02 Feb 07
We could make the world a slightly cleaner place tomorrow by going out and buying a car with a highly efficient internal combustion engine and running it on conventional petrol or diesel blended with bio-fuel. This is the short-term way to drive greener - bank account and the availability of a local bio-fuel pump permitting.
In the long term - say 25 years - we may be trading in our super-clean hybrids for even cleaner hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or battery-powered electric cars, with those batteries getting their electricity from a renewable source. That's the zero-emissions dream - and brilliant minds all around the planet are hard at work sorting out the details.
VW is involved in developing new agricultural techniques
But what about the medium term - your next-but-one car? A new idea gets put forward every week, but the latest is particularly convincing because it comes from Volkswagen. The German firm does very well from the status quo and so has more to lose than most from backing a radical departure that comes with no guarantees of success.
VW's plan, as outlined in a seminar in London this week, gains extra weight from its timing. It comes just weeks after the Stern report into the business implications of global warming pricked many a conscience normally hidden beneath pinstripes and bowler hat. It also comes just as the European Union is considering stricter, earlier targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases.
In January George Bush also repeated his call for the US to end its addiction to oil, never mind the fact that he's mainly concerned with the instability of the nations supplying most of the world's oil, rather than with global warming. It also ties in neatly with the fact that American farmers have massive overcapacity and so need little encouragement to sow crops that can be turned into bio-fuel.
