Encouraging biofuels - Fuel dealers’ obligation welcomed

IT IS expected that next month’s Budget will place a greater emphasis on encouraging businesses and private motorists to use more biofuels.

This is a welcome if inevitable development, especially in the context of figures released by the Central Statistics Office and soaring oil prices. The CSO showed that more people are driving to work and that a declining proportion of people are using buses. This is unsustainable either economically or environmentally.

Ireland has a capacity to produce biofuels and anything that can be done to reduce our dependency on imported energy must be encouraged.

It would be no harm if the Government considered a campaign, along the lines of its successful anti-smoking one, to encourage the use of biofuels.

The announcement that the Government is to introduce a Biofuels Obligation in 2009, which will insist that every fuel dealer supply a fixed proportion of its market with biofuels is to be enthusiastically welcomed.