Biodiesel

For a com­pre­hen­sive and crit­i­cal per­spec­tive on the real­i­ty of Biodiesel, we rec­om­mend to vis­it Biodiesel Real­i­ty Check 

[Print­able PDF ver­sion of this fact­sheet]

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work: Heat­ing and Trans­porta­tion Fuels

Biodiesel is one of sev­er­al liq­uid fuels posed as an alter­na­tive to using oil or nat­ur­al gas to meet trans­porta­tion and heat­ing needs.

Oth­er false solu­tions being pro­mot­ed to sat­is­fy our heat­ing and trans­porta­tion needs include ethanol, cel­lu­losic ethanol, oth­er bio­mass or waste-based fuels and coal-based liq­uid fuels. All of these have sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal, social and eco­nom­ic costs, espe­cial­ly to the com­mu­ni­ties that would host the pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties of these alter­na­tive fuels.

Tru­ly clean solu­tions focus on con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy first, then meet ener­gy needs with pas­sive solar, solar hot water, ground-source (geot­her­mal) and air-source heat pumps and clean elec­tric­i­ty (from wind and solar). See our plat­form and our ener­gy hier­ar­chies chart for more on clean alternatives.

What is Biodiesel?

Biodiesel is fuel derived from ani­mal or veg­etable fats. Biodiesel fuel is processed and refined from raw mate­ri­als with high oil con­tent. Biodiesel can be mixed with petro­le­um diesel at any con­cen­tra­tion in most mod­ern diesel engines, although engine per­for­mance may decrease. Bio­mass fuel (such as used veg­etable oil), is unre­fined fuel which can­not be used in a typ­i­cal engine. Biodiesel has recent­ly been heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed as the ide­al fuel for trans­porta­tion needs. The envi­ron­men­tal costs of biodiesel have been over­looked in this process. The pro­duc­tion of the raw mate­ri­als used to make biodiesel requires a large input of ener­gy and land resources. The refin­ing process pro­duces pol­lu­tion through air emis­sions and sol­id waste products.

The Prob­lems with Biodiesel

Pro­duc­ing Raw Mate­ri­als (Soy­beans)
Biodiesel com­mer­cial­ly pro­duced in the Unit­ed States cur­rent­ly comes, almost exclu­sive­ly, from soy­beans. While it may be true soy­beans are renew­able in the sense that can be grown again, they are by no means a source of renew­able ener­gy. World­wide pro­duc­tion of veg­etable oil and ani­mal fat is no where suf­fi­cient enough to replace liq­uid fos­sil fuel use. 

1. Grow­ing Soy­beans: Soy­beans, which are cur­rent­ly har­vest­ed from 72 mil­lion acres in the Unit­ed States [1], require a large input of fos­sil fuels through the use of fer­til­iz­ers and in plant­i­ng and har­vest­ing. Large-scale agri­cul­ture also con­tributes to water pol­lu­tion through runoff, caus­es increased ero­sion and loss of top­soil, con­tributes to loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty by con­vert­ing native habi­tats to mono­cul­ture crops and is harm­ful to nat­ur­al ecosys­tems through the use of pes­ti­cides and her­bi­cides. Genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied soy­beans are an increas­ing haz­ard to ecosys­tems in a nat­ur­al bal­ance (92% of soy is cur­rent­ly genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered [2]). Genet­ic engi­neer­ing for her­bi­cide tol­er­ance has led to increased use of her­bi­cides (13% increase on aver­age), [3] and to the increased appear­ance of her­bi­cide-resis­tant weeds. Farm­ers in the south and mid-west are find­ing her­bi­cide-resis­tant weeds that have been spread between fields by flood­wa­ters. [4] Roundup has also been found to be more dan­ger­ous than pre­vi­ous­ly thought, being high­ly lethal to amphib­ians. [5]
   

   Biotech crops have also been sound­ly crit­i­cized for numer­ous oth­er rea­sons includ­ing; poten­tial for aller­gies and health prob­lems, [6] under­min­ing organ­ic agri­cul­ture through con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of non-biotech vari­eties, and even farm­ers being sued by Mon­san­to for “steal­ing” their “prop­er­ty” when Monsanto’s biotech crop genes end up con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the crops of farm­ers who haven’t plant­ed them. Else­where in the world, biodiesel pro­duc­tion is linked to mas­sive destruc­tion of rain­forests, peat­lands, savan­nas, and grass­lands as thou­sands of acres world­wide are cleared to plant palm oil and soy­bean plan­ta­tions. [7] Grow­ing these crops requires extract­ing and trans­port­ing water and caus­ing issues with soil deple­tion, air and water pol­lu­tion, genet­ic pol­lu­tion from biotech crops, hunger, and net ener­gy loss. 

