10/02/2022
B-HISTORY: BAUER opens its own CNG fuelling station
After the Climate Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the world’s eyes turned to the topic of environment and climate protection. Natural gas is soot-free and low-emission. The environmentally friendly fuel was a viable alternative to petrol and diesel, particularly in its renewable form of biogas. However, the lack of fuelling station infrastructure posed a problem. As the leading manufacturer, BAUER set a good example by opening a Type CFS 150 reference fuelling station on its own premises in 1995. It was primarily used by waste disposal trucks from the city of Munich’s municipal fleet, but was also open to the public. State funding schemes introduced for CNG fuelling station operators plus tax reductions helped to transform natural gas into a particularly low-cost fuel; in fact, in a direct comparison with petrol, it worked out at around half the cost per kilometre driven.
These moves resulted in rapid growth for the fuelling station network, and the numbers of gas-powered vehicles on the roads rose quickly. At the height of the natural gas boom in 2008, a turnkey system left the BAUER factory almost every week. Of the 900 CNG fuelling stations in Germany, around half were produced by BAUER. Europe’s 1.8 million CNG-powered vehicles could avail themselves of around 4200 fuelling stations throughout the continent.