The use of biodiesel blended fuels can significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, over a full lifecycle analysis from production through to use in the vehicle.

In Australia in 2008, our diesel demand equaled 18,100,000,000 litres of fuel. The US EPA states that one litre of diesel equals 2.67kg of CO^₂ (www.epa.gov).

So in terms of Australia’s 2008 consumption of diesel, we emitted 48,327,000,000kgs or 48.3 million tonnes of CO^₂.

The US EPA also states that one litre of biodiesel reduces net emissions of CO^₂ by over 67.7%, so one litre of biodiesel will save 1.8kg of CO^₂.

So by replacing Australia’s total annual consumption of diesel with biodiesel, we would reduce our CO^₂ emissions to 15.6million tonnes, saving 32.5million tonnes per year.

However at the moment, we don’t use B100 blends. If all heavy vehicles were using B20 blends only, our emission savings would be in the vicinity of 10million tonnes a year. By 2020, by which time our freight task is expected to double and we expect to be using about 25 gigalitres of diesel per year, we would be saving about 45 million tonnes per year if we converted completely to B100.