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Originally Posted by suneel112
...As you know, oil is a fossil fuel (nonrenewable), and it is running out, and production has either recently peaked or will peak in a short while. In the mean time, however, we have made an economy so dependent on oil that even a small reduction in production can cause a recession (I.E. the 1970s)...
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Technological advances have already made oil a renewable resource. For example, there's a
thermal depolymerization pilot plant near a Butterball facility in Missouri that produces more than two barrels of mid-grade oil from each ton of turkey offal it processes, with more than 80% of the energy content of the incoming waste ending up in the outgoing oil. The process works with any organic input, including plastics, sewage, and medical wastes. It's presently more expensive than imported crude oil -- the output from the pilot plant is something like $80/barrel -- but that'll go down with increased scale. That it uses up garbage in the process is a bonus.
Because the oil produced by TDP comes from wastes and is not a fossil fuel, burning it doesn't add to the carbon dioxide in the biosphere. The overall result isn't as clean as a hypothetical hydrogen economy could be, but it has two clear advantages: it makes full use of existing infrastructure, and it's a whole lot less expensive than producing hydrogen from non-fossil sources.