Hydrogen rubbish truck © Dries Luyten
Sustainable rubbish trucks
The introduction of these sustainable rubbish trucks will have a huge impact on reducing emissions from the City of Antwerp's fleet. In light of the mandatory electrification of the fleet by 2026 and the European goal of being climate neutral by 2050, this is a huge step forward in terms of emissions of our government's fleet. Especially when you know that the average rubbish truck consumes as much as 65 litres of diesel per 100km!
These new environmentally friendly rubbish trucks are electrically powered. The electricity generated for the rubbish trucks is produced by a hydrogen fuel cell. To store the electricity, a 136 kW battery is also provided, which will be charged at Pluginvest charging stations overnight. This will help maximise operability and driving range. In addition, these rubbish trucks don't emit any CO2, but only harmless water vapour. They are also very quiet. Therefore, if this technology can be deployed widely in the future, we’ll see much more rubbish trucks that are significantly more quiet driving down the street.
These kinds of sustainable rubbish trucks will be refuelled with hydrogen at the gas station on Boomsesteenweg in Wilrijk, owned by our partner DATS 24 , for which Pluginvest provides charging infrastructure.
The REVIVE project
The introduction of these rubbish trucks is an initiative of the European REVIVE project, which consists of testing at least 14 sustainable rubbish trucks in 7 European cities. Antwerp can therefore proudly present this new technology as one of these 7 pioneering cities. It is part of the City of Antwerp's broader commitment to sustainability.
The "and-and" story, not the "or-or" story
A highly underexposed aspect of making mobility more sustainable as a whole is the "and-and" story. We increasingly find that advocates of electric mobility and advocates of hydrogen propulsion cannot reconcile. However, this is completely unnecessary, because to make sustainable mobility possible we actually need a mix of these different types of technologies, as is so well illustrated by the zero-emission rubbish trucks proposed by the City of Antwerp with the REVIVE project.
So it's not about which technology is better than the other, but about how we as a society can maximise the use of these technologies to ensure that the mobility solution is one that has zero emissions. For that, we need to join forces and work together on the mobility transition!
