There’s fuel in those fields Raising crops to produce biodiesel

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a New England Futures Project aimed at identifying 21st century challenges facing the six-state region. Citizen reaction and participation, leading to a shared regional agenda, are key to the project. Comments are welcome at www.newenglandfutures.org. Journalists Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson have reported for newspapers on unique strategic issues facing two dozen metropolitan regions nationwide. Peirce is a syndicated columnist (Washington Post Writers Group) who has written two books on New England. Johnson is a public policy analyst and former community college president and Minnesota government official. They are co-authors of the book “Citistates.”

Diesel fuel oil – spewing its burned black emissions from the tailpipes of countless trucks, buses and heavy construction equipment, not to mention home furnaces – has big downsides.

It throws off particulates considered a major culprit in high asthma rates. It exudes carbon into the atmosphere, increasing perils of global warming. Every gallon has to be imported into New England. Its price is sensitive to any interruption of U.S. or international petroleum supplies.

But what if New England could blend a homegrown substitute fuel to run all those hungry vehicles? Or, even better, pour a clean substitute (50 percent fewer particulates, 78 percent less carbon dioxide) into the furnaces of millions of homes and small businesses?

This miracle fuel already exists. Based on crops from New England and Midwestern farms, it can take a substantial bite out of the petrodollars that we now ship overseas. It’s called biodiesel.

Almost any modern diesel engine, or diesel-powered furnace, can run on any proportion of biodiesel. Harmful emissions start to drop significantly, even at a blend of 10 percent biodiesel.

Up to now, biodiesel has mostly been made by crushing soybean seeds to separate the oil, after which there’s a fancy process called transesterfication. But a next generation of crop source is coming on fast, based on the far higher production potential of rapeseed (canola) and mustard seeds.

Advocates such as director Fred Carstensen of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis claim these new sources can more than double biodiesel harvests and yield four times the energy it takes to produce it. That means biofuels are increasingly cost-competitive as national and global fuel prices escalate.

There are naysayers, of course. “Not enough land in New England for these seeds … the growing season’s too short, the soil too rocky.”

But one instantly wonders: Can biofuels translate into an era of new, locally raised crops, provide willing, young New England farmers with reason to stay? Could fuel crops provide incentive to keep the open, tended fields so important to the region’s mystique (and tourist economy)? On the edge of growing metropolitan zones, can biofuels help farmers decide against making a subdivision their final crop?

The potentials are wide. After oil is extracted from mustard seeds, for example, the remaining meal in some varieties makes an effective organic pesticide. According to Michael Briggs of the University of New Hampshire’s physics department, “High oil algaes can be grown on organic wastestreams and processed into biodiesel and biofertilizer, animal feed, and potentially other products, yielding many times more oil per acre than conventional crops.”

Biofuels may also be a key to tapping the energy harvests of New England’s vast northern forests. Current experiments seek to take waste or low-grade timber, volatize it and cool the gases, some of which condense into a bio-oil that can be used as a fuel.

New England biofuel pioneers, it turns out, are already at work – small refineries, start-up distribution terminals, venture capital financing for production facilities. In several locations, cooking oil from restaurants is being used as a biofuel. UConn and MIT, Dartmouth and others are testing new biofuel sources. Boston Mayor Tom Menino is vowing to convert 450 city vehicles to the fuel.

What about price? Historically, biofuels have cost marginally more than oil or gas. But this spring in the Midwest, ethanol was selling 30-40 cents per gallon less than gasoline. Brazil gambled oil prices would soar and now a third of its vehicles operate on ethanol largely produced from its own sugar crops. Most of the energy experts we talked with said that unless hurricanes stop, peace suddenly engulfs the Middle East, and Asian nations halt their fast-rising energy demands, petroleum prices will ride a permanent high. The bottom line for biofuels: an excellent bet for New England.

But with one big proviso. This won’t work in New England’s familiar, splintered ways.

If biodiesel is to get to a significant scale and really make a difference, it must have a big enough start-up market. That means “lot of additional tank capacity, along with new quality measures,” says Richard Handley of the Coalition of Northeast Governors. Governments will need to be catalysts since private-sector fleets will join, but too slowly.

There’s an obvious breakthrough strategy: start shifting all of New England’s school districts, public vehicle fleets and transit systems to biodiesel. Then there will be incentive for major investments in crushing and refining equipment, supply terminals, distribution centers.

In addition, there is major potential in the home heating market. Handley points to surveys showing consumers would even pay more for a biodiesel blend, though enough local supply, combined with federal tax credits, could make biodiesel cheaper.

As a starter, a big New England skull session on biofuels could be called – possibly by the Clean Energy States Alliance, based in Montpelier, Vt. There are many unknowns regarding crop selection’s long-term benefits. But who says science and techno-proficient New England can’t figure the answers?

Attempted state by state, biofuels won’t amount to much. Developed regionwide, they could be a big marker in a New England drive for ever-greater energy independence.

For more information on New England’s biofuels pioneers – inventors, refiners, researchers, visionaries – go to: http://www.newenglandfutures.org/issues/energy/resources/

The sponsoring Partnership for New England includes the Vermont-based Institute for Sustainable Communities (which will coordinate follow-up public debates across the region), the New England Council, the New England Initiative at UMass Lowell, Mount Auburn Associates, the New England Association of Regional Councils and the Orton Family Foundation. Financial backing comes from community foundations in all six states, the Bank of America Foundation and others (full list at the Web site).