CleanR Grupa’s fleet vehicles – more environment-friendly
To reduce its environmental impact, CleanR Grupa has purchased 20 new electric cars, thus increasing the proportion of electric vehicles (EVs) in its passenger car fleet to 42%, informs Juris Gulbis, the Group’s Chairman of the Board.
Gulbis explains that close to a half of CleanR Grupa’s passenger fleet cars run on electricity. It significantly exceeds the overall figure for Latvia, where only 0.5% of the cars are powered by electricity. Also, the Group seeks to expand the use of alternative energy for its heavy vehicles, giving preference to practically the only green energy source available in Latvia for trucks—compressed natural gas, as well as upgrading its vehicle fleet to meet the highest ecological standards.
The basic operations of the CleanR Grupa companies involve the use of various means of transport given that they operate in the fields of waste management, premises, road, and urban environment maintenance, and property management, serving over half a million Latvian people daily. Currently, the Group’s companies own more than 200 vehicles, with a third being passenger cars and the rest—heavy vehicles to provide waste management services, as well as cleaning and improvement of roads and other urban spaces.
“Managing our impact on the environment is one of our Group’s key strategic goals, therefore we constantly seek to improve our sustainability performance, including developing an increasingly greener and more sustainable vehicle fleet, gradually upgrading it with environment-friendly automobiles,” emphasizes Gulbis.
As part of the vehicle fleet update, this week CleanR, the Group’s subsidiary company, is testing an electric Scania truck, transporting textile containers or damaged containers from their locations around the city to the CleanR plastic recycling facility for recycling. As the company is planning to use electric trucks in the near future, these test drives have allowed us to gain practical experience in operating electric trucks, learning about their driving range on one charge, charging options, charging frequency, etc.
“CleanR Grupa closely watches the latest trends in the electric vehicle market, including the cargo truck and specialized vehicle segment. Despite the still high costs of such equipment, soon we are planning to purchase specialized electric vehicles, thus pursuing the Group’s climate-neutrality goals and meeting our clients’ procurement requirements for the provision of services using vehicles powered by alternative energy sources,” explains Gulbis.
The addition of EVs to the Group’s passenger car fleet will significantly reduce the number of fuel-powered cars operated by the Group’s companies, thus reducing the Group’s direct impact on the environment. The amount of greenhouse gas emissions that until now was produced by one diesel car will decrease by more than 85% per vehicle, thus reducing the overall carbon footprint caused by the passenger cars of the Group’s companies by almost 17% annually. CleanR Grupa has installed seven charging stations, setting up the necessary infrastructure for the daily operation of electric vehicles.
Also, 58% of the Group’s passenger cars run on midget fuel or LPG engines, producing about 15 % less emissions.
In the last two years, the Group’s companies have purchased 15 new garbage trucks that are powered by compress natural gas (CNG), which has reduced the amount of emissions by about 20% to 30%, decreased noise pollution, as well as decreased fine particle pollution caused by sulphur dioxide emissions by about 98%. Also, the Group’s companies are updating their truck fleets according to the highest ecological standards—the share of the EURO VI vehicles constitutes 54%. The EURO VI vehicles cause about four times lower nitric dioxide and hard particle emissions, compared to the EURO V engines.
For further information, contact:
Zane Plone
Head of Public Relations at CleanR Grupa
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +371 28 627 003
