Sweden

Sweden comes in third place with 16,900 units.

Sweden has a well balanced fleet with 15,650 light duty vehicles, 850 buses and 400 HD trucks.  One unique feature is the fact that Sweden, without access to a natural gas pipeline system (except a 300 km stretch along the southwest coast),  has managed to build up a good refuelling network in the southern half of the country, and is now expanding into the northern part. This was made possible via local plants for the production of biomethane which now accounts for 58 % of the total methane used in Swedish NGVs. There are more than a dozen cities where the bus fleets completely rely on biomethane.

The Swedish success is largely based on government support for municipally owned biogas plants. Various incentives have also been very important – 40% reduction of income tax paid for the use of a CNG company car, free municipal parking for NGVs in many cities, and priority lanes at airports, railway stations and ferry terminals for CNG taxi cabs. 24 hour well maintained self-service filling stations with payment via standard credit cards have also been well received. Sweden is now pioneering the large scale production of biomethane produced from forest industry waste within Europe. Another innovation is the future overland transportation of liquefied NG/biomethane using tank trailers to supply filling stations without close access to biogas plants or the NG grid. The availability of liquefied gas will also support the use of L-CNG filling stations servicing both conventional CNG vehicles and hopefully also long haulage 44 ton trucks using LNG.

Whereas AB Volvo is still offering NG powered buses and trucks the Ford owned Volvo Cars, in 2007, cancelled the earlier three CNG models offered. Due to Volvo’s high market share in Sweden this resulted in a significant set-back. But several new products, suitable for use in the very important company car segment, will boost new NGV registrations during 2009.