Question: is there ever going to be cheaper fuel?

Zara Gladman answered on 11 Jun 2011:

Good question, which I’d love to know the answer to! I spent about £60 filling up my car the other day, it’s very expensive.

In the future, there’s likely to be an increase in the amount of eco-friendly cars on our roads. There are already a number of these on the market today, which run on ‘biofuels’ such as LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) and BioDiesel. LPG cars release less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than petrol cars and the fuel is about half the price of traditional petrol. BioDiesel cars also have much lower emissions than normal diesel ones.

Eco-friendly cars may allow the cost of fuel to come down. A lot of money, however, will need to be spent on infrastructure (e.g. replacing or upgrading petrol stations to contain biofuel and accommodate future technologies, such as electric or hydrogen cars). The amount of money spent on infrastructure and research will affect how much fuel costs – so it’s hard to say for sure if it will be cheaper.

If everybody used biofuel, we’d make a big difference in tackling climate change. The future of eco-friendly transport is still a long way off, however, as petrol continues to be the world’s fuel of choice for the foreseeable future.