The Theatrical Events Company (TTEC)

From The Age… dated June 26 2007…

“Smorgon heir puts money into green service stations” “At a tiny service station in High Street, Prahran, under the brand name Conservo, Mr Edwards and his business partners will start selling E10 (unleaded petrol blended with 10 per cent ethanol), B20 (diesel blended with 20 per cent biodiesel) and B100 (100 per cent biodiesel) to the public. E10 is suitable for use in all petrol vehicles and both the B20 and the B100 can be used in standard diesel engines. The fuels all have claimed lower carbon emissions than standard petrol and diesel.”

I drove across to Prahran today to get a haircut. For me, a normal trip to Prahran would be via public transport, as that side of town is congested, busy and has little parking. But i remembered this morning that my car, a 1994 Toyota 4Runner (3.2lt 4 cylinder diesel) was low on petrol, so i made the decision to drive and select one of the two diesel fuels on offer at Conservo. The two fuels on offer were B20 (20% bio diesel, and 80% petrol diesel) which i have used before, and B100 (100% bio diesel) which i had planned to try this morning and ‘bite the bullet’ so to speak.

My car had previously run quite well on B20, and had cured ‘Jack’ (my car) of an idling problem that previously required constant adjustment of the choke. I believe the reason it cured the car of this problem was due to its thinner liquid content. Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with this new service station, it is an entirely new concept, and the coming together of some great people, a few businessman, a few environmentalists, a marketing manager and a lawyer. Who would have thought? The service station is owned by the Victor Smorgan Groups biofuel company Energetix, and incorporates the selling of biofuels with an environmental ideas shop, an organic cafe, carshare facilities, and a car park (for increase revenue).

I had done a great deal of research on bio fuels, sourcing information from both sides of the debate. Currently there are three main service stations offering a complete package of biofuel options. See here for more information. Once immersed in biofuel information, i soon found out that both sides of this complex debate have their extreme activists and critics. I spoke to a generator hire company owner who essentially told me that i was a “f**kwit” if i chose to put that “f**king c**p” in my car engine. I also spoke to a bio fuel producer, who currently runs his car on homemade biodiesel and claims that cars were really designed for use with biofuels, but that there was a conspiracy run by a few rich men who owned oil companies. The amount of information available on the internet is vast and most of it is reliable. There are forum and homepage sites for most states and territories in Australia. A simple Google search will open up the information floodgates!

From Conservo Homepage (today) July 8th 2008…

“The Conservo pilot at 118 High St, Prahran was a resounding success. We are now on the lookout for a new, long term, site.”

Thats right, i turn up at Conservo, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside to think that my car can run virtually carbon neutral for a week or so, and am confronted with a barren, stripped petrol station for lease. No cafe, no petrol pumps, no rain water tanks, no carshare spots, no carpark, no organic snacks, no biofuel, and no conservo. Now my detective skills tell me that that message on the conservo website was placed there as long ago as June 29th (thank you google caching), but what i want to know is…

What went wrong?