Finland’s Gasum to build 50 natural gas filling stations

Finnish natural gas and LNG company, Gasum plans to invest in the construction of around 50 gas filling stations for heavy-duty vehicles in Finland, Sweden and Norway by the beginning of the 2020s.

The investment will multiply the size of the Nordic heavy-duty vehicle gas filling station network, enabling considerable emission cuts, Gasum said in a statement on Friday.

In the Nordic countries, heavy-duty road transport plays a key role in the logistics system while at the same time generating a significant proportion of road transport emissions.

For the emission reduction targets set at the national and international levels to be reached, concrete solutions are needed to reduce heavy-duty road transport emissions considerably from the current levels.

Among the low-emission fuels, the most competitive alternative for this purpose is LNG, the statement notes.

In the next few years, Gasum’s gas filling station network serving heavy-duty road transport will become several times larger than today.

The new filling stations will be located at key transport nodes as regards road haulage, and they will enable significant increases in the use of LNG and biogas in heavy-duty transport, the company said.

The switch of heavy-duty vehicles to LNG or liquefied biogas (LBG) will result in significant cuts in carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate and noise emissions from transport, it said.

”We’re on our way towards a carbon-neutral society and it’s now time to accelerate the pace. Gas plays an indisputably important role in this transition,” Gasum CEO Johanna Lamminen said in the statement.

The demand for cleaner transport solutions is increasing rapidly as solutions are sought to combat climate change.

Delivery and heavy-duty road vehicles are currently responsible for more than a quarter of road transport emissions in the EU, the statement said.

Together with new gas vehicle models, the expanding gas filling station network creates “good conditions” for road fuel gas market growth and emission cuts, it said.