first UK supermarket that delivers food products using new technologies that help to reduce carbon emissions while recycling organic waste (which is also damaging to our climate) and to decrease our fossil energy dependance.

This Sainsbury’s initiative is conducted in partnership with Clean Air Power, a technology developer, and BOC, an large-scale industrial gas producer.

John Pettit, Chief executive of Clean Air Power, said he is delighted to support Sainsbury’s environmental initiative. Clean Air Power develops patented technologies that enable an existing diesel engine to operate on a combination of diesel and methane. In this case, it set up a combustion technology, named « Genesis Dual - Fuel TM », dedicated to heavy duty diesel vehicles. First, it was developed for Daf CF 85 and Mercedes-Benz Axor Euro 3 heavy trucks, but it is being developed further to be fitted to Euro 5 heavy trucks as well.

“That is a great technical step forward because it is the very first time we can hear about a dual-fuel vehicle running on a combination of diesel and biomethane, because until now, the methane used was LNG (Liquified Natural Gas)” says John Pettit..

But it is a great thing for environmental life as well. As John Pettit noticed, the « Genesis Dual – Fuel TM » system for heavy trucks running on diesel and biomethane from landfill biogas could save up to 60 metric-tonnes of CO2 per year, compared to its diesel counterpart. So, if all the UK heavy duty vehicles were converted to run on biomethane, there could be a total CO2 saving of up to 8.0 million metric-tonnes per year, that is equivalent to a 4% reduction on the UK’s total CO2 emissions.

However, such a development would require a government commitment to support the use of bio-methane as a fuel of choice.

http://www.gasrec.co.uk