Greener Road Transport Fuels

Debate between Fiona O'Donnell and John Pugh

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh]

I assume that my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales)will be joining us shortly, but I think we can be less concerned about the timing of the debate, thanks to that interruption, Mr Weir.

I was trying to make the point that the most environmentally sustainable thing to do is probably not to move around at all, but for most of us in the 21st century, the daily commute, the school run, the journey to work and so on, are likely to be part of our lives for some time to come. Everyone in the room is surely familiar with that, as they surely are, too, with the constant need to refuel the vehicles that they use.

Everyone with a conscience in these times, when they are standing in the forecourt, probably thinks of two things: they consider price, primarily, but they also think of pollution. The Government, reflecting voters’ views, think not only of pollution and price, but of one other thing: revenue. It has long been a Government axiom that they are prepared to sacrifice revenue to achieve an environmental effect, because we all recognise that individuals by themselves are unlikely to bring about major environmental change. A community problem has to be solved on a community basis.

The fundamental problem presented by our travelling—that is, apart from noise, disruption and the permanent possibility of accidental death—relates to air quality and emissions from vehicles. We can address that locally through things such as the congestion charge, which, in London, has been a great success in improving air quality, and in a small-scale way through pedestrianisation, but that does not, by itself, do anything about the cumulative national, international and global impacts of transport.

The obvious remedy—not the only obvious remedy, but certainly one of them—is to make fuel less polluting or to make less polluting fuels, and to persuade, or alternatively, to coerce drivers to use them. A number of alternatives are clamouring for our attention. This list is not complete, but I put down hydrogen, bioethanol, biofuels, biogas—anything beginning with “bio”—electricity and electric cars, liquefied petroleum gas and compressed natural gas. There are exotic alternatives, too: I am aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) runs his rather large car on chip fat, which is one of the more exotic possibilities. None of them, particularly chip fat, is wholly unproblematic.

I want to put the case for LPG, particularly, as the least problematic alternative and the most worthy of Government support. By support, I mean fiscal support, rather than support in the form of further research and so on. I do not think LPG, as a mode of propelling cars, needs any further research. It can obviously been made more efficient over time, but the technology is well understood and well implemented.

I would like briefly to deal with some other candidates and my reasons for sidelining them in this debate. I am sure that other colleagues will wish to do otherwise and will perhaps want to highlight them. On hydrogen briefly, I think that we have to put that aside. People talk of conspiracy theories about the influence of the oil industry; there have been a good number of stories going back decades about how any promising research into hydrogen propulsion has been sat on, bought up or, in some way, scotched by the oil industry. I do not know whether that is true, but even advocates of hydrogen as a fuel would probably acknowledge that it is not yet a mature, scalable technology. More research is needed, and I hope that the Government will engage with those who research in this field, even if they do not actively support it.

Biofuels are further down the track, but consideration of biofuels and their mandatory mixing with conventional fuels, or their use as a substitute for conventional fuels, leads us to a series of what appear to be complex debates. The obvious debate, held at length in the Daily Mail, is about whether they will add to transport costs. Another debate, particularly on the continent, is about whether they are compatible with all forms of engine development—I understand that the German car industry has reservations and has blocked progress at EU level. There are debates about whether they will threaten food security or raise food costs, and about whether they will have a detrimental effect on land use as land use changes.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman said that there is a debate about whether biofuels can affect food security. I quote the report from the Select Committee on International Development, which said that

“the FAO, the OECD and the World Bank”

all agree and that it is rare for so many organisations to agree on a fact such as that biofuels are a threat to food security.

[John Pugh]

This debate is swirling around the European community and effecting some progress, along the lines of putting a great amount of biofuel into ordinary fuel.