Royal Mail delivery lorries will run on vegetable oil in Greater Manchester

Royal Mail delivery lorries will run on vegetable oil in Greater Manchester as part of ambitious new plans for the company to tackle carbon emissions.

A number of its larger fleet vehicles at the Manchester vehicle operating centre, as well as locations in Sheffield and the Midlands will see heavy good vehicles (HGVs) transition to be fuelled by renewable diesel alternative Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO).

The locations have been chosen based on where HGVs move significant volumes for major customers and are predicted to save a combined consumption of 2.1 million litres of diesel this year.

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The transition is part of Royal Mail’s plan to reduce the business’ carbon emissions to net zero by 2040, with a long-term target to reduce its average emissions per parcel to 50gCO2e.

Royal Mail announced further plans to continue to increase its HVO deployment across its local and national distribution fleet network over the coming years, aiming to reduce its direct emissions by up to 200,000 tonnes of CO2e.

HVO is a drop-in, fossil-free biofuel that can cut up to 90 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to figures from Certas Energy, which will be supporting Royal Mail with its initial roll-out.

Rob Fowler, Fleet Director at Royal Mail, said: “We’ve made great progress in decarbonising our operation by introducing 5,000 electric vehicles into our final mile fleet but we also need to focus on our HGVs. At present, the electric and hydrogen alternatives are still in development for HGVs.

“Vehicle ranges are low, purchase prices are high and infrastructure is in its infancy. That is why we have introduced the use of HVO to decarbonise the HGV fleet within our operation via the most viable low-carbon option.

“We consider HVO to be a transitional fuel that helps us to take steps towards decarbonising our HGV fleet whilst low-emissions technologies continue to advance in this area.

“We will continue to assess and test other emerging low emission technologies that we could potentially deploy in our larger fleet including electric and hydrogen HGVs. Many of these technologies are still in development and are currently not commercially viable to deploy at scale.”

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