Air Quality - Huelin Renouf - Transcript - 26 November 2007

STATES OF JERSEY

Environment Scrutiny Panel Air Quality Review

WEDNESDAY, 26th NOVEMBER 2007

Panel:

Deputy R.C. Duhamel of St. Saviour (Chairman) Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire of St. Helier

Deputy C.J. Scott Warr en of St. Saviour Professor D. Laxen - Advisor

Witnesses:

Mr. T. du Feu - Huelin- Renouf Mr. M. Le Brocq - Huelin- Renouf

Deputy R.C. Duhamel of St. Saviour (Chairman):

Welcome everybody. I have got to read you a note again. Right, it is important that you fully understand the conditions over which you are appearing at this hearing. The panel's proceedings are covered by parliamentary privilege through Article 34 of States of Jersey Law 2005 and as a result you are protected from being sued or prosecuted for anything said during this hearing, although this privilege should obviously not be abused. The proceedings are being recorded and transcriptions will be made available on the Scrutiny website, unless of course items are confidential in which case they will only be made available to yourselves. Thank you for attending. We are doing, as you know, a review into air quality. It would appear that there is quite a lot of different interest from different parties. Obviously there is aviation fuels and the aviation industry; the shipping industry; there is cars; there is ordinary heating for every household. But I gather you are here in your capacity for shipping and distribution. There is a little article in the New Scientist on 17th November and I will just read it out again, and then I think we will start there and ask you to comment. Burning of fuels anywhere is obviously an issue with global warming and climate change and also with health problems, as you know. This item is called "Death on the Ocean Waves" which is a bit melodramatic, but there you go, and it went on and said:

"Pollution from ships in the form of tiny airborne particles kills at least 60,000 people a year and unless action is taken, the toll will climb. So says a report investigating the number of deaths that can be linked to soot emissions from the shipping industry carried out by James Corbett at the University of Delaware, Newark, and his colleagues. It suggests that ships release between 1.2 and 1.6 million tonnes of airborne particles each year, mostly from burning shipping fuel. Particles are less than 10 micrometres across and include various carbon particle, sulphur and nitrogen oxides. They are small enough to enter the blood and can trigger inflammations which eventually lead to heart or lung failure. Deaths caused by these particles worldwide will increase by 40 per cent by 2012, the team predicts. Corbett's team used 2 independent inventories of the emissions produced by the shipping industry and they fed these figures into climate models to predict where the winds would carry the emissions and added population density figures for the areas affected and using this they were able to compare the concentrations of the particles with the incidents of premature deaths to arrive at an estimate for the total number of deaths that could be attributed to shipping emissions. A significant number of the deaths are related to fuel quality, Corbett said." So, I think I would like to start there basically and then they do a little picture of a - I do not know if it is one of your ships - but it has got a big "C" on the side. I do not know which company that represents?

Mr. T. du Feu:

No, we have got "Huelin- Renouf " on the side of ours.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes, fair enough. Okay, so it is not your one. So, I think I probably would just like to start off then and ask you to comment perhaps on the content of that particular article in relation to your business.

Mr. T. du Feu:

I was on the understanding that we were here to discuss St. Helier and Jersey and the air pollution problems with that.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes, we are, but hopefully I will put that into a global context, and you are part of a bigger picture.

Mr. T. du Feu:

All right. We have a ship called the "Huelin Despatch"; one ship that comes to Jersey 3 times a week. It arrives in the morning and then probably mid morning to lunch time it leaves us. As with any ship that circulates around the globe, they are within certain management and safety conditions that every year certificates are done and checked. Certainly while our ship is not the newest of the fleet - she is 29 years old - every 5 years or every 2 and a half years she goes into surveys and therefore they check everything that goes on. You will be glad to hear that she is coming up to her 30th birthday next year and, whether you have heard in the media or not, Huelin- Renouf are investing in a new vessel being built next year to come on service for December 2008 and will meet, I assume, all the best environmental criteria that there is.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

With this new ship that is on order, can you tell us a little bit about the emission standards that you will be following? Will the improvements come directly from a better class engine or will it come from fuel additives which assist in the cleaning of the materials that are burnt?

