I came to the CV Show at the NEC with the intention of looking out for any new products or services with an environmental bent - on fact, it's been more difficult to find a stand which doesn't have a 'green' angle.
Anything which saves money (or is claimed to save money) has been given a green spin, and even those stands which aren't explicit about their environmental credentials seem to feature a lot of green - the colour, that is. Thank goodness for Roadtransport.com's all-red stand (number 7-030 - come up and see us here tomorrow).
But a few of these environmental claims are rather more interesting:
One of them is from compressor and air equipment manufacturer Atlas Copco, which has a couple of green (and money-saving) ideas on offer; the first is that some of its compressed-air equipment is on the Carbon Trust's Energy Technology List (ETL), which means that it qualifies for Enhanced Capital Allowances (ECAs). What all these three-letter acronyms (TLAs) mean is that on qualifying equipment you get 100% first year tax relief on capital expenditure - so you can write off the whole cost of the equipment against taxable profits in the year of purchase.
The slight catch (there's always a catch) is that not all of this compressor's components qualify for the ETL scheme - the rest of its parts are not especially energy-saving; so you'll only get the enhanced allowance on a proportion of the total cost. Still, it's better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish, eh?
Atlas Copco's other green wheeze at the show is to inflate your tyres with nitrogen, using one of their nitrogen generators (N2 makes up 75% of the atmosphere, so it's not too tricky to pull it out of thin air). Nitrogen is used to inflate the tyres of aircraft and F1 cars, because:
- it's an inert gas, which won't corrode wheels;
it doesn't expand and contract with temperature changes as readily as air;
it leaks through rubber more slowly than air.
So your tyres should maintain their pressure more consistently and for longer, reducing the need for top-ups of air - thus ensuring that your tyres use less rubber and your vehicles use less fuel. Atlas Copco points out that even if this only saves 1% on fuel and 5% on tyres it could save tonnes of CO2 for an average fleet per year. I'm a little sceptical (hey, it's my job) - surely a well-maintained fleet would see little or no difference - but I'd like to see some convincing supporting material.