Oil Companies Serve Up Bio-Diesel

  • Tom Torre (pictured) is Chief Operating Officer at Metro Fuel Oil. (Photo by Brad Linder)

For years, environmental activists have been demonstrating that you don’t need gasoline to fuel a
car. Some people have been retrofitting cars with diesel engines that can be powered by
restaurant grease. But with the price of oil soaring in recent years bio-diesel’s been getting more
popular. Brad Linder reports that it’s moving from a fuel for hobbyists to an energy alternative
that’s even getting the attention of oil companies:

Transcript

For years, environmental activists have been demonstrating that you don’t need gasoline to fuel a
car. Some people have been retrofitting cars with diesel engines that can be powered by
restaurant grease. But with the price of oil soaring in recent years bio-diesel’s been getting more
popular. Brad Linder reports that it’s moving from a fuel for hobbyists to an energy alternative
that’s even getting the attention of oil companies:


From a distance, Metro Fuel Oil in Brooklyn, New York looks like an over-sized gas station. And
in a way, that’s what it is. Truckers pull up to a series of pumps, grab a hose and load their tanks
with oil. It’ll be distributed to heating oil and diesel customers throughout the area.


Tom Torre is Metro’s chief operating officer. He says starting next year, some of those trucks
will be topping off with a blend of oil and vegetable-based bio-diesel:


“Kind of like if you’ve ever seen a Sunoco gas station where they had the different octanes you
can buy, same thing with the bio. It’d be B5, B10, B20, B15s, whatever they might utilize.”


In other words, you can get a blend… For example, B20 is 80% diesel and 20% bio-diesel.


For more than six decades, Metro has provided oil to residential and commercial customers. A
few years ago, Metro began importing processed bio-diesel from nearby states to fuel its own
fleet of 40 trucks.


But next year, the oil company plans start taking in raw vegetable oil and processing it on-site.
Metro’s planned 110 million gallon bio-diesel processing facility will be one of the largest in the
country.


Torre says Metro doesn’t expect to get out of the oil business anytime soon. But the company
does see a future for domestically-produced fuels like corn-based ethanol and vegetable-based
bio-diesel:


“And it’s good for the economy as well. I mean, you know, the numbers are astounding as to
how much we spend a day, billions of dollars a day, that are being spent on foreign imported oils that are going back to the Arabs where… and
nothing against the Arabs, don’t get me wrong, but it’s money flowing out of the United States.”


When the processing plant opens, Metro will be able convert large quantities of soybean, palm,
and rapeseed oil into fuel. With a few modifications, the facility could also process restaurant
grease:


“I’ve been here, with the company, for 25, 26 years. Most exciting thing that’s happened in at
least the last 20, 25 years. We’re looking to push this thing going forward. And with our
association as well, the New York Oil Heat Association, to say, listen guys. We’d better start
thinking about this. We’d better be forward thinkers. Otherwise we’re going to be left behind.”


But as more and more facilities like Metro’s pop up around the country, what happens to the
nation’s food supply? Bill Holmberg heads the biomass division of the American Council on
Renewable Energy. As the demand for vegetable-based fuels rises, he says so could the price of
foods based on corn and soybeans.


“I think there will be an increase in price in those. But I think they’re beginning to level off now,
I think people are beginning to realize that you can find other resources to make those diesel- type
fuels.”


Holmberg says if you make bio-diesel out of soybean oil, there’ll be less soybeans available for
food processing. But that’s not the case if you use restaurant grease. And researchers are looking
at ways to cultivate algae as a fast-growing source of vegetable oil for bio-diesel.


If the economic impact of bio-diesel remains unclear, Holmberg says there’s no question it’s
more environmentally friendly than petroleum. Bio-diesel emits far less carbon monoxide, sulfur,
and particulate matter than petroleum-based diesel.


The U.S. bio-diesel industry is still young. Last year, it processed less than 300 million gallons
of fuel, which is just a drop in the 40 billion gallon transportation diesel market. Holmberg says
even large facilities like Metro’s aren’t going to change that overnight:


“We, in the world of bio-fuels, ethanol, and bio-diesel and other forms of bio-fuels, will be
making a major contribution if we just do not increase the amount of fuels used in the
transportation sector, which we’re doing now. If we can just keep that number steady for a few
more years, we’re providing a real service to the United States.”


