American Biodiesel news

By: Matt Cota


In Santa Barbara, soybean-powered vehicles will soon be hitting the streets.


Beginning July 1, all city-owned vehicles with diesel engines will run on biodiesel, a blend of diesel fuel and soybean oil.


The next time Santa Barbara firefighters fill up their trucks, they will be using biodiesel. The city's entire fleet of 150 diesel cars, vans, trucks and tractors will run on the environmentally-friendly fuel.


"We have been selling biodiesel for several years, and not too many know about it yet," said Ken Olsen, McCormix Corporation.


Olsen has been selling the product at his McCormix gas station for years, and although his customers are loyal, they are few.


One of the reasons is that the soybean fuel blend can be up to a dollar more a gallon than regular diesel. But that is changing, now that the cost of oil is rising, now biodiesel is actually more cost-effective. It is only about 10 cents more, and a whole lot cleaner for cars.


"Hopefully with more demand, there will be more demand and consequently a lower price," said Olsen.


The decision to run its entire fleet on biodiesel makes Santa Barbara the first city in the county, and one of just a handful in the state, to exclusively use the environmentally-friendly fuel.

Less than 30 minutes before closing time, a large white box truck pulls up at BioFuel Oasis, a biodiesel fueling station in West Berkeley. Suzanne Joi, an activist with CodePINK Women for Peace, is about to drive to Washington, D.C., and needs to fill up her truck's 30-gallon tank.


It's a short wait as another customer finishes fueling up a vintage pale yellow Mercedes, at $3.60 a gallon, from the station's one pump. Joi can't make it all the way to D.C. just on biodiesel, a clean-burning substitute fuel for diesel engines made mostly from vegetable oil, but the renewable fuel is becoming more widely available.





"It's surprising how many places have sprung up," she said.


In the garage's adjoining office, a faded red love seat welcomes several other customers waiting to pay or fuel up. Singer Willie Nelson, who tours in a biodiesel-fueled bus, stops by when he's in town; his autograph decorates the wall, lending the women-owned and operated co-op business a hint of celebrity buzz.


Since opening 2 1/2 years ago, BioFuel Oasis has seen its sales triple, said co-owner Jennifer Radtke. For competitive reasons, she would not disclose how much biodiesel Oasis sells. She attributes the growth in sales to word of mouth and more biodiesel cars being on the road.


Many people who now own biodiesel vehicles, like Joi, owned diesel cars for years before switching to cars capable of using biodiesel. There's more awareness today, Radtke said.


"The state of California has been really concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, and that's the issue that biofuels address," Radtke said.


BioFuel Oasis, one of two biodiesel filling stations in the East Bay - the second is Martinez-based Bay Area Diablo Petroleum - is part of a burgeoning grass-roots movement that includes a one-year-old brokerage and three Richmond-based producers.


The Bioenergy Interagency Working Group, an alliance of 10 state agencies that includes the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission, laid out an action plan in April to boost renewable fuel consumption, including ethanol and biodiesel.


The group is seeking a broad-based renewable fuel standard for the state's transportation sector and a consumption target of 2 billion gallons of biofuels by 2020, with 40 percent of that produced in-state. In 2004, Californians consumed about 5 million gallons of biodiesel.