Biodiesel is hot!
Almost immediately after the August issue of Render began arriving in mailboxes, the calls came streaming in for additional copies. One renderer requested a half-dozen more to distribute to customers. The next day, a company that is developing a system for processing waste vegetable oil asked for three copies.
Over the next several weeks, more requests came in: a renewable energy resource engineer in New Zealand looking at the feasibility of using New Zealand’s currently exported tallow to supplement that country’s diesel requirements; a non-profit environmental and educational development group researching the process, uses, and potential of biodiesel; and a Canadian firm investigating the use of rendered products in biodiesel production for their producer client.
If the responses to that biodiesel issue are any indication, this alternative fuel is an up and coming market for renderers, but the word needs to get out there – to lawmakers, producers, and distributors – that there’s more to biodiesel than soy.
In this month’s “Biodiesel Bulletin” on page 20, we report on the opening of two more biodiesel fueling stations. But these distributors are being fed soy-based biodiesel, even though they have no preference in feedstock, so long as the fuel meets the American Society of Testing and Materials standard for biodiesel. The reason is producers have more incentives for selling soy-based biodiesel than they do for fuel derived from animal fats and oils.
That has to change.
Lawmakers must be informed about the benefits of using recycled vegetable oil and animal fats and oils so these products receive equal footing when it comes to tax credits.
Producers must also be sold on the benefits of using rendered products.
And renderers must not give up the fight for equality.
October 2002 Render