Chapter 1 · Penang
The car nobody wanted
Penang. A teenager at an international school is handed an old diesel Mitsubishi Pajero, while everyone else with a licence seems to drive a sleek European sedan.
The story
A story in five chapters.
Chapter 2 · The experiment
One day on cooking oil
He has just watched Jeremy Clarkson run a car on used cooking oil on Top Gear. Half hoping to wreck the Pajero and earn something newer, he tries it.
It runs. For a day. The next morning it will not start, and he spends it at the workshop flushing food waste out of the engine.
Chapter 3 · The recipe
Old T-shirts and a stove
So he perfects the recipe. He talks his favourite eateries into handing over their waste oil, warms it over a stove, strains it through old T-shirts and mixes it half and half with diesel. The Pajero runs. Then a few friends' cars do too.
Chapter 4 · Abroad
A tax on home-brewed fuel
Abroad at university to study business, he spots biodiesel at the petrol pump, then a front-page story about a new tax on home-brewed fuel. If the government is taxing it, it is happening at scale.
Chapter 5 · The leap
A refund and a flight home
When a logistics company looking for a greener fleet offers to buy his fuel, he says yes without asking anyone. He asks his university for a refund, buys a small biodiesel unit with it, and flies home to build what becomes FatHopes Energy.
Where others saw waste, he saw a resource. He still does.
