Cars of the future 'should be wood-powered'

Transport and energy experts have finally twigged: the ideal fuel to run Britain's cars in future is wood.

A new report for the Department of Transport concludes that fast-growing trees, such as willows, planted over a quarter of Britain's farmland, could produce enough fuel to power all the country's cars, lorries and buses, while mopping up environmentally damaging carbon dioxide.

Branching out into wood could fight global warming and free the country from dependence on Middle Eastern oil as North Sea wells run dry, says the report, produced by the official Energy Savings Trust, the influential National Society for Clean Air and the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

The key to this latter-day conversion to the Stone Age's main source of energy lies in increasing interest in government and industry in running vehicles on alternative fuels. Hydrogen is every environmentalist's dream, but it is principally produced by burning oil, gas or coal, which, the report concludes, would actually damage the environment. Using renewable sources such as the sun or the wind would be clean, as would fuel derived from crops, but this would take up two-thirds of the country's agricultural land.

So the report plumps for gases from fermenting trees, which can be grown in less space and on poorer soil than is required for the intensive agriculture of the future.

In short, future Mr Toads could run their cars on willows, rather than the wind.