245 comments on Requesting Feedback on Renewable Diesel Essay
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The great virtue of vegetable oil is that is now available in bulk at warehouse stores at prices only slightly higher than toxic fossil fuels. It can be stored for long periods (until you open it) and can also be eaten.
If you take out the Ponzi schemes of a constantly growing world population and world energy use, saving becomes a very different matter than on the rising side of the Hubbert curve. Imagine one is willing and able to work for 40 years and plans to live 20 more years in retirement. One needs to save 1/3rd of one's lifetime income - in some durable form - in order to retire.
Along with the stockpiled wheelbarrows and bicycles, some cans of vegetable oil would be worth saving in the cellar.
Not only can it be stored safely and for long times, and not only can it be used as food, it is also local - that is, rapeseed oil does not have a lot of overhead in areas where it is grown, such as southern Germany. The containers used are the same used for vineyards, adding another aspect to the idea of 'renewable'.
As a matter of fact, I can buy a thousand liters of rapeseed oil a couple of miles down the road, and have it delivered - no permits, no safety concerns, and as for taxes - well, that is complicated.
To be honest, I expect such solutions to be very far down on the list tried, since such simple changes to lifestyle will require a select group of people to lose their accustomed lifestyle - those in the production and distribution of petroleum products, and those involved in manufacturing, maintaining, and driving IC driven vehicles for personal transport. Which describes a lot of people, doesn't it?
In terms of keeping farm machinery, fire fighting equipment, and necessary construction machinery going (repairing water mains, for example), towns in this region could probably manage without any major problems in terms of infrastructure - what would suffer, hugely, would be the local economy if such a shift was actually carried out.
I think any attempt to describe the proper place of renewable fuels requires describing a properly functioning social structure around them - and what we have today most certainly isn't the proper structure.