Piedmont Biofuels, with its 185 members, is currently considered the largest biodiesel cooperative in the United States. Operating in Chatham County, North Carolina since 2002, the co-op produces non-commercial 100% biodiesel (B100) for members, and commercial biodiesel (B100) for five local filling stations. The fuel in their 225 gallon batch reactor is created using methanol, potassium hydroxide and waste vegetable oil, which is collected from a variety of local restaurants.
Headed by Rachel Burton, aka Wrenchwench, aka In Charge, Lyle Estill, Vice President in Charge of Stuff, and Leif Forer, lead reactor designer, the co-op’s stated mission is to 1) lead a grass-roots sustainability movement in North Carolina and 2) spread the knowledge and technology necessary to encourage individuals and organizations to produce quality biodiesel in small quantities (under 250,000 gallons per year). To that end, active co-op members - the 20 or so hard-core men and women who are ready, willing and able to do the grunt work - consult, design, build and sell small biodiesel reactors and train their customers on how to use them. They also provide straight vegetable oil conversion kits for automobiles and installation services for commercial kits like Elsbett, Greasel, Greasecar, or Neoteric.
Piedmont Biofuels’ education and outreach program offers classes in renewable energy, biodiesel, conversions, sustainability and more. The group also runs booths and gives presentations at energy conferences, green conferences, educational conferences … anything to get the word out.
Wrenchwench and Leif were too busy working on their new reactor to talk. That left the VP of Stuff to tell the story of Piedmont Biofuels.
The Fried Okra Factor
Sometime around the turn of the new millennium, Lyle, a North Carolina farmer, was deep fat frying turkeys – whether as a sidebar business or because he’s into cholesterol is uncertain. But every time he cooked up a batch he was left with the problem of what to do with five gallons of leftover vegetable oil. Living in the country, he simply pitched the stuff in the woods … only to find it spawned bugs and attracted animals and other live growing things. It hit him that he was tossing away some really good energy, so he researched how to make biodiesel and started using his leftover turkey oil as a biodiesel feedstock for his tractor.
In August 2002, Lyle joined Rachel and Lief at a local community college to help teach a class on making biodiesel. Things just happened from there. “We’re like a garage band that has yet to break up,” admits Lyll. Teaching and home-brewing biodiesel for their own use expanded as friends and family and other community members wanted access to B100 - and the knowledge on how to make it. Eventually Piedmont Biofuels was born.
If bloated self-interest and ‘oil at any cost’ is the core rationale of the petroleum industry, commonsense ‘do-it-on-the-cheap’ lies at the heart of sustainability. “Use what you’ve got” could be a mantra. So could “Do it locally.” The co-op’s choice to make biodiesel was unquestioned, and revealed an almost inherently macrobiotic-like approach to sustainability.
“If I had a whole bunch of starch I'd been throwing away, maybe I would've thought of ethanol,” Lyle says. “But I was throwing away veggie oil. And also, this is North Carolina, and in North Carolina we have an awful lot of fried foods. Rachel refers to it as FOF - our fried okra factor. We may have a higher FOF than say, Washington State [where] maybe you have a bunch of wood residue. Okay use that. Make your ethanol where you have your wood residue. We have a high fried okra factor, so we're going to use vegetable grease down here. Over on the Mississippi, they have a bunch of fish oil. Great. I mean, take your feedstocks and buy them in the region that you're driving around in.”
Large scale biodiesel and ethanol production programs would do well to take a chapter from the book of small organizations like Piedmont Biofuels, where members practice what they preach and inventively focus on every energy-saving measure they can create. In addition to producing biodiesel, Piedmont Biofuels works hard at showcasing sustainability. Its leased acreage farm uses alternative technologies wherever possible. The reactor uses solar-thermal energy instead of propane, and a heat exchanger is used in the refining process. Wherever possible the operation uses solar. The buildings are mostly built from salvaged and sustainable materials. The farm contains a small market garden, an elaborate glycerin composting facility, and an oilseed crop research station for investigating bio-regionally sound oil producing crops for on-farm energy production.
These practices fly in the face of corporate approaches to alternative fuel. Ethanol production, which took a huge developmental leap during the 1970s energy crisis, depends for the most part upon big corn and big agricultural corporations like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and ConAgra which rely on monocropping and genetically modified seed to guarantee profits on their crush supplies.
