We are in an age of globalisation, where there is great uniformity of production and product and where most of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases are global companies. We have come to assume that solutions will also be globalised because that is the way things have evolved historically. But are things changing?

As we all know, transportation is at the forefront of the emissions debate and motor vehicles are becoming a legislative target for emissions reduction. There are many new engine technologies in the market which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide and they can with the right kind of support and will, be deployed now. The introduction of hybrids is one example.

What is becoming very evident is that a low carbon economy will require multiple and often localised solutions for energy needs because clean energy will vary significantly in price depending on your location and in the case of vehicles, the clean energy sources available. At the moment Governments, foolishly, are taking a technology neutral stance. This has meant that companies investing in energy technology, particularly big companies do not know where to concentrate their R & D pounds, while every company knows that the global commodity oil might not be replaced by another global commodity for energy. Instead it might be bio fuels for Brazil, biomass for Sweden, wind and wave for the UK. In the case of the car industry this will mean replacing a single technology, the combustion engine that uses hydro carbons, with potentially several types of engine technology for the same car depending on cheapest source of local clean energy.

If this is the case, then car manufacturers will be splitting R & D budgets, and those budgets for that reason will need to be bigger. There are suggestions that the clean energy solutions for cars in Europe might encompass at least five types of technology because what might be cheap clean energy in Spain to power a car is not cheap in Denmark.

Governments need to start to grasp this and give manufacturers and their suppliers, their preferences on clean technology so that business can work in a more certain environment. In a shareholder focused corporate world, certainty and direction, supported by legislation is the best way to attract investment within large companies and also from the public.

Governments now have enough knowledge on energy costs and solutions to provide a lead. If they did, not only would an industry like transport be able to focus its options but the infrastructure to support the deployment and maintenance of the clean energy technology can also move forward.

After all, if the Government can prescribe to the media industry a switch from analogue to digital frequencies for radio and television by a prescribed date, why can’t it do the same for say clean car technology?