Inspired by Prince Charles's Aston Martin that Runs on Cheese and Wine, Toby Walne Road-Tests a Rather More Humble Biofuel...Used Chip Fat oil

by Toby Walne (Daily Mail) Using used cooking oil to fuel cars and lorries is very much part of the future; Biofuels could play a role in turning Great Britain carbon neutral by 2050; Boris Johnson says the country will 'lead the charge' against climate change

It might all seem rather bizarre, but using used cooking oil to fuel cars and lorries is very much part of the future as we wean ourselves off petrol and diesel.

Biofuels may not prove as popular as electricity when it comes to propelling cars, but they could play a role in turning Britain carbon neutral by 2050 – an ambition laid out last week by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he declared the country would 'lead the charge' against climate change.

I have decided to test drive a four-year-old Mercedes S-Class, fuelled by old cooking oil. The £40,000 vehicle belongs to Andrew Freeman, boss of a haulage company based just outside Peterborough in Cambridgeshire.

Freeman is also a director of Pure Fuels which, from the same site, manufactures biofuel derived from cooking oil. This is used to fuel Freemans Transport's 50- strong fleet of lorries that do a combined nine million miles a year. Typically, a 44-ton lorry can manage only 12 miles to the gallon on biofuel.

There is nothing different to this ride than if I were driving a normal diesel car. It is a smooth drive with no fume smells.

The Royal heir's Aston Martin is run on a blend of 85 per cent ethanol – derived from alcoholic gases emitted during the production of wine and cheese fermentation – mixed with 15 per cent unleaded petrol.

But critics point out it is not a practical solution for most drivers. Yet chip fat oil used to fry up Britain's favourite meal of fish and chips can easily be turned into a biofuel to power cars.

You do not even have to adapt the engine on older diesel motors, while for modern ones such as the car I drove, you just need to ensure the cooking oil is refined.

Freeman calculates his refined fuel costs less than £1 a litre. This is a bargain compared with the soaring cost of diesel – which currently stands at about £1.44 a litre and is still rising. The fuel economy is pretty much the same for both.

The biggest hurdle is to convince petrol stations to stock biofuel at the pumps. Freeman says: 'Sadly the fuel industry is dragging its feet, of course. Selling biofuel is not in the best financial interests of the major petrol stations and the Government has fallen for its own misguided spin on electric cars being the future.'

Last month – as the petrol pump crisis gripped the nation – the Government started reducing the proportion of fossil fuels in a standard gallon of petrol with the introduction of new rules requiring more environmentally friendly ethanol in the mix. Standard unleaded petrol changed from a mixture of 5 per cent ethanol and 95 per cent petrol (E5) to 10 per cent ethanol and 90 per cent petrol (E10).

Drivers of modern vehicles are unlikely to notice any difference, but cars built before 2011 may not run as well on the new blend. This is because ethanol – which can also be produced from crops – can damage rubber and parts of older vehicles over time. These cars might have to switch to the more expensive 'E5 super unleaded' that typically costs £7 more to fill up a 60-litre tank.

Despite the Government's push towards more vehicles being powered by electricity – banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 – not everyone is convinced by this strategy.

A lack of fast charging points, sometimes little more than a hundred miles between recharges, plus the additional expense of electric cars, are all major disincentives.