Holmberg hopes that ten years from now, facilities will be in place to actually reduce the amount
of petroleum used. He says that could be from a combination of ethanol, bio-diesel, gas electric
hybrid vehicles, and other technologies that are just in their infancy.


Metro’s Tom Torre doesn’t think the oil industry is going away anytime soon. But he says the
company’s willing to invest 15 million dollars in its new processing plant to help the
environment and to get in on a growing industry.


It doesn’t hurt that Metro can sell bio-diesel for almost the same price as oil. The federal
government provides a tax incentive for bio-diesel producers like Metro, and the state of New
York offers a tax credit to residents who purchase bio-diesel. Currently, that means it’s cheaper
to heat your house with a bio-diesel blend than with 100% petroleum-based heating oil.


Without those incentives, Torre says Metro would still be opening a processing facility — just a
much smaller one:


“It would definitely not have been a 110 million gallon plant. You know, we could have started it
off with 5 million gallons, let’s say, and just utilize it for people that really wanted to be green.
But when we took a hard look at it and saw that it could be competitive, especially last year as
the price of petroleum just soared, is when we really started to say you know what? Instead of
doing the 5 million, let’s just go right to the 110 million.”


Metro’s new bio-diesel processing plant – one of the biggest in the country – is scheduled to open
next fall.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brad Linder.

Related Links

A Better Bacteria for Bio-Fuel?

President Bush and others are promoting more use of plant-based
material to fuel our vehicles. Scientists say they’ve taken an
important step toward more efficient production of bio-fuels. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

President Bush and others are promoting more use of plant-based
material to fuel our vehicles. Scientists say they’ve taken an
important step toward more efficient production of bio-fuels. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:


Biofuel producers say they need to get a common plant sugar called
xylose to ferment to get an efficient conversion of plant material into
fuels like ethanol.


Researchers from the US Forest Products Lab and the Department of
Energy are working on the problem. They say they’ve now completed a
genetic map of a yeast that helps xylose ferment faster.


Micro-biologist Thomas Jeffries says with the new information about the
yeast, researchers plan to do more genetic tweaking:


“Well, we’ve been able to increase the specific fermentation rate of
this organism with one of our mutations, we’ve been able to increase it
by 50%, we really are aiming to get a four-fold increase.”


But Jeffries cautions there are still many steps before the work with
the yeast might pay off at your local gas station.


For the Environment report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

Related Links

Flex-Fuel Economy Questioned

If you plan to buy a new car or truck this
year, you might find some showrooms filled with
vehicles that run largely on ethanol instead of
gasoline. Car companies are pushing these corn-fueled vehicles as environmentally friendly.
Julie Grant takes a look at those claims:

Transcript

If you plan to buy a new car or truck this
year, you might find some showrooms filled with
vehicles that run largely on ethanol instead of
gasoline. Car companies are pushing these corn-fueled vehicles as environmentally friendly.
Julie Grant takes a look at those claims:


More people are considering buying cleaner, more fuel-efficient
cars now that gas prices and global temperatures are on the rise. The gas-
electric hybrids made by Toyota and Honda are becoming popular. And
American car companies are also jumping on board and offering alternative-
powered vehicles.


General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner has put much of his company’s stock in
ethanol:


“At GM, we believe that the bio-fuel with the greatest potential to
displace petroleum-based fuels in the US is ethanol, and so we have
made a major commitment here to vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol.”


E85 is a blend that’s 85% ethanol with 15% gasoline. GM’s not the only company offering cars that run on them:


(Sound of vehicle introduction)


Angela Hines is from Green Bay, Wisconsin. She’s taking notes as she looks at one
flex fuel car. The E85 only matters to her if it’s going to save her a
few bucks:


“I drive anywhere from 80-200 miles
a day for work, so yeah, gas is important.”


Gui Derochers is looking at a Chevy Silverado pickup truck:


(Grant:) “Does it matter to you that it’s a flex fuel?”


“I think it’s a good thing… flex-fuel. Particularly, we know there are some ethanol plants in Michigan coming, right? Isn’t
that what flex fuel is? Ethanol?”


Derochers works on engines and transmissions:


“You have to remember, I work for Daimler-Chrysler. But we have flex fuel as well. It’s a good thing. It’s wonderful.”


