MADRID (The Guardian) -- The orange groves of Valencia could soon be powering Spanish cars as a new technology is developed to turn the fruit's thick, shiny peel into biofuel.

In a region with 190,000 hectares covered with oranges and lemons, many of which are left to rot on the trees, citric-powered cars could reduce pollution while using a readily available source of energy, according to local officials.

The presence of a Ford car factory in the town of Almussafes adds to the potential for the region.

"We have a car plant ... and we have the oranges," explained Esteban Gonzalez, head of planning at the regional government of Valencia. Oranges and lemons have been cultivated along the east coast since at least the 18th century and are still the region's biggest export product.

Valencia produces 4m tons of oranges a year, most of which are squeezed into juice. Most of the 240,000 tons of waste is sold as animal feed but it could be turned into bioethanol.

Each ton of pulp could more than fill the average car's petrol tank, producing 80 liters of fuel.

Once the new juice plant planned for the region is completed, waste output would rise to 500,000 tons, Gonzalez said. "That would be enough to produce 37.5m liters of bioethanol," he added.

Valencia plans to utilize the technology being developed in another orange-growing region of the world, Florida.

A distribution network around the Valencia region would sell the fuel to locals, who would pay about 40% less per liter than they pay for petrol.

The bioethanol project will not just use up pulp left over from juicing; it could also cope with much of the fruit that farmers leave on trees where it is no longer profitable to harvest them.

Local officials claim they could reduce the region's dependency on petrol by up to 40% while creating 2,500 jobs and revitalizing a sector that pays for the upkeep of 100,000 families.

Spain, with the rest of the European Union (EU), has a goal of replacing almost 6% of transport fuel with bioethanol or oilseed-based biodiesel by 2010 as part of its efforts to halt global warming.

Valencia's orange juice fuel would account for 1% of the country's total transport fuel consumption.