page_title: Vegetable oils as alternative energy
section_title: Environmental effects
hierarchical_section_title: Vegetable oils as alternative energy / Environmental effects
caption_attribution_description: Jungle burned for agriculture.
context_page_description: Vegetable oils are increasingly used as a substitute for fossil fuels. Vegetable oils are the basis of biodiesel, which can be used like conventional diesel. Some vegetable oil blends are used in unmodified vehicles, but straight vegetable oil needs specially prepared vehicles which have a method of heating the oil to reduce its viscosity and surface tension. Another alternative is vegetable oil refining.
  The availability of biodiesel around the world is increasing, although still tiny compared to conventional fossil fuel sources. There is significant research in algaculture methods to make biofuel from algae.
  Concerns have been expressed about growing crops for fuel use rather than food and the environmental impacts of large-scale agriculture and land clearing required to expand the production of vegetable oil for fuel use. These effects/impacts would need to be specifically researched and evaluated, economically and ecologically, and weighed in balance with the proposed benefits of vegetable oil fuel in relation to the use of other fuel sources.
context_section_description: There is concern that the current growing demand for vegetable oil is causing deforestation, with old forests being replaced with oil palms. When land is cleared it is often burned, which releases large amounts of the greenhouse gas CO₂. Vegetable oil production would have to increase substantially to replace gasoline and diesel.  With current technology such an increase in production would have a substantial environmental impact.
caption: Jungle burned for agriculture in southern Mexico.
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