Trouble at Muscle Beach?

Can grassroots biodiesel projects deliver a steady supply of safely produced, high-quality fuel?

Greg Hopkins, president of U.S. Biofuels, Inc., a mid-sized producer of biodiesel refined almost entirely from local Georgia waste poultry fat, isn't sure. U.S. Biofuels recently relocated its sole production plant in Rome, Ga., to a new 28-acre facility with the potential to produce 25 million gallons a year. Right now, it's operating at a rate of about 7 million to 8 million gallons a year, in part because the recent drop in oil prices has made it harder to price biodiesel competitively on the world market.

Hopkins worries that community-scale facilities run by the little guys will fall outside the American Society for Testing and Materials regulatory standards for fuel quality that larger manufacturers are required to meet, and for which they pay expensive testing fees. He's also concerned that grassroots ventures lack staff with the proper training in engineering and chemistry to operate safely. And there's the pollution risk: U.S. Biofuels uses expensive protective and filtering systems to avoid methanol leaks into the atmosphere. "Their heart is in the right place," says Hopkins of the grassroots projects. "I love what they're doing, but it scares me."

Lynn Benander of Northeast Biodiesel Company, Inc., doesn't buy in to those fears. She points out that even without corporate backing, community-based projects can muster sufficient scale to run smoothly. Northeast Biodiesel's Greenfield, Mass., plant, due to open in early to mid-2007, has been planned from the outset to produce at least 5 million gallons a year, which will generate enough revenue to support trained personnel (at a fair pay rate), as well as safety measures and testing for ASTM standards. "Large commercial ownership isn't the main factor," she says. "It's the size of the facility." There are chemical and mechanical engineers on Northeast Biodiesel's board, says Benander, and the company is already in the process of making its first hire for the Greenfield facility: a plant manager qualified in chemical engineering.

Rob Del Bueno, who founded Atlanta's Vegenergy and now works under the umbrella of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says Hopkins' "points are completely valid," but adds that "it doesn't have a lot to do with scale."

SACE worked with an engineering firm on the design of its biodiesel-in-a-box plants so they would meet applicable codes for material and operational safety, according to Del Bueno, and will train the operators who franchise the plants under its ReFuel program (as opposed to buying the equipment outright) to run them safely. He adds that SACE will also oversee fuel quality testing for franchisees; it will keep costs down by alternating between testing all fuel-quality parameters about once a month with more frequently checking those most likely to change between batches, such as the total amount of glycerin.

Fuel quality doesn't depend on whether a project is community-based or commercial, Del Bueno notes, citing recent findings from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The study, funded in part by the National Biodiesel Board, found that 30 percent of samples of commercially produced biodiesel taken between last November and June had glycerin levels exceeding the national standard, an indicator of incomplete processing.

And then there's the question of whether community biodiesel can even survive as Big Ag moves into the market. As companies like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland take advantage of the new enthusiasm for alternatives by pushing corn-based ethanol or soybean-based biodiesel, "it seems logical that mom-and-pop biofuel producers will be eclipsed," says Michael Coates of Mightycomm, a public relations firm that represents the Diesel Technology Forum, a pro-diesel advocacy group, and diesel fuel producers.

Not necessarily, says Benander, who points to the natural-foods industry for an example of peaceful capitalist coexistence. "The natural-food cooperatives that launched that market are strong. Many of them are thriving across the country, next to very large chains that are selling natural foods," she says. Above all, says Benander, multifaceted solutions at all economic levels are the key.

"A lot of questions have to be raised about whether making biodiesel from virgin soy oil that's industrial monocropped using large amounts of pesticides, fertilizer, freshwater ... [is] really any better than burning the petroleum directly," says Del Bueno. Still, he sees the two sides of the bio-based energy sector as intertwined. "I think there's no way you can stop the big biofuels industry," he says. "It's going to happen."

Moreover, he adds, it wouldn't be in the big players' interest to expend energy trying to squash the small fry: "The grassroots movement laid some of the foundation groundwork, and built this undercurrent market for biofuels. They're the ones who tell the next person, who tells the next person, who tells the next person. I think it would be wise if the big players would realize that."