A Galway Green Party councillor is to call on the city's corporation to collect used chip oil being dumped down the drains and use it instead to power its maintenance vehicles.
Cllr Niall O'Brolcháin says that the grease, fat and used chip oil is playing havoc with the drainage system and could instead be used to run the council's fleet, saving thousands of euro a year.
O'Brolcháin will put the motion before the council in two weeks' time. "Thousands of gallons of grease, fat and chip oil are clogging drains leading out to the €100 million Mutton Island treatment plant."
While converting vehicles to run on vegetable oil may cost about €600 each, the cost should be recouped very quickly. "The only cost to the corporation is that of collecting the oil. Apart from that, the fuel to run the city's diesel fleet would effectively be free of charge."
A recent Government initiative allowing biofuels be used without attracting tax under certain conditions was approved by Minister for Finance Brian Cowen last month.
Tax relief for pilot biofuel projects, first announced in last December's budget, means biofuels such as rapeseed oil, vegetable oil or biodiesel can be used in approved pilot projects without excise duty.
Converting a car to run on vegetable oil is one way to use biofuels. The alternative is to convert the oil into biodiesel, which allows it to be used in any diesel car without mechanical alteration. It also allows the car to run on any mix of diesel or biodiesel.
Although this technology has been in existence for over a decade there has not been a great take up on it mainly because of the cost involved, which can be up to 30 per cent higher than conventional fuels. This factor has been an obstacle to the development of the biofuel industry across the EU which Minister Cowen pointed out at the launch of the tax scheme.
These fuels, by their nature, can be more expensive to produce and consequently the European Commission is allowing full relief from excise duty to enable these alternative fuels to compete with conventional fossil fuels.
Although a number of companies including Dublin Bus and Cork Co Council used biofuels on a trial basis in a number of vehicles over the years, the projects were not rolled out across their fleets.
One of the main issues in the cost of producing biodiesel in Ireland is that the raw materials must be exported and processed before being re-imported as biodiesel adding hugely to production costs. There is a campaign in Carlow at present to convert the ill-fated Greencore sugar plant into a biodiesel producing facility.