Does Biodiesel Deserve a Better Deal??

Biodiesel and ethanol both fall under the category of “biofuels,” which describes any fuel synthesized from plant or animal matter. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Biodiesel offers a significantly improved environmental impact compared to both ethanol and standard petroleum-derived diesel. It can be used in standard diesel engines with little or no negative impact on engine health. Just add it to the tank of your Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen or Mercedes diesel vehicle – or pretty well any other diesel including light trucks.  In tropical warm weather it even starts well in the morning.

Meanwhile, ethanol deserves scrutiny for its relatively high emissions, and the way it can damage engines that aren’t specifically designed to burn the fuel.

In recent years, ethanol has been the target of a backlash from environmentalists and critics of government waste, who argue that the limited benefits of the fuel don’t justify the federal support it received over the last few decades. In the USA, the Renewable Fuels Standard, which sets a production mandate for both ethanol and biodiesel, has recently been a target of reformers, who would like to see the standard cut to reflect the low demand and perceived declining promise of ethanol. If that happens, biodiesel production could get caught up in the reforms, with the EPA opting not to raise production targets for biodiesel in 2014.

Biodiesel can be produced from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled food by-products like restaurant grease, or from algae, which can be grown using waste materials like sewage. It can be sold in a variety of blends with petroleum diesel or as a pure 100-percent blend known in some areas as B100.

Locally in the NT there is one small scale production facility near Berrimah, using waste vegetable oils and greases………plus one large mothballed facility at East Arm where current production is zero, but capacity is 130 million litres per year.

The mothballed biodiesel facility near Darwin

The cost of the fuel to consumers varies depending upon blend and location, but may be more expensive than mineral based diesel.  That extra cost brings the benefit of about a 50-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2010 study by Argonne National Laboratory in the USA.

Should there now be more emphasis on biodiesel production, with this very high reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, especially as Australian mineral derived diesel seems to be remaining persistently high in price?  

Cheap Distributed Energy for Rural Development

In India, Tata, one of the industrial giants of the country is working through concepts to invest in cheap distributed power supply in rural areas.

The company believes there is a market.......if not today, then soon. And they are positioning themselves to be part of it.

Sure, one thinks of solar powered telephone towers, remembering that the entire microwave repeater system across the north of Australia was run on solar power, and that was 25 years ago. So that is not new.

There are other options too, including local use of biomass produced for fuel such as palm oil, or other crop oils used in small diesel motors to run local cottage industry or produce modest amounts of electricity.

Tata is doing this big time though.

Does their model also offer some hope for many other rural and remote regions across Asia and Africa especially?

Read more here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20047974-54.html?tag=mncol;mlt_related

Can Energy be Less Black in Australia?

Australia's energy markets, their regulation and development might be in for some serious challenges it seems, right at the nub of change - policy intervention.

Australia has much of our energy production from coal, including some from particularly dirty brown coal. These are all on one side. Shall we say the brown, or maybe black corner.

Then there are the new energy producers, with renewable energy in various forms, but commonly wind in the majority at present, but more alternatives coming, or at worst, gas as the primary energy source. The green corner, you might think.

Lobbying from the black corner has so far been quite successful, with their success relatively undiminished. Even a few more recent successes. There has been a focus on preservation of the policy status quo. BUT.......the green corner is pushing hard, and might be on the cusp of some decent gains.

Read the article here and look at the links. An interesting time is upon us.

http://www.environmentalmanagementnews.net/storyview.asp?storyid=1564856&sectionsource=s0

Can the politicians yet be convinced that it is within their power to actually do something??

Agriculture WILL be Part of Biofuels Future

While there have been many naysayers about the role of crops in biofuel production, recent developments do show a somewhat different pattern emerging as new generation production facilities are coming on line.

In 2007, the US Department of Agriculture estimated cellulosic ethanol production costs at $2.65/gal., compared to $1.65 for corn-based ethanol.

POET recently reported that it lowered production costs for cellulosic ethanol - including capital expenses - from $4.13 to $2.35/gal. in one year, as of November 2009, at its South Dakota pilot plant and hopes to lower it further.

Novozymes, the leading producer of enzymes in the world, recently estimated that the cost of enzymes for cellulosic ethanol production [ in the USA] has been reduced significantly in the last two years to about 50 cents/gal., reducing total production costs in the near term to about $2/gal.

Algae has great yield potential, but production cost estimates (net of capital costs) for growing and converting algae to fuel are significantly higher, ranging from $9 to $35/gal. depending on the production technology, the report notes. "Developing the capacity to use multiple feedstocks and to produce bio-based fuels that are equivalent to fossil fuels that can be used in current vehicles without limit and distributed seamlessly in the existing transportation sector may become the least-risky business model to pursue," the report concludes.

Read the full report at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/BIO%200101/BIO0101.pdf

Some new plants are producing biodiesel from waste fats, rather than new farm based oils or similar eg palm oils.

Work continues in a range of countries, with biodiesel small scale plants making some inroads in developing countries.

Australia still seems to be locked into ethanol from sugarcane and grains..........yet the new cellulosic ethanol option would seem to be of increasing importance.

Will we see Australian grassy weeds - with lots of biomass for example gamba grass - be seen as valuable for cellulosic ethanol production. Many sure do produce a lot of biomass!!

There is also a good article here:
http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/role-for-ag-in-advanced-biofuels/1837573.aspx?storypage=0

Soil Carbon May Come from the Tractor Exhaust

A Canadian inventor may have found a very useful tool that can inject tractor exhaust gases into the soil and help build soil carbon and stimulate soil microbes.

Yes.......there are many snake oil salesmen around, but this does sound possible. It fits well with some recent agronomic evidence that if small doses of nitrogen are applied to agronomic systems they may act first on microbial populations that are able to then grow and act on soil minerals and organic systems that have stored nutrients, to help release N and P in the soil in a form that can be taken up by plants, rather than directly on the plants themsleves.

Yes.......it is still relatively early days, but there are some serious scientists giving it a tick already.

