As prices at the pump hit eye-watering levels more people are turning to home-made biofuel as an abundant, cheap and tax-free alternative to traditional fossil fuels
By Allan Burnett

I AM motoring up the A9, past the majestic Cairngorms, and all I can think about is how far I will get before I have to barter an arm or a leg for a tank of diesel, which hit £1.45 a litre in some northern parts earlier this year. To take my mind off the fuel gauge, I turn on the radio: Russia has invaded neighbouring Georgia, the apparent prize being control of a lucrative oil pipeline. I change the channel: it's a debate about the credit crunch - should Brown and Darling be doing more than merely postponing a 2p rise in fuel duty? I turn it off.

Eventually, I reach Inverness and have to surrender my vehicle to the laws of physics. So will it be ultimate high-performance diesel with an enhanced price tag? Let's see: did I rob a bank on my way through Newtonmore? I'll have the regular stuff, please.

You don't have to be a driver to be worried about the price of oil. With fuel shooting up commercial transport costs are rising, and so basics such as bread are becoming more expensive. What's more, the heavy showers on this August afternoon seem to be hammering home the message that C02 emissions created by burnt fossil fuels - petrol, diesel, aircraft kerosene and gas - come at a price potentially far more ruinous than anything money can solve. The worst bit is that many of us feel powerless to do anything about it. We don't set the oil prices. Nor do we make the planes, trains and automobiles that guzzle the gas and belch out the smoke. And we certainly don't collect the fuel duty or the vast profits.

But things could be about to change. Very radically. I am on a quest to meet the people who have decided they are not going to put up with this situation any more. From what I have learned beforehand, their response is not, as you might expect, to get on their bikes. Quite the opposite. They want to drive wherever and whenever they like, on fuel that is plentiful and cheap - we're talking seriously, tax-free, dirt cheap - and they are taking matters into their own hands to get it.

My first stop is in the boondocks of Inverness-shire, outside the village of Kiltarlity. A family of four apparently recently bought a contraption from a business called Goat Industries based in southern England which allows them to make their own road fuel at home. At the end of a tangle of single-track country roads, I locate the entrance to the smallholding of the Bawden clan and coax my car up the cratered track between the trees to the house. Andy Bawden, dressed in a blue boiler suit and pink T-shirt, is waiting outside.

I'm an hour late, but at least the sun has come out. "You found us eventually then," he says with a guarded chuckle, looking me up and down. Bawden is initially wary of discussing his home-made fuel, but during a tour of the six-acre smallholding he shares with his wife and two daughters, the self-employed builder opens up. "The French have the right idea when it comes to fuel protesting," he says in an earthy English accent with a slight Celtic lilt. "They just won't have it. But us British, we just queue up and do what we're told. Of course, the French had a proper revolution and we haven't - yet - but I'm not going to go down that road with you." Another guarded laugh. For a moment I wonder whether Bawden might be hatching some revolutionary plot to upset the established order.

In a quiet way, revolution is precisely what Bawden is all about. "There it is," he says, as we stand in his garage before his secret weapon. The Twyn Tub 150 may have a name that sounds like an old-fashioned washing machine, but with its military-green livery and its important-looking dials and valves it is a serious bit of kit. The Bawdens have had it for a few weeks, after it was installed for them on site. Bawden picks up a wooden stick and uses it as a pointer to show me how it works. His demeanour becomes like that of an army general with a hint of Willy Wonka, and I feel like a kid in a sweet factory: I really hope he will give me some home-made fuel for the next stage of my journey. But first I must pay attention.

The fuel in question is pure 100% biodiesel. It's spectacularly cheaper than regular mineral - meaning fossil-fuel - diesel and produces virtually no harmful greenhouse gases. It is also a mysterious substance: lots of people are talking about biodiesel, but few actually know very much. You can't buy it in the "normal" way, on a forecourt, as you would petrol or regular diesel. And that is where machines like this come in, producing 100% biodiesel that meets the European standard for use in ordinary diesel cars.

"Now then," says Bawden, waving his pointer. "You've got two big drums. Into the first one goes 200 litres of the raw material, which is waste food oil that we get from a local restaurant. The whole process takes a few days, after which the stuff comes out as a finished product here." He points to the hose used for filling up the family car.

With several hazardous-sounding chemicals involved, not to mention an inflammable end product, I have to ask: how safe is it? "You hear about biodiesel being mixed in bathtubs and that's just crazy. People have been burned and seriously injured doing that. But this equipment here is perfectly safe provided you know what you are doing. A training course is given as part of the installation."

Bawden estimates that his total cost, taking everything into account, is around 50p per litre. I do a quick mental calculation: fill up the tank with 50 litres and that's £25. The price at the pumps for the same amount? £60 if you're lucky. Bawden tries his best not to look smug.

We go outside to look at the vehicle that runs on this miraculous moonshine. "Hello," comes a cheery voice from the back door of the house. It's Bawden's wife, Dot. Like her husband, Dot is originally from Devon. The couple met back in the days when he was a biker and she a biker chick. Now in their late 40s, the pair came up to the Highlands seeking, as Bawden puts it, "the good life". They put all their money into this bit of land and built their own house. That was around eight years ago.

"People accuse me of driving to work in a Chelsea tractor," says Dot pointing at the Range Rover parked in the drive, which the couple run on their biodiesel. They bought the 4x4 second-hand and, judging by the number plate, it is about 13 years old now. Having just coaxed my regular road car around a minefield of potholes to get here, I can vouch that this is certainly not Chelsea and they really do need a vehicle like this.

For the Bawdens, making their own fuel is part of a larger plan. When they describe themselves as living like the couple from The Good Life, they are not kidding. "We are not completely self sufficient yet," says Dot. "But we are trying to get into that mode," adds Bawden. "We don't bother with a dustbin. We take everything to the recycling stations in the village and in Beauly."

