The car world has long been a slave to the old fashioned barrel of oil refined into either petrol or diesel. However there has over the past decade or so been a lot of talk of a hydrogen fuel cell car as the car of the future. This technology is so advanced that the simplest way to explain it is to say that the car is powered by electricity produced through combining hydrogen with oxygen. This most jaw dropping and amazing concept results in a car that, instead of emitting harmful gases and smoke, emits water, at worst. There is a hydrogen fuel cell car in operation in California where re-fueling stations have been put into action. Unfortunately the technology for harvesting the fuel and supply chains to provide it are currently letting the side down and so it will be a long time before we see these cars as common place on Irish roads

The process of creating a petrol equivalent motoring fuel has been on a constant advance for quite some time now. To give an idea of this Sweden, home to Saab and Volvo has over one hundred thousand flexi fuel Saabs. BioEthanol is a fuel made from 15% petrol and rape seed oil. It burns at a higher temperature to petrol but it comes in much cheaper. The saving here is in the cost of the fuel and not in an actual energy demand reduction. The down-side is that the car has to be set up to run on bioEthanol before use. Some campaigners are critical over the use of bioEthanol, a farm grown product, in a world where we have massive food shortages. The last government also removed all incentives for the purchase of cars that run on bio-fuel.