Plans to fuel the city buses of Oslo, Norway on biogas were reported earlier this year. The biogas, more specifically called biomethane, will be produced from the city’s two sewage plants. Initially, 80 buses will be fueled this way, with further plans to expand to the whole fleet of 400 if trials are successful.
These plans were recently concretized – on Earth Day, somewhat fittingly – by Swedish industrial gas company AGA signing a long-term contract with the Oslo municipality.
AGA will process the sewage plants’ output to deliver about 2.2 million liters of biogas a year, which is enough to run approximately 100 buses – 20 more than the original plans for the trial project.
As part of these deliveries, they will build infrastructure for the distribution of the biogas and do research with the goal of liquidizing it. Liquidizing the gas would be a great improvement to the overall energy efficiency, as it would allow trucks to move six times as much fuel in one run.
The first biogas will be delivered towards the end of 2009, with production being scaled up over the course of the next one to three years.
Norwegian publisher Teknisk Ukeblad has more details in this article about the biomethane contract (Norwegian text only).
I suppose tasteless jokes about the origins of this fuel can – and will – be made. I choose to ignore that, though. In fact, I pooh-pooh the people making these jokes (D’oh! It appears I’m one of them!).
I hope this trial is successful, as it seems to be a perfect utilization of resources all round:
- Waste products are turned into something valuable and useful.
- The waste/raw material of the process is virtually carbon neutral in and of itself.
- The biogas fuels public transport, which obviously has far less environmental impact than everyone driving around in their car.
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