Read about it yourself............and think.
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When the smoke from a tractor exhaust goes up, that’s pollution. But get those emissions down into the soil and they become fertiliser, as Canadian farmer, Gary Lewis, is demonstrating.

Mr Lewis has spent the best part of a decade developing and refining a system that pipes tractor exhaust emissions through a condenser and into the pneumatic system of air seeders, which then injects the carbon and nitrogen-rich emissions into the ground with the seed.

What is generally considered as pollution is in fact prime soil food, Mr Lewis said, and tractor exhaust has allowed him and other farmers working with his technology to grow excellent crops without using conventional fertilisers. The exhaust gases are believed to stimulate microbial activity and root growth, allowing the plants to more efficiently extract nutrient and moisture from the soil.

The United Nations has shown an interest in the system, which might not only reduce fertiliser dependency but cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Lewis, an Alberta rancher and former auto mechanic who specialises in growing timothy hay for export, claims not to have used fertiliser on his 250-hectare irrigation farm for at least six years, instead fertilising it with his “BioAgtive” technology. Mr Lewis said he had seen no loss of production, his soils had moved from pH 8.0 (the same as the irrigation water) to a pH of about 7.0, and soil organic matter levels were now at about 10 per cent.

In testimonials quoted on the BioAgtive website, former Agriculture Canada scientists turned consultants, Dr Jill Clapperton and Dr Loraine Bailey, agree that something positive is happening in BioAgtive treated soils. “The obvious conclusion is that the exhaust had a positive effect on crop growth, yield and quality, and may have positively enhanced soil nutrients and nutrient chemistry,” Dr Bailey writes.

Meanwhile, Dr Clapperton is working on a scientific paper outlining how the technology works.

Understanding why BioAgtive is not just “blowing smoke”, as Mr Lewis feels many scientists think he’s doing, requires a different perspective on exhaust emissions.

Surprisingly, a breakdown of the content of diesel exhaust looks like a partial Christmas shopping list for plants. A Volkswagen analysis of light-duty diesel engine exhaust published in a World Health Organisation-sponsored report gave an analysis by weight of 75 per cent nitrogen, 15pc oxygen, seven per cent carbon dioxide and 2.6pc water vapour. Several other substances existed in quantities of less than 0.1pc.

Mr Lewis calculates a zero-till rig will put 1100 kilograms of air through the tractor engine to work a hectare.

Dr Bailey writes that the exhaust treatment “resulted in significant release of soil N and/or stimulated the crops to take up soil N”. She said there were also small increases in the uptake of phosphorus, potassium and sulphur and slight shifts in the amount of some micro-nutrients taken up by the crops.
If it proves viable, BioAgtive will also be a tool for farmers wanting to reduce their profile under emissions trading.

The system relies on attraction between negatively-charged ions in the gases and the soil’s positively charged alkaline component to hold the gases in the soil, as well as sealing it in.

Some Canadian farmers are now growing their own biofuel crops using BioAgtive technology, Mr Lewis said About 150 farmers around the world, including in Australia and recently China, had bought into the concept.

While the system doesn’t come cheap, at about $C40,000, Mr Lewis points to what he says is the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in fertiliser in a year.

Gary Lewis is booked to talk at the Carbon Farming Conference and Expo at Orange, later this year on November 4-5.

[ partially sourced Qld Country Life]

Biofuel from Algae - Exxon Invests Big

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world’s largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.

This was reported today in the NY Times [July 14 2009]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all#

While many organisations around the world are researching this topic, and making biodiesel or similar products on a small scale has already been done, scaling up to the size required, and having repeatability of algae production on a large scale are all a lot more difficult.

No one suggests this will happen tomorrow, but the fact that Exxon has invested, and at a considerable amount of $$, might seem to indicate that the algae to biodiesel pathway may be one of the favoured methods that could replace out of the ground oil especially for transport fuels.

Algae to biodiesel and then use would appear to offer a reasonably low carbon impact pathway, potentially less than fossil fuel burning.

We are looking at a 5-10 year timeline probably, unless someone else gazumps them..........and that could happen given the effort now going into algae to fuel research and development programs in both industry and academia.

Fate of New Biodiesel Manufacturing Plants

Oilseed prices have rocketed up in price and availability has plateaued. Soybean oil prices have increased about 300% over the past 2-4 years, as have palm oil prices.

These two feedstocks have been seen as the cornerstone of the supplies for the biodiesel plant constructed in Darwin at the Darwin Business Park. It cost around A$75 million, but will it be a silver elephant?

These radical increases in feedstock prices for what has been imported materials, along with rapidly escalating logistics and transport charges might mean the local refinery will fail, at least in the current structure.

At present the system is apparently refining glycerin to meet high quality demands in the food and pharmecutical industries, and not biodiesel, but really............it needs to be producing biodiesel. While local NT and even Australian demand is fair, under current government arrangements over tariffs, excise and other issues, the big hiccup is feedstock.

The plant owners are keeping very quiet, very quiet and it is rumoured they are struggling financially.

How many other production plants are in the same predicament?

There is no local production of agricultural produced vegetable oil materials, although some research has been running on a oil soybean industry. While this development is occurring independent of the biodiesel plant, it is likely to be some years away from, if ever, efficient production of economic crops of oil based soybeans, on a large enough scale to contribute significantly to a feedstock source.

Some other species are also being investigated.

The NT does not have a good track record on cropping on the scale required, and anyway the local NT environmental lobby would not want land cleared and used for this purpose.....almost under any set of circumstances. And they are well organised.

And even if enough was produced, would it be cheap enough to use as a feedstock anyway given world prices for the soybean oil?

An interesting conundrum.

Are there other biodiesel plants where feedstock prices are cruelling biodiesel production, even at current mineral oil prices of around US$100 + ?

Jatropha - a Better Biofuel Option?

While many write of doom and gloom about biofuel crops, and that they are actually negative in terms of carbon balance [ see post below], interest is growing [pardon the pun] in jatropha, as a oil source and biofuel.

Jatropha is NOT a food crop, so it is somewhat different to many other options. In fact more of a weed and potential medicinal species in many tropical countries.

