Hydrogen fuelled gritters for Glasgow City Council

Glasgow City Council will be converting some of its existing gritters and some new gritters to be hydrogen enabled.

Thanks to Scottish Government funding through Transport Scotland, the work will see ULEMCo convert 20 gritter / multi-purpose vehicles from James A Cuthbertson, ready for use on the streets by next winter.
 
Around half of the fleet of 20 vehicles will be converted to hydrogen dual fuel, while the rest will be hydrogen enabled from the start. Based on the gritters’ normal duty cycles, around a third of the energy is expected to come from hydrogen, resulting in the same proportion of emissions being saved.

The City Council is in the process of securing ‘green hydrogen’ for the fleet to refuel. It is also expected that other air quality emissions like NOx will be greatly reduced compared with the base vehicle; ULEMCo’s H2ICED®  technology ensures that hydrogen is used in the fuel mix when it can burn most efficiently, and with benefits to tailpipe emissions.

This is the first set of conversions for gritter lorries and is the company’s largest volume order to date.
 
“The environmental impact of large diesel powered utility vehicles is very high in city centres”, says Amanda Lyne, Managing Director of ULEMCo. “We are delighted to support Glasgow City Council in its ambition to become Britain’s first zero net carbon city, and help to ensure that its entire fleet of 2000 vehicles is carbon free by the end of the decade.”
 
“We see this development as part of a wider roll-out of hydrogen fuelled fleets across the country, and are really pleased that our first such order is with a local authority so close to our factory in Biggar”, said Ewan Tolson, Sales Manager at Cuthbertson.  “Our long history and experience of designing and manufacturing specialist highway vehicle bodywork combines well with ULEMCo’s specialist expertise in deploying hydrogen fuel systems – creating a completely UK-manufactured solution.”