Rising prices put cooking oil on menu

12 March 2008

Rising oil prices has enabled Richmond Council to press ahead with plans to run its entire vehicle fleet on recycled cooking oil.

The London borough recently announced a successful trial scheme (Surveyor, 15 November 2007), but said it was too expensive to roll out across its 200-strong fleet, due to the tax on recycled biodiesel.

However, despite the Government’s refusal to reconsider, the recent increase in oil prices has made the scheme economically viable. It is estimated that recycled cooking oil would save 300t of CO₂ emissions each year.

Cabinet member for traffic, transport and parking, Cllr David Trigg, said: ‘One early snag was the cost penalty of using this form of biodiesel, and we wrote to the chancellor asking for a reduction in the duty, which he turned down.

‘However, matters have swung in our favour as the recent increase in oil prices now makes this recycled fuel economically viable. We anticipate its use may be slightly cheaper than conventional fuel.’ A council spokesman said the cost of recycled biodiesel was likely to remain stable. Tenders are now being drawn up with a view to launching the ground-breaking initiative this summer.

Ray Cuthbert, Richmond’s transport manager, said the tender was likely to be a framework contract, as more than one supplier would be involved. Although the council would prefer local applications, the open nature of the EU procurement Directive prevents it from specifying this, so there would be some form of weighting on delivery-related CO₂ emissions, Cuthbert told Surveyor.

‘We will also write something in about cold weather performance because the fuel waxes over in freezing temperatures.’ However, even without a solution, Richmond was only affected by such temperatures for about two weeks a year, he added. The contract would be worth about £3.5M over four years, with the tender due to go out in April. Cllr Trigg said the scheme was ‘yet another step in our continuing drive to become the most sustainable borough’.

The elections are due to be held on 1 May.

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