Nottingham City Council accelerate their fleet electrification

Nottingham City Council is a local authority serving 323,000 residents. Currently holding the position of 9th biggest city in the UK, the council provides public serviceis such as refuse collection, transportation and social housing. The council consists of over 55 councillors, representing a total of 20 wards across the city. 

Nottingham has made the commitment to become the first carbon neutral city in the UK, aiming to reach this target by 2028. The Nottingham Transportation department started to electrify their fleet in 2016 to accelerate their carbon cutting commitments. 

Nottingham City Parking, Fleet and Transport Operations team led on the council’s fleet electrification journey - they are at the forefront of the EV revolution and have recently been awarded ‘Environmental Fleet Trailblazer’ by Fleet News, due to their decarbonisation commitments.

The key selling point

Nottingham Council’s fleet vehicles all have different charging requirements - a Dennis Eagle eRCV has a 300kW battery that can only be charged by a DC charging station. At the opposite end of the scale, the Renault Kangoos have 33kWh batteries. 

The Clenergy EV Charge Point Management System is built as an all-in-one charging platform for these different use cases. By using Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and being hardware agnostic, the Nottingham transport team are able to use charge point stations that are most suitable for the job - their current charger estate includes well known charge points brands for 200 charge points:

• Schneider Electric

• Alfen

• Project EV

• EV Box

• Kempower

• Sevadis

• Wallbox (vehicle to grid chargers)

Every charger brand can be monitored, managed and maintained from one login. The system is future proofed and fully flexible to Nottingham City Council’s needs. More and more certified charging stations are added

Why Clenergy EV?

“We chose Clenergy EV to support our transition to electric vehicles as we wanted to work with a provider that had the facilities to support our users 24/7, with the same commitment to sustainability that we have. In such a nascent industry, we also love the way Clenergy is a development-led team who regularly upgrade their system so that it stays at the forefront of EV innovation.”

 “The data we receive from the Clenergy EV CPMS gives us full tracking of both our carbon and monetary savings - as well as operational information, ensuring our fleets are fully charged, 365 days a year. Clenergy have supported us on our fleet electrification journey and now support charging and provide insight in to charge points (V2X) and vehicles (RCVs and sweepers) that we couldn’t even imagine when we started in 2016.” 

“Nottingham City Council has an ambitious plan to be carbon-neutral by 2028, and that includes a fully electric fleet where possible. Thankfully we’ve been able to rely on Clenergy EV’s back-office software and charge point expertise to stay on schedule.”

Matt Ralfe, Innovation & Change Manager

The Results

Saving over £920k per annum on fuel and vehicle maintenance. The figure would be greater if the wider social and environmental savings were quantified, including improved driver, employee and public wellbeing, reduced carbon emissions and air pollution. For example, the EVs on Nottingham’s fleet are estimated to save 1,162t CO2 p/a – equivalent to how much CO2 is absorbed by 44,685 trees

By the end of 2022, Nottingham has already reduced its overall CO2 emissions per capita by 57.7%, the highest reduction of any UK core city.

Nottingham City Council was able to utilise the Clenergy EV CPMS to ensure vehicles were always fully charged for the next working day. Operational standards remained high despite introducing a new, greener and more efficient fuelling system.

From January 2022 to January 2023, Nottingham City have:

• Used 146,777 kWh of power from Clenergy EV charging stations.

• Completed a total of 9,704 charging sessions.