There are few available alternatives to the internal combustion engine and though there are many viable fuel options, only petrol, diesel and liquid petroleum gas are generally available. Since the sixties, automotive manufacturers and independent engineers have developed and tested prototype alternate fuels, many with really encouraging results.
One alternative, hydrogen, has gained some stock reasons for its failure to gain support and acceptance.
When the automotive industry were active in testing this fuel, tests were similarly carried out with liquid petroleum gas (LPG). This fuel also had no bulk distribution network and was also more volatile than petrol. For safe handling both hydrogen and LPG require a robust fuel tank. In Europe LPG gained acceptance and promotion and is now widely available, hydrogen didn’t.
Interestingly, LPG is produced by the same companies that produce petrol and diesel as it is a by-product of that process. More interestingly LPG is produced from the same raw product as petrol. This comes from the same oil fields as petrol. Hydrogen does not come from oil fields.
More recently bio-diesel was extensively prototyped and tested. Again it failed to lift off in a marketing sense.
Bio-fuel is produced from green mass, grown in farm fields and not pumped from oil fields.
Alternative fuels are inherently more expensive than fossil derived fuels. Apparent price parity with petrol/diesel only comes about because the cost of fossil derived fuel is maintained at a high value through supply control of the raw material and taxation on derivative sales. This could be seen as a global attempt at triple bottom line accounting as while oil and gas are relatively cheap to mine, the oil field to petrol pump costs take no account of the millions of years it took the earth to lay down the deposits.
Yet even in countries where petrol and diesel prices are the highest, consumption continues to rise. An indicator, perhaps, that more expensive alternative fuels will not find themselves priced beyond the market.
Marketing and market timing are the key factors here. If and when the world does run out of fossil fuels there will be many alternatives to choose from. The current stalemate is that the producers of raw fossil fuels (countries not companies) cannot withstand the effect that a mass movement away from this resource would create.
This is a very general summary of a very complex world situation, also it does not take account of the environmental issue that surround it, but you can rest assured that, given a gradual process of development, the world’s wheels will not stop turning for want of petrol.
It would seem then that the dichotomy is that though millions will be adversely affected by global warming, if the world were to make the major step of ditching the use of fossil fuel consumption in favour of an alternative, that switch would also adversely affect millions.
Catch 22.
© Copyright 2007
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