Mr. T. du Feu:

As far as I am aware, the engine obviously will be of the best environmental grade that there is because the engine has been made either this year or will be made next year. As to the fuel, we buy our fuel in bulk twice a month or 3 times a month from Fawley and it comes by barge to Portsmouth. That fuel is of the best grade that there is in gas oil and, in fact, I believe that as from 1st January the new European director says that the sulphur levels are going down; being reduced even more. So, all I can say to you is - without having the documents in front of me - it is our aim to be as environmentally friendly as we possibly can.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

In terms of the soot emissions or the particulates, what measures do your new engines come and employ in order to reduce those particles?

Mr. T. du Feu:

I am not that mechanically minded to give  you that information. As I say, my colleague, Mark here, is a diesel fitter to do with vehicles, not of ships.

Mr. M. Le Brocq:

No, I have not got into the shipping side.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Have you had any experience of using any fuel additives like the enzyme additives that are on the market for reducing engine smuts and the like?

Mr. T. du Feu:

We have for our land based fleet used Soltron which now comes on, I believe, the market as X-Mile, and we started using Soltron 10 years ago. We had a persistent salesman who suggested that we could not live without it. I do not know if you have a copy of a little summary of background information that I sent to the Scrutiny Panel on Friday afternoon? That will then give you a little bit of an idea of where I come from. I have been with Huelin- Renouf Shipping - my second time actually - for about 12 years. Previous to that I was the operations manager at Fuel Supplies (C.I.) Limited who are the Shell distributor. In fact, in my later years there I looked after the consortium which was the main fuel storage. So, I have been through the trauma; the introduction of Formula Shell which was an additive that was supposed to do good things to cars, which I think, unfortunately, did not work because some type of car failed abysmally with it, and I think Vauxhalls were the ones that had problems, and they withdrew it from the market. Then another additive was brought in. These were additives that were put into the petrol at the gantry so when you were loading your truck you would put so much additive in, and away you go. When I left Fuel Supplies and joined Huelin- Renouf , after a couple of years Mr. Chapman came to see us. So, I was slightly sceptical of his additive because I had seen and heard of additives before and did not really believe that what he was saying would work. I could not see how it could help. How this little bottle could produce something which could reduce our

emissions from our trucks and make the engines cleaner without maybe doing some harm on the other end. If it is doing something to the fuel, maybe it is going to break something else inside the engine. So, after a little bit of coaxing we started to test it. Testing it was done on 2 vehicles. We have managed to dig out some of the figures that we had in 1997 and we only did it on 2 trucks and all we can find is in September one truck was reading 3.63 parts per million and a month later it was down to 2.99, and I think subsequently it went down towards 2. The other truck went from 2.22 down to 2.06.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So, you talk about the concentrations dropping, but for what particular materials?

Mr. T. du Feu:

For the exhaust emissions.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

For exhaust emissions. Was this part hydrocarbons or particulates?

Mr. M. Le Brocq:

Just like the particles that leave smoke. So we did the emissions; ran it to its working temperature; put the additive in; tried it a month later and it brought them right down.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Who did the testing for these results?

Mr. M. Le Brocq: We did it.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire: Did you have a handheld?

Mr. T. du Feu:

We have exactly the same machines as the D.V.S. (Driver and Vehicle Standards).

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire: It is a handheld machine?

Mr. M. Le Brocq:

Yes, it is a gas - it is a handheld one you put into the exhaust. You bring your vehicle up to its working temperature and you follow the procedure and test. You do 2 tests full throttle, then it counts, gives you a reading; slacken off again. So, it is just up and down, getting it to its working temperature. So, yes, we do have our own emission tester.

Mr. T. du Feu:

Since that first month we noticed that they were going down further. We have not got the records. But that really does not matter to us because we found that there was a change and a dramatic change. Now, before we used it I was getting phone calls from the general public of our vehicles going up hills and people seeing big blue cloudy smoke clouds and we then had to take the vehicle in; strip it; get the injectors out; change everything. Since we have been using Soltron - and I know this is the worse thing I could probably say - I have not had one phone call. Even before we used Soltron we changed the position of our exhausts so instead of heading down on to the pavement, we turned them up and had them sticking out into the air. But even then you have still got blue smoke coming up. So, we were quite convinced that the 2 trucks that we used - and they were not new trucks - these were pre Euro 1. So, heavy machines, heavy engines and the result was there.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

And how many vehicles do you use on land?

