The Energy Spectator
Bio-Fools
There are those who think turkey droppings and French fry grease offer a path to energy independence.
(Page 2 of 2)
BioWillie was pitched to independent truckers thought to be fed up with paying huge sums to Middle Eastern sheiks when they just as easily could be filling the pockets of American farmers. The idea, as Willie put it, was to “put five million farmers back on the land growing fuel and keep us from having to start wars for oil.”
Willie Nelson is certainly a great musician and songwriter, but he has never shown much aptitude for handling women (married four times) or money (his assets were seized in 1990 when the IRS said he owed about $17 million in back taxes). So perhaps it’s no surprise that BioWillie went belly up. In 2006, Earth Biofuels Inc., the company behind BioWillie, found itself paying more to produce a gallon of biodiesel than it was earning by selling it, hardly a sustainable business practice. Most of the outlets that carried it stopped doing so. Earth Biofuels reportedly lost $63 million in 2006, and Nelson himself quit the board of directors and gave up six million shares of worthless Earth Biofuels stock. The company retains the rights to the BioWillie brand and is continuing feeble efforts to make a go with it.
Not that Willie is dissuaded. He is still a true believer, in 2007 publishing the page-turner On the Clean Road Again: Biodiesel and the Future of the Family Farm. It’s worth buying if only for the chapter entitled “To All the Oils I’ve Loved Before.”
For all his goofiness and wrongheadedness on everything from biofuels boosterism to 9/11 conspiracies, Willie Nelson is still the man who penned “Crazy” and “Hello, Walls.” He’s a national treasure. He puts on a helluva concert, even for a septuagenarian in a perpetual cannabis fog. In my book, Willie Nelson will always get a pass.
SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T get a pass, however, is loathsome former Long Island congressman Vito Fossella. Before his career was ruined by a DUI and revelations that he fathered a child with his mistress, Fossella stumped for legislation to double the federal tax credit for using restaurant grease as fuel: “From cooking fried calamari to powering trucks,” he announced, “restaurant grease represents a viable energy source for our nation.”
Except it doesn’t, not by a long shot. As Terrestrial Energy points out, if all the kitchen grease in all the world’s McDonald’s restaurants were converted to biodiesel, it would amount to 75,000 barrels per day, or approximately .004 percent of America’s daily oil consumption. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, all U.S. restaurants produce 300 million gallons of waste oil per year. That’s about one gallon for every American.
That’s not enough to make any sort of dent in our oil consumption, but it does give us incentive to eat more unhealthy fast food. And if that conundrum gives the left fits, it’s good enough for me.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (36) | Leave a comment
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Rebecca| 3.2.09 @ 8:08AM
Don't a lot of these endeavors remind you of high school science fair projects?
Curly Smith| 3.2.09 @ 8:48AM
Don't be so critical of biodiesel, 0.004% here, 0.004% there and pretty soon you've got 0.01%! Include the BioBelly and BioTocks and we're easily up to 0.02%!! Plus, BioBelly and BioTocks are both renewable resources!!!
stmichrick| 3.2.09 @ 8:56AM
I think the Michael Moores and Rosie O' Donells everywhere should visit their bariatric surgeons and mitigate this energy crisis.
jerryofva| 3.2.09 @ 9:02AM
I know this article is tongue in cheek and it gave few laughs but on a more serious note there are a lot drawback to using biodiesel The Minneapolis school district had some serious problems this winter as their biodiesel powered school buses ground to a stop as their fuel turned to Crisco.
Neither VW or BB recommend using fuel with a significant amount of biodiesel because the fuel contaminates the oil and will signifcantly shorten engine life. Until a biodiesel fuel that is chemically identical to dino diesel is put on the market bio will remain a fringe market.
Owner of a 2005 VW Jetta TDI
Owyheewine| 3.2.09 @ 9:10AM
Most biodiesel is produced from soybeans.(sound familiar to ethanol?) Commercial blends contain about 5%, and have been associated with more than a few cold weather problems. Engine manufacturers have tested higher concentrations, and found more problems including engine part failures, but be aware. This is the camel's nose under the tent. Mandates for inclusion are coming.
cdc| 3.2.09 @ 10:55AM
A lot of these ideas won't work out and most of them are crazy. But some might be just crazy enough to work. The biggest advances have come from garage tinkerers, from the wright brothers to Wozniak, who were thought to be nutjobs at the time.
Inventors and scientists should be lionized more than CEO's, celebrities and entertainers; but most will get no renumeration or recognition. So be kind these guys are honestly trying to help.
Bud Hammons| 3.2.09 @ 12:22PM
Those who are converting turkey waste or used vegetable oil to fuel are welcome to do that if it suits them - it should be neither discouraged nor encouraged. Some of those folks probably enjoy thinking well of themselves because they can presume some level of environmental piety. Whatever floats their boat ..
However, the engineering and business considerations that stand between boutique energy solutions and true industrial scale energy production are more formidable than the environmental lobby will concede. The only energy solutions known to scale to mass utilization involve fossil fuels or nuclear power, which are considered 'evil'.
