Institutional support:
Lingotto Center, Turin city, Italy. Under the theme “Clean energy for a sustainable world”, the event, which will include exhibition and conference, is hosted by the Consorzio NGV System and organized by NGV Communications Group.
In June, 2005, it was held the I World Fair of NGVs and H2Vs in Bolzano. It was the biggest methane for vehicles event not only in the Italian but also in the European history: 101 stands which occupied a space of 3,598 m2, and were visited by 9,320 people. Over 70 models of all kind and making were on display. The OEMs with stand were 11: Bredamenarini Bus – Dynetek (sponsor Gold), Citroën, Fiat, Ford – CNG Technik, Ekobus, Evobus – Daimler Chrysler, Iveco (sponsor Silver), MAN, Opel – GM, Volkswagen, and Volvo Cars (sponsor Silver).
It was a success at promotional level for inhabitants of South Tyrol (which since then is one of the NGV leading regions), as well as for the political results attained by the regional government (it was the main sponsor) and the commercial deals closed by exhibitors.
Since then, several political authorities and different companies that took part in Bolzano (Italian and foreigner companies) expressly asked the organizers, ENGVA (European Natural Gas Vehicles Association) and NGV Communications Group, to carry out this II Fair.
Italian OEMs sold a total of 40,582 NGVs in 2006, a world record figure. Fiat was favourite by far: 86% of registrations were of models produced by the Turin manufacturer.
The first five months of 2007, one model alone, the small Panda Panda, received 28,000 orders; specialists estimate that the amount will rise to 40,000 by the end of December.
The number of conversions was high in 2006: 38,400, what also shows that the other pillar of the Italian NGV market is powerful and much healthy: every month of 2007 evidences more switches to methane than the same period last year.
The II World Fair of NGVs and H2Vs backs the national target according to which the clean fuel market share will be 6%, enough to consider NGV as a traditional fuel and not an alternative one.
On the other hand, in Germany, up to June of 2007, there was a 10% reduction of diesel/gasoline models registration and a 19% increase of NGVs. The drop in sales of liquid fuels units is due to current alerts and debates on CO2 emissions. This first semester, the favourites list is led by Volkswagen with 1,998 NGVs, completing the podium Opel (1,658) and Fiat (614). Then, Daimler Chrysler (109), Citroën (102) and Renault (82).
In Sweden, Volvo sales account for 80% of the total NGV models running in the country. The Swedish are now waiting for the launching of CNG Volkswagen Passat and Mercedes Benz B-Class, both expected to be introduced in the market by late 2008. Various incentives strongly support the use of “environmental vehicles”.
A major CNG fleet of buses and public services trucks is being consolidated in the main cities of Spain: Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Burgos and others. The great leap is expected in the next months since regulations have been approved by which natural gas use in LDVs is enabled.
Gaz de France promotes the implementation of domestic compressors for CNG refuelling and the segment follows attentively the fulfillment of the French government resolution establishing that one out of every three new buses should operate on natural gas.
While Switzerland moves forward rapidly towards the application of biogas to transport, Austria stated its plans to complete the national fuelling stations network by doubling the amount of fuel outlets already in operation in the country.
Ukraine, with 60,000 HDVs, is the second CNG continental market and its growth continues steadily.
Russia has recently announced the expansion of its supplying centres with 200 new stations to serve one million NGVs the next decade.
Whereas these developments take place in the different national markets, it is expected that the European Union defines the way to attain its own objective, in other words, replace at least 10% of liquid fuels consumption with natural gas by year 2020. This represents some 24 million NGVs around the continent.
