Jonathan Nash - General Motors

ePolitix.com speaks to Jonathan Nash, managing director of Saab Great Britain Ltd, about the use of biofuels

Question: How do biofuels fit into General Motors' overall corporate strategy?

Jonathan Nash: GM is the world's leading manufacturer of flex fuel vehicles, with 3.5 million flex fuel vehicles on the road worldwide. The increasing use of renewable alternatives to conventional fossil fuels is an important element of GM's overall environmental technology strategy. We believe that bioethanol offers a cleaner alternative to petrol, that's adaptable to our current refuelling infrastructure, is cost-effective and consumer-friendly.

Question: Aren't you using biofuels as a means to avoid making efforts to improve the overall efficiency of your vehicles?

Jonathan Nash: Absolutely not. Increased use of renewable alternatives to fossil fuels is just one element of a much broader strategy that we're pursuing as a company to reduce the environmental impact of the vehicles we manufacture and sell.

In the short-term, we are looking at ways to continually refine the conventional internal combustion engine and existing petrol and diesel powertrains. We are refining conventional engines using variable valve timing, six-speed transmissions, direct injection, and turbo charging and downsizing of engines. Indeed, because of the higher octane content of bioethanol compared to petrol, shifting to E85 offers even more opportunity to downsize and turbo-charge our engines and hence achieve additional improvements in efficiency.

For the medium-term, we are also investing very heavily in plug in electric vehicles. At last year's Frankfurt motor show, we displayed the Opel Flextreme, a plug-in electric vehicle which combines a lithium ion battery with a conventional motor which can run on a variety of energy sources, including bioethanol E85. The motor acts as a generator that provides back-up power to the battery.

Essentially, when running off the battery, the Flextreme can travel around 40 kilometres on pure electric power. If you are going further than that distance, the onboard back-up motor recharges the battery and provides the vehicle with comparable range to a conventionally powered vehicle of that type. We would expect that, according to the current European drive cycle the vehicle could deliver CO2 emissions of around 40 grams per kilometre.

In the longer-term we are looking at hydrogen fuel cell technology – cars that run on hydrogen and emit nothing but water vapour from the tail pipe. This year we launched the world's largest consumer trial of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with over 100 vehicles worldwide being placed directly in the hands of consumers to give them a chance to test the cars out themselves in real world conditions. In Berlin, we will be placing 10 HydroGen 4 fuel cell cars on the road as part of this global trial. 

Overall, we have invested over €1bn in hydrogen fuel cell technology, with the ultimate aim of producing a fuel cell propulsion system that can compete with conventional technology on unit cost, performance and range. We aim to be the first company globally to sell more than one million fuel cell vehicles.

Question: What are flex-fuel vehicles?

Jonathan Nash: Flexfuel vehicles are specifically designed to run on unleaded petrol, bioethanol E85 or any mixture of the two. Our flex fuel cars are equipped with state of the art Trionic engine management systems which are able to detect what's in the tank and adjust accordingly. 

Hence, when bioethanol E85 isn't available, flexfuel drivers can fill up with normal unleaded, and drive the car just as they normally would, without any adjustment.

Question: So why are biofuels good for the environment?

Jonathan Nash: Bioethanol and biodiesel are renewable fuels produced from a variety of natural sources. In the case of biodiesel, suitable feedstocks include sunflower and rapeseed oils. Bioethanol can be made from sugar cane, sugar beet, corn, or wheat.

Unlike fossil fuel, biofuels do not add to global CO2 because they are actually 'recycling' CO2 already present in the atmosphere. CO2 is removed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis when crops for conversion to biofuel are grown. This CO2 is then returned to the atmosphere during combustion when driving the vehicle.

Question: How do you respond to recent criticisms of biofuels and the claims that it takes more energy and CO2 to make them than using conventional fuels?

Jonathan Nash: Current so-called first-generation biofuel is produced from a variety of different feedstocks, as I've already mentioned. Provided the production process is efficient, all first generation feedstocks can generate significant CO2 savings, calculated on a well-to-wheel basis.

Of course, if you produce biofuels inefficiently, there's potentially negligible benefit in terms of CO2 savings, or even a net negative impact – put that's where government policy needs to set the framework that ensures efficient production methods are the norm. And fuel distributors should be asking questions about the well-to-wheel figures for the biofuels they buy from producers.

As far as biofuels sourced and refined in the UK are concerned, I think the figures clearly demonstrate the environmental benefits. Bioethanol made from sugar beet at British Sugar's plant at Wissington in Norfolk achieves a 60 per cent reduction in well-to-wheel CO2 compared to petrol, for example.

I also think the critics of biofuels often forget some crucial facts about fossil fuels: First, refining crude oil into petrol and diesel also uses up energy and produces CO2. So a fair comparison of the two needs to look at the well-to-wheel impact of both – there's no point in comparing a well-to-wheel analysis of bioethanol with a tailpipe figure for a vehicle running on petrol, because it isn't like-for-like.

