Future Fuels: Q&A with industry leading experts

Therefore, we reached out to the fuel industry's leading names to share their insights into future fuels and answer some frequently asked questions.

Sharing their experience and providing valuable information about the future of the fuel industry are:

• Ken Cronin - CEO of the UK and Ireland Fuel Distributors Association (UKIFDA)
• Simon Lawford - Technical Sales Manager at Crown Oil Ltd
• Giovanni De Bei - Marketing Director at Piusi
• Rob Terry - our very own Technical Director here at CTS

You can watch the full Q&A video below and learn more about these new renewable fuels or read the summarised version of our interviews in the article below.

First, we talked with the CEO of the UK and Ireland Fuel Distributors Association (UKIFDA), Ken Cronin, asking him, ‘What part do new green fuels play in the fuel industry's future and how does UKIFDA support the adoption of renewable fuels such as HVO’. Ken Corrin shared with us some very interesting facts about the use of liquid fuels for heating homes and businesses in the UK and said: “UKIFDA is currently involved in a demonstration project with 200 homes using HVO across the UK and the early results are extremely encouraging."

UKIFDA's CEO believes that introducing renewable fuels such as HVO and GTL will help decarbonise the heating systems without costly or disruptive modifications, helping the government to decarbonise an entire sector very quickly. However, Ken added that there are some serious questions involving sustainability, security of supply, and above all else the cost to the consumer that UKIFDA are currently discussing with the government. So, it will be interesting to follow the discussions and find out how homeowners and businesses can reach the net-zero target and move to more sustainable fuel alternatives.

The second interview we had was with the Technical Sales Manager at Crown Oil Ltd, Simon Lawford, where we focused more on the environmental and operational benefits that HVO provides as a drop-in replacement of fossil fuel. As you probably already know from our previous blog posts and our new #FutureFuelFriday series, HVO offers a net greenhouse gas reduction of 90% versus fossil diesel and its clean burn performance results in significant reductions in noxious emissions. However, Simon added some interesting information about the performance of HVO in modern Euro-6 and stage five engines.

He said: "For modern Euro-6 and stage five engines, the cleanliness of HVO burn reduces the operating strain on diesel particulate filters and selective catalytic reduction systems, meaning they will continue to clean up exhausts for longer and reduce the consumption of consumables such as AdBlue." In addition, Crown Oil's Technical Sales manager explained that HVO is impervious to water ingress and the generation of diesel bug, and has an extremely low, cold filter plug-in point meaning that it is not only suitable for road transport and non-road mobile machinery, but also for standby power such as backup generators. He added that Crown Oil tests have shown no effect on the available power or cuts in reliability and that they are confident that the fuel can be deployed quickly and easily by businesses currently using diesel to power their operations.

Last but not least, we talked with Piusi, the leading European refuelling equipment supplier, who have performed exhaustive testing to ensure that all their Piusi dispensing products are fully compatible with these new fuels. Providing reassurance during our talk was Giovanni De Bei, the Marketing Director at Piusi, who said: "All Piusi products, those suitable for transferring, refuelling, managing and measuring fuels and liquids such as gasoline and diesel are 100% fully compatible for paraffinic diesel, HVO and XTL, and others like GTL, BTL, CTL, PTL, and others that are available anywhere in the market, this according to the EN 15940 regulation of the year 2019." This means that all our customers looking to switch to some of these renewable fuels can rest easy knowing that Piusi equipment will still provide the same high performance and reliability that it always has done.

After our discussion on the hot topic of renewable fuels with some of these industry leaders, we believe that even with electrification and other gas technologies, there will still be a strong demand for liquid fuels for years to come, and these new fuels provide a pathway to reducing carbon footprints and improving air quality.