Tour boats switch to renewable fuel

San Francisco’s Red and White Fleet is running on a biofuel made at a Singapore refinery.    Finland’s Neste Corp. said Red and White Fleet, a tour boat company in San Francisco, has switched its entire fleet of vessels from operating on petroleum diesel to using Neste’s renewable diesel fuel.
   Helen Deian, a spokeswoman with Neste US, said Red and White is the latest in a number of California businesses and governments to switch to the company’s renewable diesel. For example, cities including San Francisco, Oakland, Walnut Creek and Carlsbad are using the biofuel in their municipal fleets, as are some bus companies.
   Neste says because of the way it is manufactured, its renewable diesel is different than traditional biodiesel fuels that must be blended with fossil fuels.
   Deian said the renewable diesel will be produced at the company’s refinery in Singapore, largely with waste products from the United States, but also from Australia and other countries.
   Neste uses about 10 different products such vegetable oils, fish and animal fat waste from the food industry, used cooking oil and vegetable oil processing waste to make its renewable diesel.
    If the expansion proceeds as planned, Neste will increase the current capacity of that Singapore refinery from 1 million to 2 million tons by the end of 2022. Combined with its refineries in Porvoo, Finland, and Rotterdam, the company expects to increase capacity to 4 million tons by 2022. Before deciding to expand in Singapore, Neste had considered building a refinery in California, which it considers to be one of its prime markets along with Nordic countries.
   “The use of renewable diesel supports our environmental commitment, a key component of our brand,” said Joe Burgard, executive vice president of Red and White Fleet, which will add a 600-passenger hybrid drive vessel to its fleet in July.
   Burgard said Red and White Fleet tried out other alternative fuels but incurred “cost and maintenance impacts beyond what was initially anticipated, so we approached the use of renewable diesel with caution.” 
   The excursion boat company said it has found it can use the Neste renewable diesel without disruption to operation of its boats and that the new fuel produces less soot.
    Red and White said the city of San Francisco and a number of public transit agencies supported its research and transition to renewable diesel.
    Increased use of biodiesel in the maritime industry is expected to be one of the ways that the shipping industry will be able to reach the goal of reducing both sulfur emissions by 2020 and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as outlined in a strategy adopted by the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization last week.
   Red and White Fleet was founded in 1892 by Thomas Crowley and is one of the oldest businesses in the Bay area. In 1997, Tom Escher, a grandson of Crowley, purchased the company.