But not everyone thinks the move toward ethanol-fueled cars is
wonderful. Tadeusz Patzek is a professor of civil and environmental
engineering at the University of California in Berkeley. He says
ethanol is not cheaper and it’s not any better for the environment than
regular gas.


Patzek says each gallon of ethanol burned might emit less greenhouse gas
into the air, but you have to burn more fuel to go the same distance:


“So, mile for mile, emissions of CO2 are exactly the same for gasoline as
they are for ethanol. Because they are proportional to the energy stored in
the fuel.”


When it comes to gas mileage, Patzek calls claims that ethanol is any
better then gasoline an imaginary economy… and he’s not alone. When
Consumer Reports magazine tested a Chevy Tahoe that runs on gas mixed
with only ten percent ethanol, the truck got 14 miles per gallon. But
it got less than 11 miles per gallon when the ethanol content was
raised to 85%, as in E85. That’s a 27% drop in fuel economy with E85.


Consumer Reports concluded that to go the same distance, you wind up paying more than a dollar
extra per gallon on E85 then on regular
gas.


Patzek says it’s not a good deal for consumers or for the environment:


“You emit less because you have oxygen but you burn more, so it comes as a wash.”


Patzek says ethanol has other environmental costs. To grow the corn needed to make it, farmers have to use more fossil fuel-based fertilizers, tractor fuel, and then more fuel to truck the fuel to gas stations.


Even so, many scientists say ethanol still provides an energy benefit over fossil fuels and some auto engineers say ethanol cars
are just a stop-gap measure until a better technology comes along, but Patzek disagrees with that logic:


“So, you’re saying the following: why don’t we have a terribly bad
solution and call it a stop-gap solution because it’s politically
convenient. I’m saying is, if I’m an engineer, I have to, essentially, if I’m honest with myself and others, do I want a
better technological solution or do I want to say, let’s do probably the worst possible solution
that delays other solutions 10-15 years into the future… while the
world is running out of time?”


Patzek says the real reason American car companies are moving toward
vehicles that run on E85 is that the federal government rewards them
for it.


GM and the others get extra credit for meeting fuel efficiency
standards just for making cars that can run on E85, even if those cars
aren’t more fuel efficient.


Patzek knows he’s become unpopular among many farmers, engineers,
scientists and politicians who want easy answers. He wants people to
start reducing their energy-use rather than waiting for technological
magic bullets.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Bush Pushes for Renewable Fuel Program

The Bush Administration is proposing a Renewable Fuels Standard Program. It aims to double the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Bush Administration is proposing a Renewable Fuels Standard Program. It aims to
double the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The GLRC’s Lester
Graham reports:


This new regulation would require more renewable fuels at the pumps. The Bush
Administration predicts we’ll cut petroleum use by nearly four billion gallons a year.
Most of those fuels are expected to come from crops such as corn for ethanol and soy
beans for soy-diesel. But some scientists say using food crops for renewable fuels is a
short-term fix.


That’s because it takes a lot of energy to produce ethanol from corn. At best, the net
energy gain in growing, harvesting, and processing corn into ethanol is: one energy unit
input producing a one-and-a-quarter energy unit output. And, ethanol production has been
heavily dependent on government subsidies.


The Environmental Protection Agency notes that new technologies might be able to
produce ethanol from agricultural and industrial waste, such as scrap wood chips,
at a cost that’s competitive with today’s gasoline prices.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Returning Quality Food to Urban Areas

  • Chene Street, on Detroit's east side, was once a thriving retail corridor. Now, it's a decimated stretch of crumbling and burned-out buildings. (Photo by Marla Collum)

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city
neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience
and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around
the grocery store problem – and help revitalize a neighborhood:

Transcript

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around the grocery store problem and help revitalize a neighborhood:


(Sound of traffic)


Up and down this street as far as the eye can see are crumbling and burned-out buildings. This used to be a thriving business district. It’s where Vlasic Pickle, White Owl Cigar, and Lay’s Potato Chips grew into national brands. Today, the most evident sign of commerce is the prostitutes walking the street. Smack in the middle of this is Peacemaker’s International. It’s a storefront church where Ralph King is a member.


