25 July 2018, Germany, Munich: A deep fryer stands in a tent at a press event for the new beer jug ‘Wiesn-Wirtekrug’ for the Oktoberfest. Photo: Lino Mirgeler/dpa (Photo by Lino Mirgeler/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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It’s easy to forget that wind and water and oil are but outsourced substitutes for human exertion. What’s important about all three is that while they’ve always existed, knowledge about their myriad applications as sources of power and production continues to evolve.
It comes to mind as the “dark, viscous oil” sloshing around in storage tanks at the back of restaurants develops secondary economic meaning. Please read on.
Nicolas Rivero reports at the Washington Post what some readers already know, that restaurants are not allowed to dump French fry grease down the drain since it’s known to clog sewers. The problem is that some are prone to running out of space to store what they’ve historically had to carefully rid themselves of. Thank goodness for progress.
Rivero reports that the grease increasingly has economic applications. In his words, “the spent grease that restaurants unload has become a valuable commodity.” More intriguingly, he adds that “If you’ve been on a plane lately, there’s a chance that used cooking oil has helped launch you into the sky.”
It’s a reminder that even in the advanced times in which we live, there’s still so much we don’t know. While it’s perhaps unlikely that the 40,000 McDonald’s around the world won’t soon offer a fuel option that’s adjacent to and an effect of its popular French fries, the growing market applications of French fry grease remind us that the only limit to knowledge is relentless experimentation. The grease has known fuel applications today, but possibly other uses for tomorrow.
To which some will understandably and practically reply that French fry grease as a source of fuel isn’t presently economic. The latter is acknowledged by Rivero, but expense is not a reason to turn one’s nose up to the discovery of an unexpected source of fuel. Figure that every advance starts out as expensive, only for investment in increased supply to author advances in production techniques that bring down the cost.
It calls for a continuation of an everything approach to energy. About the previous assertion, it’s not rooted in environmental alarmism or lack of it as much as it’s a plea for experimentation, and lots of it.
This is worth keeping in mind now as the Trump administration targets wind energy and other alternative sources of power for elimination. Ideally this will cease. That’s because experimentation is its own reward, and precisely because it’s knowledge. We need more of it.
This is particularly true as news accounts point to $325 billion worth of AI data center investment in 2025 alone, with plans for trillions more of it in future years and decades. If true, it’s no insight to point out that future power consumption will make the present appear impoverished by comparison.
What’s important about future power needs is that as opposed to a burden, they’re an exciting development. If power consumption is set to skyrocket, what knowledge about how to create and harness power will be discovered amid the evolution? And with necessity the mother of innovation, what energy advances might reveal themselves to our mystified, why-didn’t-I-think of that surprise?
French fry grease long had no secondary economic purposes until it did. What’s true about restaurant excess could similarly be true for all sorts of other power sources presently deemed insufficient.
The main thing is that we must use soaring power needs to learn more about what could be power. Which means an open mind to all would-be energy sources so long as they’re attracting the investment to produce it.