Three ways DCC Is helping to decarbonise transport

Mobility is part of our basic needs – yet it’s the sector that’s probably the most challenging to decarbonise. Our managing director of Mobility, Andrew Graham, tells how we’re offering low-carbon fuels, making electric vehicle (EV) charging more available and helping customers manage their fleets

DCC’s managing director of Mobility Andrew Graham grew up in New Zealand, with a father who was into motor racing. Mr Graham senior built single-seater Formula Fords – a stepping stone for drivers between karting and Formula One.

“He was a talented mechanic and creative engineer,” Andrew says. “Formula Fords may be at the more extreme end of mobility. But I’ve always had that love of transport and vehicles.”

It’s an enthusiasm that’s fed into his career. In 2001, Andrew moved to Ireland to work for Statoil and Topaz Energy in leadership and financial roles. He joined DCC business Certas Energy Retail in 2014 as operations director, became managing director of Certa Ireland in 2021 and MD of DCC Mobility in April 2024.

How DCC Mobility leads with speed and grip

“We’ve built up the Mobility business over the past 10 years so it’s a young business relative to the rest of DCC,” he says. But it’s been busy. Andrew describes the “roller coaster” of six acquisitions in two years at Certa Ireland, building a leadership team and reshaping and rebranding that business.

“We’re agile. We move in a very timely way. It’s exciting. That’s what I love about the mobility business. It’s fast-moving,” he says.

DCC Mobility operates in eight markets with fuel card businesses in seven of them and a recent move into telematics, which provides data to help operators manage their fleet. When you add in business from almost 1,200 service stations, it means just 600 Mobility colleagues handle almost 100 million transactions annually, thanks to a bespoke, multi-country platform that enables sound processes.

1. DCC helps customers make data-backed decisions

DCC Mobility takes a data-based approach to support fleet managers. Data from telematics can help drivers drive more efficiently.

“With those 100 million transactions a year and what we collect in terms of vehicle diagnostics and GPS, we’ve got a heck of a lot of data,” says Andrew. “If a driver is doing a lot of harsh braking, a lot of idling, they’ll be burning more fuel than they need to. The data from telematics can help them reduce fuel usage, bring down emissions and save money,” he says. “Based on current routes and charging infrastructure, telematics data can also support a fleet manager to pick the optimal time to invest in electrification.”

2. DCC takes a clear line on low-carbon fuels

On the retail side, DCC is enhancing around one third of its 1,173 service stations with biofuel and rapid EV charging.

“HVO biofuel is available at the pump at 100 service stations now. It gives up to 90 per cent carbon reduction straight off the bat,” Andrew says.

“We don’t have the luxury of time,” says Andrew. “HVO’s part of a range of solutions as a bridge to net zero, because the challenge is too big to wait. For us, it’s important to raise awareness of low-carbon products like this.”

HVO – hydrotreated vegetable oil – is derived from non-food biomass and used oils that would otherwise go to waste. Fleet operators don’t need to make any modifications to their vehicles to use HVO. That’s why it’s known as a drop-in product.

HVO has its critics, however, who say it’s not always made from waste, as claimed. Andrew welcomes the scrutiny. “Customers are rightly checking that we have evidence-based processes in place,” says Andrew. “It’s a priority for us to make sure our biofuel comes from sustainable sources. It’s vitally important we work with suppliers who have a transparent supply chain. We won’t work with any company that can’t validate its feedstock sources. We want to be able to stand by every single litre of biofuel we sell and use in our own fleets.”

He sees laws like the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive III with its binding targets as nudging transport-based businesses to switch to fuels like HVO.

“It’s a move in the right direction,” he says. “Liquid fuels will still be needed for many years, so let’s develop less carbon-intensive options as we wait for electrification to happen.”

3. DCC makes smart investments in EV charging

“EV charging is a different market to liquid fuels. People charge at home or work and use our service stations for top-ups on the go,” says Andrew.

“We started off renting space to ChargePoint operators on our forecourts. We shared the data, then went into joint venture partnerships. Now we’re at the stage of making investments ourselves. It’s been gradual as we’ve moved with our customer needs and built our knowledge. Norway’s the most advanced EV market in the world, so we learned a lot from running a network there,” he says.

DCC plans to expand EV charging to 200 sites by the year end. The longer charge time – 25 minutes compared with three for liquid fuels – presents opportunities to rethink the traditional gas station and turn it into something more. “We can offer customers car washing. We can offer them parcel collection services. We’re putting in playgrounds, restaurants and convenience stores. They’re evolving into real hubs of activity,” he says. “That’s my main message, that we’re making investments on the ground. And we’re fully committed to serving our customers with the energy they need,” he says.

“We’re a very customer-focused business. The trust we’ve built up, those long relationships, really give us the edge,” he says. “That and our entrepreneurial culture make a great base to work from to help transport decarbonise.”