The Indian government has been pushing to increase the area of this species, with a focus on small, village level developments, and local processing using modest presssing or extraction equipment. That is probably a great thing, eliminating the need for cash outlays to purchase expensive imported diesel. The jatropha oil, often with minimum further processing can be used in small diesel engines, for lighting, electricity, small workshop and industrial power and machinery operation.

Others are pushing the use on better land, mainly in Africa, and to a lesser extent in India. Sometimes this land is currently idle or damaged in some way eg landmines and in these cases a larger agro-industrial approach is being developed. In Africa, in Mali, a project has been in various phases since around 1993, with generally good results. And the Indian scientists have been developing superior genetic materials with superior establishment and performance.

In Australia jatropha has a stigma as a weed, and development will be, and is, quite muted. Are we missing out on this apparent growth and development? Maybe not, as the Australian owned biofuels plant in Singapore has signed up to buy jatropha oil as a biofuel feedstock.

Will we see weed fueled buses in Darwin?

There are some excellent online resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_oil - a bit dated but ok for a start point

http://www.jatrophabiodiesel.org/aboutJatrophaPlant.php

http://cals.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln40/jatropha.html

http://www.jatrophaworld.org/

Like all energy crop projects over the past 25 - 30 years there is a lot of hype with some substance. But with oil now hovering around $100 US per barrel, has the time come to seriously push harder for use of biofuel options, especially those capable of being grown in marginal areas where food crops are not possible?

BUT....jatropha seems to have a significant drawback that is rarely discussed. Seed harvest currently seems to rely on cheap highly intensive labour. Hardly a good option for the industrialised countries. However, one item in abundance in many developing regions IS the supply of labour. Maybe, just maybe, it will be hand harvested while superior semi- mechanised options are developed. They will be needed if it is to expand.

Biofuels Worsen the Carbon Balance and Do Nothing for Climate Change

Growing crops to make biofuels results in vast amounts of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere and does nothing to stop climate change or global warming, according to the first thorough scientific audit of a biofuel's carbon budget.

Scientists have produced damning evidence to suggest that biofuels could be one of the biggest environmental con-tricks because they actually make global warming worse by adding to the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide that they are supposed to curb.

Two separate studies published in the journal Science show that a range of biofuel crops now being grown to produce "green" alternatives to oil-based fossil fuels release far more carbon dioxide into the air than can be absorbed by the growing plants. The scientists found that, in the case of some crops, it would take several centuries of growing them to pay off the "carbon debt" caused by their initial cultivation. Those environmental costs do not take into account any extra destruction to the environment, for instance the loss of biodiversity caused by clearing tracts of pristine rainforest.

"All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly. Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture," said Joe Fargioine of the US Nature Conservancy who was the lead scientist in one of the studies.

The scientists carried out the sort of analysis that has been missing in the rush to grow biofuels, encouraged by policies in the United States and Europe where proponents have been keen to extol biofuels' virtues as a green alternative to the fossil fuels used for transport.

Both studies looked at how much carbon dioxide is released when a piece of land is converted into a biofuel crop. They found that when peat lands in Indonesia are converted into palm-oil plantations, for instance, it would take 423 years to pay off the carbon debt.

The next worse case was when forested land in the Amazon is cut down to convert into soybean fields. The scientists found that it would take 319 years of making biodiesel from the soybeans to pay of the carbon debt caused by chopping down the trees in the first place.

Such conversions of land to grow corn (maize) and sugarcane for biodiesel, or palm oil and soybean for bioethanol, release between 17 and 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels, the scientists calculated.

"This research examines the conversion of land for biofuels and asks the question 'is it worth it?' Does the carbon you lose by converting forests, grasslands and peat lands outweigh the carbon you 'save' by using biofuels instead of fossil fuels?" Dr Fargione said. "And surprisingly the answer is 'no'. These natural areas store a lot of carbon, so converting them to croplands results in tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere," he said.

The demand for biofuels is destroying the environment in other ways. American farmers for instance used to rotate between soybean and corn crops but the demand for biofuel has meant that they are growing corn only. As a result, Brazilian farmers are cutting down forests to grow soybean to meet the shortfall in production.

"In finding solutions to climate change, we must ensure that the cure is not worse than the disease," said Jimmie Powell, a member of the scientific team at the Nature Conservancy. "We cannot afford to ignore the consequences of converting land for biofuels. Doing so means we might unintentionally promote fuel alternatives that are worse than the fossil fuels they are designed to replace. These findings should be incorporated into carbon emission policy going forward," Dr Powell said.

The European Union is already having second thoughts about its policy aimed at stimulating the production of biofuel. Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner, admitted last month that the EU did not foresee the scale of the environmental problems raised by Europe's target of deriving 10 per cent of its transport fuel from plant material.

Professor John Pickett, chair of the recent study on biofuels commissioned by the Royal Society, said that although biofuels may play an important role in cutting greenhouse gases from transport, it is important to remember that one biofuel is not the same as another."The greenhouse gas savings that a biofuel can provide are dependent on how crops are grown and converted and how the fuel is used," Professor Pickett said. "Given that biofuels are already entering global markets, it will be vital to apply carbon certification and sustainability criteria to the assessment of biofuels to promote those that are good for people and the environment. This must happen at an international level so that we do not just transfer any potentially negative effects of these fuels from one place to another."

Professor Stephen Polasky of the University of Minnesota, an author of one of the studies published in Science, said that the incentives currently employed to encourage farmers to grow crops for biofuels do not take into account the carbon budget of the crop. "We don't have the proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products but not rewarded for carbon management. This creates incentives for excessive land clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions," Professor Polasky said.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/destroying-native-ecosystems-biofuel-crops-worsens-global-warming-15441.html is the link to one Polasky article, and he has an excellent presentation on biofuel economics on line as well.

These studies apparently point to a very different dynamic in the use of biofuels. We do not seem to be able to have it both ways it seems with current systems. But the next generation of biofuel production systems that mostly use lignocellulosic products [commonly waste biomass] which are converted microbiologically are generally a very different proposition with the economics apparently positive. But whether the carbon balance is positive or negative is currently still being debated. At least the initial products used are not being diverted from primarily food production.

