Mean Green

When someone asks the real cost of biodiesel, the question is hard to answer. There is an environmental impact of producing the fuel, to some extent, and that can be considered a cost. There is also the physical cost of production to take into consideration. However, the real cost question may not always be answered obviously. Here are some interesting “cost” facts about biodiesel.

While one gallon of the fuel will be priced higher than traditional gasoline, the engine will perform at 30 to 40% better efficiency. Thus, if gas is selling for $3.00 a gallon, biodiesel should be selling for around $4.20 a gallon. This alternative fuel does not require extensive modification or replacement of the engine. If it runs diesel, it will run biodiesel. The fuel works as a solvent and will clean the engine. The result could be clogged filters, so changing those a few days after adding the biofuel is important. This will increase the “cost”. Oil is used as the base for this alternative fuel. If the oil is not produced in a green and eco-friendly environment – the end “cost” of the energy will be higher.

There is a whole world surrounding the production of biofuels. This world works in the same way it always has but running petroleum based engines and emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If that part of production is not green, is the fuel really saving Mother Earth? Some companies are moving toward more environmentally friendly practices, but these steps are smaller than they may need to be.

Who would have thought that the materials from plants and animals can be turned into a renewable energy which is now known as the biofuels. There are so many natural materials that can be turned into this type of alternative energy including animal manure, vegetable oil, sugar cane, and wood. But why use this energy since there are still companies selling high-priced energy sources?

One of the main benefits of this is that it can be cost-effective for all those who would use it. By the time that the technology for making this type of fuel becomes available worldwide, it would provide an energy source that is far cheaper compared to the conventional gasoline.

There is also a bigger source of material for the biofuels as mentioned before. This makes it very environment-friendly since it is an efficient way to recycle and stop adding more reasons for global warming. Fossil fuels would require you to wait for thousands of years before it can be used as a source of energy. This alternative on the other hand would only take a couple of weeks or days. It is easier and faster to renew therefore it is more convenient to make this renewable energy.

Countries that would also opt for the biofuels have more secured source of energy. If they would decrease their dependence on the fuel sources from foreign countries, they would be able to have a lower price and more secured energy source.

And in relation to that, since the renewable energy will be made within the country, it would spawn new chances for employment. People living within the rural areas will get to have employment thus, the stimulation of economic growth as well. Moreover, there will also be bigger demand for crops that are needed in creating this alternative energy.

More and more people choose to use biodiesel as their alternative fuel for their diesel vehicle. There are so many reasons and incentives to use biodiesel instead of petrodiesel. The biodiesel is produced from vegetable oil or animal fat. The vegetable oil has to pass a simple chemical process that is called transesterification in order to become biodiesel.

You go to local restaurants and fast food branches, ask to speak with the manager and explain him or her that you would like to have their used vegetable oil before they through it away. Most of the restaurants’ managers will be happy to supply it for you since you pick their “garbage”. You can provide them the container that they will fill up with the vegetable oil and agree with them when is best to pick it up.

Most of the diesel engines do NOT require any modification in order to use bio-diesel instead of petrodiesel. Only diesel engines that have natural rubber parts instead of synthetic rubber parts cannot use biodiesel, but these engines are not as common as the engines that can use the biodiesel.

Using biodiesel is very cost effective and can save a lot of money. When you make the biodiesel yourself the average saving is more than 50%. Even though that using biodiesel is much more than just saving money, this reason alone is a great incentive to do so. An engine that runs on biodiesel is much healthier so the saving is not just by the biodiesel cost compared to petrodiesel but by the maintenance costs.

The ecological reason of using biodiesel is not less important than saving money. When powering diesel engines with biodiesel, the pollution is reduced significantly. Studies showed that several pollution parameters levels were reduced while using biodiesel as opposed to petrodiesel.

You can save money and help to reduce pollution as well. It is very easy to make biodiesel at home.

It is quite possible that there will be future potential problems and issues with biofuels down the road. For instance if we are to break our addiction to Middle Eastern foreign oil we will need to produce 15% or more of our fuel by growing it here in the United States Midwest, but to do that we need to produce quite a bit of it. It is possible to grow it, but we need refining capacity and a distribution network to get to market. Additionally people will need to have cars, which run on flex fuels or can run both diesel and ethanol.

After we hit 15% biofuels we will need to expand at 10% per year and that will be tough because there’s only so much water and only so much farmland to make this and not all the cars on the road are capable of using E85 Ethanol, which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It would destroy your car engine if your car was not made for this. Most automobiles can run 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline without too much problem or damage to the engine.

