Doctor used 'human fat to power car'

A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who claims to have turned fat, extricated in liposuction, into biofuel for his car has skipped town after US officials raided his surgery in an investigation into his procedures.

Dr Craig Alan Bittner, who runs the Liposculpture clinic on Rodeo Drive, said that he had created “lipodiesel” with his patients’ excess subcutaneous fat.

The cosmetic surgeon told Forbes.com that he used the blubber to power two cars including his four-wheel-drive Ford.

Dr Bittner is under investigation by the California Department of Public Health because it is illegal in the state to use human medical waste to power vehicles.

In addition, WIRED magazine cast doubt on Dr Bittner’s claim that he used the lipodiesel to power his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator – which it said does not have a diesel model.

It said the whole scheme could be a hoax inspired by the film Fight Club, in which Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durden uses waste from liposuction to make soap.

Dr Bittner left a message on his clinic’s website on November 20 to tell clients he was moving to South America to volunteer at a small clinic “where I can help those most in need.”

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'The time of cheap gas is coming to an end'

Russian premier Vladimir Putin sent shivers down the spines of Western consumers today with a chilling warning that gas bills are set to soar.

To ram home the point, he oversaw the setting up of a new international Opec-style 'cartel' of gas producers - unofficially led by Moscow - which critics fear will seek to fix output and prices paid by users.

'Costs of exploration, gas production and transportation are going up - it means the industry's development costs will skyrocket,' said Putin.

'The time of cheap energy resources, cheap gas is surely coming to an end.'

It was the second day in succession that the Kremlin hardman entered the fray in what Western diplomats increasingly see as a policy of 'gas imperialism', holding consumers to ransom because there are often no other available sources of cheaper energy.

On Monday, his government warned that gas supplies to Britain and the rest of Europe could be disrupted during the New Year as part of a battle by Moscow to force its neighbour Ukraine to pay off debts and accept a huge hike in prices for the future.

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ScottishPower to Cut Energy Bills for Ages 60 and Over on Welfare Benefits

ENERGY provider ScottishPower has announced a new social tariff for its most vulnerable customers.

The firm said it will offer annual savings of up to GBP211, available from January and the social tariff will be open to customers who are aged 60 or above and in receipt of a social welfare benefit.

The saving was announced with a range of measures, including spending GBP10m on the tariff programme over the next 14 weeks - which will help an estimated 230,000 customers this winter.

ScottishPower said the tariff was part of a GBP240m investment over the next three years in social measures and energy efficiency programmes that will deliver "a comprehensive range of fuel poverty and energy efficiency initiatives that will help lift customers out of fuel poverty and reduce bills".

Willie MacDiarmid, ScottishPower's retail director, said: "The social tariff is an important part of our combined approach to help our most vulnerable customers.

"We believe discounted prices, together with access to energy efficiency measures and benefits health checks, will provide customers with a sustainable approach to address each element known to contribute to fuel poverty - the cost of fuel, the energy efficiency of the property and the household income.

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We must turn up the green heat of technology

The idea of being able to solve both our economic problems and climate change by building a low-carbon economy is enormously attractive. But it looks as though some countries had their Green New Deal years ago.

Take wind power, a huge growth area. We don't make a single wind turbine in Britain. We import from Spain, Germany and Denmark, which got the wind in their sails long ago and now have 90 per cent of all the industry jobs. Or nuclear. We have only one postgraduate nuclear engineering course - at Manchester University. Our nuclear engineers are as few and ageing as our nuclear plants. The consensus seems to be that any new plants will be built mostly with French and American components, and French labour.

Even solar energy is dominated by Germany, where nearly half a million houses have solar roofs because its Government pays above-market rates for individuals selling power back to the grid. You can argue about the specifics of the subsidies. But they have given Germany a market lead. Britain has ambitions to becoming the leading exporter of carbon capture and storage technology. But the kind of demonstration plant it wants to build is already being constructed in China.

Wave and tidal power are a better bet: Britain has some of the world's leading marine engineering companies. Bain & Co, the consulting firm, thinks that the UK could create 2,100 tidal jobs by 2020. That is a trickle, though the export potential must be higher. Offshore wind might generate 57,000 UK jobs, according to Bain - but the Danes are ahead of us there too.

Behind the audacity of hope lies the prosaic reality that green jobs in Britain may be few, at least in the short term, and most will require the kind of brawn that is needed to insulate people's homes, not the kind of brain that generates high-value exports. We still have clever designers and scientists, but someone else is making the kit. John Rose, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce, said recently that we have acted “as if innovation and creativity were not words appropriately associated with manufacturing”. Britain thinks of itself as “post-industrial” - but the energy revolution will involve enormous amounts of manufacturing, which we should be part of.

Britain is behind the green curve for two reasons: lack of funding and lack of clarity for investors. In a paper published this week by the think-tank Policy Exchange (of which I am a trustee) Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy at Oxford, argues that Britain's energy policy is no longer fit for purpose. Britain's liberalised energy markets were created in the 1980s when we produced more oil and gas than we needed. The main objective was to bring prices down. Today we need energy supplies to be secure and low-carbon - not something that the liberalised market will naturally create. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said this week that the Government must be more interventionist. He is right. But the Government needs to stop dithering on regulation and set a clear price for carbon - the price of pollution - beyond 2020. That will give businesses the certainty they need to invest in green technology.

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