The True Cost of Sustainable BiodieselBenjamin P. Jordan, P.E.byline‚ Jul. 28‚ 2008Editor's Note: San Francisco is perhaps the largest city in America to implement the use of the alternative fuel, biodiesel. The City's entire diesel fleet, MUNI, Airport Shuttles just to name a few, all use a blend of this more environmentally sound fuel source. The SF Bioufuels Cooperative now numbers over 200 members and alongside the SF Department of the Environment, helped the City to reach it's goal of converting it's entire diesel fleet to the use of biodiesel, ahead of it's December 2007 date. Yet the Bay Area has seen the price of biodiesel rise from it's $3.25 per gallon for B100, or "pure biodiesel" in 2006, to as high as $5.80 today. Why? Benjamin Jordan of the Peoples Fuel Cooperative, is also one of the biodiesel community's leading advocates and co-founder of the Biofuel Recycling Cooperative, one of the architects of the successful "SF Greasecycle", a program run by the BRC & SF Public Utilities Commission, by which restaurant grease is collected around San Francisco and turned into biodiesel. Jordan was kind enough to shed some light on the rising costs of this much needed alternative to our dependance on foreign oil and the important issue of sustainability. What controls the price per gallon of biodiesel? It seems as though every time the price of diesel goes up so does biodiesel. Why is this when the two industries are so very different? When can I expect the price to go down? All good questions that attempt to decipher the complex road fuel industry that has traditionally been ignored due to the low prices for so long. |