Seattle decision to stop fueling City vehicles with soy-based biofuels

Thomas, a Pinehurst neighbor, asked to share from a letter sent to Seattle City Council regarding the Council’s decision to stop fueling City vehicles with soy-based biofuels:

I recently heard that the city will no longer be fueling vehicles with soy-based biodiesel. See quotes from the NPR story below. While I understand that there is some controversy, especially since rain forests are being cut down and burned, often for agricultural purposes, I think that biodiesel is an important part of the bridge to a sustainable energy economy.

The EPA report cited as the reason you took the initiative to stop using biodiesel has several flaws. Change to foreign land use is the only factor cited in the study that enables a projection that soy-based biodiesel has anything but a huge net positive impact on green house gas emissions vs. petroleum diesel. It is essential to understand that soy is not grown primarily for oil, but rather is grown primarily for food for both humans and livestock. Soy production in Brazil, for example, dropped between 2004 and 2008, even as soy-based biodiesel production increased from 25 million gallons to 700 million gallons (28 times as much biodiesel!) Source:http://biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3523 But the EPA analysis uses the growth in Brazilian soybean production from a prior period and projects it forward, attributing such growth to biodiesel production. Any economist can tell you that such a projection is almost certainly wrong as many market forces will play a role in future land use decisions.

You said “Decisions should be driven by science”. Well, those land use projections are not science, they are wild speculation based on faulty assumptions. You may also be influenced, during these hard economic times, by the fact that petroleum diesel has been less expensive than biodiesel for over a year. However, that will likely change again making biodiesel, as it has been several times in the last 8 years, cheaper.

The main barrier to inexpensive, highly efficient, negative GHG-emissions biodiesel is the lack of a stable market. Biodiesel producers can’t make capital investments to produce biodiesel from US feedstocks (such as soy, canola grown on marginal lands, or algae) because petroleum prices continue to bounce up and down, making demand for biodiesel come and go. Producers such as Central Washington Biodiesel struggle even while they produce biodiesel from waste oils that obviously has a hugely positive impact on GHG emissions. Eastern WA farmers have been jerked around by this up and down. A firm commitment by the city to buy biodiesel would certainly help stabilize that market.