By land, sea and air. Repsol and Cepsa have agitated the race for the decarbonisation of transport with a barrage of alliances with leading companies in their fields, from airlines to shipping companies or giants of heavy road traffic. These trade agreements have become the magic formula with which the big oil companies are starting the large-scale production and sale of biofuels, the renewable and immediate alternative to traditional sources such as diesel, since the former still compete at a price disadvantage with the latter.
Repsol has partnered with companies of all kinds such as XPO, Grupo Sesé o Group Servetus (trucks), Tragsa (machinery), Navantia (boats) or Keep it up y Alsa (buses). In the case of Cepsa, the bulk of the agreements have been sealed in the air traffic sector, with airlines such as Iberia, Vueling, On Nostrum, TUI o Wizz Air. The objective is to ensure that renewable fuels, in permanent development, take root in the day-to-day life of transport companies.
Other Spanish energy companies such as Nature They have joined the alliance party. Last October, the gas company announced an agreement to supply biomethane to the last-mile vehicle fleet of Aquaservice, the mineral water distribution company. In this way, the energy companies share the risk inherent to their investment in products in the development phase and improve access to financing (what is known as bankability in the jargon) of these projects, by offering banks the guarantee that someone will buy the productoff taker).
Things are going well, but obstacles such as the difference in price compared to gasoline or diesel remain to be overcome. In the case of the so-called Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO), a biofuel produced from vegetable oils, its pump price is still around 35 cents (plus VAT) more expensive than diesel. That is why stable, large-scale supply to large customers continues to be key to flattening the price curve and definitely getting the market for new clean alternatives to fossil fuels off the ground.
The agreement announced yesterday between Repsol and the logistics giant XPO is based precisely on the sale of HVO, through which the energy company will supply more than one million liters of the aforementioned renewable fuel to the truck fleet of the US group in 2023.