Rural revitalisers

Oliver Tickell talks to Calor Gas’s Paul Blacklock

[gfimage id="147"]Village of the year: Great Bentley[/gfimage] Companies whose business is squarely based on fossil fuels are hardly flavour-of-the-month these days. But Calor Gas has won spurs from Greenpeace for its work on ‘greenfreeze’ fridges, and it is emerging as a key supporter of community initiatives in the countryside.
This isn’t surprising, since it has always had a strong rural focus, as Marketing Manager Paul Blacklock explains. “It was founded in 1935 by a bunch of Wiltshire farmers in a pub in Salisbury.” They had realised the need for portable energy sources in homes and farms far from mains services. Even today, over three-quarters of Calor’s sales are in rural areas, and it has stockists in almost every village.
It’s the strength of that network which has encouraged the company to help tackle one of the hidden tragedies of the countryside: fuel poverty. Hidden, says Blacklock, because “apart from a few old mining and industrial villages where the main employer has closed down, it’s very hard to identify sufferers from outside. Mostly it’s something that afflicts a farm cottage here, a small council estate there. As a result, the government is struggling to target the right homes. So we have offered to help using our geographical database which covers the whole of Britain, and to reach out through our network of stockists in post offices, village shops and filling stations.”
Reviving villages is at the heart of any rural agenda, which Calor recognises through its sponsorship of the Village of the Year Award. “This is about communities doing it for themselves,” says Blacklock. “It encourages initiatives across a wide range of areas – environment, business, community life.” 1998’s winners, Llanbadarn Fynydd, completely revitalised their village, and ended up launching a co-operative to sell local farmers’ Welsh lamb (www.lambdirect.co.uk). It’s a dramatic evolution of the Best Kept Village Award, which Calor also sponsored. “That was about how things looked: this is all about the sustainability of the rural community in its widest sense.”
Calor Gas is also backing Rural Futures, a new initiative promoting debate on how to provide a ‘positive future’ for the countryside, beyond its crude characterisation as a place of ‘angry farmers and foxhunters’. The initiative groups environmental campaigners such as Friends of the Earth and land rights movement The Land is Ours, with more mainstream bodies such as the National Trust and Women’s Institutes, along with Young Farmers’ Clubs and representatives of family farms.
Its excellent website hosts debates with the likes of ex-Greenpeace director Peter Melchett and writer Chris Rose on key issues such as local production and rural identity.

Calor Gas, 01926 318773
www.villageoftheyear.org
www.ruralfutures.org

Liquefied power
Key to Calor Gas’s business success is LPG – liquefied petroleum gas. It may be a fossil fuel, says Blacklock, but that does not mean it’s all bad for the planet. “Moving to a non-carbon economy is not easy, and there will be stages to go through,” he says. “It may take 50 years for the full transition to take place. LPG is an intermediate step – which is cheaper, safer and cleaner than petrol.”
“To take one example, we’re developing a whole new set of products for quad bikes, which are much quicker for getting around the farm than tractors – but if they’re running on petrol at pump prices, very expensive.”
The company’s most ambitious venture yet is to supply fuels for cars, with the aim of displacing petrol as the vehicle fuel of choice. “LPG puts less wear on the engine, the oil lasts longer and emissions are lower.” Thanks to a cut in duty, LPG is now half the price of petrol on the forecourt – more than enough to compensate for the 10-15% reduction in mpg. Petrol cars can be readily converted and, following a £4 million investment by Calor Gas, LPG will be available in over 1,000 filling stations around Britain by the end of this year.

29 July 2001

Oliver Tickell