Sunday, April 27, 2008
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Atlanta biodiesel expands, European market booming

 

Rob Del Bueno with his car and its cooking oil fuel.
CREDIT: Stephanie Ramage

By Mark Woolsey

Recent soaring gas prices—well over $3 per gallon in most areas—may have prompted some interest in biodiesel that wouldn’t have developed otherwise but according to Robert Del Bueno with the Atlanta-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, actual biofuel use is primarily fueled by environmental awareness, not price. He says that even with recent fuel price jumps, while biodiesel is “competitive” with traditional petroleum diesel, the bio version is still more expensive.

   “What we have found that is that a certain segment of the population will pay a premium for biodiesel because they think it’s a good product, and good for the environment,” says Del Bueno, the alliance’s Refuel Biodiesel program manager, who explains that biodiesel is cleaner-burning, with less hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions, and it’s renewable. “And there are other people fed up with sending their money to the Middle East and the big oil companies, so they say screw it.”

    The alliance has grown steadily even as the larger biofuel industry has struggled with the rising price of raw materials used to make their products. Biofuels are often derivatives of soybean, palm and other vegetable oils, as well as rendered animal fat

      The alliance went fully operational about one year ago with a program for collecting used cooking oil from local restaurants and turning it into a blended product, 80 percent petrol and 20 percent biodiesel. The hybrid product goes to Emory University for use in its buses, is sold to some small fleet operators and, increasingly, is peddled to the general public through the only biodiesel pump in Atlanta, a 24-hour self-pay facility near Little Five Points. Sales at the self-service bio pump, he says have quadrupled in the past year. Small potatoes (or perhaps soybeans), he concedes, but it’s up significantly from the 300 gallons a week they were turning out initially.

      Del Bueno says that current fuel prices have produced a flurry of calls from fleet operators asking about the organization’s program, “but when I tell them they’re not going to save money a lot of them don’t want to bother.”

      Despite that, he adds, “We’re actually having to turn down new accounts until we can increase production.”

     The alliance turns out about 1500 gallons a week of pure biodiesel, which equates to about 6,000 gallons of the 80/20 blended product.

And now there is expansion afoot. The organization has reached a deal with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville for a plant to be operational in about six months, pending permits. Del Bueno says the company is realizing a small but steady “profit” which goes back into the alliance’s energy awareness programs. To reach that point, he says, “There is a limit of scale. You can’t collect 20 million gallons of restaurant fryer oil efficiently.”

      Large producers have struggled as the price of soybeans has more than doubled. Coupled with that, say industry observers, U.S. markets haven’t significantly materialized. U.S. Biofuels in Rome, Georgia, is running at capacity but every drop of its production goes to the European market where biodiesel blend mandates and many more diesel cars have boosted demand.

    “It’s not so much the money,” says U.S. Biofuels President Greg Hopkins. “It’s that this is a contract business and we know how much we need to produce and sell in Europe. Domestically, it’s more of a rollercoaster ride.”

    The EU mandate requires all diesel fuel to be blended with 5 percent biodiesel. In 2010, that minimum will increase to 10 percent.

With ethanol production booming in the U-S and resulting former soybean farmers growing corn, the large producers are dealing with tropical producers who have destroyed rainforests to produce palm or soybean oil plantation-style.

      “So there are questions about deforestation,” says Del Bueno. “These big producers may be doing stuff that no longer jives with the initial motivation.” SP

Stephanie Ramage contributed reporting to this article.