Photo from: http://go635254.s3.amazonaws.com/gas2/files/2008/08/fryer_grease.jpg
In 1996, an article in the Wall Street Journal quoted one Tres Dausey, who, with his father George, ran a struggling grease outfit in St. George, South Carolina, called Dausey By-Products. “To tell you the truth I don't see why anyone would want to get in the business," he said. "My dad's been in the business I can't tell you how many years long. Right now the market for our finished product is the lowest it's been in 30 to 35 years.” How times have changed. Biofuels still have a ways to go before keeping ExxonMobil (XOM) executives awake at night. But used frying oil, or yellow grease, which can be rendered by companies like Darling International (DAR) into a substitute for diesel fuel, is a traded commodity that has tripled in price over the past two years, leading to what the current issue of Render Magazine calls the “ever-increasing theft of grease.”
When diesel fuel sells for four dollars a gallon, and making biodiesel is so simple, I can see a guy with trucks going around and collecting the so-called “discarded grease”. It’s stealing, no doubt.
Photo from: http://biodieselexpertsindia.com/PlantsAroundtheWorld/tabid/251/Default.aspx
SGS North America Inc. is offering its services to biofuels producers in meeting new U.S. EPA registration requirements mandated by RFS2. Multiple steps are involved in the registration process, including electronic application submission, EPA processing, approval, and finally verification by a licensed professional chemical engineer in the state in which the biofuel plant is located. To finalize the registration process, an independent third party company must be retained to provide written verification of key elements of the electronic application, including types of feedstocks used, a description of production processes, coproducts produced, process energy fuel types and locations of origin, and baseline volumes as specified in EPA-issued air permits. The company will provide an on-site visit, a review of critical documents and a written report and cover letter verifying the information provided in the electronic registration. With less than two months before the deadline, ethanol and biodiesel producers are under considerable pressure to complete this important requirement.
Here is yet another field where biodiesel makes jobs and that is in the testing and certification of equipment and products. There is much science and lab work that goes into biofuel, every batch of it.
Jessica Robinson communications director and grassroots outreach coordinator, NBB
“No matter what happens, do not stop playing. You set the pace, you win the game.” That was my coach’s pep talk as we faced a team slated to crush us to smithereens. They were better than we were, much, much better, but coach would not be deterred. She insisted that no matter how off balance the scorecard, giving in was not an option. That was soccer, but the lesson was hard and fast. When you take on something bigger than you are, the most important part of the fight is to keep playing with all you’ve got. We won most of our games that season, not because we had the most talent in the league, but because we had the most will. We didn’t quit, and we set the pace. Since I joined the biodiesel family 18 months ago, the industry has faced obstacles that would have leveled a lesser competitor at first glance. The economic and credit crunch, feedstock prices, the RFS2 delay and the uphill battle to secure biodiesel’s place in it, the EU tariff, the tax incentive ... a seemingly endless stream of fierce challenges have revealed an industry with a resolve that will not break, and the spirit to conquer repeated challenges.
Please read the entire article, you will never find a more qualified and brilliant spokesperson for biodiesel, I hope Ms. Robinson will join Biodiesel Now and speak with us in the forum.
In a recent article, “Indirect Land Use: One Consideration Too Many in Biofuel Regulation,” authors David Zilberman, a professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and assistant researcher Gal Hochman, along with Deepak Rajagopal, argue that indirect land use effects (ILUEs) should not be considered in current California and federal biofuels polices. The authors write, “…we will argue here against an indirect land use in biofuel regulations for the basic reason that its inclusion in LCAs (life cycle analysis) contradicts a basic principle of regulation – namely that individuals are responsible only for actions that they control. The indirect land uses are difficult to compute and vary over time.”
In a nutshell, the authors contend that American farmers, or farmers anywhere for that matter, should not, and cannot be held accountable for the decisions made by others in other countries, such as Brazil. “The differences in the treatment of technical and pecuniary externalities is that producers control their production and hence their pollution. But in a competitive market, they don’t control the prices. This reflects a basic principle: Individuals should be responsible for activities that they control and not for those they don’t. This basic message of accountability suggests that producers of biofuel shouldn’t be held responsible for indirect land-use decisions made by others.”
Yes, and thanks to the author for explaining it better than I ever could—don’t punish Americans because they cut down the rain forests in Brazil. We don’t have rain forests, but we do have lots of land.