Last March, in a fanfare of publicity, East Cambs District Council announced Council to invest in new veg-fuelled recycling vehicles setting expectations the council’s new bin lorries would use HVO, a vegetation based oil, dramatically reducing the council’s carbon footprint. The new vehicles have now been delivered but just one will run on HVO, the others will continue to use diesel after a Lib Dem proposal to switch all vehicles to vegetable oil was thrown out at last Monday’s Operational Services Committee meeting.

In June the council agreed to an ambitious target to become Net Zero by 2035/36. Council fleet vehicles, primarily bin lorries, account for around 67% of the council’s carbon footprint and around 89% for Scope 1 emissions. These are greenhouse gas emissions over which the council has direct control. If East Cambs District Council is to achieve its Carbon Net Zero target it needs to address emissions from its vehicle fleet.

In the Foreword to East Cambs District Council’s latest Environment Plan (Year 4) published in June this year the Leader of the Council states “we are going to commence using vegetable oil to power some of our refuse vehicles.

The reality is no refuse vehicles have so far used HVO (fuel based on vegetable oil) and the council is planning to run just one refuse vehicle on vegetable oil for the last five months of the current financial year. Running the whole waste collection fleet on HVO for a year would reduce the council’s carbon footprint by more than 570tCO2e. Running one vehicle for five months saves just 15tCO2e.

The council’s Tory administration argued it could not afford the £35,925 cost of running the whole waste fleet on HVO for the rest of the year. But it has already underspent on fuel costs by around £30,000 in the first six months of the year and the full year underspend is likely to be well above the additional HVO cost. It should be possible to run all vehicles in the waste fleet on HVO to the end of March and still come in under budget on fuel costs.

East Cambs District Council has cut its carbon footprint by less than 10% since it declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 and needs to step up its game if it has a hope of achieving its target of becoming Net Zero by 2035/36. The Tory administration’s backtracking on plans to run its waste fleet on vegetable oil raise serious questions about its commitment to address Climate Emergency.

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