Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Now if this was April 1st, I would have sworn that the story about the Volkswagen Beetle powered by human waste was an April Fools’ Day joke. However, it’s not April and this is not a joke. As reviewed by The Telegraph’s Harry Wallop, the clever people at GENeco, a Wessex Water subsidiary have converted a good old VW Beetle and made it run on biogas.

How we get and use fuel is an ever increasing hot topic with fuel companies looking at how wind and solar power can power our homes and car manufacturers looking at hybrid and electric engines. It seems we have become a nation obsessed with finding new ways of powering our homes and cars.

Personally, I think what we flush down the toilet is called waste for a reason and shouldn’t end up powering my car to the supermarket or the beach but you have to admit with an ever growing population – projections suggest UK population will exceed 65million by 2018 – it seems there will be an endless supply of ‘suitable materials’ that could be turned into biogas for many years to come.

Planes are back in the skies after being grounded by volcanic ash last week, but it seems that there is no end in sight for rising fuel prices, which were a huge contributor to the increase in March’s UK inflation rates.

When filling up my beloved car the weekend, I was flabbergasted by how much fuel has actually risen! To say I was bowled over at having to pay £1.20 per litre (about £65 for a tank) is an understatement, especially as crude oil was around $86 per barrel last time I looked – much lower than in July 2008 when it hit $147 a barrel. So why are we paying so much for an everyday necessity?

One reason for the soaring prices? Double taxation!  Not wanting to take political sides but fuel tax has soared under the Blair-Brown era, topped up with VAT means we, as consumers, are paying two lots of tax. The more cynical amongst us would suggest it was merely a way of getting more money into the government purse, but is there more to it?

Encouraging us to leave our cars behind and become greener by using other modes of transport such as bikes, trains or even feet is surely the main aim and this is where it all falls down for me. There’s no point me denying it – I am a petrol head through and through. I love to hop in car, hit the road and reach my destination in comfort and to my timetable.

For me, this view will not change, especially when it remains cheaper to commute by car than use the bus and train. If the incoming government (whoever that may be) is seriously committed to making the UK a greener place, then it needs to look seriously at more than just putting petrol up. A few steps it could take include:

-          Investing in the railways – make it cheaper and more convenient to use the trains to travel around. At the moment, it is more expensive for me to commute to work by train than car!

-          Encouraging the use of greener cars – why are hybrid cars as or more expensive than petrol and diesel? If you want people to be green, make it more affordable.

-          Making cycling more accessible – admittedly, there appear to be more cycle routes than ever before but more can be done to make it easier and safer to cycle through our country’s cities

And despite an LPG car getting pole position at the British Touring Car Championship at the weekend, it will take a lot more convincing to get me to leave behind my beloved petrol car and move to a greener mode of transport.