The same holds true for large-scale biodiesel production, which mostly depends upon midwest soybean production - again managed by big agricultural corporations like West Central Soy. In the business of doing business, it doesn’t matter that soybeans have only average oil-per-acre yield, average emissions profiles and inferior cold flow properties. Maximum returns are what count. Other regional biodiesel feedstocks with better potentials like hemp, radish and mustard seeds remain relatively unexplored except by small independent operations and county farm bureaus which struggle to do so.
“There's two distinct currents in biodiesel in the United States,” agrees Lyle. “Backyard grass roots are coming from the position of ‘let's go meet our own fuel needs.’ And then there's commercial biodiesel, like, ‘Let's have 100,000,000 gallon plants. And let's ship grease in from Brazil. And let's ship grease to the Panama Canal and blah, blah, blah. Sustainability is not in their vocabulary. They are motivated by greed and shareholder interests and quite frankly couldn't give a rat’s ass if the storms in the Gulf are getting worse. So we're coming at it from a very different angle.”
Biodiesel Blues
Grass roots fuel making doesn’t get a whole lot of support from national or state level government either. In fact, much legislation actually hampers the development of small production facilities. In order to sell their biodiesel to the public, the co-op has to be EPA certified, fully warranted and “every drop of biodiesel” has to meet the national ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) quality specifications (D-6751). Quality assurance however, is vital for any commercial product. Although it costs the co-op thousands of dollars, that is not the problem. It’s all the other small and not-so-small stuff that adds up along the way.
Hindrances start with local fire marshals. In most counties around the country, hazardous materials handbooks don’t have a category called “Biodiesel.” There is only one category where it fits, and that’s under “F” for fuel. However fuel can mean gasoline or high octane rocket fuel. Never mind biodiesel has an extremely low flash point, is biodegradable and is non-toxic (you could ingest it), it’s still a F-U-E-L. As such, its production is regarded with suspicion by authorities who are uneducated about its properties. Even individuals who just want to set up a garage operation for their own use are faced with permitting hassles.
Then there is the road tax issue. Commercial fuels are subject to road taxes in most states. In North Carolina, for example, there's a $.51 tax component on diesel fuel. Where does the backyard biodiesel brewer fit into that equation? Although there is no legislation which makes home production of fuel illegal for personal use, most fuel makers dodge the permitting and tax issues by hiding their production behind closed garage doors. Others, when faced with potentially obstructive legalities, shrug their shoulders and choose to do nothing.
“It's a complicated morass,” says Lyle. “Most people take a look at it and say ‘I'm not going wade through it. I'm going to hide.’ Or, ‘I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to drive to the Shell. It's convenient and fast, and I can get my New York Times and my Hershey bar, and think nothing of it.’”
For co-ops and potential biodiesel businesses, there is the enormous issue of being able to produce a competitive product. Piedmont Biofuels has been selling biodiesel for $3.50 a gallon for the last three years. When their commercial sales first started, petroleum was at $1.69 per gallon. Now, even with petroleum fuel prices soaring, they still aren’t competitive. That could change, however, if the North Carolina state legislature would temporarily drop its state tax on biodiesel. Not only would that make biodiesel prices competitive and give the fledgling industry a chance to develop, it would also be a move towards leveling the playing field as far as government subsidies on petroleum are concerned. In some estimations, the petroleum industry is being subsidized to the tune of $12- $17 per gallon on gasoline if you take into consideration the cost of such things as Middle Eastern wars to keep the sweet light crude oil flowing to the West. These subsidies get paid for every April 15 th by American taxpayers.
If federal and state governments were actually interested in promoting energy sustainability and the development of alternative fuels, Lyle points out, they should impose higher taxes on petroleum products including plastics and other manufactured goods and give struggling alternative fuel companies a break.
In addition, it doesn’t help that legislators are frequently ill-informed about alternative fuels and viable sustainable practices and choices. North Carolina, which produces an average of 12 million gallons of waste vegetable oil per year, still doesn’t have a viable in-state distribution and use program. Instead it ships used vegetable oil to Europe to be made into biofuel there. The cost of shipping, plus the use of petroleum to get the feedstock oil to Europe cancels out any environmental advantages and energy savings the used vegetable oil might have been good for. This is exactly the kind of illogical, counter-productive practice that has environmentalists and sustainability activists tearing their hair out in frustration.
