Can HVO fuel help us tour sustainably?
Battery powered electric vehicles are still a long way from achieving the range needed for touring vehicles. Splitter van, sleeper bus, and tour trucking companies have been left firmly tied to traditional internal combustion engines for the time being. Further to insufficient range, the charging infrastructure is also nowhere near developed enough to cope with itinerant tour routings.
Tour transportation companies have been unable to move away from mineral diesel. They upgrade their fleets to the newest emissions standards (as of 2024 this is Euro 6) and change business practices to reduce their carbon footprint. But they cannot yet make real change towards sustainability where it will impact most.
The development of HVO fuel may be a significant step towards addressing this.
HVO (Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil) is a purified bio-fuel that produces much less CO2 (up to -90%), NOx (up to -27%), Carbon Monoxide and particulate matter (up to -85%) than diesel and meets the EU EN 15940 regulation. Although not all diesel engines can use it a growing number can and importantly no changes need to be made to the engines. Existing diesel in a fuel tank can even be topped up with HVO – it is a direct diesel replacement.
Are there any negatives?
HVO costs more than diesel – between 20% or even 40% more at the forecourt. So for splitter van or sleeper bus tours on a budget the extra expense might not be possible.
There’s also still a fairly small supply network of HVO across Europe, so it can be hard to find. Many tours won’t be able to afford the time to drive off route to hunt down HVO refuelling stations. And of course… its not a silver bullet; HVO still produces emissions (just a fair bit less than mineral diesel) and there is a necessity to ensure that the oil itself is produced sustainably (some is still produced from alternative feedstocks such as palm oil and there is currently no way to differentiate as an end user of the fuel).
But even with these drawbacks, HVO is the first technology to be developed that is fit for purpose to help the touring transport industry take real practical steps towards touring sustainably. Battery powered electric motors are some way off being useful for live music touring and HVO offers a stepping stone technology to allow the industry to travel towards sustainability in a meaningful way in the interim. The supply of HVO on fuel station forecourts is also growing rapidly and as demand and the volume of production increases the cost will come down.