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Alternative Fuels and Technologies


Alternative Fuels and Technologies

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Post-fossil fuel automotive technology is now under intensive development.

As an armada of real and pretend experts proclaim their often blurred visions of our motoring future, it's becoming difficult to separate genuinely viable alternatives to fossil fuels from the snake oil and dead end technologies.

Of course a debate over which fuels are better or worse, cleaner or dirtier, expensive or cheap is inevitable, and ultimately productive, because in the end the best technology will win. It usually does.

With the European Commission adopting its 130 g/km emissions target for the majority of new vehicles in 2012, the first step on the road to genuinely clean green cars has arrived. 

Driving change

Whatever we drive over the horizon, David Lamb (one of the NRMA sponsored Jamison Group members) says the way to make a difference now is to use our car less. "By 2050, we need to achieve an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to stop global warming becoming irreversible," he said.

"I think we can, and as a rich nation we have to show some leadership, but at present we just encourage waste. Large six cylinder cars produced by the Australian industry are just so far away from what the rest of the world is talking about. "Lamb said.

Mark Diesendorf (Jamison Group member) concurs with the 80 per cent by 2050 target, but says "there are no certainties". He also condemns the current political emphasis on so called "clean coal" technology in Australia.

"It's deluded rhetoric to claim that Australia can fund the development of clean coal and export the technology to the world," he said.

"We should leave that to the Americans and the Europeans, who can afford it, and put our research dollars into renewables like wind, solar and biofuels.

"The nice thing about the car business," Diesendorf said, "is that increasingly high oil prices, and declining supply, are natural drivers which will make the market for alternative fuels, and vehicle technology, work - as long as the current government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, which run into billions of dollars, stop. That really is throwing money into a bottomless pit."

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