London Gatwick has cut carbon emissions from its diesel vehicles by 90% by swapping the fuel for Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). The switch means London Gatwick will save more than 950 tonnes of carbon emissions per annum. HVO is a low-carbon biofuel made from plant waste, oils and fats making it a more sustainable and lower-carbon alternative to diesel. All 300 diesel vehicles, 85% of London Gatwick’s fleet, are now powered by HVO until they are retired from use. They will then be replaced by electric vehicles as part of the airport’s sustainability policy, Decade of Change. Fire crew manager George Treadwell takes us on a tour of one of the Rosenbauer Panther fire vehicles
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00:00 Here at London Gatwick, these are our Rosenbauer Pamphers.
00:04 Now our Rosenbauer Pamphers, we have five of in the fleet,
00:07 and we also have a different variant with a H-Rep model, which is an extended boom on the top.
00:12 But our main running appliance here that attends all aspects of the airfield
00:17 and deals with every aspect of aviation is the Rosenbauer Pampher.
00:21 It holds 12,500 litres of water, and we can project that out of our main monitor on the roof
00:27 up to 80 metres at a discharge rate of 5,000 litres a minute.
00:32 So an enormous amount of pressure and a lot of water that we can get out within a short space of time.
00:41 So let me show you around the appliance very, very quickly,
00:49 and I'll show you some key features that's really important to know.
00:53 So as we come round to the main cab, the main console inside, this can house a crew of four,
00:59 but we tend to run these operationally with a maximum of three.
01:03 So we have the OIC on one side, the person in charge of the appliance, the driver,
01:08 and then we also have a firefighter on the other side, and at any operational incident,
01:12 they can get off the appliance and roll out hoses and be able to deal with any sort of incident.
01:19 And as we sort of move around, we see the size of the tyres, the size of the truck,
01:28 and this appliance in itself weighs just under 40 tonnes, which is a huge bit of kit to be moving around.
01:36 Now you might be thinking about the size of the engine and what sort of power that needs,
01:41 and this is running at just under 750 brake horsepower, so a huge amount of power.
01:47 So a 300 litre fuel tank is what it contains, and these are now operated all with HVO fuel.
01:57 So being 700 brake horsepower, with a 14 litre engine, it's going to chew through a lot of fuel,
02:03 and that being at about 2 to 5 litres per gallon.
02:06 So having something environmentally friendly is really important.
02:16 So here's our first locker that we come to. We've got our main hoses on the side there.
02:21 We've also got a high pressure hose reel in case we need to go internal firefighting,
02:25 and then we've also got dry powder units for if we have to deal with anything particularly with fuel,
02:31 or where we need to get a little bit closer to the seat of a fire.
02:35 So that's our first locker that we come to.
02:38 Now as we come down, we've got further equipment lockers, small fire extinguishers in these ones,
02:45 and then right at the back here, we've got our fuel locker itself.
02:54 So once a week our vehicles get refuelled. We get it fuelled by our airfield operations team,
03:06 who come out of a Bowser, and then we refill our vehicles on a weekly basis.
03:10 So there we have our Rosenbauer Panther, a fantastic bit of kit.
03:15 It's designed to get anywhere on the airfield at a moment's notice,
03:18 and it's equipped to be able to deal with any incident.
03:21 We've got five of these of this particular style, and then we've got one HRET vehicle,
03:27 and when I say HRET, that refers to a high boom, so we can move that boom into different levels of operation,
03:35 whether it be dealing with an undercarriage fire, so we can put it down at floor level,
03:38 or we can put it up really high if we were dealing with an APU style fire,
03:42 so the artillery power unit of an aircraft, or we can use our cameras on it to get up nice and high
03:47 and look down onto the top of an aircraft.
03:50 Rosenbauer Panther is now having HVO fuel as opposed to having diesel.
04:02 We've seen no performance difference, so what's really important to me, the crews, and the fire station
04:07 is that we can deploy anywhere across the airfield, have that performance, have that reliability,
04:12 and when we were going through the transition period and the testing between diesel and HVO,
04:17 we didn't notice any performance difference at all between the two.
04:21 So now we've confirmed that we did vigorous testing, we were able to then transition our whole fleet over to HVO.
04:35 These Rosenbauer Panthers here take 300 litres of fuel,
04:38 and they regularly run anything between 2 and 5 miles to the gallon,
04:43 so a very juicy vehicle, as you'd probably say, but weighing in at just under 40 tonnes,
04:51 and having a performance as they do, so we have to have, they'd have speed tests,
04:56 and we have to be able to meet certain times across the airfield, roughly about 2 minutes in optimum conditions.
05:03 They need to be able to hit 0-50 miles an hour in about 25 seconds,
05:08 and for a big vehicle like that, that's extremely quick.
05:11 Well, we're trying to promote, across the airport, saving life, rescuing,
05:21 we're environmentally friendly, we want to have a good environmental impact,
05:27 as you can see behind me, we've got lots of aircraft coming in and out,
05:30 and also we've got obviously these big vehicles that are burning a lot of fuel.
05:33 So what is important to me is being able to help people, help the environment,
05:38 help the area that we're working in, living in, and the conditions that we are.
05:43 It's my ultimate health as well at the end of the day,
05:45 so it's in my best interest to be able to not only promote the HVO fuel,
05:50 but to actually be an ambassador for it and support it, and be able to fly the flag,
05:55 and be able to celebrate the fact that we are a lot greener, a lot more greener than what we are.
06:00 We originally refer to it here as the 'chip fat oil',
06:13 and I have very limited knowledge in myself on how HVO works,
06:18 and because it's such a new product, a new concept,
06:21 it was quite hard for me to get my head around it.
06:24 But then when we started hearing that actually the two can be mixed,
06:27 and originally after our test vehicle, our test Panther was used,
06:32 we have now started to put HVO straight into our vehicles,
06:35 even when they've had a bit of diesel in there.
06:37 So now I see it as just another fuel that you would potentially,
06:41 maybe even one day be buying at a petrol station.
06:44 All but being more expensive, it's then obviously a lot greener,
06:48 and through the emissions as well.
06:50 Now our vehicles with a big exhaust coming out the back, and particularly on this one,
06:54 originally when we were operating diesel you had that big sort of black plume of smoke coming out,
06:58 whereas now, you don't really see anything at all.
07:01 So visually I'm actually seeing something, performance wise no difference at all,
07:07 and then I'm assured by our management team, by the MT section,
07:11 and through the testing that we've done, that it is a lot safer, greener, and environmentally friendly.
07:18 [Music]