Can urban transport come clean?

Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden, is much involved in EU-funded research to switch to cleaner urban transport.

The city has won funding from Civitas, a programme launched by the European Commission’s transport and energy department under the 5th and 6th framework programmes for research.

Malmö’s project is called SMILE (Sustainable Mobility Initiatives for Local Environment) and it is a four-year project set up in February 2005, which also involves Tallinn (Estonia), Potenza (Italy), Norwich (the UK), and Suceava (Romania).

The project gets around 35% of its funding from the EU, with the remaining 65% paid for by the municipality. Its goal is to evaluate the efficiency of sustainable urban transport strategies.

Malmö is aiming at making its municipal fleet of 500 cars run on cleaner fuel. 225 cars (45%) are already clean. A further 250 low-emission or emission-free vehicles that run on natural gas, ethanol or hybrid power will be introduced in the next two year.

The objective is by 2009 to have a 100% clean fleet. The measure has a twin purpose. The decrease in emissions will also have a direct effect on the environment. It is also hoped that the project will make environmentally friendly cars better known to the public.

Clean cars, run by gas or electricity, are more expensive than ones that run on petrol or diesel. But according to Patrik Widerberg, the site manager in Malmö for the Civitas projects, the cost of a Ford Focus running on ethanol is only €1,000 more than a petrol or diesel car. But the gap widens for a CNG (compressed natural gas) pick-up truck (€8,000), or a hybrid petrol and electricity car (€5,000 difference).

"We receive European funding for 35% of these additional costs," says Roland Zinkernagel, project co-ordinator for the environment department in the City Council of Malmö. "Additionally, we receive 30% of the additional cost for gas-driven cars from the national climate investment programme, which is managed by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The remaining costs are paid for through the municipal budget."

There are also initial start-up costs for putting in place the infrastructure for maintaining and re-fuelling a clean fuel fleet. But the cost of maintaining them will be no different from that for standard petrol or diesel vehicles.

Citizens in Malmö are being encouraged to switch to cleaner vehicles with incentives of cheaper parking.

Another clean vehicle-related project in Malmö, financed by SMILE and Civitas, is to build two gas filling-stations for light and heavy vehicles, and a plant for turning sewage waste into natural gas, all of which will be working by 2009. "They are of course expensive investments but the cost of using biogas should be reduced significantly when we are able to use the existing infrastructures for biogas instead of imported natural gas," says Widerberg.

One of the other Civitas and SMILE projects is to enable the local dairy company Skånemejerier to replace ten of its heavy diesel vehicles with natural gas vehicles with carbon-dioxide (CO2) coolers, by 2008. The emissions of CO2 will be cut by 62% and the new vehicles will produce less noise. Drivers will also take eco-driving lessons, to learn how to drive in an environmentally friendly way, polluting less.

Malmö is not alone in Sweden trying to reduce emissions. There are also clean vehicle projects in Stockholm and Gothenburg. The cost of clean cars was cut by 4%-15% in Stockholm thanks to a joint procurement scheme which led to a framework agreement to buy 5,000 vehicles.

Sweden already has 779 biogas buses and 4,500 clean cars and the sales of biogas-powered cars increased by 49% in 2005.

In Gothenburg the world’s largest biogas plant is being built to upgrade biogas to vehicle quality. The city also boasts the world’s first biogas-run train.

But is the rest of Europe ready to follow suit?

Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden, is much involved in EU-funded research to switch to cleaner urban transport.