There is a question whether we, as a society, will adopt biodiesel and we need to address a number of complex and sometimes related challenges first. We are restricted by a limited amount of comprehensive data research, but nevertheless many factors are in favour of biodiesel fuel. Just 10 years ago, widespread adoption of biodiesel as an alternative fuel mode seemed unlikely, but that situation is certainly changing fast.

We are all becoming very aware how traditional fossil fuels have caused damage and become a great concern for the future. Greenhouse gases associated with the production of petroleum and our other energy needs are causing a highly detrimental change to our planet’s average temperature. Climate change is already leading to weather pattern alterations that could potentially cause devastating problems to future generations. We know that we must make changes and reduce our reliance on these traditional forms, yet to this point change has been slow to come. We often do not like changes and challenges to the way that we exist and we certainly do not like additional economic costs associated. It seems clear that to adopt alternative ways of producing and using energy will result in competitive disadvantage, if compared to communities or economies that do not.

Environmentalists assure us that unless we act now, harm will become irreversible. Governments are listening and may well consider taxation of carbon, ensuring that organisations become more efficient and reduce their reliance on fossil fuel. For biodiesel, this could help to balance the playing field. When traditional fuels become more expensive due to this carbon tax, biodiesel fuel will become more attractive.

Society will exert its own pressures and will move toward options that are seen to be far “greener” than they are now. Biodiesel fuels may represent a premium over alternatives and may be more difficult to find, but nevertheless a trend toward them will begin. Ways of making biodiesel will be explored and commercial solutions will begin to spring up in more and more places.

Farmers have been worried about declining demand for their products in recent times. These days, homemade biodiesel can be made from vegetable oils and surplus oils, together with animal fats and soybeans, for example could easily provide the raw material needed to produce the fuel. This in turn would help to keep revenues from the production and sale of fuel within our communities, rather than distributing these revenues overseas. By the 2020s, fully two thirds of the revenues associated with fuel purchase could be filtering its way to foreign countries, unless we’re careful.

As we enter the new decade, it seems that more and more people and organisations are going to focus on the need to be sustainable. The biodiesel industry will be very much to the fore. With so much at stake, not only with respect to the long term financial stability of our country, but also the priceless global sustainability which could be achieved, can any of us really afford to continue to wait until someone in power makes a decision?