Lack of a comprehensive national and local level alternative energy development program is a real stumbling block. Fundamental contributors to this lack are both the current administration’s continued support of the petroleum industry and the enormous inflexibility of government itself. Lyle, who has been an active alternative fuels lobbyist in the North Carolina legislature for the last three years, has so far managed to get some of his ideas into play every session. But getting them out of committee and into comprehensive legislation for a vote has so far proved impossible.
“The way we create laws in this country is nuts,” says Lyle. “These poor schmucks - they get 15 minutes with me, 15 minutes with the soy growers, 15 minutes with Farm Bureau insurance, 15 minutes with BP (British Petroleum), 15 minutes with the marketing board and the energy guys, then they're ready to go, and they have no clue what they're talking about. And they write a bill, and it’s total gibberish and silliness and it’s packed with really bad ideas that someone managed to pack into a 15 minute presentation. And you look at it and go, ‘No, no, no! That's ridiculous!’ It's idiotic, but that's the way our laws get made.”
Back to the individual
The bureaucratic scenario tends to kick issues of sustainability, ecology and energy independence back into the laps of individuals who really care about making it happen. But taking individual responsibility for one’s fuel supply can be a big undertaking. Not surprisingly, the majority of Piedmont Biofuels’ co-op members just want the fuel. They don’t have the time or the interest in getting involved in the process, the maintenance, the education or the lobbying. They just want to live up to their ecological convictions and are willing to pay the extra price to do so. They supply an enormously important part of the biofuels economy: ethics-driven, community DEMAND.
Currently Piedmont Biofuels supplies B100 within a 100 mile radius of their reactor, which churns out approximately 250,000 gallons of biodiesel per year. The demand is sufficient for a larger service area, and the co-op is currently renovating an abandoned chemical plant facility in Pittsboro, NC to up their production capacity to a million gallons per year.
Over a thousand people toured Piedmont Biodiesels facilities last year. The co-op’s latest community college biodiesel class graduated 35 qualified, make-your-own-biodiesel enthusiasts. Those enthusiasts have friends and family who will inevitably get involved.
From left to right: Rachel Burton, Lyle Estill, Leif Forer and Evan Ashworth
“Really the most interesting facet of this project [has been] the accidental community building,” says Lyle. “We started out thinking it was about fuel. I would say if you asked any one of us today, it's like it's probably more about the community - the B100 community we've accidentally created.”
The B100 community is made up of all kinds of people who have made a lifestyle commitment - for that’s what using alternative fuels rapidly becomes. For most, the start point is conservation. Price savings is also a major factor. If you drive a diesel vehicle and can get your vegetable grease for free from a local restaurant, homemade B100 can cost as little to produce as $1.00 per gallon – obviously not including labor and the cost of a homebrew kit which involves converting a hot water heater. If you have to purchase a diesel vehicle to get into the game, the cost is higher.
But money savings is considered the worst possible reason to make the fuel switch because the lifestyle change that automatically comes with the switch is often too high a price to pay.
“When you're making your own fuel, now you're free of Halliburton and a slave to homemade fuel,” Lyle points out. “Suddenly it's an amazing feedback loop. It's an amazing study in, ‘Well, do I need to make that trip? Am I really driving too much? Am I efficient enough?’ And so on and so forth.
“I know for myself. I used to be in metal sculpture, and I used to pretty much live in my truck. I drove about 27,000 miles a year. And when I started thinking about my own fuel, it basically changed my job, changed my life, changed where I work, and now I'm down to [driving] about 9,000 miles a year.”
Few people are willing to embrace such a lifestyle shift – not even committed sustainability advocates. And yet it is only grassroots people like Lyle, who, in going the distance with biodiesel, have the insight into what sustainability really means. Yes, we can talk about legislation, and developing markets for alternative fuels. We can discuss creating infrastructure for biofuel distribution. We can investigate new technologies. We can do a lot of things. But the bottom line of sustainability seems to boil down to one unavoidable fact of life: individual change.
“I would be willing to argue that all of us could take a two third hit and still be standing,” says Lyle. “There's two thirds worth of fat in all of our ecological footprints that can be changed and modified. … I think some of the big efficiency experts…would agree we could probably conserve our way to sustainability. We live pretty large, you know. We live pretty large.”
For more information you can go to Piedmont Biofuels’ website at http://biofuels.coop or contact them at P.O. Box 661, Pittsboro, NC 27312 | 919-321-8260.
