The Future's…Silent!

3.25.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 27th May 2005

Local councillors from Monmouthshire were told that local government has a huge part to play in the global effort to combat climate change and greenhouse gas emissions at a conference on combating global warming.

The added bonus is that future cars and vans could well be silent!

Phil Hobson, Liberal Democrat group leader on the county council said, "The conference showed us how we can lead the effort to combat our energy use and promote energy efficiency. There's a huge amount of central government money out there to help us achieve tough targets - we're just not doing anywhere enough to get government funding."

"A speaker from Aberdeen City Council should us how they are reducing energy consumption in housing and council buildings by applying for government funding. Their results are very impressive. We need to be doing the same", he added.

County Councillor Douglas Edwards from Abergavenny (Lib Dem, Grofield Ward) said, "The Liberal Democrats are committed in seeing that Monmouthshire becomes a leader in energy efficiency as the county is becoming in recycling record amounts of household waste. We did that through working with a number of organisations and external funding."

He added, "We know how to go about getting government money to achieve environmental targets, we just have to have the will to commit ourselves to this important effort."

During the conference both Phil Hobson and Doug Edwards test drove new energy efficient cars and vans - some purely electric and some using liquid petroleum gas or a combination of both, known as 'hybrids'.

"The fully electric car was like turning on a computer. Press the on button and wait for the car to 'power up'. What was amazing is that the cars were virtually silent. The future of road vehicles means environmentally friendly cars and the added bonus of eliminating traffic noise. The future's silent!" said Phil Hobson.

Douglas Edwards added, "We also saw commercials vans which the county council could start to look into buying when current parts of the council's fleet of vehicles become obsolete. The conference organisers showed us that although more expensive (at present) than the usual petrol versions, these new vans would pay for themselves in two years. We really will need to look into this."