Maybe if we stopped charging customers an extra 10 odd percent on their electricity bills to fund windmills which don't work then energy bills would come down?

Peak electricity demand is in January time when a lovely anti-cyclone sits over Europe. You indeed get many things from that but wind sadly isn't one of them so windmills are rather pointless.

Whenever us Brits express scepticism at the windmill project we keep being told 'Germany has 10 times more of them than us and they don't complain!' but what the BBC don't tell us is Germany is finding them to be utterly useless and are importing more energy from eastern Europe and opening up more coal fired stations.

Well it's easy to be interested in nonsense like global warming when the 'solutions' don't cost you anything or impact you. When the price of our saving otters policy is freezing to death we'll radically rethink matters.

I can absolutely gaurantee that energy bills will not come down the gas if its found in enough quantities it will be piped to run the new generation of gas power stations which will actually force prices up.

Shale gas has forced prices down in the US.

I love how the greenies keep changing their tune: When known oil and gas reserves are running low, they claim that we need to diversify from fossil fuels to prevent an energy crisis. When new reserves are found, the goal posts are moved again and we have to diversify from fossil fuels in order to prevent an energy apocalypse.

Who else can remember the 'free gas' promises after the North sea discoveries?

Not to mention the 'tolls would be removed' from the Dartford crossing once it had paid for itself!

There's no technological hurdle to overcome. Any petrol engine will run on gas. The problem is that the range is very short. Fifteen million cars sounds a lot but it it is a small proportion of the world's fleet. Most of the CNG vehicles are taxi/delivery vehicles that operate within a small radius of a central depot.

We've had North sea gas for over 30 years and there was no CNG revolution. There won't be one now-unless the government makes natural gas tax free for road use, which is not likely.

It appears though that it is now becoming a fuel that's being taken more seriously in the US - taking into account the cheap availability of shale gas and CO2 reduction.. Even if all PSVs, taxi's municilple vehicles and delivery vans were CNG that would be a huge expansion of the use of this gas.

Time will tell.

Yes, LIQUID petroleum gas. Propane/butane mixture easily condenses under mild pressure to give a high energy density.

Natural gas is mainly Methane. You can compress it, but not to the density of a liquid. And the tank has to be very strong, so it's heavy.

We've gorged ourselves on North Sea gas for 30+ years and no one has been interested in running their car on the stuff. Why the sudden interest now?

As is often the case industry has been doing for decades what clever marketers are only discovering today. All the big diesel manufacturers offer their diesel engines in natural gas versions. But these are stationary engines that are used where the operator has access to cheap gas.