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The adoption of biodiesel and its integration within our society face a number of complex, interdependent or exclusive challenges. 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 learning very quickly how our reliance on traditional fossil fuels is likely to cause us great concern in 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. This type of climate change is leading to results that we can already see and we can be very worried about the problems that could face future generations. Changes must come and we must cut down our reliance on fossil fuels, even though this change is slow to materialise sometimes. We often do not like changes and challenges to the way that we exist and we certainly do not like additional economic costs associated. However, adopting alternative energy production processes and consumption patterns may put us at competitive disadvantage compared to countries 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. This could help to balance the playing field for biodiesel fuel. If traditional petroleum fuels become even more expensive due to carbon related costs, biodiesel fuel will become more palatable.

Further to that, as society becomes increasingly more worried about climate change, it is likely to turn toward measures and solutions that are seen as being far “greener.” 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.

Our agricultural producers have been worried about a decline in demand for their goods in recent years. 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?