Motorists soon able to put a crop in the tank

Every British motorist will soon be driving on petrol made from sugar beet and diesel made from the crop rape as part of the Government's fight against climate change.

Biofuels, which are made from crops and do not add to the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) causing global warming, are to become an everyday feature of British road transport, in the biggest fuel shift since unleaded petrol was introduced more than 15 years ago.

The Government is drawing up a biofuel obligation, which will require oil companies such as Shell and BP to blend a fixed proportion of biofuels - initially 5 per cent - with all the petrol and diesel they sell on garage forecourts.

The measure will be similar to the existing renewables obligation on electricity supply companies that requires them to provide an increasing amount of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind power.

Under the new proposal, all British petrol will be blended with ethanol, a fuel made from sugar beet or wheat, and diesel will be blended with biodiesel made from rape or recycled vegetable oil.

Unlike oil, gas and coal, which when burned add to the net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, biofuels are "carbon neutral" - because the CO2 they produce when burned is absorbed from the atmosphere by the crops used to make them.

The new mixes will make little practical difference to the motorist - they will go straight into standard engines and will not push up pump prices because of lower duty on biofuels - but they will make a difference to Britain's carbon emissions.

Replacing 5 per cent of the country's standard road transport fuel consumption with biofuels is calculated to save a million tonnes of emissions annually, out of the current total of 155 million tonnes of carbon.

The Government is desperate for the saving because it is struggling to meet its commitment to cut British CO2 emissions back to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.

Elliot Morley, the Minister for Climate Change, said he hoped the biofuel obligation would kick-start a domestic biofuel industry in Britain.

At present, it produces a small amount of biodiesel, but no ethanol at all, and most of the biofuel needed will initially be imported from countries such as Brazil, which produces large amounts. But that is likely to change quickly.

British Sugar, for example, is seeking planning permission to build a multimillion-pound ethanol plant at its giant sugar-beet processing factory at Wissington in Norfolk, which will be capable of producing 55,000 tonnes, or 70 million litres, of ethanol annually and could be operating by 2007.

Although British biofuel production is low, consumption is growing, and biofuel 5 per cent blends are starting to become available, especially in the south of England.

Biodiesel blends are available at more than 150 outlets and ethanol-petrol blends are available at some Tesco supermarket sites, although the oil "majors" such as Shell and BP do not retail biofuels as yet.

Brazil has led the world in biofuels, producing vast amounts of ethanol from sugar cane and building a specialised motor industry to run on it.

American output of ethanol from maize is now rising at 30 per cent a year. Germany is lifting its output of biodiesel by nearly 50 per cent a year and China has built the world's biggest ethanol plant.

- Independent