In Australia the rush to use biofuels has not been as great as elsewhere, mainly due to supply constraints, and the paucity of production plants.

[partially sourced from original sources, http://www.independent.co.uk/ and others]

Biodiesel Chocolate Truck - Off to Timbuktu

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate (biodiesel) Truck

SOURCE: http://www.triplepundit.com

Two men left England last Friday on their way to Timbuktu in a truck powered by chocolate.

For the sake of accuracy, the truck is powered with biodiesel fuel made from “waste chocolate” (I never knew there was such a thing as waste chocolate!).

Leaving from England on a ferry across the English channel, the team of Andy Pag and John Grimshaw plan to make their 4.500 mile journey in approximately three weeks.

Using cocoa butter extracted from a confectioner’s misshapen chocolate “rejects”, the truck will carry 454 gallons of biodiesel fuel. The Ford Iveco Cargo truck is carrying two smaller vehicles for the final hard slog across the Sahara desert, all powered with standard engines fueled with biodiesel. The final cost of the fuel is calculated at about $1.16 per gallon.

Carbon Neutral All the Way to Timbuktu

The trip is billed as the first carbon neutral journey across the Sahara desert. To achieve that neutrality, the pair will offset the carbon produced from the journey by delivering a biofuel processing unit built upon their arrival in Mali. The device is built by Ecotek in the UK, the same company that designed the process to convert the chocolate bits to biofuel.

The processing unit will be delivered directly to Mali-Folkecenter (MFC), a charity organization that works with developing enterprise in rural and under served communities through environmental and renewable energy projects. The biodiesel processor will be used by local woman to convert waste cooking oil into fuel, bring in some supplemental income, employ two technicians, and provide low carbon fuel for local vehicles.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip is to encourage Peg and Grimshaw’s fellow Britons to use biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuel.

I don’t believe all biofuels are “created equal” or are a panacea or total solution to our dependence on fossil fuel (see my earlier post on the subject), but developing a process that converts waste chocolate into fuel serves as another example of how innovative thinking can help pave the way to viable alternative solutions to fossil fuel use. The road to good ideas sometimes leads to unexpected places, powered by creative thinking and, well, chocolate!

Follow the team’s progress at biotruck.co.uk and keep on trucking

Low Level Biodiesel Blends DO Reduce Greenhouse Gas

A new CSIRO report shows a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from biodiesels, even with a low 2pc biodiesel blend. Every little bit does count!

Biodiesel is a diesel substitute made from renewable materials such as tallow and vegetable oils which typically is blended into diesel at ratios of 2, 5 and 20pc here in Australia, depending on the type of customer.

Caltex in australia is a significant supplier of these blended biodiesel fuels, and CEO, Des King, says, "Biodiesel blends also reduce emissions of very fine particles from diesel vehicle exhausts, while reducing greenhouse gas." “Every litre of diesel supplied from Caltex's Newcastle terminal is New Generation Diesel containing 2pc biodiesel." "The supply of our biodiesel blends from Newcastle saves our customers about 20 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

In addition, Caltex supplies 5 and 20pc blends to commercial customers in various locations.

According the recent CSIRO report, a 2% biodiesel blend can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5% compared with the effect of unblended diesel, assuming the biodiesel is made from tallow. The reduction for a 5% biodiesel blend is 3.7pc and the reduction for a 20% is 15%.

Caltex has not purchased imported palm oil based biodiesel and will not, unless it can be shown to be sustainable, to the satisfaction of key stakeholders in the countries where it is produced.
Biodiesel made from palm oil sourced from existing plantations, offers similar greenhouse gas emission savings to tallow-based biodiesel. However, imported palm oil sourced from cleared rainforest or peat swamps would greatly increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Caltex commissioned CSIRO to conduct the research on the greenhouse gas benefits of biodiesel blends to support development of renewable fuels, and to provide updated, authoritative information for our customers and everyone with an interest in biodiesel.

"Caltex supports development of biofuels in Australia," says the CEO. "We achieved our volume target for 2006 under the former government’s Biofuels Action Plan and have already achieved our target for 2007. "We advocate continuation of this plan under the new Labor government.

“We also see the need for the government to prepare a comprehensive plan for biofuels in Australia through to 2020, including consideration of some pressing short term regulatory and financial issues including the biodiesel blend standard and the longer term transition to non-food biofuels feedstocks."


* The report on greenhouse and air quality emissions of biodiesel blends in Australia, can be downloaded at www.caltex.com.au or www.csiro.au/resources/pf13o.html

Proposed New Biofuel Crops in Australia - Is Jatropha a Weed?

New biofuel crops or just more bloody weeds? [reprinted from Rural press sources]
Australia Wednesday, 30 May 2007


With climate change so much in the news, new biofuel crops are attracting interest but initial investigations by the Invasive Species Council (ISC) have found that many of these are potential major weeds- putting the economy and the environment at risk.

An ISC spokesmand, Tim Low, said they have found that some of the plants being promoted by biofuel organisations in Australia to be serious weeds. "For example, a biodiesel company in Queensland has called on farmers to grow jatropha (also called physic nut), an Indian plant that is banned in Western Australia and the Northern Territory because of its weediness. "Jatropha is also closely related to bellyache bush - one of the worst weeds of grazing lands in northern Australia - and like bellyache bush it is poisonous to livestock. It could be a disaster if this plant was deliberately put in the ground as a crop in Australia," Mr Low said.

The ISC has found that other known major weeds touted as biofuel crops include Chinese tallow tree, castor oil plant, reed canary grass, giant reed and Chinee apple. For example Chinese tallow tree is one of America's worst weeds, and it was recently declared a noxious weed in northern NSW because it was invading land so rapidly.


In September last year six scientists published an article in the journal, Science, warning about the weed risk posed by biofuel crops.

In the US, corn is grown as a biofuel, but the costs of cultivation are so high that without subsidies it is not a viable alternative to petroleum.


