Fuel innovation
Although we have been a pioneer in the roll out of electric vehicles in our light commercial fleet, we still produce over 10,000 tonnes of carbon through our Heavy Goods Vehicles(HGVs) and one of our biggest challenges within our decarbonisation strategy is to transform this fleet. As an interim solution, we carried out a successful trial in Galway using Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil (HVO) as a fuel for our HGVs. HVO is a renewable diesel fuel made from certified waste oils and fats and the trial showed excellent results with no performance difficulties. Since September 2021, our trucks have travelled over 119,000km on HVO fuel. This resulted in a 91.8% reduction in carbon emissions when compared to diesel fuel.
We were the first company to try this new HVO technology on a truck fleet in Ireland and are currently expanding this scheme to Waterford and Cork. As part of our commitment to circular economy principles, we retrofitted an existing 45,000 litre tank and diesel pump to be made suitable for use in the HVO trial.