WHEN you or I go to the garage to fill up with fuel, most of the money we pay to the attendant goes not to the owner of the garage, nor even to Shell or BP, but to the Government.

That is for two reasons. Firstly, and by far most importantly, because the Government needs to raise revenue and it knows that, up to a point, the motorist is prepared to pay. Secondly, to try to price some motorists off the roads and either to stop them travelling at all, or to make them use public transport.

Governments have always interfered in the pricing mechanism of fuel. There is something mesmeric about personal transport. We will sacrifice much in order to be able to travel when and where we want. Chancellors down the years have always known this. They have always exploited it.

Fuel for transport is only one small part of the overall fossil fuel jigsaw. If aircraft fuel were to be taxed like petrol in the UK is taxed, I suspect many of the foreign holidays we all enjoy would not occur. Just as importantly, such an increase in cost would alter the price of the many items in the shops which are flown around the world in transport aircraft. That would change the balance between UK-produced items and foreign product airfreighted into our market. You can't send strawberries from California by boat. Well, you can but there wouldn't be much left when they got here.

It seems fairly well established that a greater deal of damage is done to the ozone above us by aircraft. Perhaps a few fewer flights might not be such a bad thing.

The spin off would be that the carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for global warming, would also be reduced. Even the UK Government is not particularly serious about reducing CO2 emissions. If it were serious, it could call on many more policy options than at present. All combustion releases CO2. The problem is that burning fossil fuels releases CO2 which was laid down millions of years ago when the oil and coal was being created.

If we had more power stations which ran on willow coppice or on methane from digesters using animal by products, the carbon dioxide would have only been laid down in the past few years. There would be a need to encourage such power sources by manipulation of the tax system at least at the beginning. But the tax system has been manipulated before on public policy grounds and will be again.

It is possible to grow vegetable oil and to use it for fuel, and some local authorities have successfully operated this bio fuel in their public transport fleet. Apparently the emissions smell like a chip fryer, which seems like a gain to me.

The most controversial aspect of renewable fuel seems to be the use of wind-farms. In the past windmills were used to grind corn into flour. Many villages had one where they would catch the maximum wind. Today there are occasional outbreaks of their modern equivalents, mostly in small groups in exposed areas. Sometimes there is just one for a specific purpose. Whether one likes the look of them is a matter of personal preference. They do seem to me to be a possible way forward in the generation of electricity.

They are not a complete answer. There is no complete answer. There are lots of partial answers. We might have to put up with the looks in return for the environmental gain.

Updated: 11:00 Tuesday, February 19, 2002