“Now if you look at it you see that there’s no commercial activity, no grocery stores within a mile of here. And our concern was that people had to eat.”


There are about seven liquor stores for every grocery store here on the east side of Detroit. Some people can drive to the well-stocked supermarkets in the suburbs, but many families don’t have cars, and King says the city busses are spotty.


“So they’re buying food at convenience stores or gas stations. And quite frankly, it just doesn’t seem a good fit that a community has to live off gas station food.”


That means processed, high-starch, high-fat diets that lead to illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Those are all problems that disproportionately hit African Americans, and public health researchers say those higher rates of illnesses are linked to the food availability problems in poor black communities.


Amy Schulz is with the University of Michigan, and she’s studied the lack of grocery stores in high-poverty neighborhoods.


“What we found, in addition to the economic dimension was that Detroit, neighborhoods like the east side that are disproportionately African American are doubly disadvantaged in a sense. Residents in those communities have to drive longer, farther distances to access a grocery store than residents of a comparable economic community with a more diverse racial composition.”


In other words, if you’re poor and white, you have a better chance of living near a grocery store than if you’re poor and black. Ralph King and the folks in this neighborhood want to get around that problem. So about three years ago, they decided to try and reopen a nearby farmer’s market. They turned to Michigan State University Extension for help. Mike Score is an extension agent.


“I thought it would just be the process of organizing some people, helping them buy some produce wholesale, setting up in the neighborhood, selling the food, and generating a net income that could be reinvested. And I was really wrong.”


The farmer’s market was a flop. Score says produce vendors set up in the neighborhood, but the fruits and vegetables sat all day, unsold. He says the problem was they were using the wrong currency. Most people in this neighborhood have very little cash on hand, and they need to use their food stamp cards to shop for groceries.


So, Score helped develop a plan for a neighborhood buyers’ club that can negotiate low prices by ordering in bulk. His business plan also calls for job training for people in the neighborhood.


“It’s going to give people who are chronically unemployed but who have some entrepreneurial skills access to food at a lower cost, and that enables them to think about starting restaurant businesses or smaller retail businesses. So that’s an important part of this project: in addition to getting people groceries, it also creates some job opportunities.”


It’s been a struggle to get the program off the ground. It took a long time to get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a machine to read peoples’ food stamp cards. People have stolen some of the project’s meager resources, but Mike Score and Ralph King say they’ll stick with it until families in this neighborhood can put decent food on their tables. And they say they hope it can be a model that other low-income communities around the country can use.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

Study: Mtbe Alternatives Pose Similar Threat

The Clean Air Act says gasoline must contain additives to help it burn more cleanly. But the common additive MTBE is a proven environmental threat. And a new study says the alternatives could be just as dangerous. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports:

Transcript

The Clean Air Act says gasoline must contain additives to help it burn more cleanly. But the
common additive MTBE is a proven environmental threat. And a new study says the alternatives
could be just as dangerous. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports:


Underground storage tanks at gas stations can leak. Fuel
additives like MTBE leak faster than the gas and can
cause groundwater pollution.


For that reason, seventeen states, including New York,
Michigan and Illinois have restricted or will restrict the use
of MTBE in gasoline.


That means other fuel additives intended to reduce air
pollution will have to be used instead.


Mel Suffet co-authored a new study published in the
journal Environmental Science and Technology.


He says some of the alternatives to MTBE can cause the
same problems.


They can be toxic and can make groundwater
undrinkable. Suffet says to solve the problem, leaks need
to be prevented.


“The first thing you have to do is develop a design of
underground fuel storage tanks to emphasize containment
leak detection and repair.”


Suffet says even modern tanks are prone to leaks. So he
says designers need to go back to the drawing board to
create a leak free tank.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Corbin
Sullivan.

Related Links

Stocking Up in the Face of Danger

  • Prices spiked at some gas stations around the region after September 11th, and many drivers felt compelled to wait in long lines to fill their tanks.

