Last updated at 09:30, Friday, 11 July 2008

On the quiet country roads around Kirkbride, John Stamper of RI Stamper Haulage is giving driving lessons. Stamper’s drivers already hold HGV licences. In many cases they have years of experience.

John Stamper: His family haulage business is paying upwards of £10,000 a month more to fill its 15 wagons

But some of these old dogs are in urgent need of a new trick or two. The future of the business could depend on it.

These lessons are in the art of fuel-efficient driving: accelerating smoothly rather than revving the engine, braking in good time rather than screeching to a halt.

The saving for each manoeuvre is not spectacular but it all adds up. And every penny counts. Soaring fuel prices in the past year have led to this family business paying upwards of £10,000 a month more to fill its 15 wagons. “I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” says Stamper. “I worry every day about it.”

The problem is painfully familiar to most businesses and households. The price of fuel has soared. So has the price of food. So, it seems, has the price of everything else.

But Cumbrians are coming up with ways to ease the daily pain while also looking ahead to a time when oil prices may be of little consequence because other energy sources are cheap and plentiful.

First the short term. Stobart Group chief executive Andrew Tinkler spent last Tuesday at 10 Downing Street with two of Gordon Brown’s senior advisors. He was advising them on ways of saving fuel.

This is a subject close to Tinkler’s and many other hearts. The Stobart Group’s transport empire includes 1,800 trucks and two freight trains. Since last September rising fuel prices have cost the business more than £20million.

Tinkler believes his strategy of combining rail, water and air with road transport has helped Stobart Group cut fuel wastage. Using trains has slashed the company’s diesel consumption by three-million litres a year.

“It’s in everybody’s interests to stop wasting fuel,” Tinkler tells The Cumberland News. “It keeps oil and food prices down. It makes sense commercially and environmentally. We’re looking at using trains more and cutting back on empty legs – journeys where wagons are not carrying any load. We’re also talking to manufacturers about using hybrid fuels. There are various things we can do.

“The meeting at number 10 went well because the Government is willing to listen to the industry. They understand the pressures we’re under and they take them on board. We need to keep the dialogue open. We can help each other.”

John Stamper has not yet been summoned to Downing Street but his ideas about cutting fuel consumption are already paying off. As well as advising his drivers to drive more efficiently he is now buying automatic vehicles, which should use less fuel, and devices which calculate how drivers could travel less wastefully.

Mr Stamper is also trying to plan routes more efficiently but beyond these measures he feels powerless, insisting the Government must ease the burden by cutting taxes.

“I’m just a glorified tax collector,” he says. “About 75 per cent of the cost of fuel goes to the taxman. Then we pay road tax, PAYE, VAT on everything. They don’t realise they are going to put an awful lot of businesses in trouble. Quite a few hauliers have given up. You can’t compete against the big boys.

“My profits are down and we’ve lost a few jobs. We’re just keeping our heads above water. In the past when you ran a business there was always a little bit to fall back on when things were sticky. We’ve used all that up now.”

During the past decade the search for alternatives to oil has focused largely on biofuels – fuel produced mainly from food crops such as wheat, maize and sugar cane. These were initially regarded as the perfect weapon against climate change because of their lack of carbon emissions.

But concerns are growing that diverting food crops to make fuel is causing food shortages and driving up prices. Clearing forests to make way for biofuels may also hasten climate change.

The EU is now reviewing its pledge that biofuels should make up 10 per cent of transport fuel by 2020. Transport minister Ruth Kelly said this week that Britain would press ahead with biofuels but their introduction would be slowed down.

Several small-scale biofuel projects are underway in Cumbria. The University of Cumbria is looking at using biofuels for heating and for powering its minibuses, using oil seed rape grown at Newton Rigg campus near Penrith.

Ed Rowbury of Newton Rigg’s Natural Resources School is keen to press ahead despite the increasing global suspicion over biofuels.

“There has been a backlash,” he admits. “The pendulum has really swung against mass production and I’m sort of on their side. It makes no sense ripping up rainforests to plant palm trees for palm oil. But we are looking to self sufficiency here. It’s not a commercial venture.”

Newton Rigg has grown five hectares of oil seed rape which could produce 5,000 litres of diesel to run the college’s vehicles, including farm equipment. “In the old days a farmer would grow a field of oats to feed the horses and the horses would power the farm. We’re almost back to that situation.

“The university’s annual fuel bill is more than £200,000. It would take 300,000 hectares of biofuel crops to meet that, which is out of the question. But we’re looking to make a small contribution.

“We can extend the life of the diesel available to us by mixing it with biofuel. We should be looking at these things and trying them out. Something has to happen.”

Something has to happen. Working out just what is the job of Ian Pearson. Pearson grew up in Hensingham. He now lives in the south of England but regularly visits his family in west Cumbria.

Pearson was BT’s futurologist for more than 20 years until leaving last year to go it alone. He analyses trends in technology and his “I told you so” predictions include text messaging and Second Life-style chat rooms.

Pearson’s encouraging belief is that current fears over fuel will soon be rendered redundant. “It’s a short-term problem,” he insists. “Fuel prices will increase for the next three or four years then the price of oil will come down because people won’t need it.

“The higher the price of oil, the sooner an alternative will be found. And the higher the price of oil, the less expensive the alternative will look.”

Technology is already creating alternatives to oil. Pearson sees electric-powered cars and huge solar farms in places like the Sahara desert, South Africa, Asia, Australia and the USA as the keys to a largely oil-free future.

According to Pearson, covering large swathes of the Sahara in solar panels would produce 40 times more electricity than the planet needs. “There will be a huge rise in investment in solar power. Sunshine in the Sahara is a lot more consistent than wind in Cumbria, and even then it has to be the right speed of wind.

“A lot of people are trying to make it work. By 2016 it will be cheaper for American households to use solar power than to take it from the grid. The US is sunnier than Cumbria so we’ll have to wait a bit longer. You could make solar power in the Sahara but you can’t get it to Europe very easily. In 15-20 years we’ll be able to transmit energy long distances on cables so that less of it disperses on the way.”

If Pearson’s vision is accurate, much of this energy will charge electric-powered cars. Models such as the Tesla Roadster, a British-built sports car which does 0-60mph in 3.9 seconds and can travel 220 miles on a single charge, are becoming available and their technology is constantly improving.

The Tesla is due to go on sale in Europe soon at about 100,000 Euros (£79,500). Not cheap, but you’ll never pay a penny for petrol.

Pearson feels that the next few years before solar power becomes dominant will see a rush to commission new nuclear power stations, but that these will be largely superceded by solar power by the time they become operational.

He insists that mass production of biofuels will be discredited and predicts more genetically modified food. Food rather than fuel could be the main concern in decades to come. Increasing demand is led by rising living standards in China and India.

“It’s a growing population that wants to eat well,” says Pearson. “They’re buying what we’re buying so the price goes up. It’s supply and demand. We won’t see an end to that because they won’t stop developing.”

Growing crops to feed animals is extremely inefficient but technology could solve this by creating meat in laboratories. “Synthetic biology will have enormous results in the next 10 or 20 years. You could grow cultures of beef tissue that has never been anywhere near a cow.”

Theory is one thing. Reality depends on a huge range of factors, not least politicians’ decisions. “Politicians are often badly advised,” says Pearson. “I look at biofuels and wonder how that was ever taken seriously. It’s so obviously a stupid idea.

“The real issue is, how do you stop governments adopting policies that are outdated already and which then take another 20 or 30 years to happen?”

First published at 05:33, Friday, 11 July 2008
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk