Thursday 18 June 2020

John Lewis Partnership to build dedicated biomethane gas filling station for its HGVs

The John Lewis Partnership has announced plans to build a dedicated biomethane gas filling station to fuel its largest heavy goods vehicles.

The facility, which will open at the firm's head office in Bracknell in December 2020, aims to accelerate its ambition to stop using fossil fuels across its entire 4,800 strong transport fleet by 2030.

The business’s first on-site gas filling station will serve approximately 120 Waitrose heavy goods trucks, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80% and allowing each truck to save more than 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.

The business has pledged to be net zero carbon across its entire operations by 2050 and has committed to switching its 600 heavy goods vehicles to low carbon biomethane by 2028 - since making these commitments at the start of last year, it has reduced its total operational carbon emissions by 6.6% and emissions from transport by 6.9%.

The biomethane at the Bracknell site will be made from food waste and waste materials and the single facility is expected to save more than 70,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the carbon footprint produced by more than 13,000 UK households.

Justin Laney, Partner & General Manager of Central Transport at the John Lewis Partnership, said: “The evidence of climate change is all around us, so it’s important we act now using available technology rather than wait for unproven solutions to appear.

"We are working hard towards our new aim of removing all fossil fuel from our transport fleet by 2030, which will reduce our carbon emissions by over half a million tonnes and gets us well on the way to our ultimate target of operating a net zero carbon emission fleet.”