An important step in making the widespread use of HVO in rural home heating in the UK a realistic possibility, but further initiatives are now required to make it a reality…
The United Kingdom and Ireland Fuel Distributors Association (UKIFDA) and OFTEC welcomes the announcement today by the Secretary of State for International Trade concerning the lifting of anti-dumping duties and countervailing measures on Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) imported from the USA into the UK, imposed previously by the EU.
This follows a comprehensive review by the Trade Remedies Authority which provided interim recommendations in December 2021 to remove import tariffs for HVO.
Ken Cronin and Paul Rose, UKIFDA and OFTEC CEOs, said: “This is welcome news. Increasing the availability of HVO into the UK at a time when we need to start decarbonising our heating stock is a smart decision by the government. Our project has shown that we can decarbonise rural homes quickly, without disruption and inexpensively using liquid renewable fuels.
“We are calling on government to go further by signalling a move to treat the use of HVO across transport, aviation and home heating equally.
“Currently, HVO cannot be delivered to home heating customers as cheaply as those in transport and aviation. In addition, HVO is subject to much higher duties than the fossil fuel it replaces. Removal of these further anomalies would mean a huge kick start to affordable and efficient rural home decarbonisation.”
UKIFDA and OFTEC are the trade bodies that represents the liquid fuel industry in the UK that directly employ 20,000 people. Currently, liquid fuels are delivered to over 1.7m residential homes and 250,000 businesses. Today, most of these liquid fuels are fossil based and a significant proportion is used for heating purposes.
Many of these households are located in rural locations, in homes and premises that are both detached and built before 1919. These characteristics limit the decarbonisation options open to them without significant disruption and cost.
As a result, UKIFDA and OFTEC embarked on a strategy to help advance the transition to liquid renewable fuels and are currently running a UK-wide HVO demonstration project, which has converted 150 homes and premises to HVO. Each conversion took about an hour during a normal maintenance visit and cost c£500.
This successful demonstration project principally looked at the logistical elements of distributing HVO, which offers up to a c90% reduction in carbon against the counterfactual kerosene and builds on a smaller trial in 2020, which concluded there were no technical issues with swapping to HVO at a domestic home level.
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