Our long-term decarbonisation ambition involves the electrification of heat, plant, and mobility across the Harbour Estate. However, to make deep cuts into our direct operational emissions now, we are one of the first businesses in Northern Ireland to deploy Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) as a low carbon alternative fuel.
HVO can reduce GHG emissions by around 90%, as well as positively impacting local air quality, and plays a vital role in our pathway to Net-Zero.
Most of our operational emissions are attributable to our pilot boat and crane fleet, which together accounts for almost 90% of our Scope 1 emissions.
During the past two years we have trialled HVO in various landside assets; this year we began a phased deployment of HVO across all our marine fleet and landside infrastructure.
Our Ben Madigan pilot boat has been operating on HVO fuel since July 2023. Performance to date has been exceptional, with the pilot boat crew reporting cleaner operation and improved performance.
The use of HVO across the entire pilot boat fleet will reduce our operational carbon emissions by over 500 tCO₂e per annum. The final phase of our HVO transition will take in the remainder of our landside equipment by the end of 2026.