Texte du reportage consacré à Valenergol qui est passé sur BBC World récemment.

Document fournit le 8 janvier 2002

par Joêl G. un Internaute membre de notre liste de diffusion

Well, yesterday we heard from a viewer asking how important it is for big oil companies to diversify into alternative sources of energy; one place the oil majors might look for inspiration is the south of France as a band of ecologists there and farmers have managed to prove just how easy and how cheap it is to develop alternative fuel sources; but their entrepreneurial skill has not gone down too well with the French government. Christopher Bockman reports.

Like millions of other commuters school teacher Henri Barbe drives to work every morning; unlike most other motorists he never stops at his local petrol station: that’s because Barbe is one of around a hundred people living in a rural part of south west France who’ve swapped their fuel from diesel to sunflower oil. Barbe’s old Peugeot engine has no problem accepting sunflower oil and running the car is now cheaper; he saves about $7 every time he fills up.

“Right now I’m driving at the same speed as before, I can accelerate exactly the same manner, I can go above the speed limit on a country road or even a motorway, the only thing that’s changed is it’s less expensive.”

Seven years ago a small group of ecologists got together and studied some manuals; they turned locally-grown sunflower seeds into sunflower oil which can go on to cars run on diesel and no changes to the engines were needed; it turns out no big a refinery to produce sunflower oil in needed either; in fact for around $5,000, Alain Juste, an ecologist, who’s run unsuccessfully for office for the Green Party and his colleagues created their own company called Valenergol which presses dried sunflower seeds, the oil squeezed out of the seeds is then put through crude filters to take out impurities that might clog up motors. It’s that simple, and that’s what go the people behind this enterprise in trouble: the company was raided by French Customs officials and then taken to court by the Ministry of Finance for not paying fuel duties to the government.

“The state says we owe money, but it’s making a big mistake in saying that, if this business was exonerated it would provide more revenue for the government than if it did not exist. All companies are exempt from paying taxes on new energy resources, there should be the same rules for everyone.”

These cows grazing in the fields may be Valenergol’s secret weapon: the cows are eating pellets made of nothing less than the shells of the same sunflower seeds used to produce the oil; the cows like it and many farmers in the region no longer have to import as much animal feed from the United States.

Until the next court hearing the tractors will continue to run on nothing less than sunflower oil and the cows will continue to chew on sunflower seeds.

That is Christopher Bockman reporting, but Christopher, were there any Black-Eyed Susans in there?