Andy Pag on what sustainable travel gets wrong, and where real change starts

Few people have tested the limits of sustainable travel as relentlessly as Andy Pag. A former BBC journalist, TEDx speaker and hands-on eco-adventurer, he has spent years turning bold ideas into real-world experiments, from waste-fuelled vehicles to low-carbon journeys across continents.

As an environment & sustainability expert, Pag brings something sharper than theory alone. His work sits at the point where climate, transport, technology and social justice collide, shaped as much by what happens on the road as by what gets debated in policy circles.

What gives this conversation its edge is the way Pag talks about sustainability without stripping out complexity. He is as interested in what works, what fails and what still does not add up as he is in the optimism needed to keep pushing forward.

In this exclusive interview with the Sustainability Speakers Agency, Andy Pag reflects on the journeys that shaped his thinking, the limits of technological fixes, and why genuine curiosity still matters when tackling global environmental challenges.

Q1: Your work frames sustainable travel through both experiment and ethics. What first drew you to that space?

Andy Pag: “So, my background, I've done a number of trips which could be described as sustainable. I've driven around the world in a truck that I've pulled out of a scrapyard and converted to run on used cooking oil.

“I was scavenging used cooking oil from the back of restaurants in countries all the way around the world to power that journey. I've driven, probably most famously, to Timbuktu in a chocolate-powered lorry. 

“That was fuel made from chocolate, a biodiesel that was made from waste chocolate. Who knew there was such a thing as waste chocolate? I've also organised rallies for cars running on used cooking oil across Europe. We called it the Greece to Grease Rally. And then, away from vehicles, I've cycled across South America. 

“I've sailed from Greece to New Zealand, and I've paraglided around the Himalayas. So, these are all kinds of ways I've explored travelling around without using fossil fuels, and this very much sets me up as that kind of do-good sustainable eco-hero that's going to make everybody feel guilty about taking the weekend break to Barcelona, and that's really not what I'm about.

“These trips have all come around, as I say, as experiments to see if there's a way of doing what I enjoy doing in a more sustainable way. And the inspiration, where it started off, was not even really about carbon footprints. It's more about social justice. 

“So, I used to buy old MOT-failed cars in Germany, and I used to drive them down through Europe and across the Sahara Desert and sell them in West Africa. And these trips were a great way of exploring parts of the world that I hadn't seen before and learning about other parts of the world.

“And there was a sort of, I like to post-rationalise that there was a sustainable element in that I was recycling these vehicles. But the reality was, they tended to be big 4x4s, big gas guzzlers. And there came a point when I was in Marley in 2008, and there was a place where there's basically a bus line that runs across the whole country. And this is the lifeblood of the country. 

“I was in a small village, a bus pulled up and all these ladies came running to the bus to sell their wares. This bus is not only a transport lifeline, but it's an economic lifeline. So, it's a way money comes in and out of the village.

“At the time, in 2008, oil price had hit $100 a barrel. It was the highest it had ever been. And a lot of the buses couldn't afford to run because the cost of fuel was so expensive. And I was sitting on the bonnet of my gas-guzzling 4x4. 

“And it kind of occurred to me that my contribution to the supply and demand curve of crude oil was part of the big wheels that are turning to make that situation, and one of the consequences was that, in this tiny village, people were feeling that economic burden.

“So that's really where my interest in initially biofuels and then later sustainable travel in all sorts came about. It was more from a social justice point of view.

“So, these days I kind of talk about those trips. I talk about the experiments that I've done, the journeys that I've done, how each one has led to the next sort of iteration of thinking of, all right, well that sort of worked and that didn't work, so what's the next step? 

“And as well as the different technologies and different means of travel, I've also kind of evolved in my thinking of what sustainability actually means. My favourite definition is that sustainability is about ensuring the needs of future generations without compromising the needs of people today.

“So, there's quite a lot in that short sentence. Specifically, there's this idea of needs rather than wants. Often this idea that environmental do-gooders just want everyone to be miserable and just have your needs and nothing more than that. But there's also a kind of important idea of ensuring people's needs today.

“I think often in the sustainability debate that gets lost, and people feel threatened by the changes that come with creating sustainable solutions to the problems that we have, and they feel that there's a sort of rationing.

“Really, the sustainability issue in my head is the end game is to ensure the well-being of humanity, and that's how you do that, which is a compromise between rationing the resources we're using today compared with the damage that that might do in the future.

“So really that's the kind of journey I've been on, not only the road trips and the sailing trips that I've been on. And I include anecdotes from those journeys. But it's also about that journey and understanding what sustainability really means.”

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Q2: To what extent can technology genuinely decarbonise travel, and where are its limits?

Andy Pag: “There was an era, back in the early noughties, where people first cottoned onto this idea of using used cooking oil to fuel their cars, and it became very popular as a sort of garage hobby thing to do. And then the competition for getting oil from restaurants became increasingly difficult, and then the waste oil started to have a value. So, then there was a cost involved. 

“And then, actually, what happened is that that whole process got consolidated by biodiesel producers who were making fuel in a much more efficient way. It was kind of hard luck for the garage enthusiasts like myself, but actually, overall, it was quite a positive thing.

“In terms of technology, it's really nice to think, when you think about the climate crisis and the way we use energy, it's lovely to think that there's going to be some technological panacea out there that's going to solve everything.

“Electrification is certainly working wonders in terms of cars, public and personal transport, and rail networks, and the electrification of our grid. 

“Those are really great solutions. They work really well, and what's really uplifting and positive to think about is that they are happening at pace.

“You look at the pace at which the UK is rolling out the electrification of the grid. It is absolutely amazing. And actually, the UK is not even one of the fastest countries around the world that are doing it. So, there's reason to be really positive there.

“There are some forms of travel that I personally don't think that, in my lifetime, we'll see carbon-free versions of. So, freight transportation. It's very difficult for logistical reasons for freight transport to be electrified in terms of charging times and downtime for vehicles. 

“There's a kind of economic pressure on freight transport that makes that very difficult. Planes, the amount of energy you need, the battery technology is evolving, but again, I don't think in my lifetime we'll see electric-powered planes that can do even short-haul distances at the sort of speed and in the way we use jet planes at the moment.

“And so, there are technological solutions that can help in one respect, but some solutions have to be more societal. We have to think about how we use resources in a more sustainable way and think about really how we make those societal value judgements.

“I think with plane travel, it's a difficult one. It always becomes a really contentious issue to talk about, but I think, really, we have to value plane travel in a very different way. We live in a world, certainly in the developed world, where we have connections that are very far away. 

“Our lives have kind of grown in a way that our social networks are expanded, and that's been facilitated by plane travel, and if you were to suddenly turn that off, then that's a difficult challenge to solve.

“My mother lives in Turkey. I like to go and see my mother. There's not really the option to drive. It's too far away. So how do you reconcile those things?

“I think that has to be something that is decided on a societal level, how we valorise the resources that go with plane travel in a way that means that they're fairly used and responsibly used with respect to the people who are at the other end of the climate crisis consequences.

“So that really comes down to having, it's funny you've asked me a question about technology, but at the end of the day, it comes down to having functioning governments, functioning institutions that have a resilience to lobbying that can make rational decisions. 

“Again, sustainability at the end of the day, it's all about the well-being of humanity. It's a social justice issue, really. And so, some of the technology can certainly help.

“Part of that is part of the answer, but there's a bigger context and a bigger framework that some of those decisions have to be made in.”

This exclusive interview with Andy Pag was conducted by Jack Hayes of the Motivational Speakers Agency.

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