Rotterdam officially opened a new charging square for the city’s electric refuse lorries at Kleinpolderplein on Friday 30 October. The site has room to charge 24 refuse lorries at the same time. The city needed it because it uses more and more electric refuse lorries, and the existing charging points were not enough to charge all of them.

What opened and who uses it

The city of Rotterdam has bought 32 new electric Volvo refuse lorries, and most of them are already in service. It also already had 6 electric refuse lorries. A large part of these vehicles now start and end their working day at Kleinpolderplein, where they also recharge. The other eight are spread over the other sites of the city’s waste collection department. The aim is to distribute vehicles and charging points across the city. The charging square was built in a partnership between the city and its contracted energy supplier, Total Energies.

Grid capacity secured early

Several years ago the city decided to prepare for a charging square and requested a heavier grid connection from the network operator. That proved important, because grid congestion now puts pressure on the electricity network in many places in the Netherlands. New or larger connections go on a waiting list at the network operator, and projects like this sometimes have to wait for years. For this charging square, the required grid capacity was already available, so construction could go ahead. The city’s climate page notes that grid congestion is increasingly a bottleneck for charging its electric vehicles.

Clean air and the zero-emission zone

The city is working on clean air, and electric refuse lorries produce no exhaust gases on Rotterdam’s streets. The new lorries are also allowed to work in the city’s zero-emission zone. The zone covers an area inside the ring road. Since 2025 it has applied stricter rules to lorries and vans, and these rules also apply to the municipality itself. From 1 January 2030, vans and lorries with combustion engines, such as diesel, petrol or gas, will no longer be allowed in the zone.

Climate targets

The city aims to cut the CO₂ emissions of the municipal organisation by 55% in 2030 compared with 2019. It also aims for an emission-free municipal fleet in 2030. Whether that succeeds depends on the availability of suitable heavy zero-emission vehicles.