There is no free lunch, and the level of civilization is proportional to the amount of energy one can harness.
v/r,
--- Bud
Tyler Durden| 3.2.09 @ 12:57PM
What a waste! Just think of all the soap he could have made!
Pete | 3.2.09 @ 1:03PM
Judge Judy on the Supreme Court? Actually, sounds pretty good to me. How about Dr. Laura as White House Chief of Staff?
SoberHorseThief| 3.2.09 @ 1:18PM
Good piece. I recently edited a book on biofuels by a Ph.D. who, though being a Global Warmenist and all, explained that biofuels are very hard to turn into oil and it takes a hell of a lot of them to run a car.
One error, though: I believe Crazy Vito is from my native Staten Island, not that other, lesser island.
Michael Garjian | 3.2.09 @ 2:12PM
I agree biodiesel is nothing to get excited about, but I am very happy with my Greasecar that uses waste vegetable oils even if diesel fuel dropped to $2.00. But if Mr. Schulz thinks it won't be back to at least $5.00 when the economy comes back, Iran is attacked, or peak oil is confirmed, I think he is in for a rude awakening.
megapotamus| 3.2.09 @ 2:30PM
There is one foundational conceit that makes this claptrap appealing regardless of the efforts involved and that is global warming. And that, of course, is a lie, there is no global warming. It is not that there is warming whose cause is mysterious. No, there is no warming. There is cooling. It is precipitous, natural and quite beyond our ability to alter in either direction. The global warming hoax is a drag on all advancement of all kinds across the world that makes the trillions of entitlement debt the US labors under into little more than a hiccup. Global warming is a lie; it is an attack on modernity, on progress itself. Do not sit still for anyone who babbles on about global warming. Call them out and denounce them as the idiots they are with the simple fact that, no doof, there is NO global warming. There is global cooling. It must be said at every opportunity to your brother in law, your snotty kids and your precious grey-haired mother. Every opportunity.
Marc Jeric| 3.2.09 @ 2:34PM
In the late years of WW2 we used to see Hitler's trucks run on bio-fuels ( their refineries got bombed out by American planes). Also engines run on gas produced by boilers burning old socks and towels. That was desperation times; I remember the French joke during the first oil embargo: "Jean - c'est sur le charoit qu'il falloit mestre the gasogesne!" You see - her husband mounted the boiler on the horse.
Dave Rocket| 3.2.09 @ 5:24PM
Who says you have to limit youreslf to cooking grease? I know of a startup company that converts partially treated sewage to biodiesel. This could significantly increase the volume of raw material to convert. (Heck, make a plant in Washington DC where there is enough bull**** to run the entire economy until the capitalism engine seizes due to socialist incompatibility.)
Lyle Rudensey | 3.2.09 @ 6:10PM
You don't have to do anything to a diesel engine to "convert it to use biodiesel." Conversions can be done to allow a diesel to use SVO (straight veg oil), but bioidiesel can go right in the fuel tank without modifying anything.
Chris Long| 3.2.09 @ 7:37PM
Who ever said any of the causes that Liberals champion have to make sense -- economic, political or otherwise ?
They just want us to do what they say and live the way they tell us...and be quiet about it. Actually, the most practical fuel is hydrogen, which Iceland already has converted cars for and built solar and geothermal-powered fuel stations.
Hydrogen is unlimited and and reasonably cheap. But what we hear from the Liberals is ONLY of the fuels that have significant problems: alcohol, waste oil etc.
Like nuclear for base load electric generation, the most practical source is not even mentioned hardly in the MSM. We hear of wind farms, solar panels and such nonsense.
Again, live as they want you to and be assured of the superior wisdom of the Liberals.
Paul Nelson| 3.2.09 @ 10:00PM
Chriss Long,
Hydrogen as a fuel is only practical if you do not mind using a gas as a fuel that cannot be stored in mild steel tanks, that requires either high pressure or low temperature to liquify, a tank which would weigh approximately as much as the rest of the car. Hydrogen is a fuel that has to be manufactured by putting in more energy from some other source than is contained in the hydrogen.
Pingback| 3.5.09 @ 7:01PM
Green Blogs » Blog Archive » Rationale and Support for Biodiesel Growing links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Chris Long| 3.13.09 @ 3:36AM
@Paul Nelson
Uh, the Icelanders seem to have their hydrogen fuel infrastructure and autos working very well. Perhaps you have disproved their use of the fuel...
Bob Moffitt | 3.18.09 @ 9:19AM
jerryofva, your information is wrong. It was Bloomington, MN, school system, the problems was issolated to just a few older buses of a certain design, and the petroleum portion (98%) of the fuel was found to be the problem -- not the 2% soy biodiesel blended into every gallon of diesel sold in Minnesota.
Trackback| 5.4.09 @ 1:03AM
Handcrafted Model Ship, on Handcrafted Model Ship, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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