Mr. T. du Feu:

It is written down in the summary. We have 9 articulated trucks. These are the ones that pull the containers and the trailers and then we have 8 Mercedes curtain-siders. They are the solid ones which are not under the P30 system, but can circulate around town and things like that without having to go on permitted routes. So while we had done the experiment, we then decided to put it into the main storage tanks so that everybody could benefit. Every vehicle that used diesel had it in and, as I say, the

results are just purely monitored on a day-to-day basis. When a vehicle comes in for its service and maintenance, we do not find that the air filters or the injectors or other parts of the engine have got as dirty as they used to. Now, our trucks are still not Euro 3. They are still Euro 1s or 2s. So, if anything, they would be making more and more smoke the older they get and we found that certainly Mark, in the maintenance department, you certainly found a difference pre-additive to

Mr. M. Le Brocq:

Yes. Also the engines are running a lot cleaner. When the mechanics work on and take the injectors out and take the filters out, they are a lot cleaner inside. You can virtually take the filter off, tip the diesel out and it is like from the time you put it in. It is perfectly clean. There are no particles, nothing within the filters at all.

Mr. T. du Feu:

Now, I cannot explain it, with my experience in fuel quality testing. I do not know how it works.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

What kind of mileage have you been doing? Has it been consistent?

Mr. T. du Feu:

We have not been monitoring the mileage.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

But has your general pattern of distribution been the same in this period of time or have you reduced your mileage on the road? Obviously you have evidence that there is a good performance from an emission perspective. I am just wondering from a use perspective are you still doing as much as you were doing then in those days, business wise?

Mr. T. du Feu:

It is not something that we have really targeted or measured, in all honesty with you because other things happen. I have mentioned in my report here about the state of St. Helier , that we do find it harder to make deliveries. That we have been asking for a long time for proper unloading bays; bays where a commercial vehicle can come in, park, do its deliveries and get out again. They used to be able to drive in little circles around the town. You used to get vehicles chasing each other. You still do. But now those circles seem to have got bigger where other roads have been blocked off - not necessarily the rat runs - but places where you could turn off - certainly French Lane and Hillgrove Street - places where you could turn off and maybe go around and do the circle. So, the town itself is - well, it is not polluting itself, but it does not help us to make deliveries. That is a bit of a sad thing really. You do get vehicles circulating around, and now if we come up towards Market and you do not make Waterloo Lane, you are on a big trip around town to get back again. Then, of course, we have the double whammy, the driver needs to make a delivery. It is a time delivery where he needs to be there at a certain time at a shop. He will do his best to park somewhere and go and make the delivery. Now, it may not be close to where he delivers, so he might have to walk 100 yards or 200 yards to make a delivery and while he is there he will do another one because he knows he still will not find anywhere to park. The traffic warden comes along, sees a vehicle doing nothing and a ticket is written.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So you generally are saying then that as a direct result of the planning restrictions, or whatever, that have been placed upon your vehicles, although you have managed by the use of this Soltron product to clean up the emissions, in some instances the carbon emissions presumably might well have gone up because you are having to travel bigger distances in order to do the deliveries that could have been obtained by shorter journeys in the first place?

Mr. T. du Feu:

Yes, it is our part of distribution to get in and make the delivery and get out. We do not want to be driving around town. It is a waste of resource for man and for vehicle.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So, would that, in your view, be the biggest thing that the States could do in order to assist you to help us improving air quality emissions around the town?

Mr. T. du Feu:

I think it would help cut out a lot of the emissions because it is not only us who have that problem. It is every delivery company and it is all very well saying yes, well you could maybe use a smaller vehicle, but we consolidate all our cargo down at the Victoria Quay so that we put a lorry just for town. While our cargo comes out of containers we would try to consolidate that. We put the cargo out into the yard and then we try and build it up. Another little thing that while St. Helier is open until 10.00 p.m., it closes after that. Not all the time do we have our cargo out. Our cargo arrives at 7.00 a.m., but some of it may not be out of the containers until 10.00 or 11.00 so we need to make afternoon deliveries. If the weather is bad and our ship is late then we do not stand a chance at all.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Obviously these are things that we can discuss in the future with the Constable and the Roads Committee of St. Helier , and because the Constable is a member of this panel we can start to look at those issues, and we probably most likely will. But before we just move on from this area, can I ask if you have any areas of improvement that you have recommended that could help address this situation? Have you identified any bays or times or things to the Parish?

