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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 ...