Devon County Council gritting lorries are powered by hydro-treated vegetable oil. Credit: Devon County Council
Torridge District Council could be the first authority in Devon to have a vehicle fleet fully powered by hydro-treated vegetable oil if councillors give the go ahead.
Using HVO which produces up to 90% less CO2 than regular diesel could help the council cut its carbon output.
The authority currently has a poor record of reducing carbon emissions and was told this week it was way off target to be carbon neutral by 2030 – an objective it set itself six years ago when it declared a climate emergency.
Some 40% of the council’s carbon emissions come from its diesel engines and there are 27 vehicles in the fleet.
Replacing them with electric is not an option at the moment due to cost – they are around £100,000 more than diesel vehicles – and the technology is not advanced enough to cope with the rural terrain of Torridge.
Members of the council’s community and resources committee have agreed to investigate the use of hydro-treated vegetable oil, made from waste materials such as cooking oil, as a fuel after it was suggested by the climate emergency working group.
Chair of the group, Councillor Peter Hames said HVO had been used by some other councils including Winchester for its park and ride buses and bin collections and in some rural areas of Scotland.
Closer to home HVO has been used by Devon County Council in its fleet of gritters and its contractors Griffiths who worked on the North Devon Link Road was one of the first companies in the county to use the ‘green diesel’.
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The cost to the council of switching over to HVO would be between £70,000 and £124,000 a year.
Cllr Hames said Torridge was happy to give money to deserving causes like The Plough Arts Centre and Atlantic Racquet Centre but it also needed to think about having a climate change budget and using money from the underspend each year.
He said there had been hardly any decrease in the council’s carbon emissions over the last few years and these figures were ‘disturbing’.
But there was concern from some councillors about how effective HVO was and there was anecdotal evidence that it could cause damage to vehicles.
They also highlighted reports of virgin palm oil being used by disreputable suppliers of HVO and fraudulently relabelled as waste. The production of palm oil can cause deforestation and biodiversity loss
But Cllr Hames said Winchester Council took care to ensure the supply of the fuel was fully validated with an auditable supply chain, manufactured only from primary waste sources.
Cllr Thomas Elliott claimed the National Trust had trialled HVO and it worked well in the boilers at their Arlington Court property but was damaging to their waste vehicles.
READ NEXT: Torridge replaces diesel vans with a trio of electric vehicles
He said there were potential issues with insurance companies because of this and damage to engines could get very expensive.
Councillors said they could not risk any problems with the waste and recycling fleet and would have to be completely sure that it would work.
They agreed the climate group should investigate the fuel further and find out from other authorities how effective it was.
Members also recommended the council’s commitments to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 were re-examined given its poor performance so far.
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