Diesel BioFuel VRT

gowger

According to the VRT calculator on revenue.ie it states that if you can provide documentary evidence to the effect that the CO2 emissions are a certain amount then you can be charged appropriately.

They don't list BioDiesel as an option in the drop down menu. It seems that they completely ignore the recent advances made in the area of powering diesel engines on low carbon footprint plant oil.

Does anyone think it might be possible to provide documentary evidence to show that the car has a low carbon footprint for a biodiesel set up? I'm wondering what kind of documents they would accept.

Another interesting thing, which shows more discrepancies and hypocrisies in the VRT system is that there are two models of my car listed in the drop down menus. Same engine, same bhp specified in the menu, same transmission but two different values, in different bands. One says 213 and the other says 184 gm/km. Guess what, one of them has the word sport in the name. Guess that must make it much heavier, and hence draw more fuel, because there's no difference in the engine profile. :mad:

I haven't carried out the conversion yet, so I'm wondering if it's also possible to reduce the bhp via the engine computer in the mean time, and get documentary evidence to support it's lowered emmisions? Maybe the NCT can provide this? I don't need the full power output, it'd be cheaper to run and until it's using biofuel I'd rather not pump that much carbon out of the ground.

This omission of biodiesel in the scheme is baffling, anti competitive and backward. Other European countries are promoting it heavily and irish biodiesel firms are exporting to them, while ireland imports almost all of it's energy. Why do we seem to be totally incapable of planning for change in this country?

I've written to the local VRO about this so we'll see what they say ...

Riskymove

As I understand it biofuel cars are measured on emmissions as if they had a fullt ank of normal diesel/petrol

I think the reasoning is if you can use normal diesel then there is no guarantee people will actually use biofuel in their car.

I agree its an anomoly in the new system that may be dealt with in future budgets

ninty9er

Riskymove wrote: »

As I understand it biofuel cars are measured on emmissions as if they had a fullt ank of normal diesel/petrol

I think the reasoning is if you can use normal diesel then there is no guarantee people will actually use biofuel in their car.

This is true, it's why cars like the Focus FFV and Volvo 1.8 F range are in the D band. It's only fair since you can use diesel or petrol in a bio car of this type.

robbie99

That got me thinking. Maybe this should be it's own thread/debate but it doesn't matter whether you use biodiesel or regular diesel. You're still pumping CO2 out your exhaust pipe. It's the growing of the crops from which you produce the biodiesel that removes CO2 from atmosphere, not the burning of biofuels. To be environmentally friendly a hole should be dug in the ground and all diesels - bio, regular, and petrol and ethanol etc should be poured in and buried.

Riskymove

well yes you still emit CO2 but its from a sustainable source and means less oil used, less emissions in production etc

gowger

I should have looked harder, they say on the site the kind of documentation that they will accept.
http://www.revenue.ie/index.htm?/faqs/faqs-vrt-changes.htm

So I think I might be able to can get an NCT centre mechanic who to measure emissions to take a reading after remapping the chip to a lower power value and show them that.

I phoned the VRO in tallaght and asked them their opinion. The guy didn't really know what I was on about but he reckoned if I had a letter from the people who do the conversions, certifying that they did indeed carry it out and what they reckon to be the resultant emissions then that would do the trick. They may say that it is a carbon neutral solution. I don't really have much faith in that though. I couldn't imagine being able to convince the customs officer of the science of the carbon cycle somehow.

I'd like to dispel the myth however that biodiesel is carbon neutral. It still takes a lot of energy to produce and distribute which will produce it's own carbon footprint before it gets to your tank. So although the carbon you release when you drive it has originally come from the atmosphere, we can be fairly sure that the energy used to produce it didn't all come from neutral or renewable resources. It's still the best solution though in my humble opinion, when combined with hybrid technologies as we don't have enough land to support us all drive guzzlers.

http://www.citroen.com/CWW/en-US/CONCEPTCARS/CMETISSE/TEXT5/

gowger

ninty9er wrote: »

This is true, it's why cars like the Focus FFV and Volvo 1.8 F range are in the D band. It's only fair since you can use diesel or petrol in a bio car of this type.

Surely they should treat this situation in the same way as Red Diesel. The dye used in red diesel can be detected long after it's stopped being used, so I've heard.

So when the conversion is done, the engine could be cleaned with a solvent, as I think it should be in any case, and then you could stand over it saying that no diesel has gone through the system since conversion.

By the way Audi helpfully told me the wouldn't be able to give me an emissions cert for the VRT people as the car wasn't registered here. "I can only type in the registration number into the system" ... eh model, year, chassis number? are they really that different in different countries? Vorsprung duh teknical support