UK investigating fraud claims alleging ‘green’ HVO diesel contains virgin palm oil

The wonder fuel that Holcim UK (formerly Aggregate Industries) has pledged to use to extract and haul material from Straitgate is in trouble. 

We have posted about HVO or hydrotreated vegetable oil fuel before. Condition 22 of Holcim UK’s planning permission to quarry Straitgate 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. 

Last year, we wrote a post titled HVO – where on earth will all the used cooking oil come from?: 

Aggregate Industries’ magical solution to its unsustainable 2.5 million mile haulage scheme for Straitgate Farm – a result of processing the as-dug sand and gravel 23 miles away at Hillhead near Uffculme – is to rely on hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO, despite, as of early 2024, HVO being around 40 pence per litre more expensive than normal diesel... 

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? 

And surprise, surprise – today the BBC has reported that the UK government is now investigating HVO diesel amid claims of significant fraud: 

 ... industry whistleblowers told the BBC they believe large amounts of these materials are not waste but instead are virgin palm oil, which is being fraudulently relabelled. 

And data analysed by the BBC and shared with the UK's Department for Transport casts further doubt on one of the key ingredients in HVO, a material called palm sludge waste. 

Europe used more of this waste in HVO and other biofuels in 2023 than it is thought possible for the world to produce. 

UK consumption rocketed from 8 million litres in 2019 to about 699 million litres in 2024, according to provisional government figures. 

Its green credentials rely heavily on the assumption that it is made from waste sources, particularly used cooking oil or the waste sludge from palm oil production. 

But industry whistle-blowers have told the BBC that they believe virgin palm oil and other non-waste materials are often being used instead... 

"It's a very easy game," said Dr Christian Bickert, a German farmer and editor with experience in biofuels, who believes that much of the HVO made with these waste products is "fake". 

"Chemically, the sludge and the pure palm oil are absolutely the same because they come from the same plant, and also from the same production facilities in Indonesia," he told BBC News. 

"There's no paper which proves [the fraud], no paper at all, but the figures tell a clear story." 

Construction company Balfour Beatty has a policy of not using the fuel, citing sustainability concerns:

"We just are not able to get any level of visibility over the supply chain of HVO that would give us that level of assurance that this is truly a sustainable product," Balfour Beatty's Jo Gilroy told BBC News.

"UK investigating claims green fuel contains virgin palm oil"

Industry whistleblowers say large amounts of the material used to produce HVO diesel (increasingly popular as a transport fuel) are not waste - as claimed - but instead are virgin palm oilhttps://t.co/c3DzN98AOE

— Colin Walker (@colinwalker79) April 9, 2025

Devon quarry hosts UK’s first driverless dump truck

The number of people employed by the quarrying industry has been in decline for many years, as we posted back in 2012, when we pointed to the fact that in 1968, 41 and 148 people worked at the nearby Blackhill and Rockbeare sites respectively, and wrote: 

Even over the last 10 years there has been a dramatic fall in employee numbers in sand and gravel, with the UK Minerals Yearbook reporting over 8000 employees in 2001, but under 3000 in 2010. The HSE says the "industry has difficulty attracting and recruiting staff" and "anecdotal evidence suggests an ageing workforce". 

Will the use of autonomous vehicles hasten that decline still further? 

This week, Sibelco’s china-clay Cornwood Quarry, near Ivybridge in Devon, hosted the UK launch of an autonomous articulated dump truck "designed to help futureproof the effectiveness and competitiveness of quarrying operations within the minerals and aggregates industry". 

The demonstration, from Chepstow Plant International and Bell Equipment, used technology from Xtonomy, a German company specialising in autonomous haulage systems: 

The development of autonomous driving capability opens the door to a range of operational efficiency, safety, environmental, and employee benefits to underpin the sector going forward.

Commenting on the Bell B40E dump truck, which also uses HVO instead of diesel, Ben Uphill, operations director for Kingsteignton Cluster at quarry-owner Sibelco, said: 

We envisage many benefits from having access to this sector-first autonomous ADT solution. The minerals and aggregates sector must embrace technology as a way of continually delivering improvements across our daily operations and cost base.

 

HVO – where on earth will all the used cooking oil come from?

Aggregate Industries’ magical solution to its unsustainable 2.5 million mile haulage scheme for Straitgate Farm – a result of processing the as-dug sand and gravel 23 miles away at Hillhead near Uffculme – is to rely on hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO, despite, as of early 2024, HVO being around 40 pence per litre more expensive than normal diesel. 

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. 

In 2022, we posted HVO – AI’s answer to the Straitgate sustainability issue – gets bad press and questioned how the company's HVO scheme would work in practice: 

How this would be done is anybody’s guess, since the company does not own its own fleet of trucks and HVO is not available on garage forecourts – as Devon County Council pointed out. How this would be monitored and policed is another issue – as the Council also acknowledged. 

We also posted that HVO is blamed for indirectly "encouraging more deforestation in Southeast Asia" with some research claiming it’s "three times worse for the climate than regular diesel when indirect emissions from changes in the use of land are accounted for". How so? HVO is primarily made from used cooking oils, UCO, which is used in the production of animal feed. Increased demand for UCO will lead to increasing use of palm oil as a replacement, therefore increasing deforestation. Across Europe, imports account for more than half of the UCO that's made into fuel. According to this study, there's no way to prove these imports are sustainable: 

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 being touted as a solution for air travel too: 

HVO is fully compatible with petroleum diesel and can also be upgraded for use as ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ (SAF). 

