“We understand the role of the Lithuanian railway infrastructure in ensuring military mobility and preparation for the country’s defense – it is a special element that ensures the redeployment of forces”, commented Egidijus Lazauskas, CEO of the LTG Group.

“LTG Cargo has accumulated experience in project transportation, transporting military equipment and soldiers of NATO allies both in Lithuania and on international routes.”

The King’s Strike

During the so-called “King’s Strike 2025” exercise, LTG Cargo transported military equipment, but there were also passenger wagons attached to the train. Some of the participating soldiers travelled on board the train.

The exercise has provided LTG Cargo with valuable experience, its CEO Eglė Šimė said. Šimė added that the railways are important transport lines for the arrival of NATO troops to the Baltic region, particularly due to their ability to transport large amounts of equipment and personnel quickly.

Biofuel HVO

Besides the military exercise, LTG Cargo embarked on a sustainability adventure. Two of the company’s locomotives will run on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) for the coming 18 months. HVO is widely seen as a more environmentally friendly alternative to diesel, with claimed emission reductions of around 90%.

LTG Cargo is already running a shunting locomotive on HVO, and a Siemens mainline locomotive will join the pilot in a few months.

The operator hails HVO100, the type of HVO that it will be testing, as completely free from fossil fuels. It is supposed to be completely sourced from renewable raw materials, such as cooking oil and animal fats.

Results by the end of the year

“The data to be used as a basis for Infrabel’s analysis will be ready in July. Infrabel will then begin the analysis, which should take about 6 months”, AERRL Secretary General Carole Coune told RailFreight.com. The locations for the use cases have not yet been chosen, she added. Once the tests are done, “Infrabel will lead a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis from a social perspective”, AERRL said.

This initiative follows a study carried out by AERRL, Akiem, Beacon and Cargounit at the end of April 2023. Among the main conclusions of this study was that a full electrification of European railways by 2050 is quite an unrealistic goal. Back then, HVO was proposed as a transitional solution, while battery-electric traction is considered as the most appropriate approach.

Nearly two thirds of POME-based biofuels in the EU were used for the production of HVO. That could account for around a quarter of HVO consumption in Europe, made by companies such as Eni, Repsol, Shell, Total, BP, and Neste, according to a report by T&E. The use of POME in HVO seems like a fairly simply measure to reduce global carbon emissions.

Something does not add up

However, import data casts serious doubts over the residual nature of POME. T&E says that POME materials used in EU and UK biofuels reached two million tonnes in 2023. That is an unexpected figure, considering that the estimated global availability of POME is no more than one million tonnes. “Such mismatch suggests that fraudulent practices are likely happening along the biofuels supply chain.” In other words, a significant share of the imported POME may not be residual in nature at all. Rather, it could simply be palm oil in disguise, which would mean many fewer carbon emission savings due to the associated deforestation.

European biofuel policies introduced in 2009 led to an increase in the consumption of palm oil. However, it also led to large-scale deforestation and human rights violations to allow for mass production. A revised policy from 2018 triggered a sharp decline of palm oil consumption in Europe. Rather, waste oils are now preferred, such as cooking oils and the POME palm oil residue.

Unsurprisingly then, imports of POME in Europe have grown explosively in recent years. For example, German POME consumption quadrupled between 2021 and 2022, and in Ireland and Belgium it grew 26 times and 14 times respectively (in 2023).

HVO has become an increasingly popular substitute for diesel in the rail freight sector. For example, DB Cargo has been trying to replace diesel in all countries in Europe where it operates. The operator told RailFreight.com that it is relatively easy to take into use, considering that all its locomotives can use it without the need for retrofitting.

FS and HVO

FS has been progressively expanding the scope of its HVO utilisation. First, it ran a pilot with a few trains from its passenger operator subsidiary Trenitalia in the summer of 2023. Then, six months ago, the Mercitalia cluster signed a contract with Italian oil giant Eni to transport HVO and other chemical products. And soon it will be used to power shunting locomotives in Padua. “Other facilities where we plan to use HVO are La Spezia and Livorno”, the FS spokesperson added.

Interporto Padova

The logistics intermodal platform in Padua, known as Interporto Padova in Italian, is a crossroad for freight transport in Italy. With rail connection to most major ports in the country and various terminals in northern Europe. Intermodality plays a key role for the terminal, which is also highlighted in the data for 2024, where this segment recorded a 6.4 per cent increase compared to 2023.

