Spain

Spain, with 1,800 vehicles running on CNG, is ranked after Austria (3,574) and Switzerland (7,122) in terms of number of NGVs, but it is interesting to see the way in which NGVs have developed during the last couple of years. NGVs are practically limited to urban trucks used for garbage collection and urban buses, having much lower and therefore cleaner emissions. The present number of 1,800 units buy the end of 2009 will increase by 450 new trucks, already assigned in the city of Barcelona and another 350 buses for the city of Madrid to be introduced by 2009-2010. Running a NGV fleet with heavy duty urban vehicles operating 12 to 16 hours per day, combined with an engine power that is around three times more than it is for a private car, means that a heavy urban vehicle uses as much gas as 25 to 30 private cars. 40 of the current 42 Spanish CNG filling stations are limited to service great city fleets and only 2 are so far are in public use.

Medium-term NGV developments in Spain are oriented towards potential users, such as big supermarket chains and parcel delivery companies, but also others operating large city fleets. At the same time there are other incentives such as the one from Gas Natural, which is trying to introduce more NGVs in the taxi sector.

Finally it is particularly important to know that the Spanish gas market is already supplied with a significant quantity of LNG. It comes from the periphery of the whole Iberian Peninsula through seven ports with large LNG terminals that provide 65% to 70% of the total natural gas consumed in the peninsula. LNG is about to become a very interesting option for medium and long distance road transport in Spain and Portugal.