What a totally ridiculous comment. It's absolutely brilliant that Shell are funding the R & D of these types of things. I would suggest that any day is a good day to introduce low carbon & renewable fuel. Stop being so backward.

james, London, England

Very good news, however "Massive political and regulatory pressure is building on energy companies..." no it isn't. The political and regulatory pressure is weak and insipid. If it was massive, we would be able to buy renewably fuelled cars by now, as they are available, but it is cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to continue to turn out oil based engines. Shell seem to have heeded the campaigns against them and are now playing it totally straight? I do hope so. As it happens, we run a 4x4 on vegetable oil anyway. But this is still excellent news.

Jennifer Hynes, Barry, Cymru

Well done Shell lets have more!

Waste biomass to fuel has to be good!

Jim Golightly, Prudhoe, England

without subsidy from goverment or massive capital injection from big company, this non-profitable business could not last for a long time. but the prospect of the this industry should be good and must be good as we do need a clean alternative energy in the future.

Jacky, BJ, Chian

BTL, CTL, & GTL all produce syngas, CO + H, to produce Fischer-tropsch diesel which is superior in all ways to diesel fuel made from oil. BP and DuPont are working together to produce and market Butanol, a superior alcohol fuel with 24% more energy per gallon than ethanol. Butanol can be easily blended with diesel fuel in large percentages and used 100% in ordinary internal combustion engines. It also is much less volatile than gasoline or ethanol and less of an air pollution problem in hot climates.

In addition BTL and alcohol fuels including butanol are carbon neutral because the biomass used for these fuels comes photosynthesis using atmospheric CO2 not previously sequestered carbon from fossil fuels.

John Adam, Hebron, Ohio

The 'very serious problems' appear to be down to the refinery getting their recipe wrong... too much of certain additives in conventional fuel. It has no relevance at all to whether or not it's a good idea to produce basic fuel from a source other than crude oil. Technologies such as this have the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions (over the cycle of plant growth to vehicle exhaust.)

Incidentally, Henry Ford originally designed the Model T to run on
alcohol, so that farmers could ferment and distilled their own fuel. And Rudolf Diesel originally intended his engine to run on vegetable oil. So there's a very long history of bio-fuelled internal combustion vehicles.

Paul, London,

It will be interesting to see how this fares against the corn lobby in the US. This type of synthetic fuel for some vehicles, along with electric cars/scooters powered from clean sources, combined with an overall reduction in the number of cars on the road, is the future.

Scott Redding, Coventry,

I would suggest that in view of the very serious problems being experienced by thousands of motorists as a result of using 'improved' petrol this is not a good day to be introducing another synthetic fuel.

Alfred, Woking,