Condition 22 of the planning permission to quarry the farm says:
Prior to the export of any sand or gravel from the site, a scheme which ensures that all heavy goods vehicles entering and leaving the site, together with all plant and equipment located within the site, use hydrotreated vegetable oil fuel shall be submitted to and approved in writing by the Mineral Planning Authority. The scheme shall include details of how the use of hydrotreated vegetable oil fuel will be monitored to secure compliance with this condition. All heavy goods vehicles and plant shall be used in accordance with the approved scheme.
China supplies over a third (34%) of Europe’s UCO imports while almost a fifth (19%) comes from major palm oil producers Malaysia and Indonesia combined. Within a decade the volume Europe needs could double to 6 million tonnes as EU countries strive to meet targets for renewable fuels in transport, the study finds. This in turn could trigger palm oil being used to replace cooking oil in exporting countries while also incentivising fraud (mixing virgin oil).
HVO is fully compatible with petroleum diesel and can also be upgraded for use as ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ (SAF).
They’re a wheeze. Unless governments get in behind the production and sourcing of sustainable aviation fuels – and they’re only going to come from, ultimately, the oil majors, the only ones who are going to make them – I don’t see where we will get the supply in the volumes we need. You want everybody running around collecting fucking cooking oil? There isn’t enough cooking oil in the world to power more than one day’s aviation.
Whilst Ryanair has deals with oil majors for up to 9.5% of its fuel needs in SAF by 2030, O’Leary said:
But we have no idea that they’ll be able to make those kinds of volumes.
Aggregate Industries is new to the HVO scene. In June last year, the company made a big song and dance about
a single HVO-fuelled cement tanker being a "UK biofuel first". For Straitgate, it is conditioned, as pointed out above, that all the trucks, and all the plant and equipment located within the site, will need to use HVO.
At our Bardon Hill Quarry we are replacing diesel with HVO on equipment such as generators, compressors and crushing and screening plant. All of our HVO is traceable to source under the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification Scheme, does not result in any deforestation and will save an estimated 3,301 tonnes of CO2e at Bardon Hill. The savings from this, together with our suspended conveyor system saves enough carbon annually equivalent to driving a car 26,000 miles.
Which is all very commendable – albeit the 26k miles is insignificant compared with the company’s HGV haulage plan for Straitgate. But whilst it may be possible to claim that the HVO used by AI does not directly cause deforestation, proving it does not indirectly cause it, proving that the UCO used in making its HVO is not causing more palm oil to be grown elsewhere as a replacement, is another matter.
The concern must be that if every corporate is now going to be greenwashing their pollution away with the delights of HVO, where on earth will all the used cooking oil come from? And how many millions more acres of rainforest will have to be cleared to replace it?
Almuth Ernsting of NGO Biofuelwatch
warns:
We are deeply concerned that HVO is being used and promoted in ever more sectors, from aviation fuels to cars and now as a heating fuel, too. While a limited amount of HVO can be made from genuine waste products such as used cooking oil, such waste products are in very short supply and come nowhere near meeting current HVO demand... EU and UK biofuel sustainability and greenhouse gas standards still permit biofuels from palm oil and soy to count towards renewable energy targets, and they are based on a flawed greenhouse gas methodology which ignores the greatest source of emissions – indirect land use change.