Despite the patriotic fervor that has marched across the country, the first test of the war against terrorism found many Americans taking a “me first” attitude. When rumors were flying that gasoline shipments might be disrupted, people lined up to fill up their tanks before supplies dried up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

Transcript

Despite the patriotic fervor that has marched across the country, the first test of the war against terrorism found many Americans taking a “me first” attitude. When rumors were flying that gasoline shipments might be disrupted, people lined up to fill their tanks before supplies dried up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


On September tenth, the Energy Department reported that gasoline prices fell almost two cents per gallon. It was the first drop since early August and nearly three-and-a-half cents a gallon cheaper than the same time last year. Supplies of gasoline were plentiful and cheaper, but no one seemed to be in a particular hurry to filler up.


That all changed on September eleventh.


“… breaking news from New York City where planes, two planes have hit both towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan” (voice fades under)


As the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D-C unfolded rumors of refineries shutting down started circulating. Some suppliers told service station retailers that they weren’t sure when or even if they could deliver the next shipment. Word quickly spread that the price at the pumps was going up.


(Natural sound of service station)


Sharon Cameron lives and works in a small town in Illinois. She heard from a co-worker that the price might go up to five dollars a gallon. When she got near the convenience store. She found a long line of cars and trucks.


“I had about a 35 minute wait to get gas.”


And some in line weren’t happy about what they saw in front of them.


“There was a gentleman that was pretty upset because another guy had pulled his truck in there and had filled up both tanks on his truck and then proceeded to fill up about five or six gas tanks in the back of his truck.”


People appeared to be hoarding gasoline because of rumors that speculated supplies would be cut off because of the terrorist attacks.


Some retailers took advantage of the situation. Scott Mulford is a spokesperson for the Illinois Attorney General’s office. He says about 1500 people from around the state called in complaints that stations were price gouging.


“Prices at the stations increased in some cases as high as five dollars a gallon.”


The Illinois Attorney General is filing suit against one convenience store chain, charging that the price spikes violated the state’s Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.


Other states in the Midwest had similar incidents. Ohio is filing suit against at least four station owners. There were reports of price gouging in Wisconsin. The Michigan Attorney General has plans to file suit against 13 retailers. Some retailers say in their defense that it wasn’t greed that motivated them. But concern about gas supplies. Some of those gas station owners who hiked prices on September eleventh say they were simply trying to discourage a mad rush for gasoline by raising the price. Stanley Pruss is with the Michigan AG’s office.


“There was something of a panic. There were gas lines. The gasoline station retailer can close down, limit hours, ration gasoline, or spike the price or raise the price to control demand. I mean, those are all options within their purview. Price increases to control demand that double the price of gas are just unconscionable.”


Pruss says it’s somewhat understandable that people wanted to rush to fill their tanks when they heard that gas prices were going up to five-dollars-a-gallon or that supplies might be disrupted.


A marketing professor at the University of Illinois says it’s to be expected. Brian Wansink says instead of conserving in times of crisis. Americans have a tendency to stock up. “Just in case.”


“Any time there’s a crisis or any time that uncertainty is magnified in one direction or another, this basic tendency that we have gets expanded, you know, two, three, or even four-fold.”


Wansink says part of this tendency is a leftover from another national crisis, the depression. He says our parents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression in the 1930’s have instilled in us the stories of their terrible struggles.


“About how, you know, they only had bread to eat, and how things were really, really tight, and how dire things were. And so, there’s essentially this trace in our mind that ‘My god, things could be really, really bad and I don’t know.’ And I think it’s this threat that drives some of this hoarding also.”


So, storing up or hoarding is part of our culture. At least this time the impulse to hoard gasoline was short-lived. The lines dwindled in just a few hours. Hiked prices were lowered to more reasonable levels by the next day. Hoarding quickly gave way to an outpouring of generosity toward relief efforts for the victims of the terrorist attacks. It’s evident that Americans have another tendency: that is, to pull together in times of tragedy. After they’ve had a little time to reflect on the bigger picture.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Regulations Hurt Small Town Economies

  • Service stations that went out of business rather than pay for upgrades of underground storage tanks have left some small towns without anyplace in town to buy gasoline. That's affected some small towns' economy.

Across the nation some small towns are hurting because of
environmental regulations that have led to economic problems. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

REGULATIONS HURT SMALL TOWN ECONOMIES (Shorter Version)

  • Service stations that went out of business rather than pay for upgrades of underground storage tanks have left some small towns without anyplace in town to buy gasoline. That's affected some small towns' economy.

Some rural communities are struggling because environmental
regulations hurt their economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports: