The prices of fuel keep on rising all over the world, and no one is winning except the big oil companies.
The consumer is losing more and more money on fuel for transport and other uses, and the environment continues to be suffocated by our fuel emissions. It’s just those big oil companies that happily sit on very fat wallets while the whole world goes to hell.
Us Tunisians are luckier than others because the government subsidizes a percentage of the fuel price to keep it lower for us, but the country won’t be able to go on doing that forever, as prices soar even higher and demand continues to grow.
That’s why, just like the rest of the world, we should be looking for alternative fuel and energy options.
There are many directions that companies and governments around the world are pursuing to get rid of the human dependency on petroleum based fuels, ranging from the simple to the really sophisticated.
An option that I find really accessible for a country like Tunisia, that can’t afford to invest a lot of money in hydrogen-powered fuel cells for example, is BioDiesel.
Biodiesel is fuel made from renewable materials such as vegetable oils or animal fats, or even recycled fryer oil. It is biodegradable and non-toxic, and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned. It also functions in current diesel engines and reduces engine wear by as much as one half.
Biodiesel is made through a process called transesterification whereby the glycerine is separated from the vegetable oil. The process leaves behind two products – biodiesel (Mono-alkyl ester) and glycerine (a valuable by-product used in soaps and other products).
I really wish the government or some private companies would explore this option and maybe other ones too that could help reduce our dependency on environment-unfriendly foreign fuel and keep the fuel prices low.