Not all biofuels are made the same

(This is a quick response to the New York Times article that came out today http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.htm)

As you know, not all biofuels are made the same; cutting down the rainforest to grow biofuel crops is a terrible idea. Growing crops locally has been proven thru many studies to create lowered emissions and a net gain of energy over the life cycle of the fuel. Life cycle assessments follow a product from "cradle to grave" and all the inputs in between; for biofuels, this would be taking everything from planting, to fertilizing, harvesting, transport, conversion, distribution and combustion, into consideration.

Soybean-based biodiesel (grown in the US) has a lifecycle impact of lowering carbon dioxide emissions by 78% as compared to petroleum diesel. (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf)

SeQuential has always relied upon government laboratory research; we feel it is the least biased source we can find. If you want to do some further reading, here is a page with a whole bunch of links to documents that support the benefits of biofuels: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/publications.html.

Most studies are done with Midwest grown soybean based biodiesel. The SeQuential-Pacific plant in Salem primarily makes biodiesel out of used cooking oil, adding the element of recycling into the mix. I have not seen any studies on how many times better this makes the environmental impact, but I imagine it is many-fold.