Second, fossil fuels are running out, and as sources become increasingly hard to get to, so the amount of energy exerted in exploration and production (not to mention the wider environmental impacts) will increase. Extraction of oil from tar sands, for example, is a hugely energy intensive method of producing petroleum.

So although in the short-term there are challenges associated with biofuel production – which you'd expect with any new industry – we need to strive hard to resolve these, and maintain the momentum, because the urgent need for renewable alternatives to fossil fuels will only increase over time.

Question: So what's GM doing to address these challenges?

Jonathan Nash: At General Motors we have worked with a number of strategic partners – universities, businesses, governments – to fully understand ethanol development and how to rapidly expand production in a sustainable and super-efficient manner.

US biology-based company Coskata has developed a second generation process for producing ethanol cost effectively from almost any source material including renewables like municipal waste, discarded plastics, even old tyres. 

The process uses less water per litre of ethanol than current processes, whilst for every unit of energy that the process uses, it creates up to 7.7 times that amount of energy. On a well-to-wheel basis, compared to conventional petrol the process reduces green house gas emission by up to 84 per cent.

Ultimately, we hope to achieve a process for producing bioethanol which can be made locally, anywhere in the world, and which can contribute significant reductions in CO2 through the sustainable large scale production of renewable fuels.

Question: Isn't it more efficient to blend biofuel with fossil fuel at low levels so that the maximum environmental benefits from biofuel at minimum cost can be achieved?

Jonathan Nash: Many in government do believe that the most efficient way to drive the maximum environmental benefit from biofuels is to blend at low levels, starting from 5 per cent moving to 10 per cent, 15 per cent and beyond. 

However, there are very good engineering reasons why blending biofuels into mainstream fuel is currently only limited to five per cent. Firstly, in the case of bioethanol, it is significantly more corrosive than petrol, therefore, at blends above five per cent there is no guarantee that existing vehicles will not suffer corrosion problems with fuel lines and the fuel tank, unless the car has been specifically engineered for a higher blend. 

As a consequence, even if a 10 per cent blend of ethanol to petrol (E10) were to become the norm for all petrol sold in the UK, there would still be a need to have a separate pump dispensing this grade of fuel to those cars which are specifically engineered to support it, with a separate lower blend available to those cars which are not. 

Therefore, rather than tinkering with lower blends, as an established fuel grade, we believe that E85 offers maximum benefit in terms of carbon reduction and importantly, represents a conscious shift in consumer behaviour – but one that is so compatible with petrol/diesel that it is easily manageable for drivers to make the move. 

It is important from the car industry perspective to get drivers engaged with technology and fuel change. I personally believe this is crucial if transport is to become sustainable.

Question: Porsche are appealing against the increased London congestion charge for 'gas-guzzlers'. What is your view on current transport policies in the capital?

Jonathan Nash: Overall, we believe that there is sense in taking a local approach to issues of congestion and air quality, where the effects are also experienced at a local level so to this extent we acknowledge the efforts that mayor Livingstone is making. 

We can also see the benefits that can be drawn from using specifically targeted discounts from congestion charging to encourage London drivers to purchase and use new low-carbon technologies such as flexfuel vehicles (although this is something that London has unfortunately so far refused to do).

However, the mayor's most recent proposals bring the objectives of tackling CO2 emissions and reducing congestion into direct conflict with one another, and are unlikely to be effective in addressing either as a consequence.

Ultimately, CO2 emissions from new cars are best tackled through an EU regulation, which we expect to be adopted in the course of next year. The Congestion Charge should continue to be focused on its original purpose – namely, tackling congestion in the capital. I think the new proposals are a case of trying to achieve too many things using an incredibly blunt policy instrument.

Question: Is the government being too timid? Isn't it in everyone's interest to speed up development of clean engine technologies?

Jonathan Nash: Ultimately, yes. But this is as much about fuels and energy as it is about engine technology. The government has sent some very mixed signals to the biofuels industry, which doesn't exactly instil investor confidence for the future.

We're at real risk of losing what capability we have to develop advanced biofuels in this country, because the industry has no reason to believe that the government is committed to biofuels as any part of the climate change solution. And if that happens, I think it would be a disastrous mistake and a real lost opportunity for the UK.

The government could learn a lot from its European counterparts such as the Swedish government. The Swedish government has set itself a target to eliminate its dependency on oil by 2020. As a contribution to meeting this objective, the Swedish government has put various policies in place to encourage the use of renewable fuels such as biofuels. 

For example, the government has set a legislative target for fuel companies, requiring that 50 per cent of the country's refuelling stations must be equipped with a renewable fuel pump by 2009. Significant incentives are also in place to encourage customers to buy flexfuel vehicles:

- Fuel duty discounts ensure that E85 must sell at 25 per cent cheaper than petrol
- Customers can get a £750 grant towards the purchase of a flexfuel car
- Flex-fuel cars get free parking in many Swedish towns and cities
- Flex-fuel cars are exempt from the pilot congestion charge in Stockholm; and
- Company car tax is 20 per cent lower for flexfuel vehicles