2. How Many Acres of Soy­beans are Need­ed? In order pro­duce enough biodiesel to con­vert our entire trans­porta­tion needs to soy biodiesel, we would need to plant 2.8 bil­lion acres of farm­land in soy­beans. In the US, rough­ly 302 mil­lion acres of land is now used for grow­ing crops, with the major­i­ty of that actu­al­ly being used to pro­duce ani­mal feed for the meat indus­try. Each car in the US would need approx­i­mate­ly 10 acres of soy­beans to sup­ply its fuel needs. While corn-based ethanol is ener­gy inten­sive, soy-based biodiesel is land inten­sive – tak­ing 5 times more land to pro­duce the equiv­a­lent of bio­fu­el ener­gy. Con­sid­er veg­e­tar­i­an­ism sav­ing land from avoid­ing waste­ful cycling of food crops through ani­mals to pro­duce food; how­ev­er, veg­e­tar­i­ans using biodiesel made from soy­beans are usurp­ing 6 times more land for their cars than their beef-eat­ing coun­ter­parts are for cows. [9]

Cur­rent Petro­le­um Diesel Used for Transportation	60 bil­lion gallons	[8]
Cur­rent Gaso­line Used for Transportation	120 bil­lion gallons	[8]
Biodiesel need­ed to Replace US Trans­porta­tion Needs	140.8 bil­lion gallons	[8]
Approx­i­mate Biodiesel Usage	500 gal­lons per year per car	[9]
Trucks & Cars in the Unit­ed States	243 mil­lion	[10]
Biodiesel Yield from Soybeans	50 gal­lons per acre	[11]
Farm­land in Soybeans	72 mil­lion acres	[1]
Total Crop­land (Includes Pasture)	434 mil­lion acres	[12]

1. Pro­duc­ing Soy­bean Oil: In addi­tion the ener­gy inten­sive grow­ing of soy­beans, the crush­ing of soy­beans to pro­duce soy­bean oil uses ener­gy and pro­duces pol­lu­tion. “Prepa­ra­tion of beans involves removal of the beans’ hulls, as well as grind­ing and flak­ing. Flaked beans
   
   are then sub­ject­ed to an extrac­tion step in which hexa­ne is used to remove the soy­bean oil. The extract­ed
   
   beans are dried and ground to pro­duce a mar­ketable meal prod­uct. Oil-con­tain­ing hexa­ne is then
   
   processed to sep­a­rate the volatile hexa­ne phase from the oil. Hexa­ne sol­vent is recov­ered and recy­cled as
   
   much as pos­si­ble. Final­ly the oil prod­uct is washed with water to remove gums before the final oil
   
   prod­uct is stored or shipped.” Life Cycle Inven­to­ry of Biodiesel and Petro­le­um Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus. U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. May 1998. (Page 120) 
   
2. Net Ener­gy Loss: Recent stud­ies have shown that there is a net ener­gy loss in the pro­duc­tion of ethanol. Biodiesel, as well, costs more ener­gy to pro­duce than is gained from the process. Pro­duc­ing biodiesel from “soy­bean plants requires 27 per­cent more fos­sil ener­gy than the fuel pro­duced,” Ethanol Pro­duc­tion Using Corn, Switch­grass, and Wood; Biodiesel Pro­duc­tion Using Soy­bean and Sun­flower. Nat­ur­al Resources Research, 2005. David Pimentel and Ted W. Patzek. Press Release. Paper (PDF).

Oth­er Issues in Biodiesel Pro­duc­tion

1. Oth­er Biodiesel Crops
   
   Pro­duc­tive Capac­i­ty of Bio­fu­els per acre: [7]
   
   
   
   • Soy­bean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre
   
   
   • Rape­seed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre
   
   
   • Mus­tard: 140 US gal/acre
   
   
   • Jat­ropha: 175 US gal/acre
   
   
   • Palm Oil: 650 US gal/acre
   
   
   • Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre
   
   
   
   

   
   While soy­beans are among the least pro­duc­tive source of fat for the pro­duc­tion biodiesel, soy­bean pro­duc­tion is the only crop now grown in a quan­ti­ty that could pro­duce enough biodiesel to be used in a com­mer­cial mar­ket. 90% of biodiesel is cur­rent­ly pro­duced from soy. Only 10% is from recy­cled cook­ing oil. [13]

   
   
2. Palm Oil & Biodiesel
   
   Envi­ron­men­tal­ists, US and par­tic­u­lar­ly Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have been cam­paign­ing for biodiesel to be make up a per­cent­age of fuels used. By doing so, a mar­ket is being cre­at­ed for the import of biodiesel made from palm oil. Refiner­ies are being built in Malaysia and Sin­ga­pore and Africa, to name a few. In “Suma­tra and Bor­neo, some 4 mil­lion hectares of for­est have been con­vert­ed to palm farms. Now a fur­ther 6 mil­lion hectares are sched­uled for clear­ance in Malaysia, and 16.5 mil­lion in Indone­sia.” Read more about the impact of pro­mot­ing the import of biodiesel from palm oil, in a report by Robert Minoto. 