The search is on for hardy low-maintenance biofuel crops, but unfortunately some of those proposed are well known weeds. This poses a potential major risk to Australian agriculture and the Australian environment. Due to the risk the Invasive Species Council is preparing a comprehensive report on the weed risk posed by some biofuel plants.



BUT...........the following article appeared in Scientific American May 2007.



Green Gold in a Shrub
Entrepreneurs target the jatropha plant as the next big biofuel
By Rebecca Renner


Image from D1 OILS PLC
Jatropha seedlings JATROPHA SEEDLINGS are planted in Zambia for U.K. biodiesel firm D1 Oils--part of an increasing effort to harvest the shrub, which favors hot, dry climates, as a source of biofuel.



A woody shrub with big oily seeds could be the ideal source for biofuel. For hundreds of years, Africans in places such as Tanzania and Mali have used Jatropha curcas (jatropha) as a living fence. Now biodiesel entrepreneurs in tropical zones in Africa and India are buying up land, starting plantations and looking forward to making fuel from the seeds, which, they argue, will be better for the global environment and economy than conventional biofuel crops grown in temperate climates.

Ethanol from corn or sugarcane and biodiesel from canola, soy or palm oil have become major players in renewable energy. In principle, biofuels do not increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, because as the plants grow they trap the CO2 that is released when the biofuels are burned.

Still, biofuels face a great deal of criticism. Food commodities such as corn, canola and soy all yield oil, but they are expensive, require intensive agricultural practices and threaten food supplies. Jatropha seems to offer the benefits of biofuels without the pitfalls. The plants favour hot, dry conditions and hence are unlikely to threaten rain forests. There is no trade-off between food and fuel either, because the oil is poisonous.

John Mathews, a professor of strategic management at Macquarie University in Australia, notes that many tropical developing countries have huge swaths of degraded and semiarid land that can be utilized for fuel crops. The cost of labor there is cheap, too. Biofuels made from plants such as jatropha, he argues, "represent the best bet for a last-ditch effort to industrialize the poor south and end poverty." He advocates large-scale plantings to aid energy independence in expanding economies such as China and India and to boost exports in the less developed countries of Africa.

Mathews's vision may be coming true. U.K. biodiesel company D1 Oils has planted 150,000 hectares of jatropha in Swaziland, Zambia and South Africa, as well as in India, where it is part of a joint venture. The firm plans to double its crop sizes this year. Dutch biodiesel equipment manufacturer BioKing is developing plantings in Senegal, and the government of China has embarked on a massive project. "People aren't making much jatropha oil right now, because everyone wants seeds for planting," says Reinhard Henning, a German technology transfer consultant and expert in jatropha.

In addition to establishing plantations, jatropha boosters are starting to identify, select and propagate the best varieties for biodiesel production. Henning has found Brazilian jatropha seeds that contain 40 percent oil--about the same as canola and more than twice the 18 percent contained in soybeans. Indonesia has a dwarf variety that is especially easy to harvest.


Finding the variety best suited to particular growing conditions is crucial, explains D1 Oils agronomy director Henk Joos, because right now not much hard scientific information exists about jatropha--just lots of stories. "We know that this plant is environmentally elastic and drought-tolerant. But the aura that this is a wonder crop that you can plant in the desert and harvest gold" is a dangerous notion that threatens social and economic sustainability, Joos says, adding that jatropha needs to be managed like any other crop. He notes that at D1 Oils plantations, farmers plant in land that is as good as possible without replacing food crops, then apply first-rate farming practices: prune branches, apply manure and provide water.

But the realization that successful large-scale operations have to function like well-run farms raises the issue of competition with food crops for water and land, says agronomist Raymond Jongschaap of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Jongschaap is spearheading one of the research projects looking for different types of jatropha with the goal of matching plants to growing conditions and maximizing oil yields. He has the most faith in small-scale efforts based on hedges or intercropping jatropha with other plants-- a method used in projects in Kenya and Madagascar, where jatropha is planted alongside vanilla.


Henning agrees that it is smart for jatropha growers to start small. Biodiesel cannot compete with current petroleum prices, which are relatively low, so jatropha would be better suited for local projects that improve rural livelihoods and basic energy services. These small projects have already started to build a framework of familiarity and expertise--in parts of Tanzania, kids learn about jatropha in school. Then, as fuel prices increase, jatropha cultivation can go to a larger scale. The wild shrub could then become a "sustainable cash crop," Joos believes, and a fuel for the future.

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There is a definite sense of deja vu about these proposals. As an agronomist that has seen all this before in two earlier oil shocks, there is a VERY large distance between concept and actual sustainable production with plant biofuels. The idea of "livelihood" production is especially useful, with biofuels able to replace expensive and often difficult to obtain petroleum products in rural communities across Africa and even India. That may have merit and fits with the ideas in the recent UN document on biofuels. Developing the agronomic systems for large scale is more difficult.


I have no doubt we will hear more about several other species, most of whom have had considerable work done on oily / gum / latex constituents that might be suitable for fuel or fuel conversion. Many of these are semi arid or arid zone plants eg Euphorbia tirucalli . But the agronomy required to develop them to meet the requirments of modern agricultural practice in western countries and their labour costs AND yield enough is a very tough call, especially in the short to medium term - say 7-10 years.


BUT.......for Australia the case being developed by the Invasive Species Council against jatropha should be carefully examined. It is weedy........and can be very weedy!


All the promoters wish to do is make a lot of $$, and they are all commercial firms without a lot of "public good' among them. Cynic I may be, but experience does lead one to that conclusion.

Biofuels May Be a Problem - UN Report

May 09, 2007 — partially by Nicole Winfield, Associated Press ROME

Biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor, but the benefits may be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for the hungry, the United Nations concluded Tuesday in its first major report on bioenergy.

In an agency-wide assessment, the United Nations raised alarms about the potential negative impact of biofuels, just days after a climate conference in Bangkok said the world had both the money and technology to prevent the sharp rise in global temperatures blamed in part on greenhouse gas emissions.

Biofuels, which are made from corn, palm oil, sugar cane and other agricultural products, have been seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world's soaring energy needs than with greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels.

