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Howard S. Abramson/TT

Volvo Trucks officials said Thursday the company will begin selling Class 8, over-the-road trucks powered by dimethyl ether beginning in 2015.

At a press conference at the California Capitol in Sacramento, officials said they have already begun field-testing DME trucks with one fleet and will soon add a second test in conjunction with food-store chain Safeway Inc., a fuel producer and a local governmental agency in California.

“We look forward to further validating DME technology for the trucking industry,” said Göran Nyberg, president of��Volvo Trucks’ North American sales and marketing.

“We believe the fuel shows great potential for the North American market and, when produced from biomass, it can provide a 95% reduction in [carbon dioxide] compared to diesel,” Nyberg said.

DME, which burns clean without producing any soot, can be made from a variety of sustainable domestic sources, and from natural gas, Volvo said in a statement, adding that it plans to begin “limited production in 2015 of DME-powered vehicles.”

Nyberg called DME a “simpler technology” than compressed or liquefied natural gas, adding that it “costs more than LNG but has more energy than LNG or CNG.”

He was joined at the capitol by Cliff Rechtschaffen, Gov. Jerry Brown’s senior energy adviser, and executives from Oberon Fuels, the first company to announce plans to commercialize DME fuel production in North America.

For additional coverage, see the June 10 print edition of Transport Topics.