Biodiesel Refiner­ies (needs updating…) 

Sup­ply­ing a 5‑mil­lion-gal­lon biodiesel refin­ery requires about 100,000 acres of crops. [15]
All of the fol­low­ing can be used in the pro­duc­tion of biodiesel:

Veg­etable Fats: vir­gin oil feed­stock, rape­seed and soy­bean oils, mus­tard, palm oil, hemp, and algae, waste veg­etable oil

Ani­mal Fats: tal­low, lard, yel­low grease, Omega‑3 fat­ty acids from fish oil

Air Emis­sions:
See sam­ple per­mit for the Min­neso­ta Soy­bean Proces­sors in Brew­ster, Mar­shall Coun­ty, Minnesota.

Waste Prod­ucts:
The oil and grease skimmed off the waste­water is land­filled; the remain­ing waste­water is sent to
the munic­i­pal sew­er sys­tem.[16]

Exist­ing Biodiesel Refiner­ies
Map and list of all exist­ing and pro­posed biodiesel pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties as of June 2008. [PDF]

Pro­posed Biodiesel Refiner­ies
Map of pro­posed expan­sions. [PDF]
Search­ing Google News, you can find many links for arti­cles about pro­posed biodiesel refineries. 

Louisville, KY. Rub­ber­town Emer­gency Action and Ken­tucky Resources Coun­cil is oppos­ing a pro­posed biodiesel facil­i­ty in their town. (Poul­try fat conversion)

Emis­sions from Biodiesel 

Since biodiesel burns hot­ter than diesel, nitro­gen oxide (NOx) emis­sions are actu­al­ly high­er and up to near­ly 3 1/2 times that of gaso­line. [17] While biodiesel is clean­er than con­ven­tion­al diesel in many oth­er ways, it’s still dirt­i­er (more air pol­lut­ing) than gaso­line. Bio­fu­els in gen­er­al “result in more atmos­pher­ic CO2 pol­lu­tants than burn­ing an ener­gy equiv­a­lent amount of oil” when con­sid­er­ing the entire pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion cycle (“well-to-wheel”). If the moti­va­tion for bio­fu­els is to com­bat glob­al warm­ing, the title of a New Sci­en­tist arti­cle in August 2007 summed up the lat­est stud­ies well: “For­get bio­fu­els — burn oil and plant forests instead.” [18]

Biodiesel Pol­i­tics
Large­ly because of this net ener­gy prob­lem, the cost of biodiesel is actu­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than diesel or gaso­line, though this may not be reflect­ed at the pump due to sub­si­dies. U.S. tax pay­ers will con­tribute up to $11 bil­lion dol­lars to sub­si­dize biodiesel between 2006 and 2012 aver­ag­ing $2/gallon of biodiesel con­sumed, and $2.20/gallon of con­ven­tion­al diesel equiv­a­lent. [19] In addi­tion, biodiesel input crops them­selves are also heav­i­ly sub­si­dized. Soy is cur­rent­ly the 4th most sub­si­dized crop in the U.S., receiv­ing $5.75 mil­lion in 2007 alone. [20] Typ­i­cal­ly with sub­si­dies, most are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly paid to large-scale farms often grow­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops. [21] There are also oth­er hid­den costs in soy pro­duc­tion like land recla­ma­tion costs and sub­si­dies to the oil and nat­ur­al gas indus­tries which soy pro­duc­tion depends on (in the form of cash hand­outs, lax stan­dards and enforce­ment, and mil­i­tary invasions). 

Pro­mot­ing Heat­ing and Trans­porta­tion Fuel
Alter­na­tives on a Small Scale
Although no cur­rent viable options exist for replac­ing trans­porta­tion and heat­ing fuel needs, on a small scale you can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the amount of these fuels that you use. Here are some suggestions:

• Low­er Your Heat­ing Needs: Choose a small­er house, insu­late bet­ter (Ener­gy Star tips), choose pas­sive solar heat­ing tech­niques if you are build­ing or ren­o­vat­ing, invest in a pro­gram­ma­ble ther­mo­stat, low­er the thermostat
• Fly as infre­quent­ly as possible
• Dri­ve less, choose more effi­cient and hybrid cars, keep your car well main­tained and use dri­ving tech­niques that use the least amount of gas
• Walk, bike, car­pool, telecom­mute and use pub­lic trans­porta­tion when­ev­er possible
• Advo­cate for bet­ter designed cities (reduce sprawl) that encour­age walk­ing and biking
• Con­sume prod­ucts pro­duced clos­est to where you live
• Grow your own food, eat low­er on the food chain and choose local and less processed foods. About half of your house­hold ener­gy use comes from the food you eat [20].
  

