The vehicles can be fuelled with a proportion of 10% (B10), 20% (B20), 30% (B30) or pure biodiesel (B100). Almost all the well-known vehicle and engine manufacturers have given their approvals, including Caterpillar, DEUTZ, MAN, MTU, Scania and Volvo. 

Germany’s heavy-duty road transport sector accounted for just under 29% of the total amount of fuel consumed in 2019. Depending on the feedstock used, biodiesel emits between 70–90% less greenhouse gases (GHGs) than fossil diesel. 

‘It makes particular sense for climate protection in heavy-duty transport to use more biodiesel, because electromobility cannot be used here in the short term,’ comments Detlef Evers, Managing Director of Mittelstandsverband abfallbasierter Kraftstoffe (MVaK), which published the list together with Arbeitsgemeinschaft Qualitätsmanagement Biodiesel (AGQM), Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen (UFOP) and Verband der Deutschen Biokraftstoffindustrie (VDB). 

Elmar Baumann, Managing Director at VDB maintains that biodiesel blends will be increasingly attractive to cities and municipalities in Germany which are obliged by the Clean Vehicle Procurement Act to use vehicles in their fleets that cause fewer GHG emissions. 

The use of biodiesel also offers cost savings to fleet operators as biofuels prices are dampened compared to fossil fuel because they are not subject to CO₂ pricing under the German Fuel Emissions Trading Act. In addition, the GHG savings achieved by using biodiesel can be sold to the mineral oil industry within the framework of German GHG reduction quota trading. This also has a price-reduction effect.