Viva locks in cleaner diesel deal

VIVA Energy has signed a carbon-neutral fuel supply deal with a Melbourne transport company.

The Geelong Refinery will provide carbon-neutral diesel to coach and bus operator Crown Caches to fuel its entire fleet, with the product earning federal government certification.

The cleaner fuel product has approval from the Climate Active initiative, which is a partnership between the government and Australian businesses to encourage voluntary climate action.

The scheme involves businesses buying carbon credits that support emissions-reducing projects to achieve carbon neutrality.

Viva chief business development and sustainability officer Lachlan Pfeiffer said the transitional fuel technologies would help businesses decarbonise in the short and medium term as new low-emissions technologies, such as hydrogen fuel and electric vehicles, are scaled up for wider commercial use.

“We recognise that customers have a complex journey ahead of them to decarbonise their businesses, especially when they have fleets of heavy vehicles reliant on traditional fossil fuel products.

“Our Carbon Solutions team has been working with commercial customers to navigate their way to a lower carbon future with a range of new products and solutions.”

Crown Coaches business development manager Ivan Furlanetto said the partnership was an important bridging step for the business.

“Viva Energy was talking about a range of low carbon pathways, including carbon neutral fuels, and we saw this as an important step towards reducing our carbon footprint.

“We’ve been working on this with Viva Energy since January this year, and have been using their opt-in carbon-neutral diesel fuel in all our vehicles. We see this as a bridging solution while we continue to transition our bus fleet to fully electric vehicles over the next few years.”

Viva said it has fielded interest from industries such as mining, construction, marine and heavy trucking about low-carbon fuels.

Viva’s cutting-edge New Energies Service Station, which would supply hydrogen fuel to a range of heavy vehicles in Geelong, is due to start construction later this year.