What are the alternative alternatives?
Surely this is not the way to save the world. If the future environmental situation is as serious as we are told, shouldn’t we all be working together to make it work? Instead we have a series of competing fuel and equipment suppliers engaged in a PR war to secure government funding and a foothold in some of the freight fleets of the world.
The latest cab off the rank is bio DME, this week Volvo are publicising its green virtue and energy efficiency. These facts cannot be denied it could well be a viable alternative for the future and it does tick a lot of the boxes on the list of requirements for the transport industry. It does burn extremely cleanly and it does not need large or heavy storage tanks on board the truck. The storage tanks are expensive and there may be some questions about the viability of DME production but it does seem to have legs.
However, s do a number of other, equally effective, alternatives. LNG seems to have similar advantages to DME, it’s not so carbon efficient but a lot easier to access. Electric power and hybrid power are also strong contenders capable of extremely green results.
The list goes on, and on. The most valuable scenario for the actual people doing the work on the roads hauling the freight is not whether one technology is better than the other but more about being able to handle a mix of technologies choosing whatever suits each particular application. This is the real alternative, it’s not about one alternative fuel taking over from diesel it’s about a suite of alternatives being used together cooperatively and not fighting it out for percentage points in of market share
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