Sustainability and decarbonisation are a process we must work on every day, combining long-term projects and day-to-day practical advancements. At Maganetti we carefully keep updated on the developments for electric motors, hydrogen and other technologies, but we’re also considering solutions we can apply immediately.
Our entire fleet consists of LNG-powered trucks, but we’re testing an alternative fuel for the vehicles of our affiliated firms: it’s HVO, Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil, a solution to replace diesel. It is a synthetic fuel produced with waste oil from food industry, plant oil waste and animal fats that undergo a process of hydrotreatment, with hydrogen as a catalyst.
HVO is an interesting option to obtain an immediate benefit towards decarbonisation: it can be used in conventional diesel engines without major modifications or adaptations, it allows a reduction of up to 90% of CO2 emissions compared to diesel and it’s produced from waste materials. This is a very important point: biofuels made with plant oils have been available for decades, but the specific allocation of land and water resources to these crops presents a number of critical issues, due to the overlap with crops intended for human and animal nutrition.
In this case, however, the raw material comes from waste from food industry, agriculture and livestock, thus creating a circular economy process that recovers energy from materials that would otherwise be disposed of as waste, as is the case with biomethane. Moreover, research and analysis on performances show that HVO is in line with fossil fuel.
For these reasons we are considering it as a solution to add another piece to our path towards zero emissions, involving our affiliated transport firms in a change that would be both economically and operationally sustainable. The prices of HVO are comparable to fossil fuel and transport companies wouldn’t have to replace the vehicles. In the meantime, we’ll stay up-to-date on technological developments and we’ll keep assessing all possibilities for providing efficient transport with a smaller footprint on the planet.