European leaders have decided that at least 10 percent of fuels will come from biofuels like ethanol by 2020, and the U.S. Congress is working on a proposal that would increase production of biofuels sevenfold by 2022. With oil prices at record highs, biofuels have become an attractive alternative energy source for poor countries, some of which spend six times as much money importing oil than on health care.

But environmentalists have warned that the biofuel craze can do as much or more damage to the environment as dirty fossil fuels -- a concern reflected throughout the report, which was being released Tuesday, May 8 in New York, by U.N.-Energy, a consortium of 20 U.N. agencies and programs. While saying bioenergy represents an "extraordinary opportunity" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it warned that "rapid growth in liquid biofuel production will make substantial demands on the world's land and water resources at a time when demand for both food and forest products is also rising rapidly."

Changes in the carbon content of soils and carbon stocks in forests and peat lands might offset some or all of the benefits of the greenhouse gas reductions, it said. "Use of large-scale monocropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion and nutrient leaching," adding that" investments in bioenergy must be managed carefully, at national, regional and local levels to avoid new environmental and social problems some of which could have irreversible consequences."

This major report noted that soaring palm oil demand has already led to the clearing of tropical forests in southeast Asia. In addition, the diversion of food crops for fuel will increase food prices, putting a strain on the poor, as evidenced by the recent steep rise in maize and sugar prices, the report said. "Liquid biofuel production could threaten the availability of adequate food supplies by diverting land and other productive resources away from food crops," it said, adding that many of those biofuel crops require the best land, lots of water and environment-damaging chemical fertilizers.

While bioenergy crops can create jobs in impoverished rural areas where the bulk of the world's poor and hungry live, creating biofuels favors large-scale production, meaning small-scale farmers could be pushed off their land by industrial agriculture. It suggested that farm co-ops, as well as government subsidies, could help small-scale farmers compete.

Such concerns have been raised by Greenpeace International and other environmental groups worried that the biofuel fad is being driven by big agricultural interests looking for new markets.
"More and more, people are realizing that there are serious environmental and serious food security issues involved in biofuels," Greenpeace biofuels expert Jan van Aken said. "There is more to the environment than climate change," he said. "Climate change is the most pressing issue, but you cannot fight climate change by large deforestation in Indonesia."

Individual U.N. agencies have previously issued small-scale reports on biofuels, but they were largely optimistic and did not highlight negative consequences because they were not yet known, said Gustavo Best, vice chair of U.N.-Energy and a biofuels expert at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

But with the surge in interest by the private sector, the rise in commodity prices and an awareness of the strain on water supplies that has resulted from biofuel production, "we now have to raise the red flags and say 'be careful, don't go too fast,'" he said in an interview.
"There are winners and losers," he said.

That the report exists is something of a miracle, since there has long been opposition among U.N. member states -- including OPEC, nuclear and other energy lobbies-- to have any kind of international dialogue on energy. There is for example, no U.N. Millennium Goal for energy, and recent U.N. working documents on sustainable development continue to be very fossil-fuel oriented, Best said.

The document is intended for governments to help them craft bioenergy policies that maximize the potential but minimize the negative impacts -- even as the technology continues to change. "We can't cross our arms and wait to have better data or better methodologies," Best said. "We need to contribute to the discussion, but in a balanced way".

It is also worth noting that biodiesel does lend itself to local production and can be made with quite simple chemicals from freshly pressed or used vegetable oils. Indeed, backyard production of biodiesel is quite common in many regions of the developed world, aiding in the removal from the waste stream of used cooking oils. Surely this approach could be used in many developing areas for simple local production of biodiesel for essential areas of use such as tractors and generators. No, it does not solve the world energy problems.........but it might just solve more immediate ones at a local level, most of whom could not give a #### about "world energy" or "greenhouse gases" as getting water, food and shelter a more immediate need.

This report follows on from recent reports emanating from the Netherlands about energy costs both economic and environmental through use of palm oil.

There are many comments in the media on this report, from all sides of the spectra, and many from well recognised energy commentators.

So the jury is still out..........and squabbling still!

Access the full report, about 64pp, at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a1094e/a1094e00.pdf

The full title is "Sustainable Bioenergy - A Framework for Decision Makers".

GM Sorghum May Offer Potential for Biofuel in the Tropics of Australia

Scientists Display Modified Sorghum Crop

May 02, 2007 — By Michael Graczyk, Associated Press COLLEGE STATION, Texas.

Texas A&M University scientists showed off to state and federal officials Tuesday a genetically engineered crop of sorghum they believe will be a more efficient and economical option to corn in drier parts of the country as the nation pushes for alternative energy sources.

Sorghum, which as a plant resembles stalks of corn, is a centuries-old grain common around the world but used more in the United States as a livestock feed. At Texas A&M, researchers have been working over the past several years to extend its growing season, allowing it to double its height to more than 10 to 15 feet [3-4m], thicken its stalk and be even more drought tolerant.

The genetic changes make it ideal to raise in the South and Southeast where the growing season already is longer than in northern sections of the country. The climate also makes it more suitable than growing corn, which has emerged as a biofuel alternative used in ethanol production, particularly in the Midwest.

The cellulose from one version of the sorghum and sugar from another version similarly can be processed for fuel. Researchers said energy yields could top those from corn and at a more reasonable cost, making it an economic windfall for farmers.

"It's really a matter of national security if we can lessen our dependence on imported oil and turn to those we can trust, and that is our nation's farmers," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said after a briefing and tour of A&M agriculture and biofuel labs. "For decades we have depended on what's below the ground for our nation's energy and now we can turn to what's above the ground. With the yields that are being forecast, with the continual growing season in certain parts of Texas and in particular the lower water usage, it offers great promise." "Agriculture already has been highly successful in providing this nation and the people with an abundant supply of food, feed and fiber," said Undersecretary of Agriculture Gale Buchanan, who also participated in the half-day briefing. "I'm equally convinced it will be just as successful adding energy to that portfolio."

