Council opts to replace existing waste and recycling fleet with diesel vehicles

Elgan Hearn, local democracy reporter

A council has confirmed it will buy diesel rather than electric vehicles when it starts replacing its existing waste and recycling fleet.

Blaenau Gwent calculates that if they do this in phases over the next five years they will save just under £3 million compared to opting for an all electric vehicle options.

A report which explained the need to replace the councils current fleet of ageing vehicles said that  while electric vehicles to collect the rubbish and recycling can be bought, “trials” by the council had shown that “more advances” in battery technology are needed before they meet requirements.

The report showed that other options for such vehicles powered by hydrogen or natural gas had “limited availability” and were not really practical.

Running costs

Deputy council leader and environment portfolio holder, Cllr Helen Cunningham said: “The vehicles we have are now over eight years old and need increasing maintenance and running costs and we’re seeing vehicle down time because of that.”

“If that continues, we’re going to see more disruption to waste collections for our residents.

“Since we got our last fleet, the landscape had changed quite a lot to how these vehicles are powered.”

Cllr Cunningham explained that it was a Welsh Government ambition for the public sector to use ultra-low emissions vehicles (ULEV) by 2025 or 2030 for HGV.

Cllr Cunningham told councillors that new diesels vehicles are “cleaner” due to advances in technology.

Cllr Cunningham said: “Battery electric vehicles are currently the only zero emission vehicles that could be deployed on a large scale in the next three to five years.

“The critical challenge for us though our existing depot does not have the physical space to accommodate the quantity of charging bays that we would need to do that.”

While the Welsh Government have indicated they would fund the “80 to 90 per cent of the difference” in cost between diesel and electric vehicles Cllr Cunningham stressed that the existing depot had “limitations.”

‘Fit for purpose’

Cllr Cunningham: “It’s not really where any of us would like to be ideally, we want to transition to net zero and ultra-low emission vehicles, but we also need to ensure that we have a fleet that’s fit for purpose and is not going to lead to disruption in services.”

Place scrutiny committee chairman, Cllr Malcolm Cross said that his committee had a “healthy debate” when the proposal was discussed at a meeting earlier this month.

Cllr Cross said: “”If the vehicles start breaking down on a regular basis it puts pressure on the crews and drivers and us as councillors when people don’t get their recycling collected on time.”

He added that crew wellbeing had been a factor on the committee recommended replacing the fleet with diesel vehicles until the “appropriate” vehicles and infrastructure is in place to move over to ULEV.

The cost of replacing their current waste and recycling vehicles with electric ones was estimated to be £5,992,000 million, while buying diesel vehicles would cost £2,996,000.