GB Railfreight (GBRf) has signed a twelve-month agreement with Drax to use HVO for its rail freight services. The 1,800 tonne trains were previously hauled by locomotives running on traditional diesel fuel. HVO has proved a viable alternative to fossil-derived fuel, and has been trialled by other UK operators.

New fuel, new locomotives

Since 2016, GB Railfreight trains have moved over 15m tonnes of sustainable biomass between Liverpool and Drax. That accounts for 10,000 train journeys, or an average of three journeys per day. Drax, which was converted from a coal burning power station, provides enough power for up to four million homes and businesses. The operators say that equates to around 8 per cent of the UK’s renewable energy and approximately 4 per cent of the country’s total electricity usage.

GBRf has called the HVO agreement a milestone in its decarbonisation strategy. The company also recently announced that its new dual-mode “Class 99” locomotives will run solely on electricity or renewable fuels. HVO is synthetically produced through the hydro-treatment process using vegetable oils or animal fats, which reduces carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions when used in diesel locomotives.

GBRf has many initiatives

Rolling stock for the loads is mainly from refurbished coal hopper wagons, re-engineered by the specialists WH Davis, the last remaining freight wagon manufacturer in Britain. Drax has faced criticism over its biomass policy. Some opinions, notably from environmental campaigners Greenpeace, have questioned the effectiveness of using wood pellets. However, the company stood by its claimed benefits, and no one has criticised the use of rail freight throughout the life of the power station.

“We’ve had a strong relationship with Drax for over twelve years, said John Smith, the Chief Executive of GB Railfreight. “We’ve agreed to use HVO to deliver our services. This is one of many initiatives within GB Railfreight’s carbon reduction plan that will support the UK Government achieve its ambitions to make the UK a clean energy superpower.”

“By exclusively using HVO for rail services, we are reducing our supply chain emissions and supporting the transition to cleaner, more sustainable energy solutions”, said Mark Gibbens, Head of Logistics at Drax. “This agreement marks an important step in our commitment to sustainability and innovation in transport. We are proud to continue our long-standing partnership with GB Railfreight, helping drive both energy security and the UK’s decarbonisation goals forward.”

By now, over 50 per cent of all locomotive fuel consumption consists of HVO. DB Cargo Italia has encountered a small limitation to HVO, however. “Unfortunately, we can’t use it on electric locomotives with diesel last-mile modules because it’s not compatible with the smaller engines”, explains company representative Emanuele Vender.

The operator was also recommended by the lessor to sporadically mix HVO with normal diesel, because there are concerns about the long-term effects with the diesel-substitute being such a novelty. From a technical perspective, the engine is approved for HVO by the manufacturer.

DB using HVO, not only in Italy

The switch of DB’s Italy chapter is not the first or only one. In Germany, 12,9 million litres has already been substituted with HVO. In the UK, the company uses 2,7 million litres of HVO annually. In Poland, the company is working on an introduction of HVO.

Philipp Nowak, project manager at DB Cargo, explains DB Cargo’s HVO ambitions. “We have the aim to be climate neutral by 2040. We are looking for alternatives, but it is a challenge to reduce emissions, specifically on non-electrified tracks in our branch.”

The DB group started a project to look for opportunities. “In rail freight, there are no good technical alternatives to combustion engines at the moment. Battery-electric vehicles don’t have enough capacity, due to our very heavy trains. But we are open to technology.”

And thus, DB turned to HVO. It is a bridging technology for DB until it is clear which type of drive will prevail in the future. The company tested both old and modern engines, to see if they could run on HVO. The company got “good, positive results”, and started approving more locomotives. Since 2023, it has approved all locomotives owned within the DB Cargo group for HVO – over 1400 locomotives in just two years.

A successful alternative

In terms of sustainability, HVO seems to be a success – the data on HVO emissions do not lie. “We are achieving a 90 per cent CO2 reduction by using HVO”, explains Nowak. “But it depends on the producer of the HVO, types that provide an 80 and 85-per cent reduction also exist. It depends on resources used and the production plants.”