According to Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, sustainable aviation fuels are a con.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary: ‘There isn’t enough cooking oil in the world to power one day of green aviation’ https://t.co/eyVEEypvsw

— The Observer (@ObserverUK) December 26, 2023

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. 

Whilst capacity for HVO is forecast to double by 2028, demand is set to outstrip supply. 

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.

 

The latest addition to our fleet - a HVO fuelled cement tanker. In a UK first we've teamed up with Lomas Distribution to add the vehicle to our fleet. HVO produces up to 90 per cent less greenhouse has emissions than mineral diesel https://t.co/OOQbHtfVBa pic.twitter.com/GdU3Fo1qm2

— Aggregate Industries (@AggregateUK) June 16, 2023

Meanwhile, at Aggregate Industries’ site in Coalville: 

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.

HVO – AI’s answer to the Straitgate sustainability issue – gets bad press

Aggregate Industries’ answer to the 2.5 million mile haulage scheme for its Straitgate Farm planning application is to claim that the HGVs hauling as-dug sand and gravel to Uffculme for processing would run on chip fat biofuel, or HVO as it's commonly known – hydrotreated vegetable oil. 

How this would be done is anybody’s guess, since the company does not own its own fleet of trucks and HVO is not available on garage forecourts – as Devon County Council pointed out. How this would be monitored and policed is another issue – as the Council also acknowledged. HVO was part of the S106 heads of terms when the application was originally determined, part of the legally enforceable planning obligations; now the HVO proposal finds itself as another planning condition – and we know the problems with enforcing those. 

Devon County Council’s barrister said in his closing submission: 

206. The Appellant’s proffered obligation/suggested condition (it is difficult to keep track – it was in the draft s.106 but seemingly no longer) that the vehicles use HVO goes nowhere. Mr Gould gave up that he can point to no example of the use of HVO in the aggregates setting. This is, as was put to him, innovative technology (he denied that, before being taken to his Proof as “innovative” is his own word). There can be no reliance placed upon it. Nor has there been any evidence from the Appellant as to how the MPA might hope to monitor so as to ensure HVO is being used. The Appellant’s suggested condition does not begin to answer matters: it simply seeks to kick the can down the road and require the question of whether monitoring is possible to be addressed later. Not good enough. To be addressed now. 

Mr Gould, who represented Aggregate Industries, preposterously claimed "the proposal minimises transport of minerals with innovative solutions to help achieve this". 

Apart from all that, uptake of HVO is being rejected by a number of organisations, including the Environment Agency and others: 

Environment Agency blocks HVO https://t.co/y0qaUxzBwU #constructionnews #construction #businessnews pic.twitter.com/78cErRoej8

— Construction Index (@TCIndex) September 20, 2022

Bursting the HVO bubble https://t.co/H2apUzJwOZ #constructionnews #construction #businessnews pic.twitter.com/cdKRx1Lu9Z

— Construction Index (@TCIndex) November 15, 2022

Even before determination last year, we pointed to the fact that rising imports of used cooking oil into the UK for biodiesel is indirectly "encouraging more deforestation in Southeast Asia" with some research claiming it’s "three times worse for the climate than regular diesel when indirect emissions from changes in the use of land are accounted for". 

Others have problems with it too. HVO is primarily made from used cooking oils or UCO:

According to Jo Gilroy, Balfour Beatty’s group sustainability director, it is simply a matter of due diligence. “We’re very good at jumping on solutions and thinking they’re the answer to our problems, aren’t we?” she says. “We look for easy wins, and HVO looked like that. 

“But any one-hit wonder solution needs to be examined carefully; you always have to do your due diligence.” 

As momentum built in favour of HVO, Balfour Beatty decided it had to delve deeper into the sustainability claims being made for the fuel before approving its use. And what it has found so far has only raised doubts. 

The chemistry of HVO is well understood but less clear is the sustainability of its supply chain. “What does the supply chain look like?” demands Gilroy, “Nobody knows - it’s very complex and there’s very little transparency.” 

One of the big attractions of HVO is that it purports to transform a troublesome waste material into a valuable commodity. But Gilroy says this is misleading: “UCO has always been used in the production of animal feed – it’s not a waste product,” she says. 

This might appear to be a mere technicality, but if one industry’s feedstock is diverted to supply another industry’s needs, alternative sources must be found. If producers of animal feed cannot obtain enough raw material in the form of UCO, they will turn to primary sources, namely commercially-grown vegetable oils such as palm oil. 

Mention palm oil and you open a whole new environmental can of worms...

Balfour Beatty’s Position paper on HVO can be found here: 

There is a high risk that the resulting increase in demand for used cooking oil is causing deforestation and the draining of peatland and marshland in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia where farmers are having to grow palm oil to produce animal feedstock. Such displacement activity has an extremely damaging impact on the environment: these areas store large amounts of carbon, so clearing them would lead to a significant increase in carbon emissions in those countries. EU research indicates that once the effects of land use change and draining of peatland are accounted for, the GHG impact of palm-oil derived HVO could be up to 3 times greater than standard fossil fuel diesel.