HVO Adoption in Brazil: Challenges and Environmental Implications

Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) is one of the solutions for replacing fossil diesel with a clean and renewable fuel in compression ignition (CI) engines. This study focuses on the benefits of using HVO-fueled engines in Brazil concerning CO2 emissions, compared with other fuels in the Brazilian energy matrix. The analysis includes CO2 emissions from the Brazilian diesel fleet over the last 10 years, comparing them with the main fossil fuels, traditional biofuels, and the anticipated introduction of HVO to the Brazilian market. The proposal involves a triple blend of fossil diesel, biodiesel, and HVO, progressively increasing the HVO blend up to 50%, while maintaining the current biodiesel concentration permitted in Brazil (B13) and progressively reducing the fossil diesel percentage. Considering the Brazilian diesel fleet from the past 10 years (2015-2025), if this fleet had already been using 100% HVO, Net CO2 emissions would have been reduced by 77.4%, and a reduction of 54.4% would have occurred with a 50% HVO, 20% biodiesel, and 30% diesel mixture. Finally, considering the use of 100% HVO for this fleet over the next 15 and 20 years, the diesel fleet could emit only 366.58 and 652.44 Mton of CO2 in 2030 and 2035, respectively, compared with 1621.53 and 2885.99 Mton of CO2 in 2030 and 2035, respectively, which would be expected if the diesel fleet keeps using 100% fossil diesel. The economic analysis suggests that adopting HVO could generate fuel cost savings of approximately 12 billion USD under favorable production cost scenarios, reaching 12.93 billion USD by 2035 with full implementation. However, if production costs remain high, total fuel expenditures could surpass those of conventional fossil diesel by approximately 16 billion USD.