DB Cargo Italia’s Emanuele Vender earlier told RailFreight.com that HVO was not supposed to lead to a decrease in performance. Having implemented the HVO switch, he can now confirm that the company has noticed no difference compared to diesel. With the reduction in CO2 emissions and similar performance, it seems that HVO is a great diesel substitute in pursuit of sustainability. Are there any downsides to using it?

The cons of HVO

A slight inconvenience is the question of refuelling. In Italy, DB Cargo has not faced any issue supplying its locomotives with HVO, because it uses trucks to deliver it. In other countries, DB makes use of shared infrastructure. “In those cases, you need to request the authorities to introduce HVO, because every company can refuel there. Under certain circumstances other companies need to approve of it too – and they often don’t”, says Nowak.

The best option for DB Cargo is to use its own fuel infrastructure – which it does in Poland, and partially in Germany and the Netherlands. The company can then decide for itself which fuel to use, rather than depending on other operators.

However, there is a bigger obstacle to using HVO. “The price is the main issue”, says Nowak. HVO is more expensive than diesel, but it differs from country to country. “Due to the growing market, the difference in price between diesel and HVO has been shrinking. We assume that the price difference will decrease in the future if more HVO is sold. In Germany the price difference is between 10 and 20 per cent in comparison to fossil diesel.”

DB’s strategy is to use HVO as much as possible, but it needs to find customers who are willing to pay for it. From the perspective of DB, the company says, HVO is the cheapest and fastest way to reduce CO2 emissions in the rail freight sector. To soften that obstacle, Italy is giving rail companies a 50 cent euro subsidy per litre for the use of HVO.

The price of HVO

Nils Pfennig, communications manager at HVO producer Neste, explains that there are a number of factors that affect the pricing of the diesel alternative. “While the products are similar to each other, their production is not.” The renewable raw materials used in HVO production are more expensive than fossil crude oil, but their prices may fluctuate under the influence of supply, demand and exchange rates. On top of that, Pfennig says, “Fossil diesel production has an advantage of several decades when it comes to optimising its production and the extraction of crude oil,” making it harder for HVO to compete.

“Finally, the costs associated with climate change are hardly factored into fossil fuels”, Pfennig adds. “We see in some countries and jurisdictions that regulators are using the taxation of the fuels to account for the climate benefit of renewable diesel and close the delta between fossil and renewable diesel. We consider this a good approach to ramp-up the use of the fuel.”

More capacity, more resources

Amid growing demand, Neste is growing its HVO production capacity. “In 2025, our production capacity will be 5,5 million tonnes as our recent refinery expansion in Singapore has been completed”, says Pfennig. “At the same time, we are currently expanding our refinery in Rotterdam, which will drive our production capacity to 6,8 million tonnes, by 2027.”

With resources affecting the price level, won’t the growing production level make them more expensive? “We don’t see the availability of these waste and residues as a limiting factor right now. We foresee that by 2030, the global availability of the waste and residues we are currently using will be approximately 40 million tonnes per year. Our production capacity for renewable products currently is 5.5 million tonnes per year”, says the Neste communication manager.

Nevertheless, Neste is looking for more resources for its diesel alternatives. “Going forward and to scale up renewable solutions, it will still be important though to tap into new renewable raw materials to expand the pool. That’s why we, for example, work on raw materials like novel vegetable oils. These are vegetable oils from regenerative agricultural practices, which aim to trap carbon in healthier soils, promote biodiversity and reduce emissions from agriculture, while increasing farm productivity.”

The blue and gold of GBRf is going green. It’s not a livery change, just a change of fuel policy for its new locomotives. As yet only seen at trade shows, the new Class 99 bi-mode will be bio-mode. The initial fleet of thirty Stadler-built workhorses will be running emissions-free or at least emissions-green when they start entering service in 2025.

Keeping up with the traffic

Looking cleaner than it ever will again, 92002 is set to be the pride of the fleet for GBRf, albeit still residing at the factory gates in Spain. The Peterborough based operator, which describes itself as one of the UK’s leading transporters of consumer and business goods, has made a bold commitment to run the locomotive and its classmates solely on electricity or renewable fuels such as HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil).

GBRf has made several claims about the class. They say they will be the first heavy-haul freight locomotive capable of transporting significant volumes at mainline speeds on both electrified and non-electrified sections of the UK rail network. Other bi-mode locomotives are in service, but GBRf says they will be able to deliver their line speed of 75mph (120km/h) under either power source.