Mr. T. du Feu:

It has been done previously.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Maybe you could share that with us and we could take it up with the Parish?

Mr. T. du Feu:

Yes, certainly our previous managing director was in consultation with the Parish because unloading bays do get used by cars and vans, and to have a proper unloading bay you need quite a big area because one of our trucks would probably take up 2 to 3 car spaces. What we were asking for was probably that we could have an area purely for commercial vehicles with maybe a 20 minute time zone. So the lorry could come in, park there, do his job and get out allowing another lorry to come in.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

I know the Constable has been working on improving delivery bays in the road plan where it goes, but as you know some of the roads belong to the States. But just as a word of comfort, perhaps the Constable of St. Helier was the one that suggested the amendment to the Strategic Plan that there be an air quality target and strategy for the States. So, I am sure that although he is not here - and he gives his apologies today - I am sure that we will take these messages back to him.

Mr. T. du Feu:

I am not saying that that is the fault, but it certainly would help us if there were more parking bays. The other thing, of course, is that the traffic does not flow sometimes as quick as it should do, and therefore you have vehicles sitting in queues waiting. I know it is not like the M25 where you just do not move at all - and maybe it is slow moving - but while those vehicles are sitting there stationary, they are pumping out emissions and that does not help. On a positive note though, as a company, about 9 years ago we went down to Bellozanne with 2 trailer loads of pallet boards. Pallet boards which were either damaged or ones that nobody wanted, and the driver got into conversation with whoever was down there, and it ended up with myself and John Richardson having a discussion. Basically, it was: "Well, why are we burning all this wood?" and I thought about it and thought okay maybe we can do something about it. What we ended up doing was having a joint initiative with Public Services and if you went down to Bellozanne you could see a notice which said "Huelin- Renouf " on one side and "Public Services" on the other. "If you have got damaged pallet boards, fine, dump them here. If you have not and you have got good ones, bring them to Huelin- Renouf on the Victoria Quay." What we did with our damaged ones - because we used pallet boards as a part of our business - we would take up to the prison, free of charge, a whole trailer full of wood and I believe that the prisoners were then able to make kindling wood. They even made some benches and things, and so we helped that way. The new pallet boards or the good pallet boards, we recycled either to local companies in Jersey or back into the U.K. and then they were re-used again. Now, while I am talking about pallet boards - you are saying, why is he thinking that - well, we estimated that in the first year we handled about 20,000 pallet boards; pallet boards that were going for burning; burning causing emissions.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

It is a lot of pallet boards.

Mr. T. du Feu:

It is a lot of pallet boards.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

There is another company that is set up in the west of the Island who are taking pallet boards. They are repairing some at the moment and they are turning others into kindling wood products for export.

Mr. T. du Feu:

We understand that and therefore we found that our figures have gone down completely, and that is no problem. We started it off and if somebody else has an initiative to continue it and make some money or being States funded, I do not mind. But at least we were saving the wood.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

No, I think that is very good. Your comments are particularly well received because there is an Island Plan Review process going on at the moment and certainly the comments you have made I do not think have been factored into any of those discussions, certainly that I have been to at the moment, and I think that they should be. So, I thank you for making them. Right, so just to finish off on that fuel efficiency one, you are not as much concerned with fuel efficiency improvements by additives as to emissions improvements?

Mr. T. du Feu:

Well, it is very difficult for us to measure anything because it is all in the tanks and where you get recommended miles per gallon, it is not Jersey-based, it is U.K.-based and you will never meet the U.K. criteria because Jersey is just a different place. So, we cannot test how good we are with anybody else because we have already got the product in the tanks doing the job.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Will you be keeping your old vessel when you get your new one?

No.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Okay, because I was going to ask if you had the Soltron used in your ship as well?

Mr. T. du Feu: No, we have not.