Waste Veg­etable Oil

Diesel engines which have been con­vert­ed can run on 100% recy­cled veg­etable oil left­over from use in restau­rants and food pro­cess­ing. Recent increas­es in gas prices has moti­vat­ed many peo­ple to switch their diesel run­ning vehi­cle over to 100% veg­etable oil oper­at­ed. Grease­car is a com­pa­ny that sells the expen­sive, but rel­a­tive sim­ple con­ver­sion tech­nol­o­gy. Users with Grease­car’s con­ver­sion get a sup­ply of oil from Chi­nese restau­rants or fast food restau­rants, fil­ter the oil and fill their car up with it. Waste veg­etable oil could nev­er be used at a large scale, because restau­rants in the US pro­duce about 2.5 bil­lion pounds (300 mil­lion gal­lons) of waste cook­ing oil annu­al­ly. [21]

Hydro­gen and Hydro­gen Fuel Cells
Var­i­ous forms of Hydro­gen are pro­mot­ed as an alter­na­tive to fos­sil based fuels. Click the above link for fur­ther information.

Sources:

1. Trends in U.S. Agri­cul­ture, USDA Nation­al Agri­cul­tur­al Sta­tis­tics Service
2. ““Adop­tion of Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Crops in the U.S.: Soy­bean Vari­eties,” .” USDA Eco­nom­ic Research Ser­vice. July, 2008. 
3. “Trou­bled Times Amid Com­mer­cial Suc­cess for Roundup Ready Soy­beans,“Ben­brook, Charles M., North­west Sci­ence and Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Cen­ter. May 3, 2001
4. “Still anoth­er flood prob­lem to wor­ry about: her­bi­cide-resis­tant weeds”University of Arkansas Divi­sion of Agriculture
5. “Dr. Relyea Responds to Mon­san­to’s Con­cerns About His Research on the Tox­i­c­i­ty of Her­bi­cide Roundup.”Relyea Lab, Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, April 1, 2005.
6. Smith, Jef­frey M., Seeds of Decep­tion, Yes! Books, 2003.
7. “For Europe, A Sec­ond Look At Bio­fu­els?” March 16, 2008 by Green Car Congress
8. “Euro­pean Envi­ron­ment Agency Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee Calls for Sus­pen­sion of Europe’s 10% Bio­fu­els Tar­get” April 10, 2008 by Green Car Congress
   
9. 
   “New Stud­ies Iden­ti­fy Change in Land Use Asso­ci­at­ed with Bio­fu­el Pro­duc­tion as Major Con­trib­u­tor of Green­house Gas­es, Far Off­set­ting Ben­e­fits of Most Cur­rent Bio­fu­els” Feb. 8, 2008 by Green Car Congress
   
10. 
    “Land Clear­ing and the Bio­fu­el Car­bon Debt” Far­gione, et al, Sci­ence” Feb. 7, 2008 
    
11. NEW NUMBERS
12. Widescale Biodiesel Pro­duc­tion from Algae, UNH Biodiesel Group
13. Biodiesel: it’s what you make out of it, Gristmill
14. Num­ber of US Air­craft, Ves­sels, and Oth­er Con­veyances, Bureau of Trans­porta­tion Sta­tis­tics, 2004.
15. Oil Yields and Char­ac­ter­is­tics, Jour­ney to Forever
16. State Fact Sheets: Unit­ed States, Eco­nom­ic Research Ser­vice, USDA
17. “Biodiesel Boom Well-Timed,” Wired, June 2004. 
18. “Ethanol Pro­duc­tion Using Corn, Switch­grass, and Wood; Biodiesel Pro­duc­tion Using Soy­bean and Sun­flower,”, Pimen­tal and Patzek, Nat­ur­al Resources Research, March 2005.
19. Biodiesel refin­ery idea holds promise for Val­ley, The Spokesman-Review, Sep­tem­ber 29, 2005
20. Life Cycle Inven­to­ry of Biodiesel and Petro­le­um Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus. U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. May 1998. Page 192 (Graph) and page 266 are useful. 
21. “Well-to-Wheel Analy­sis of Ener­gy Con­sump­tion and Green­house Gas Emis­sions of Traf­fic Fuel Chains”, Huikuri, San­na, 2004.
22. “For­get bio­fu­els — burn oil and plant forests instead.”New Sci­en­tist, August 2007.
23. “Biofuels—at what Cost? Gov­ern­ment Sup­port for Ethanol and Biodiesel in the Unit­ed States: 2007 Update” , Koplow, Doug. Pre­pared in Octo­ber 2007 for The Glob­al Sub­si­dies Ini­tia­tive (GSI) of the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (IISD)
24. The SUV in the Pantry, Thomas Starrs
25. Cos­til­la Coun­ty Biodiesel Waste-to-Ener­gy Demonstration