FUEL OF THE FUTURE.. SO WHY CAN’T WE BUY IT?

Planet Earth is under threat -and that’s an understatement. The world’s heating up, the ice caps are melting and by 2026 the human race may have to move to the Moon to survive.

Yet here comes some startling news. I have found the answer to saving the planet. And the Government doesn’t seem to give a hoot.

It is called bioethanol. You put it in your car instead of petrol and it churns out 70 per cent fewer harmful gasses. It’s also cheaper, reduces dependency on oil and can improve the performance of your car. Sounds too good to be true.

Well, there is just one problem. You won’t find a “biofuel” pump unless you live in Somerset or Norfolk.

And I should know. My eight-year-old son, who calls the Flexi-Fuel Ford Focus the “Sugar Car”, brings a bag of Tate and Lyle with him on the school run…as a joke in case we can’t find a “biofuel” garage. And he’s right. The bioethanol the car runs on is made from, among other things, sugar beet.

You can buy a bioethanol Focus right now from your Ford dealer and it won’t cost you a penny more than its petrol equivalent… and it’s 2p a litre cheaper to run. Ford and Saab, with their 9-5 BioPower, are the only two UK manufacturers to sell bioethanol cars. But as there are fewer than a dozen bioethanol pumps in the UK – and Gordon Brown, believe it or not, is still taxing the stuff – you’re going to have to run your eco-friendly Focus on petrol… which it does quite happily.

Sunday Mirror