It�s cheaper, kinder to the planet, and Scotland makes rather a lot of it. Has the age of LPG finally come? - [Sunday Herald]

The fuel station of the future will be green, lean and popping up on Scottish streets before the end of the year.
Scottish Enterprise-backed start-up Fuelture has announced that it is set to unveil the first of a national chain of high-tech unmanned fuel stations in Glasgow during 2006. Pumping only alternative fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and biodiesel, the state-of-the-art facilities will be at the forefront of a broad strategy to reduce the economic and environmental cost of the nation’s reliance on trucks and cars.
“This is an 80-20 scenario: by targeting 20% of the driving population, we believe we can go a long way towards addressing 80% of the problems caused by road transport,” says Fuelture founder Gbenga Kogbe.
“LPG is cleaner, less expensive and it is an indigenous Scottish product. If we can persuade high-mileage users like vans and taxis to make the switch, the potential social impact is enormous.”
With prices kept to around half those of traditional fuels by government-sponsored reductions on fuel duties, LPG is much more cost effective, allowing users to travel up to 50% more miles compared to petrol and up to 37% more miles compared to diesel. In practice, businesses converting their vehicle fleets to run on the alternative have seen their fuel bills drop by 50%-60%.
A by-product from the processing of natural gas and refining of crude oil, LPG is also widely recognised as a clean, low- carbon alternative. It spews out 20 times less nitrogen oxide than diesel and 120 times less of the fine particulates blamed for creating breathing and health problems such as asthma.
A recently completed year-long survey of 20 high mileage vehicles by Norwich County Council found that the top five performers in terms of cutting down on emissions all used LPG. It is results like these that have driven the Treasury to commit keeping duty on the product low for the foreseeable future.
There is plenty of it to go around. Every year Scotland exports more than five billion litres of LPG, about half of the North Sea oil fields’ annual production, while vehicles on UK roads consume just over 200 million litres.
“It all adds up,” says Kogbe. “If the high-mileage users and people who drive gas-guzzling cars like Range Rovers converted to LPG, at a stroke we’d both come close to halving the national fuel bill and would also make our city centres safer, cleaner and more pleasant places to be in.”
With statistics like these, the LPG argument would seem a no-brainer, yet despite more than ten years of active government promotion the perception remains of a niche product, partly due to the relatively tiny number of filling stations that actually stock it.
This is where Fuelture intends to profit. Already operating a tie-up deal with engine specialists Nicholson McLaren to provide private and commercial LPG conversions, the company has secured funding to build a chain of unmanned self-service stations.
With internet technology allowing the company to monitor each site and payment taken via credit cards at the pump, Fuelture plans to plug the gaps between Scotland’s current roster of less than 200 LPG retailers. Aiming to create 20 outlets by 2010, it will also ultimately offer biodiesel and other alternative fuels.
“There are already 120,000 LPG vehicles on the road in Britain, including those owned by the Queen and the deputy prime minister,” says Kogbe. “This might not be a mainstream market yet, but with the right infrastructure to support it, the potential is obvious.”
It may have taken its time, but LPG is finally catching on. UK government grants to help with the cost of converting new cars have seen a leap in the numbers of conversions over the last five years, while in countries like South Korea, the proportion of vehicles running on the alternative has grown to 15%.
Although BP and Shell are officially promoting LPG, the focus on forecourts remains squarely upon traditional fuels. Kogbe says the major oil companies have a substantial investment in petrol and diesel and that actively discourages re-equipping stations to dispense the alternatives. While this is bad news for the environmental lobby, it has created a window of opportunity that Kogbe’s Fuelture hopes to exploit.
“We are slipping into the space that the major players cannot afford. They have a vested interest that prevents them capitalising on the growth of interest in the price and environmental benefits of LPG,” he says.
“We do not, and we will succeed by going into the places where the oil companies do not want to go.”