Eagerly anticipated arrival

The Stadler-built Class 99 should give GBRf a significant commercial advantage. Being able to maintain line speed under the wires or not gives the operator a dual advantage of reliability and availability. The new locomotives will, says GBRf, significantly reduce emissions by at least 58%. “With the Class 99s running exclusively on HVO on non-electrified lines, we can now provide our customers with a fully decarbonised solution for freight transport,” said John Smith, Chief Executive Officer at GB Railfreight.

There is still almost a year to go before the class is introduced into revenue-earning service, but GBRf is already painting the new arrivals as a game-changer. They call it a major milestone in sustainable rail freight transport. “This breakthrough is pivotal to our decarbonisation strategy and will help reduce the emissions associated with delivering goods to homes and businesses across the country,” said John Smith. “This marks the next step on our journey to lead the rail freight sector towards a greener future.” Cleaner fuels, like HVO, are becoming increasingly popular across the entire logistics chain, as recently reported in our sister service, WolrdCargo News. The Class 99s are being leased from Beacon Rail, and they are set to enter service in late 2025.

4.5 million tonnes of biomass

Drax is a name in the UK, synonymous with the huge cooling towers of the power station complex, easily visible from the East Coast Main Line, and dominating the landscape around Selby in Yorkshire. The complex was built in the 1960s to take advantage of the coal reserves from mines in the area. It has been rail-served since day one. However, in recent years, the power station has been gradually converted to burn biomass – a processed form of wood pulp – which is delivered by modified trains using repurposed coal wagons (a speciality of UK rolling stock manufacturer WH Davis).

Drax Group, the UK’s leading producer of renewable energy, has decided to switch to fully renewable fuel as part of its ongoing programme to reduce its carbon footprint. That’s a big job for rail freight. DB Cargo UK currently transports around 4.5 million tonnes of biomass pellets to Drax Power Station each year, operating around 60 trains a week—approximately 3,000 trains a year—to the site.

HVO is a win-win for carrier and consumer

Despite the obvious advantages of using dedicated rail freight to transport the fuel to the site, there remains the environmental anomaly of burning fossil fuel (diesel) to deliver a sustainable feedstock to the power station. DB Cargo has, therefore, been experimenting with HVO for some time and is now in a position to switch operations to the fuel. DB Cargo estimates that switching from traditional red diesel to HVO will reduce rail freight carbon emissions by up to 90 per cent, saving over 12,000 tonnes of carbon each year. Based on figures from the UK Government’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, that is equivalent to 30 million miles (48 million kilometres) of car journeys.

“The Government had set the rail industry a stretching target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and remove all diesel-only traction by 2040,” said Roger Neary, DB Cargo UK’s Chief Sales Officer. He said the decision by Drax to adopt the use of HVO in its trains was a win-win for both companies. “The use of HVO in our trains will go a long way to helping us meet that challenge. At the same time, it will help Drax meet its own sustainability targets and minimise its impact on the environment.

Committed to rail freight

Rail freight is critical to the power station’s supply chain, transporting large volumes of biomass pellets to the plant, which produces around 8 per cent of the UK’s renewable power. The adoption of HVO is an interim measure, if Roger Neary has his calls for electrification answered. “Until a firm commitment is made to [complete] electrification of the UK network, HVO is the only credible solution to rail freight decarbonisation,” he said. “More services could be operated with HVO if the right policies and incentives were in place to enable more customers to make the switch.”

The management of Drax already recognises that rail freight is the only viable way of supplying the station’s voracious appetite. The switch to less-dense biomass products for feedstock means the complex requires even more wagon loads to be delivered. Bruce Heppenstall, Plant Director at Drax Power Station, said rail freight was already a more sustainable method of transporting the pellets than by road, taking some 192,000 heavy goods vehicles off the UK’s network each year. “Drax Power Station uses high volumes of biomass to keep the lights on for millions of homes across the UK. Rail freight is a cleaner and greener option for transporting this material, and our partnership with DB Cargo prevents thousands of additional journeys by HGVs across the UK’s road network.”

