Sustainable Touring?

SUSTAINABLE TOURING?

On KT Tunstall’s recent 2006 US Tour KT chose to use a tour bus that ran on renewable biodiesel rather than traditional and non-renewable fossil diesel. The award winning singer songwriter hired a bus using B20 biofuel, a 20% blend of biodiesel with normal fossil diesel, to tour America saying: “It seems unacceptable to tour using non-environmentally friendly fuel when there’s an alternative available.” The singer also commented that a bus running solely on sustainable biodiesel couldn’t be found in time, hence the use of the B20, but that she plans to be using 100% biodiesel for her next tour.

Biodiesel is a clean burning and renewable alternative to fossil diesel, which in the UK is mainly produced from rapeseed oil, and it has very similar physical and chemical properties to fossil diesel but with almost none of the harmful effects to the environment. Not only does biodiesel have many environmental benefits over fossil diesel when burnt, but it can be produced locally and thus have no transportation costs or the associated harm to the environment with mass and long distance transportation. Furthermore, the crop residues left behind once the oil is extracted can be burnt at a local electricity generating plant to provide a 100% sustainable source of electricity to be fed into the existing power system. According to DETR figures (Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions) biodiesel’s energy output per litre is only 7.5% less than fossil diesel but comes with the elimination of almost 100% of the pollution associated with burning fossil diesel - this slight loss seems a small sacrifice.

Although using the B20 mix, as KT Tunstall did, can be done straight away with most engines, to use 100% biodiesel requires modifications to be made to a vehicle which have to be done professionally; the conversion to using B100 fuel is a service offered by a number of companies across the country relatively simply and cheaply.

US artist Bat Makumba has achieved what KT Tunstall is aspiring to with a converted airport shuttle bus modified to run from two fuel tanks. One tank contains biodiesel and the other contains 100% recycled vegetable oil, often collected from local restaurants. The recycled vegetable oil can only be used once the engine has warmed up enough, so, the bus is started up on biodiesel and once the engine reaches the required temperature the switch is made to the recycled vegetable oil tank. This is perhaps the benchmark for the future of sustainable travel and transportation

Hopefully as more artists, and indeed the wider public, become aware of the environmental issues facing the planet then we will start to see a shift to sustainable transportation. Not only does the