Conclusions

Life on this planet depends on energy for its very existence. We need controllable energy to feed
and nurture our families, provide heat and light, and transport goods and people to their
destinations. Industry and businesses need energy to produce the goods and services we
demand.
But there can be a downside. Every year countless numbers of the earth's population have their
lives cut short, or suffer serious illness through exposure to combustion pollutants. The social and economic consequences are enormous, but can be minimized by using cleaner fuels.
Making “clean fuel” choices can directly help to improve the wellbeing of whole communities.
Improvements in public health flowing from the use of cleaner fuels not only reduces the cost of
providing health care and social services, but also contributes to the broader economy by helping to avoid the impacts of diminished productivity. Solid fuels, ranging from coal, through to wood, crop waste and even animal dung can, when used for cooking and heating, expose families to dangerous levels of pollution – often 20 or even 100 times higher than recommended maximum limits. The use of wood as a combustion fuel represents not only a highly visible consumption of our limited forest resources, but also has a very high impact on the environment and consequently on our health. Unfortunately the communities most affected by the use of these fuels are often also the poorest, so reliance must be placed on governments and aid agencies to direct more emphasis and resources towards programs to alleviate the intense suffering that results from the use of these dangerous energy sources.
Even the commonplace and convenient liquid fuels, such as diesel and gasoline, continue to
create serious levels of pollution in most developed countries, despite ever-tighter regulation of
the appliances and vehicles using these fuels. To illustrate this, the table below summarises and compares the pollutant and greenhouse emission characteristics of the principal transport fuels, relative to gasoline as a baseline (Anyon,
2002).
Gasoline Diesel CNG LP GAS
Gaseous Pollutants O O √ √
Particulates O X √ √
GHG Emissions O √ √ √
Air Toxics O X √ √
(Legend: √=better, O=neutral, X=worse, ?=Uncertain
Overall, LP Gas rates very highly and gives little or no ground to any others in the table, across all of the features considered to be of greatest importance in a general-purpose fuel. With its
intrinsically clean burning characteristics, LP Gas offers a practical avenue towards cleaning up the air we breathe.
As well as outperforming most traditional fuels, from a health perspective, LP Gas is readily
available, convenient and is frequently a lower cost alternative to other energy sources.