In Somerset, England, a unique experiment is going on. A few cars, including 10 police cars using ethanol, a fuel made of fermented Brazilian sugarcane.

The supply chain now being limited to just five pumps, will be upgraded in about three years fuelling some 300 cars or so that run on this fuel made at a special plant using England’s surplus wheat.

There is a sort of dis-coordination in Britain, on bio-fuels, it seems. At Gleneagles summit of G8 leaders, all the VIP cars were flexi-fuelled, that can use bio and conventional fuels. But the green agenda announced with great fanfare seems to have lost.

In Britain, ethanol bio-fuel costs slightly less than regular petrol and the flexi-fuel vehicles, say Ford Focus cars, are priced comparably to regular cars. It looks promising as fuel of future world wide particularly when global warming trend is increasingly becoming certain. Many swear that these could certainly help curtail Britain’s carbon emissions.

The House of Commons Environment, Food And Rural Affairs select committee advocated that this experiment need to be replicated in many more councils, businesses and government departments. But what baffles one is that there are five different departments that look after the bio-fuel development. The policies outlined by the committee are felt as too vague and without long term vision, to rope serious private players into business.

Clearly, the research across the world including the US is indicating that the global warming rate is alarming and bringing several other hitherto unexpected factors into the list of variables affecting the warming rate. For example, the sheetice melting and detachment from areas like Green land and the release of methane from thawing permafrost and heating oceans could actually send the rate of warming spiraling and many fear that a point of no-return is fast approaching Planet Earth.

In this grim situation, every opportunity that cuts or helps cut the green house gas emissions need to be embraced. For example, Sweden, perhaps the Europe’s greenest country, encourages bio-fuel by exempting cars using it from congestion tax and parking fees.

So is it the ultimate fix to all ills? Certainly, no! As much it is a great opportunity as it is a danger. If fuel crop were given intensives and bio-fuels are taken as the fix for all energy shortages, the farmers may be tempted to switch to fuel crops from food crops. The already stressed crop areas would further be threatened. With less availability of farm land, farmers will switch to clear forests and buffer zones between forests and crop lands. This apart, the bird and other animal species that depend on these lands would face threat. The ecological implications were too intricate to understand right now.

So, success lies in actively encouraging bio-fuel, as a renewable energy and, making it good part of a larger set of alternative fuels. It is not bad news at all. The fossil fuels burn carbon fixed from atmosphere into plants over millions of years adding to atmospheric CO2 but the bio-fuel crops fix carbon from atmosphere and recycle them into alcohol through fermentation. There shall be no net increase in atmospheric carbon.

Here the economics slip in. the bio-ethanol is priced at about the same as the regular petrol but the ethanol gives only two thirds of the mileage given by petrol. So, there is no effective incentive to drivers who switched to bio-fuel. Mere gestures of lowering duty on ethanol and levying penalty on oil companies that stick to pnly petrol and diesel will not do much. There needs to be some pragmatic approach.

One up thing here to this debate is it brought all the necessary points of view to the fore. Let us expect Britain and the countries, notably US under the listless Bush administration wakes up to the challenge and do some sensible thing to the only known habitable planet of our near universe.