How much can be made?

[WesleyB]

There's a move towards green and alternative energy , like the synthetic fuel biodiesel .  Does anyone have an estimate of how much vegetable oil is produced world wide ?  Much of the oil is used for food , soap , medicine et cetera .  What  is the total production world wide ? It seems to me that only a small dent might be made in required fuel to power the world by biodiesel , a fuel that can easily be stored .  With green energy the sun doesn't always shine , the wind doesn't always blow .  It seems an expensive set up for failure to try to eliminate fossil fuels .  I wasn't sure where to post this .

[Tony]

There's no doubt that storage will be a big factor in renewables, like:

• the big battery installation in Australian (129MWh) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
• the electric mountain pumped storage in Wales (9.1GWh) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
• the larger pumped vanadium batteries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery#Largest_vanadium_grid_batteries

However these only really scratch the surface of what we'd ultimately need.

[Keef]

Making fuel from virgin vegetable oil has now been outlawed commercially. The vast majority of used oil is now used for energy production in one way or another.

[Tony]

Spraying into the furnaces of coal-fired stations was definitely one use!