Center4AmericanProgress Interview re: Biodiesel

I was recently interviewed by Suemedha Sood, of the Center for American Progress. They are featuring a transcript of the interview here, where, if audio is more your style, you can also listen to the whole thing. The context is a discourse on the American Farm Bill.

Below the fold is a snippet that kind of gets at my main issues.

CAP: What should be done to increase the availability of biodiesel and other renewable fuels and increase the demand for fuel-flex vehicles?

KP: I think the most important thing right now, and it’s kind of the root of everything—so people are focusing a lot on marketing and they’re focusing a lot on kind of these further downstream things, but at the root of it all is feedstock viability—you know, the source for the biofuels. And as far as my industry, biodiesel, I think that that’s the most important thing—to develop appropriate regional feedstocks. For us right now that means recycled restaurant fryer oil—that’s the most ecologically-correct, benign feedstock available to us right now. But obviously that’s not going to last very long and we’re not very big yet; as we grow, we’re going to need something more than that, and it makes no sense for me to sing the praises of our fuel ecologically and be importing soybean oil from the Midwest to make it. So, you know, we’re working on developing local feed stocks. I’m researching something called the Chinese Tallow tree, which in much of the U.S. is classified as a pest-invasive species, but here in California, it’s not and it yields quite a bit of oil—10 times more oil per acre than soybeans. We’re researching that right now—I’ve got some test trees that we’re working with. And I think that’s the biggest challenge that’s in the way. And unfortunately, it’s only kind of getting barely minimally addressed by the biofuels lobbying forces.  

CAP: CAP’s policy recommendations focus on rewarding farmers for promoting environmental standards and producing sustainable biofuels that can make a real impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What do you think is the most important change that must be made to the Farm Bill and other energy legislation at the federal level?

KP: I think the most important change is an appreciation for appropriate regional crops, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all approach with soybeans for biodiesel and corn for ethanol. Those just don’t make sense in a lot of areas, and, specifically, they’re both very low-yield crops. So I think the biggest thing for farmers to think about is what works best in your area and what will give the biggest possible yield. And for me, that might mean Chinese Tallow trees. As we head into the future, it might even mean something kind of crazy like microalgae. But I can’t recommend Chinese Tallow trees to someone in South Carolina because there it’s a pest and if they grow one, they’re going to be growing a hundred nearby. So I think people need to focus on those kinds of roots of it all, rather than promoting the word "biodiesel" and promoting the word "ethanol" and everybody getting excited about corn and soy.

By the way, I got an e-mail from someone who listened to the interview and was reminded of a great book that many of us are reading at the moment,

These things are all connected. Thanks for reading my diary.