Some of the new crop could allow for as many as three harvests annually in areas like the Texas Rio Grande Valley. Texas, with 1.3 million acres harvested in 2005, and Kansas are the nation's leading sorghum-producing states. A&M researchers said they've been working with their counterparts at Kansas State University in developing sorghum for ethanol use. About 15 percent of the domestic grain sorghum crop already goes into ethanol production, according to the National Sorghum Producers, an industry trade group. Bill Rooney, an associate professor and coordinator of the A&M sorghum breeding and genetics program, said he hopes to have the genetically engineered crop commercially available in three years. Petrochemical companies already have been to College Station to discuss their interest.

Brett Cornwell, commercialization services director with the Texas A&M System, touted the economic benefits of the sorghum project for farmers.

"If a farmer's breaking even, they're not going to grow our product," he said. "What we're looking at with the sorghum is a solution that works in the right places with the right farmers and delivers to the farmers. They're not just in the game for God, America and apple pie. They will make money." Cornwell said sorghum could be a "regional solution that works in the Southeast and may work in California." "The reality of the bio-energy program in the U.S. is, it's not going to be a silver bullet. There's going to be regional solutions. Corn works in Iowa. Obviously, it's where the feedstock is."

Buchanan agreed, saying he believed a key to energy independence "is each part of the country has got to focus on what it can grow and use, and clearly this is sorghum country," he said. "I think that's a reflection of what we've got to do throughout the country."

Source: Associated Press

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A bit of thinking for the recently announced Northern Development Task force. Biotechnology in sorghum may also offer similar solutions suitable for north Australia, capitalising on the biomass production potential rather than grain.

Sorghum has been a marginal crop in much of north Australia, although grown with mixed success for many years for grain. BUT......a change of focus to biomass production utilising the adequate rainfall, rather than relying on the normally erratic end to the wet season that markedly impacts on grain yields could see higher and more regular biomass production well suited for local biofuel production. This would complement proposed biofuel production from vegetable oil, and with a huge effort developing in the US to improve conversion of plant cellulose to ethanol, any breakthroughs in that area could lead to use in this high cellulose yield tropical crop.

The three year further development program at Texas A&M allows time to seriously examine the possibility. And, afterall, Texas A&M is one of the same universities that have been at the forefront of sorghum research for over 50 years, developing many iconic breeding lines used by commercial companies as well as hybrid varieties in that period

While this journalistic report is produced for "media style" consumption, it is for real! Lets see how the science magazines and journals report the same issue. Definitely looks impressive so far.

A Rethink on Palm Oil for Biofuel?

March 27, 2007 — By Arthur Max, Associated Press AMSTERDAM, Netherlands --

Once, palm oil was seen as an ideal biofuel, a cheap alternative to petroleum that would fight global warming.

But second thoughts are wracking the power industry. Can the fruit of the palm tree help save the planet -- or contribute to its destruction?

Environmentalists have long warned that many plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, where 85 percent of commercial palm oil is grown, were planted on cleared rain forest, threatening the home of endangered animals like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger.

Now, amid global efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, power companies have joined conservationists in calculating the carbon count of producing palm oil fuel -- and found the balance increasingly negative. A few companies have put plans on hold to switch to palm oil.

A report late last year by a Netherlands-based research group claimed some plantations produce far more carbon dioxide than they save. Seeded on drained peat swamps, they unleash a warehouse of carbon from decomposed plants and animals that had been locked in the bogs for hundreds of million years, which one biologist described as "buried sunshine."

"As a biofuel, it's a failure," said Marcel Silvius, a climate change expert for Wetlands International, the institute that led the research team.

The palm oil debate is just one example of cold realism dampening enthusiasm for vegetable oils as substitutes for the fossil fuels that are widely blamed for the gradual warming of the Earth and potentially disastrous changes in climate.

In the United States, where farmers have diverted corn and sugar crops to ethanol production, food prices have soared. Environmentalists say the high energy cost of making ethanol, coupled with the degraded land and polluted water from heavily fertilized fields, have put a large question mark on its value as a biofuel.

Palm oil is an ingredient in cooking oil, cosmetics, soaps, bread, chocolate -- in fact, in about one in every 10 products on the supermarket shelf. It also is used as an industrial lubricant.
It is attractive for bioenergy because it is relatively abundant, cheap at about US$557 (euro419) per ton in mid-March, and more easily integrated into existing power stations than most other alternative fuels. Unlike carbon-rich fossil fuels, production is considered carbon neutral, meaning the carbon emitted from burning palm oil is the same as that absorbed during growth.

But the surrounding environmental cost is becoming increasingly apparent.

The four-year study in Southeast Asia by a team from Wetlands, Delft Hydraulics and the Alterra Research Center of Wageningen University said 600 million tons of carbon dioxide seep every year into the air from drained peat swamps. Another 1.4 billion tons go up in smoke from rain forest fires deliberately set to clear new land for plantations, shrouding much of Singapore and Malaysia in an impenetrable haze for weeks at a time.

Together, those 2 billion tons of CO2 amount to 8 percent of the globe's fossil fuel emissions, the report said.

Friends of the Earth called the report "astonishing," and said it shows that harvesting palm oil for fuel is counterproductive. "It undermines the whole project," said a climate specialist for the environment group, Anne van Schaik.

Wetlands' figures could not be independently verified by the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, by the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., nor by academic experts. But all said the research appeared credible.

Deforestation is the No. 2 cause of greenhouse gas emissions after the burning of fossil fuels, said Jeffrey Dukes, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts, and clearing peat swamps for plantations is "a double whammy."

It not only releases carbon trapped over many millennia, Dukes said, but destroys the most efficient ecosystem on the planet for sucking carbon from the atmosphere and storing it underground. "By converting these forests, we are essentially taking that buried sunshine and wasting it," he said. "It's a terrible decision. Whether or not it's consciously made, it's society going in reverse."

Next month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, will publish its second in a series of four reports on the likely causes and potential impact of global warming.

Silvius, of Wetlands, said awareness of the vast amounts of carbon released from degraded peat lands is so new that the problem was not included in an early draft of the IPCC report. The group was pushing to include it in the final report and put it on the environmental agenda.
The first report, released in February, said with more certainty than before that mankind was responsible for global warming.

