Environmental Statement.

‘Climate change is the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced’

It is becoming increasingly clear that human activity is adversely effecting local and global environment. Although it is still unclear exactly how this works and how much climate change is happening anyway, it is clear that industry and vehicles are a major part of this change and thus we all have a responsibility to do our bit to fix the problem.

Even if we decide today to stop using any fossil fuel, no petrol, diesel, gas, coal, log powered stoves, there is still a backlog of carbon input to the atmosphere that must be dealt with.

There needs to be a change in how we live, but also a technical solution to clear up the existing mess.

Now, this is a big problem for me. All my life I have loved vehicles and engines, the bigger the better. I love the sound of a big V8 burbeling away. My career is based on developing vehicles and my hobbies are 4x4s and racing!

Also, r ecently my web site has come under fire for glorifying wastfull use of fuel, here is my response.

Alternative fuels.

Some years ago I dabbled with LPG, its good stuff and has the possibility to be cleaner than petrol. I was disappointed to find that many back street conversion were so badly setup that they were actually worse! Even so, the best saving on carbon emissions is about 10%, depending on which system you are using and what you take as the ‘before’ set up.

Hydrogen, on the other hand, is brilliant. Burn that and all you get is water. The problem is in generating it

Carbon ballence

Calculate your carbon output and work out how many trees you need to plant!

For petrol and diesel, you can make a fair estimate that the total carbon output is about 700g per litre.

So, my big V8 averages about 25mpg, at 20,000 miles per year that’s 800 gallons or 3632 litres. Currently that costs about £3500!

This puts out about two and a half tonnes of carbon!

So how many trees do I need to plant per year?

In ten years I will have my own forest! May need a bigger back garden..

Although offsetting emissions by increasing the amount of carbon stored in trees is a good idea, it is not long term (trees eventually rot or get burnt, particularly if they get turned into cheap furniture).

The best way forward is to not use carbon in the first place.

Recycle cars.

And its not just fuel that gives us a problem. Manufacture uses a huge amount of energy and produces waste and fumes. Although it has to be said that western car companies use re-usable packaging for parts and have drastically reduced emissions. But there is still a lot of energy used making a new car.

Some of my friends drive cars that are over 40 years old, there are a huge number of perfectly usable vehicles scrapped every year, due to cosmetic damage or simple faults that are ‘un-economic’ to fix. How can it be sensible to strip and crush a whole car, ship it, melt it down, make new metal sheets, ship them, join them together again, paint it and make a new car as opposed to spending a day or two fixing the old one?

Well, its not.

Use old cars and stop new car production completely. How much energy and carbon would that save?

The 4x4 debate.

In the USA there is a real problem with people using increasingly large vehicles for personal transport, and they use them more than we do.

In the UK we do not have this problem. Mostly because we do not have very large vehicles, they just don’t fit in such a small country!

For example, I have a 11 year old Land Rover Discovery, it tows very heavy trailers, gets used as a van, has to go off road a lot etc. It has proved very very useful. But the space on the road is the same as a Mondeo! It takes up no more room than that. Its just a couple of foot taller. The latest Land Rover products have gone the wrong way in my opinion and are getting to large, which is a shame, it shows how American ownership of the company is changing things.

Fuel economy is worse than the afore mentioned Mondeo, a similar performance estate will do about 30mpg. Its not a huge difference but then again, a Mondeo could not do what in need my Landy to do, so its not a fair comparison. I get a full pallet with engine pars on in the back, so I would need a small van to be equivalent. And I tow a 3 tonne trailer, so it would need to be a big van. Then I need to get to places that are up muddy paths or fields, so it needs to be a big 4x4 van. I bet the fuel consumption would be worse some how.

4x4s are only a very small proportion of vehicles on the roads today (3.5% of new vehicles in the uk), most only do low mileages and are second cars. A lot of those are small 4x4s like the RAV4 or Panda. So they do not contribute a huge amount to the overall problem.

Changing them for estate cars or people carriers will really not fix the problem. Banning the millions of rep-mobiles doing astronomical mileages would! Banning driving to work every day, back and forth, causing traffic jams, that would.

So stop picking on my car and putting insulting and misinformed leaflets under my wipers!

Check out http://lib.smmt.co.uk/articles/news/News/ACF4A0B.pdf for the facts.

What am I doing about it?

Well, in the last few years I have cut my carbon emissions, from driving and other travel, by about half.

I used to drive about 20000 miles a year, fairly average for many people round here, I halved that by doing more work from home, well that and not having much work!

In the last year I have done approximately only 4000miles in my 4x4, 2000 on my motorbike (50mpg), 600 on the train (questionable environmental benefit) and 4000 in my girlfriends Fiesta diesel (the horror, the horror).

By the way, my race car gets driven to the track (average 25mpg) and raced on less than a tank full of petrol. Typically it uses about 40 litres per race and I intend to do five races this year. So even a racing V12 is not a big evil thing.

Also I don’t fly anymore. At one point a few years ago I was flying back and forth between the Alps, Cologne and the UK every week. Earning good money too. Now I am being pressed to fly to the USA every month, but I am resisting. So far so good.

I also resist buying stuff that is excessively processed or has lots of packaging, so I buy my carrots loose.

All good stuff but not enough.

Long term I intend to stop using petrol or diesel completely, I am very interested in Hydrogen generated from wind and solar energy. I would like to develop a conversion for older cars to run on this source.

In the mean time I am working with ResolveMPS on a system that will save around 400,000 gallons of fuel per year. I have invested heavily in this idea and believe it will make a positive difference.

I am still doing occasional emission development work for car companies, hopefully making cars a little better.

I have also started mucking about with a hydrogen enhancement device that I will trial on my Landy later this year, it should give around a 10% fuel saving and costs about £50 to make.

On average, I am using less fuel overall than my neighbour who commutes to work and has a holiday abroad every year.

I have made changes to my lifestyle and there are more to be made, I am taking my responsibility seriously and hope my engineering efforts will, in the long term, make a positive difference.

So now you can enjoy the rest of my web site knowing that I am not single handedly destroying the planet!