Stifled Progress

You find something good, something which helps and which looks a certain winner. You do a bit of research and it still looks good. You get excited! You cannot quite believe how good you feel at having found this 'something' and then you gradually realise there is a problem. Sound familiar/ Well this happened to me some time ago when I started making Biodiesel.

Making Biodiesel at home seemed a good way forward on many fronts. I was employed by a company who asked me to drive all around the country but in return paid me a healthy business mileage to do so. So I had a financial incentive to find a cheaper fuel. I'll be honest that was the main 'driver' in making biodiesel. i then realised, with relief, that in trying to maximise my travel expenses I had discovered a way to help a load more people than just myself. Making Biodiesel in fact was going to help the whole planet!

I doubt if many people are reading this and are unaware of Biodiesel. That's why you are here, right? Well being trained never to assume, I will just quickly state that Biodiesel is a wonderfull product and here's why: made from re-cycled waste vegetable oil or WVO (used cooking oil actually) it saves on rubbish being taken to land fill first of all, then it allows the user to run his or her car/boat/generator/central heating/van/coach/tractor etc instead of using 'fossil fuel'. It is classed as carbon neutral and generally speaking most people agree that as it is made from regular cooking oil that would have been thrown away it is a "good thing",

Well anyway the reason I called this post 'Stifled Progress' is now revealed. Making biodiesel is not regarded as a good thing by everyone. And I don't mean it is the Oil Baron's who disapprove. I mean our own Government. Yep, the people we voted for to run our precious country don't seem to want to help encourage this cottage industry to flourish. Now one could argue that the change to the excise duty and regulation last year was a positive step in our "Making Biodiesel at Home" journey. The thing is, the more cynical amongst us point out that letting people make Biodiesel at home for home consumption up to 2,500 litres was done to avoid having to regulate a newly expanding phenomenon. They (HM Gov) simply do not have the staff to carry out all the visits necessary to regulate the small producer making Biodiesel at home.

No the thing that really winds me up is the way they sneakily brought in the legislation to regularly put the duty on biofuels up every year. The public, understandably, overlook the fact that excise duty on both fossil and bio fuels goes up again in April. So unlike a lot of our European cousins who pay no duty on Biofuels at all ( their Governments seem to want to encourage the production and use of planet friendly Biodiesel etc.) our lot, despite crowing about how terribly green they all are and how they are setting the agenda on carbon reduction and climate change, really just want to collect as much TAX as possible. So less people are encouraged to make Biodiesel. Making less Biodiesel is the wrong way - we should all be making Biodiesel in our own communities. 'Local fuel for local people@ as they say.

I am now decided; I will try to help as many folk as I can to make Biodiesel at home or at work or on the allotment or in their garage or wherever! I am setting up a website shortly and will attempt to bring together all the latest news, reports, ebooks, newsletters etc so that as many people as possible can start making Biodiesel - here endeth the lesson. More later, happy days.