Watch: Kilkenny County Council discusses benefits of HVO in large machines

Kilkenny County Council operates over 250 vehicles for roadworks, and other services such as the Fire Service, Civil Defence, Mobile Library and Parks Department. Together they produce over a quarter of the Council’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Many of these vehicles are large machines, and current technology isn’t suitable to replace them with electric alternatives.

In October 2023, Kilkenny County Council commenced a trial using HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) in a number of its vehicles, such as sweepers and heavy goods, and tipper trucks. The Council says HVO is an interim solution until more sustainable technologies are found, with trials presently ongoing.

In the below video, Art Hennessey, technical services supervisor at Kilkenny County Council, gives an overview of HVO use in some of the Council’s vehicles and experiences to date.

“In order for us to meet our climate action goals, we’ve started to move some of our vehicles over towards HVO. Such vehicles include sweepers and heavy goods, and tipper trucks etc,” he said.

“It’s not quantifiable, but we expect less maintenance on vehicles due to the fact that HVO is cleaner burning, hotter burning, and therefore, we should get less problems with our exhaust after-treatment systems,” Hennessey added.