"We also grow our own organic veg." Bawden shows me a box of plump mangetouts, broad beans, potatoes and onions. "We sell this and our free-range eggs in the summer and the money is used to buy meat from a local farmer that we put in the freezer for the winter.

"The whole thing is about reconnecting as a community. It's a way of people helping each other to be self-sufficient." As I prepare to leave, Bawden hands me the treasure I have been waiting for: a container of his finest home-made biodiesel. I put it in the boot and remind myself to buy a plastic funnel at a garage so I can pour it in.

I wonder whether the Bawdens' reliance on home-made biodiesel could help insulate them from economic storms in the outside world. "The increase in fuel prices has terrible consequences," Bawden says before I leave. "Supermarkets are so reliant on oil like aircraft kerosene to bring all this out-of-season food to us from places like South Africa and Chile. So when the price of kerosene goes up, the food cost goes up. But this is just the start of it. I think things are going to get a lot worse."

THE weather turns nasty again as I stop at Inverness to pour the Bawden biodiesel into my car, safe in the knowledge that it can be mixed with regular mineral diesel without any problems. The rumour is that biodiesel makes your car smell "like a chippy" because it's made from cooking oil. In fact, the stuff smells not unpleasantly like wood varnish. My next stop is in Fife, outside the village of Leslie, near Glenrothes. I have been told that a businessman there called Jim Haig, whose small firm Brenton Homes makes kit houses, is also making his own biodiesel.

"I used to work in a distillery," Haig tells me over a coffee in his office. "But some clever person invented technology that could do my job. So I took voluntary redundancy and set up this business in 1999. It has grown and now employs six people."

But that growth was before the recent dramatic downturn in the housing industry. "Like other companies, we want to cut costs," says Haig. "But I've spent nine years building a team and I don't want to make anybody redundant. I was drawn to an article in a newspaper about biodiesel, and it got me thinking: What does a company spend on fuel in a year?' Answer: a lot."

Haig began researching biodiesel on the web and came across Goat Industries - the same firm that got the Bawdens up and running. "We contacted Patrick Whetman, the owner, and he came up a few weeks ago and installed the equipment and trained us," says Haig. "Over the course of the day we made our first batch of bio and he used it as his fuel for the journey home." Haig imparts this fact with an incredulous laugh, suggesting he still can't quite believe the machine actually does what it says on the tin. I am similarly disbelieving when he tells me how much his biodiesel costs: 10p per litre. That's around five or six quid for a full tank. "Bloody hell," I blurt out unprofessionally. Haig smiles and nods.

We cross the warehouse, which once housed a hydro-powered paper mill, to the area where Haig has installed his Twyn Tub 150. Using waste cooking oil uplifted from local nursing homes, Haig is able to make enough biodiesel to run his business van and lorry. Haig points out, however, that great as biodiesel is, it isn't hassle-free. "People are using biodiesel very carefully. When people like us contact vehicle manufacturers we are often told, No, it is not recommended'. But the question people should be asking is: Why won't it work?' Surely manufacturers could come up with solutions to the technical problems."

It's a far from unreasonable request considering that the 19th-century German inventor Rudolf Diesel actually designed his engine to run on vegetable oil, not fossil-fuels.

Presumably there are other pitfalls. Isn't it illegal to make your own fuel without paying duty? No: provided Haig doesn't produce more than 2500 litres a year - plenty for a small business like his - he doesn't have to pay any tax on it. The same goes for the Bawdens. For that very reason, however, Haig is sceptical about how long things can stay as they are. "If just 10% of people in the country began making their own fuel, the government's takings in duty would plummet. You've got to wonder, would the government allow that situation to carry on?"

The biodiesel revolution also faces a further obstacle. "There is not enough waste cooking oil out there for everyone," explains Haig. "Sure, there are alternatives. Farmers could be growing crops such as rape seed to make biodiesel, but some people argue that's unethical, that the land should be used for growing food."

The effect on world food supplies if everybody began using biodiesel would be calamitous, say the critics. But with so much farmland in Europe lying idle because of over-production, the issue is perhaps not so black and white. Supporters of biodiesel say local communities growing crops for their own biodiesel is the sustainable way to go.

Besides, as Haig points out, growing crops for transport is nothing new. "Land was used to grow crops to feed horses, which were then used to transport food and other goods."

Commendably, the government is trying to ensure increased biodiesel production does not inadvertently harm the environment. In April, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation was introduced. This measure aims to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions by three million tonnes a year by 2010 through greater use of biofuel, and to ensure this does not negatively affect food crops.

I leave Fife and return to Glasgow. I've made it home on a blend of dirty fossil fuel and clean, home-made biofuel. A small step on the road towards the bio revolution. Of course, there are those who would say I needn't have bothered going all that way. One of Europe's biggest biodiesel plants, run by Argent Energy, is near Motherwell and supplies major fuel distributors. From this and other sources, drivers across the country are already unwittingly taking on small amounts of biodiesel so that the government can meet its emissions targets. It's a blend of 5% biodiesel to 95% fossil-fuel diesel and comes out of the regular pump. But such a percentage pays only lip service to cleaner fuel. Nor does it come cheap - it is after all the very same £1.25-a-litre, fully taxed stuff all us diesel drivers have been buying of late.

My road trip has taught me that we don't have to wait for the oil companies or supermarkets to decide when we can buy genuinely clean, green and affordable fuel. There is an alternative, which, provided you check the suitability of your car and get the right equipment, does seem to put the power in your hands. "I must admit we were worried by the recent fuel protest," Haig told me before I left Fife. "You are at the mercy of the pumps, which could run dry. But now it's nice to know we can be self-sufficient whatever happens."