If our goal is to break America’s addiction to Middle Eastern foreign oil we will need to ramp up the process quicker and figure out a way to get all the ethanol and biofuels to market for both personal automobiles and over the road trucks. We should also look into ways to allow biofuels to be used in aviation in the future. Bio-diesel must be available at truck stops, card key fuel stations, travel centers and large government GSA offices.

We know from the past that blended fuel programs have been very popular in many states but generally this is because of the discounted fuel tax, which keeps the price lower than regular gasoline or diesel fuel. In the future ethanol will have to cost less to produce and deliver to market than gasoline. That might be difficult considering that OPEC will lower the price of their oil in order to keep ethanol away from the American people. All these issues are very important considerations and we must think on this in 2006.

Pellets stoves are another alternative method for heating a house. Normally they are compared and contrasted to the traditional wood stove since they are similar in the way they disperse heat in a fairly similar way.

Pellet stoves do offer some advantages compared to traditional wood stoves.

First of all they are easy to load. In a wood stove, the wood must be stacked and at times can be awkward. Pellets are small and will fit into a very small area efficiently since the pieces are meant to be packed together. Since they burn evenly and efficiently, there is little ash compared to normal wood to deal with. Generally the higher quality pellet the hotter it will burn and the more will burn leaving less waste.

Since they run on electricity they can also be programmed to burn at an even rate where that’s difficult to do with wood and fire since it will burn as fast as nature intends. The pellet stove will give you consistent temperatures at consistent times which is a huge advantage.

There are also some downsides. Pellet stoves require specific pellets which much be purchased. Most of the time you can buy these in bulk for under $150 per ton. This means that you need to make your purchases in advance and have a place to store them.

In a power outage where one might be stuck at home for awhile a pellet stove is practically useless. Without electricity these stoves don’t work making them a poor form of backup heat. If one were to run out of pellets, this is also a problem. A wood stove can use any wood and will heat without electricity giving them an advantage.

Overall pellet stoves can save people quite a bit of money in areas where heating costs are typically higher than other parts of the country.

In parts one and two of Disadvantages of Wind Power for Homeowners we looked at site considerations, cost, and resistance to the very idea. In this article we will examine the biggest disadvantage of wind power — or indeed any renewable energy source — that there is. But we will also look at the very simple, and necessary, solution.

There is a major problem with wind power, as well as solar, biofuel, hydroelectric or any other ‘renewable’ energy source. In fact, other than nuclear energy, all alternates to oil suffer from the same problem: there is more potential energy stored in oil than can be extracted from any of these other sources. There is a reason why our civilization has grown so dramatically in the last one hundred and ten years or so, and that is because of what oil can do.

Even compared to its closest cousin, coal, oil burns far hotter and therefore requires that much less to do that much more. It has been estimated that the modern human living in the west, with gasoline engines and oil-derived electricity at his disposal, has the equivalent of 500 labourers working for him or her. We have grown used to this abundance, and we have also squandered it in incredible ways simply because of the vast amounts of the earliest discoveries of oil. Remember those images of the oil refineries with huge flames shooting out of smokestacks? That was natural gas being burned off because it interfered with the extraction process and was potentially a hazard. Yes, that same natural gas that keeps your house warm in the winter and costs a bundle. It was considered nothing more that waste material up until very recently.

So as far as it concerns the homeowner, the disadvantage of wind power is likely going to be that it will be no substitute for the old ways. In fact for all of society, renewable energy will not fill the gap that will be left when oil finally runs out. But don’t despair, there are two great solutions that will make the problem irrelevant.

One of the solutions is of course technology. Innovations will improve the existing technology and we will have many new designs and ideas that have not been seen yet coming to the rescue. Green technology is now big business, and governments are finally starting to put real money into this sector.

But the far bigger solution is also simpler: conservation. That’s right, using less energy. Remember the example I gave about natural gas? There are literally hundreds of tools, technologies, methods and policies that have been developed during a mind-set of unlimited energy. Now that we have seen the leading edge of the end of oil, we have to rethink much of what we have done. It won’t be painless, but it doesn’t have to kill us either. What we have to do is do as much as we can on our own to make our own households and our lives less wasteful. We also have to let go of old ways, and accept innovation, and push our politicians toward making policies that make sense in the new world.

Many homeowners are taking matters into their own hands, and creating their own wind and solar power solutions. Even though these small turbines may only contribute a small amount of energy to the household, it also has the added bonus of making the homeowner more aware of how much electricity is being used, and thus becoming more conscientious about saving power.