The Big Biofuels Blog

You know you've gone too far with veg oil when... There's an excellent thread on this over on the Australian Biofuels forum:
Some of my favourites are:

* Your kids can not only identify whether chips from an unfamiliar chip shop were cooked in oil or lard, but identify several Brands of oil from the taste of the food alone!

* You aren’t feeding them any more food than usual but your dogs appear to be doubling in size just from the oil they are licking up off drums and from what you drip around the place.

* Friends you drop off drums of oil to unannounced, start referring to you as “ The oil fairy”.

* You buy a 28 year old Mercedes when you already had a perfectly good modern car and didn't need another one!

*You kill your wife's treasured lemon tree by composting glycerin too close to it (without evaporating the methanol first!).

Many thanks to David and Pangit for this. Plese leave more ideas here and at The Australian Biofuels forum.

UK bus operator Stagecoach is offering passengers 20p off bus fare with a litre of used veg oil on selected routes in Scotland as it trials biofuels on some routes.

According to a report on Scotsman.com

Locals can take their chip fat to a recycling point owned by Ayrshire Council, and from there it will go on to Argent Energy, which produces the biofuel using animal fat. The buses have been fitted with dual fuel tanks for mineral and biodiesel fuel, at a total cost of £40,000.

When they start, they will run on mineral diesel until the engine reaches the right temperature, when they will automatically switch over to biodiesel, which will power the vehicle for the rest of the day. Launching the scheme, Des Browne, the Scottish Secretary and MP for Kilmarnock and Loudon, said: "I welcome this innovative collaboration between two of our leading companies - a recycling initiative that fuels public transport cuts carbon emissions twice over.

I'm not sure if this incentive for micro collection really is a gimmick or if its a piece of inspired thinking.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono on Tuesday defended Indonesia's drive to expand oil palm plantations, despite a demand by environmentalists for a moratorium on deforestation.

Speaking in his keynote address at the opening of the sixth annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Nusa Dua, Bali, Apriyantono said any moratorium, including that recently called for by Greenpeace, was beyond the control of the Indonesian government. 

It must be that there are other forces at work. Surely, it would be more environmentally sensible to intensify production in existing plantations.

If you've been following the debate on energy intensity on the Big Biofuels Blog, mostly buried in the comments, (and perhaps more relevantly here) then you'll know that I've been interested in the cradle to grave carbon dioxide position of palm oil. I'm indebted to Almuth on biofuel watch, who points me to this page .

Here's the key Passage

Deforestation also releases amounts of carbon which is held by the vegetation, ie above soil. Indonesia's old growth forests are estimated to hold around 306 tonnes of carbon per hectare.5 86% of that carbon are lost during 'selective logging', which tends to be followed by land clearance for plantations or agriculture. A mature oil palm plantation only holds less carbon than logged forest, around 63 tonnes per hectare, but those plantations have an average life-time of only 25 years.

As Almuth says in answer to a question about how much carbon dioxide can be attributed to biodiesel from  palm oil...

If you are looking for precise information as to how much of this is related to producing palm oil from biodiesel - no such information is available.  It would require detailed auditing but the palm oil supply chain is not transparent and not traceable. Apart from the very partial reporting requirements in the UK, there are no requirements on biodiesel producers or suppliers to disclose the origin of their feedstock (although a lot of them are very open about using palm oil for biodiesel). In any case, as you will be aware, there are serious question marks over the relevance of putting too much reliance on direct impacts.

 Mayor Phil Gordon announced Friday that the fire department would work with other municipal offices on a biodiesel task force to educate residents on the hazards of skirting permits, codes and regulations.

The fire chief, Bob Khan, said the goal was to teach residents to produce biodiesel without accidentally setting off an explosion.

London is to get a ring of veg oil fueled electricity generation stations, according to a report on the BBC.

What is not clear from the report, which says the company planning to build up to eight stations, is the economics. At what price does veg oil become uneconomical and is there really enough used veg oil within an 80 km radius of each plant sustain power stations each generataing enough electricty for 100 000 homes?

Blue NG has changed its message about sourcing biofuel possibly as a result of getting planning permission to build the first plant in Becton, East London.