Professor D. Laxen:

Can I also ask whether you are using the Soltron just in the diesel or diesel and petrol and do you have petrol vehicles that you are using?

Mr. T. du Feu:

We have a few company cars that have petrol and we do not use Soltron in those.

Professor D. Laxen:

Can I also ask, you mentioned that most of or maybe all of your vehicles are Euro 1 or Euro 2, and I do not know if you have any pre Euro vehicles still, do you have a lifetime for the vehicles and are you likely to be getting new vehicles to more recent Euro standards?

Mr. T. du Feu:

We have a very strict maintenance programme. We have our P30 vehicles, the big prime movers checked by the D.V.S. once a year and if they pass all the requirements and they are good, why change them? We have also made a policy of ensuring that the smaller vehicles are up to that same good criteria. We do all the servicing for our Guernsey vehicles as well. What I fail to add, that I should mention, is that we do have some little vans and instead of buying diesel we went for gas. So, we have had, for about 8 years, 3 L.P.G. (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) gas vans which have had a few problems, but we find that they run very well. The availability of gas is not great. I think there is only one or 2 places that supply it, but there does not seem to be a drive or initiative from anybody to try and force people to use gas vehicles. I do not know

why. In France it seems to be something that is moving along, and gas is an alternative to diesel and petrol.

Deputy C.J. Scott Warr en:

Can I ask, would you consider at some stage using Soltron in the ship or do you not feel it is the same benefit?

Mr. T. du Feu:

The chief engineer of the vessel is very careful about what he puts in his ship. He will not even change the type of lubricant that he uses. So, if it has been on Shell lubricant all its life, he will not change to Esso or to Mobil or anything like that and I think chief engineers are very particular about their engine. But maybe we can persuade him. Maybe we will put it in.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

I just had one final one. Is it your experience as a company that most of the emission problems are caused when ships are entering or exiting a harbour or not, in terms of emissions?

Mr. T. du Feu:

I assume so, but nobody has done a test on it. Maybe we could look at that. I did not realise you were honing in on the ship part of this. I thought you were more concerned about the vehicles and our distribution involvement.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

No, I think it is both. I mean it is air quality standards across the board and it depends on the quality.

Mr. T. du Feu:

But as a shipping company of course we could maybe provide some of that information.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel: Yes, that might be useful.

Certainly advise you as to the levels that we go up to or that we are permitted to do and what it is tested at.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Certainly we have had some information suggesting that engines, if they have just been switched on and running from cold then the likelihood of dirty emissions is probably higher until the engine is warmed up and then conditions change.

Mr. T. du Feu:

I think you are dead right in what you are saying.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Given the fact that you have said that your ship arrives in the morning and leaves in the morning it is probably never getting to that point where it is switched off in Jersey anyway. So, I would imagine they keep it running?

Mr. T. du Feu:

I think they do, yes. Well, maybe not. Maybe they switch it off for a couple of hours, but certainly we are not going from the very, very cold.

Professor D. Laxen:

Just to bring you back to deliveries again, for my benefit, how much competition is there in terms of deliveries? How many companies are carrying out deliveries around St. Helier and does that play a part in finding spaces for delivery vehicles within the town?

Mr. T. du Feu:

Of course it does. There are a lot of delivery companies. There are companies who deliver containers into the middle of St. Helier . There are lots of companies who have got curtain-sided vehicles like our Mercedes, and there are a lot of white vans and lots of vans. So, there are a lot of distribution companies going on. But it had been suggested, I think by either this Constable or the previous Constable, that maybe there

should be a big hub where all the cargo gets put into and then one or 2 vehicles go out and do it. While the thought is great, I think in practice you will find that there are a lot of problems because of the different arrival times of vessels.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

And the different products people are selling as well; couches, beds, suites, watches; different sizes.

Mr. T. du Feu:

The other thing that sometimes we find is that while 7.00 a.m. we could virtually go on the road ready to deliver something, that the town is not open; that customers will not receive their goods until their staff come in, and that could be 9.00 a.m. So your window gets even smaller.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Any further questions? No, I think I am happy. I thank you very much for attending and we will be in touch.

Mr. T. du Feu:

Thank you and you will ask me any more questions on shipping if you require?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel: I will do, yes.

Mr. T. du Feu: Thank you.