Nationally the hauliers have grabbed the big headlines with protests about the costs of fuel to their firms.

Blyth Valley MP Ronnie Campbell has also rightly flagged up the additional impact of backdating excise duty charges to car users with older vehicles, often owned by those with the least money.

Government Ministers are being lobbied to avoid a 2p fuel duty increase in the autumn and at the same time green groups are urging them to go ahead.

Even if the increase is shelved, it will help only in the very short term and won't provide any kind of sustainable solution.

The AA's own figures reveal that since 1998 the proportion of fuel duty to the price of unleaded petrol has actually fallen by 15 per cent. You wouldn't have thought it from reading the newspaper headlines.

The honest truth is that the high cost of fuel is as a result of the world's industrial addiction to oil. The free market within the energy sector isn't enough to meet our nation's needs. It is time we intervened to re-balance our energy policy before costs rise higher.

This will require tough choices – not just for Government but for each
and every one of us. It means substantially increasing investment in renewable energy.

We will certainly require a new wave nuclear power and should harness its very low carbon emissions.

Crucially, all of us must resist the instinctive 'not in my backyard' thinking that can crop up during the planning stages of these developments, especially when local jobs are at stake. I believe it also means a re-focus on an overlooked energy source – coal.

Despite the politically motivated attack on the UK coal industry in the 1980s and 1990s by successive Tory Governments, coal powered stations still provide around third of our electricity.

Admittedly 'coal' and 'clean' are not two words we would instinctively put together. But the emerging technology around clean coal and carbon capture and storage methods means we could soon also leave behind many of the chemical pollutants familiar with the black stuff.

Professor Paul Younger at Newcastle University makes a powerful case for the potential economic and environmental benefits for this energy source to the UK and the wider world.

Last week's developments have shown that more so than ever we need diversity and security within energy. It is critical we do what we can to reduce the costs to households and hauliers and fairly encourage environmentally friendly lifestyles.

Gordon Brown is right to meet with oil producers to identify ways of increasing supply and reducing costs at the pump.

But unless we now look to alternative ways of powering our nation for the decades ahead then we will increasingly be at their mercy.

NEIL FOSTER

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