Sunlight

Don't they make some sort of vegetable oil from Sunflower seeds?

Offered by Stephen.

Sunflowers take huge amounts of sunlight to grow properly. They also require heavy soil enrichment. Beans will grow better than most grains in low sunlight.

Offered by Roger.

Biodiesel seemed like a clever way to use oil that would otherwise be thrown away. Your right though, it isn't realistic considering you would have to grow a grain crop which requires energy with the result be a net loss of energy overall. Wind and methane are the ones to explore. Methane, unless you have a lot of manure to digest probably won't produce much either. Everyone will have some waste so we might as well utilize it for what it's worth. It might come in handy for cooking fuel or distilling water.

Offered by Stan.

This may only be a technology to leave for our children for use 20 years post pole shift when the sun shines bright and weather gets back to normal. We would have to make sure to continue to grow seed stock for them to reproduce on a large scale. If one lived in an area with enough sunlight to grow on a large scale it would be of value in that area much earlier. When we use petroleum to run an engine, we are converting the sun's energy, stored in the petroleum for millions of years, into mechanical energy. Using rapeseed or canola is the same thing, except we are skipping the "millions of years" part. The key is the availability of sunlight and area upon which to collect it in the form of oils within these seeds. From a practical viewpoint, the only thing we can do is make sure there will still be these seeds in the future when they could be used. This adds a new dimension to the requirements for growing plants under artificial light. Not only do we need enough artificial light to grow food to eat, we need to grow some plants, such as these, to perpetuate the plant species.

Offered by Ron.