Thursday, August 17, 2006

LPG subsidies will drive us down the road to ruin

Don’t waste your money on an LPG conversion. LPG is a by-product of refining crude oil, so when Australia runs out of oil in the next ten years, we run out of LPG too. The price of LPG will climb with the price of petrol as world oil supplies dwindle.

John Howard’s subsidy for LPG conversions for cars is short-term political opportunism that demonstrates he doesn’t have any real interest in sustainable long-term energy and transport alternatives.

For example, Australia is selling natural gas for 3 cents per litre to China by the shipload, when we could be running all our cars, trucks and buses on compressed natural gas (CNG). Our reserves of natural gas will last up to 30 years, so this would buy us more time as we transition to renewable alternatives.

You can even use home refilling stations to pressurise natural gas overnight and fill your car up – but these are not yet readily available in Australia.

It is a pity our politicians are ignoring CNG, just trying to buy votes, and intent on driving us all down the road to ruin.

3 comments:

Sam Clifford said...

Brisbane's buses run on CNG, which is fantastic. I hate the smell of LPG in addition to it being petroleum based.

pam said...

thanks for your blog Peter.

I've been wanting to fill my car at home with natural gas (so cheap) for some time.

Saw on the 7.30 Report a year or so back someone who had worked out a home conversion for his light truck.

Do you know where I can get the info necessary. What sort of conversion does my car need - is it the same as LPG ?

cheers Pamela

Peter Campbell said...

Pamela, natural gas (CNG) conversions can be done by some of the businesses that do LPG conversions, but not all of them would do it. You need different gas regulators and a much heavier tank than that required for LPG. One of the major issues is that there are very few CNG refuelling places - ordinary service stations DO NOT have it. There may be only 2 or 3 places for all of Melbourne. This is because the Government and industry have done nothing to establish the required infrastructure - displaying more incompetence and short term thinking.