UK Government continues support for retrofit commercial vehicles

The UK government has announced their continued support of the retrofit sector with three technology producers – Eminox, Proventia and Baumot – and they will receive just under £1m to be used over the next two years (2018-2020) to enable cleaner air retrofit technologies to market. The applications will cover a variety of commercial vehicle applications based around trucks, vans and buses, they are even including taxis which in total account for around 40% of the UK’s total carbon dioxide emissions and more than 50% of nitrogen oxide emissions.

Behind these initiative is the Clean Vehicle Retrofit Accreditation Scheme (CVRAS) which is part of the government’s Clean Air Strategy programme designed to reduce emissions in the UK’s worst polluted regions.

Andy Eastlake, Managing Director of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership , said: “We need a range of policy tools to tackle the urgent problems associated with air pollution. Adopting electric vehicles or changing to the latest clean new trucks and buses needs to be in operators’ longer-term plans, but we also need more immediate options to deliver cleaner air in the shortest time possible. Developing robust retrofit solutions for ‘hard-to-tackle’ vehicles is an expensive business and this funding will help bring more fully accredited solutions to the market. I’m delighted to see these new solutions in the pipeline and would reiterate that operators must use accredited systems only to meet CAZ requirements. They should not be tempted by a non-approved product: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”