The DB Cargo trains powered on HVO will provide around 57 per cent of Drax’s total biomass, helping enough renewable electricity to power almost 2.3m homes, equivalent to all of the households in Yorkshire and the Humber region. HVO is marketed as one of the world’s purest and greenest fuels. It is synthetically made through the hydro-treatment process from vegetable oils or animal fats which significantly reduces harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions when used in diesel vehicles and machinery. It is derived from 100 per cent waste products, and no virgin products are used in its manufacture.

The partnership between ONE and Freightliner has announced the adoption of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO100) fuel to power all their rail cargo journeys in the UK. This decision follows their successful six-month pilot project demonstrating the fuel’s efficiency and environmental benefits.

Collaborating on an environmental initiative

“ONE UK, in partnership with Freightliner, is pleased to continue the transportation of our cargo inland using rail powered by HVO100,” said Nick Reay, Head of Operations for ONE UK. “Over our successful six-month pilot period, we calculated that 488 tonnes of CO2 emissions were saved by switching to this renewable fuel.”

Reay went on to thank Freightliner for collaborating with the environmental initiative. He says it’s part of a move to make ONE a greener and more sustainable supply chain. “ONE continues to find innovative ways to achieve our goal of net zero by 2050,” he said.

Optional carbon reduction certificate

At Freightliner, we are committed to proactively reducing our environmental impact and being a net zero business,” said Clive Slayford, Commercial Director – Intermodal Logistics at Freightliner. “Throughout our long-standing partnership, we have demonstrated our commitment to offering customers a greener alternative using HVO fuel, which [radically] reduces carbon emissions compared to diesel and road alternatives.”

ONE and Freightliner have worked together since 2018 and recently announced a new five-year contract, providing a rail-based intermodal connection between London Gateway and the Port of Southampton. ONE says their customers can opt to purchase a carbon reduction certificate, acknowledging their efforts to lower their carbon footprint.

Significant investment from both partners

Freightliner remains the UK’s largest maritime intermodal logistics operator, transporting containers from all major deep-sea ports to a national network of inland terminals. Ocean Network Express (Europe) Ltd is a subsidiary of Ocean Network Express (ONE), headquartered in Singapore.

HVO100 is a fully renewable fuel made from raw materials like vegetable oils, waste-based fats, and oils from the food industry. Just because it may come from a deep fat fryer doesn’t make it as cheap as chips. It has taken a significant investment from both partners to reach this acceptance into commercial deployment. ONE and Freightliner say switching to HVO can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90 per cent when used as an alternative to conventional diesel, typically used in freight trains.

DB Cargo Italia has been testing the use of the plant-based fuel at its shunting stations in Cervignano and Brescia. The tests were successful enough to prompt the company to implement the switch throughout the country.

The pros and cons

“The primary difference between diesel and HVO is that the latter is not a fossil fuel”, explains Emanuele Vender, managing director at DB Cargo Italia. “HVO is renewable and also contributes to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And because the chemical composition is also similar, our existing diesel engines can run on it.”

Vender explains that DB Cargo Italia incurs similar costs for using HVO as it would for using diesel. Performance-wise, HVO also shows comparable results: “It might be a couple of percentage points lower, but it is a negligible difference”, says Vender.

However, it is not as easy to get your hands on HVO when compared with diesel. “You need the right supplier with the right type of HVO. It ’is not as simple as with diesel”, Vender explains. Nevertheless, DB Cargo Italia intends to stick with HVO in the long term. “It is worth it for the environmental benefits. Despite rail cargo already being the most socially sustainable transport mode, at DB Cargo we always try to improve this aspect further”, says Vender.

Experiments

DB Cargo Italia is not the first DB Cargo subsidiary that has tested HVO as an alternative to diesel. Other DB Cargo subsidiaries and rail operators have also tested HVO as an alternative to diesel. These trials mirror a broad effort to look for more environmentally friendly fuels while maintaining operational efficiency.

Earlier, DB Cargo tested HVO at shunting locations in Bremerhaven and Munich. The Dutch north east also saw DB Cargo experiments with HVO, as well as DB Cargo UK, which tested HVO on a Class 60 locomotive. Similarly, Colas Rail also experimented with HVO in the UK.

Also read:

• Italy awards contracts worth 477 million euros for Rome-Pescara line upgrade
• Subsidy for rail freight rolling stock in Italy will remain after all
• Switzerland to invest in CargoBeamer’s Domodossola terminal