Burning question

With fossil fuel supplies dwindling and ever-increasing pressure to be environmentally friendly, we should all be looking to head in the directionof green fuels.

With fossil fuel supplies dwindling and ever-increasing pressure to be environmentally friendly, we should all be looking to head in the direction of green fuels.

Obviously, the best energy source is hydrogen, burnt directly as fuel or in fuel cells. But the real questions are how do we get there — and how quickly?

At present, vehicles in the UK and the rest of the world run on diesel and petrol from crude oil, which is where the infrastructure lies. Creating new fuels (such as E85), which albeit are ‘green’ but cannot be used by the majority of existing vehicles, requires a change to those that can run on new fuels and then a second change to vehicles that use hydrogen.

Surely we should be trying to get to the most environmentally-friendly fuel (hydrogen) in the quickest possible time.

This can be achieved by creating fuels such as Biodiesel that can be used by existing vehicles, and focusing on making the next generation of vehicles hydrogen powered. This would eliminate the intermediate step of changing vehicles to run on the likes of E85.

And the fuel a vehicle uses is not the only environmental issue — once the vehicle has reached the end of its life it has to be disposed of/recycled)

The only thing standing in the way of hydrogen power is the lack of available infrastructure, which can easily be resolved well within the lifetime of most of the existing vehicles on the road.

Nicholas Long
South Wales

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