Earthrace skipper Pete Bethune, says the futuristic-looking boat- which has been built to break the official round-the-world speed record by a powerboat and is in London this week- is a "promotion for renewable fuels".
Not surprisingly, then the Earthrace team wax lyrical about biodiesel:
- it is renewable fuel, unlike fossil fuels, which will eventually run out
- it results in increased regional employment
- if there is a biodiesel spill the fuel with be 95% biodegradable within 30 days
- if is safer to handle and easier to transport than diesel
- it has less emissions in almost all categories compared with petrodiesel
- it reduces dependence on foreign oil
- it retains more of your foreign exchange earnings at home.
One of its greatest advantages, they add, is that it can be made from so many different products. The most common forms of feed stocked used now are canola in Europe and soya bean in the USA but there are over 350 other crops that can also be used. These include coconut, palm oil, mustard seed, sunflower and jatropha.
In the future, countries will simply use the feedstocks more suited to their environment say Eathrace. Many countries such as Africa, Asia and South America have active and growing biodiesel programmes underway. Saudia Arabia for example is planting crops of Jatropha which will in the future be used as an energy crop.
In their haste to run a boat on exclusively 100% biodiesel that aims to do 26,000 miles in 65 days, they obviously failed to consult environmental groups.
If they had, they would have discovered that green fuels have the potential to do huge damage not only to the climate, but to the world's food supply.
RSPB, WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth warn that by clearing rainforests and wetlands to make way for arable land, biofuels could release far more carbon into the atmosphere than could ever hope to saved by replacing fossil fuels.
Biofuels produced at the expense of forests, peat land and natural grasslands in places such as Brazil and Indonesia, will add huge volumes of C02 into the atmosphere as well as destroying the natural habit of critically endangered species such as orang-utans they point out. Making biodiesel from soy planted on cleared rainforest takes 200 years before it could be considered carbon neutral.
RSPB director of conservation, Mark Avery, has gone as far as to suggest that without environmental standards, biofuels will be "little more than a green con".
The expansion of crops such a palm oil is also linked to the loss of indigenous people's land rights, human rights abuse and the destruction of local communities' natural resources.
So if Bethune and crew were really concerned about climate change wouldn't they have been better off staying at home? But then they wouldn't get to travel the world on a promotional tour of more than 60 cities and potentially enter the record books next year.