Well-done article by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about Imperium Renewables and biodiesel.
Biodiesel turning wheels, not turbines
Until prices fall, it's best used in cars and trucks
By ROBERT McCLURE
P-I REPORTER
Peering down from the cockpit as he piloted a
cargo plane over the ever-so-lonely curve of Russian outback, John
Plaza was deep in thought. It was dark. So was his mood.
Plaza had been hauling cargo for years "and feeling pretty guilty
about it" because of the huge contribution to global warming of all
that jet fuel he burned.
"In a 6 1/2-hour flight, we burned enough fuel to power my car for
42 years," Plaza said. "I had always been bothered by the environmental
aspects of aviation, from the time I started flying jets. But it never
hit me in a profound manner until I did that calculation."
That night in 2000 was inspiration for North America's largest
biodiesel-processing facility, which opened Wednesday on the shores of
Grays Harbor and is expected to produce 100 million gallons of
biodiesel each year.
Plaza's Imperium Renewables is the leader in the field, certainly in the Northwest, probably in the country.
But while biodiesel is being hailed as an environmentally
friendly savior in the transportation field, it's barely a drop in the
renewable fuels bucket. Even the clean-energy requirements of
Initiative 937 won't likely change that.
For the foreseeable future, utilities aren't even likely to
use biodiesel for the only power-generating use it is remotely suited:
fueling small, scattered "peaker" power-generating stations, Plaza said
in an interview earlier this year. Utilities use those only when demand
skyrockets.
Right now, "peakers" run on diesel or natural gas, both cheaper than biodiesel.
To break into even the peaker application, biodiesel "has to be
economically viable, and currently it's not," Plaza said. But he
expects natural gas and diesel prices to keep rising. Then biodiesel
might make economic sense. There's no technological hurdle -- it could
be put into diesel-run peakers and do just fine.
Philip Malte, an energy researcher in the University of Washington's
Department of Mechanical Engineering, agreed that "the main goal with a
fuel like biodiesel is for transportation."
One factor some day could change this whole analysis: algae. Specifically, algae used to make biodiesel.
Right now, the top-yielding biodiesel crop is palms, which produce nuts with palm oil.
Unlike other crops used to produce biodiesel, algae could be grown in an extremely compact area.
It could be harvested in a matter of weeks instead of months, and
byproducts could make the economics look good. That's all speculation
for now, just stars in the eyes of bored nighttime pilots and their
like.
"There's a gathering storm of folks working on algae," Plaza said.
"In two to three years, we'll start to see some meaningful
commercialization."
And after that? Well, you could say that the sky's the limit.