That report galvanized European leaders to approve a bold plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 -- and increase that to 30 percent if other countries join. Part of that goal would be achieved by converting at least 10 percent of Europe's energy supplies to biofuels.

Despite pressure to replace coal, oil and gas with cleaner fuels, major power companies in Britain and the Netherlands have scrapped plans to partially convert electricity generation to palm oil.
"We spent more than a year investigating the sustainability issues with palm oil," said Leon Flexman, of RWE npower, Britain's largest electricity supplier. The company decided against palm oil because it could not verify all its supplies would be free of the taint of destroyed rain forest or peat bogs, he said. The Dutch power company Essent also announced in December it had suspended the incineration of palm oil until it can trace and verify the sources.

Biox, a Dutch startup, said it plans to go ahead with the construction of three 50 megawatt power stations exclusively burning palm oil -- generating enough electricity to light all the homes in Amsterdam.

"Until this report came out, peatlands was not an issue because we hadn't heard of it. Nobody had heard," said Biox executive Arjen Brinkmann. "We have to take this on board as a criteria, together with the other sustainability criteria."

So far, the industry's reservations do not seem to have affected the market. Crude palm oil production rose 6.6 percent last year and will increase another 5.5% this year to 37 million tons, according to Fortis Bank. Prices have risen 35 percent in the last year and are still going up, it said. With concerns mounting over sourcing, plantation owners joined forces with processors, investors and environmentalists three years ago to form the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil with the aim of monitoring the industry and drawing up criteria for socially responsible trade.

But the RSPO has yet to create a foolproof system to verify the supply chain.

Flexman, of the British utility, said his company may still opt for palm oil in the future if the ecological issues can be resolved. "We think RSPO is the way to go in setting up verification system," he said.

Source: Associated Press

Darwin has a biodiesel plant fuelled by palm oil from SE Asia, with the company planning to build another in Singapore / Johore Bahru. And yes, the pollution from the peat and forest fires is VERY bad in most of Malaysia and Singapore during the dry season, and this originates from Indonesia. But most palm oil is expected to come from well established plantations in peninsular Malaysia at present, many of which are not on peat soils but on undulating clay soils. Not always a clearcut [ no pun intended] issue. There are also issues of local livelihood, with many thousands of rural people earning a living in the palm oil planatations.

Authors of the studies above are very credible institutions, so it should not be taken lightly. But then we already use a large volume of palm oil in other areas - is that also bad? Why has it not been raised previously if it is so serious, as palm oil cultivation has been a major feature of Indonesia and Malaysia for many, many decades? Or is this western world guilt denying a decent agricultural existence for LDC's again?

Maybe biodiesel does not rock after all. Watch this space............there will ,no doubt, be more!

Ethanol sucks - Biodiesel rocks

Many pundits as well as scientists and economists believe that for most countries, ethanol production from grain is NOT energy efficient nor economically efficient. And most current ethanol production comes from grain with the general exception of Brazil, where sugar is the base material.

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12338 link to Brazil and ethanol

The "holy grail" for ethanol production which would almost certainly change the economics of production and use, is whole biomass conversion via microbiological processes, suitably scaled up via engineering to large scale. While some serious amounts of dollars are now being spent / planned to be spent on this type of technology, this is currently not a viable option - technically or for large scale operations.

In Australia, several recent publications indicate a reasonable proportion of vehicles could never use ethanol above the approximate level of 10%, and even some not at all. With car turnover slow, that situation is unlikely to rapidly change. The report 'Setting a Quality Standard for Fuel Ethanol' dashed hopes of a high ethanol blended fuel in the Australian fleet for the near future and reinforced the current 10% ethanol cap introduced in July 2003, claiming only specially-designed flexible fuel vehicles could use ethanol in higher percentages. The government research also showed that only about 60% of cars currently on Australian roads, some 7.6 million, are compatible with the 10% ethanol blend. Despite the low ethanol blend and the potential unpopularity of the fuel, the Queensland Government still plans to introduce an ethanol mandate by 2010.

This lack of ethanol compatibility may prove a boon for the biodiesel industry whose product can supplement petroleum diesel 100% – but the industry has been struggling against government policy in order to effectively reach the market.

One then has to question why there is such a rush to develop ethanol production. However.............biodiesel, well that is a different situation, except that the federal government is rapidly DECREASING subsidies and assistance to this potential new industry, while INCREASING assistance to ethanol production.

To add to the equation, the recent Scientific American magazine [ March 2007] clearly shows the pathway to clean diesel engines, and with rapid improvements already in place in Europe, and more smaller cars having a newer style clean diesel engine, often turbocharged to give excellent performance, why is Australia ignoring this trend? Australia has also recently mandated low sulfur diesel fuel. As well, the real use of transport fuel is for trucks, small and large in both long distance and surburban delivery / trademan / contractor use - and I am sure their presence is very evident on any day, with the weekend slack being taken up by diesel 4 x 4 or similar vehicles. Other major uses of diesel - and potentially biodiesel - involve electricity generation, diesel electric locomotives, heavy industry and similar industrial uses.

Sure, light vehicles have used and will continue to use petrol or maybe petrol / ethanol blends, not to mention the recent free kick to vehicle LPG use by the federal government. BUT the real sleeper is the very high use of diesel in many trucks, and potentially increasing use in light vehicles too. There are some great diesel powered small cars.

Yet, government assistance is being removed at a time when increasing use of biodiesel is a real opportunity. A new biodiesel production facility has opened in Darwin recently, and even backyard production is relatively easy. And Australia can produce crops such as canola, peanuts, soybean and several other oilseed types, with most of the grain or seed potentially suitable for biodiesel. Esterification of fats, tallow etc can also make biodiesel. And we have available large volumes of crop products such as palm oil, even coconut oil in the region.

One has to seriously question the logic behind govermment decisions that favour ethanol over biodiesel.

So as I started out ........ethanol sucks and biodiesel rocks...........except with government it seems.