Oregon is once again setting a good example for the rest of the country. According to a story by The Associated Press, business owners all along the Interstate 5 corridor are beginning to use recycled vegetable oil in diesel engines rather than fossil fuels. This type of action is exactly what needs to be done to solve the problems of dependence on foreign oil and the dwindling supply of a non-renewable resource.
Using biofuel will not make the problems disappear completely, but it will help, and those who think that we can get away with not doing every single thing we can to find alternatives to using fossil fuels should be prepared for a catastrophe.
One of the major benefits of biofuel is that it can be produced and distributed locally.
SeQuential Biofuels, the largest biofuel operation in Oregon, has offices in Eugene and Portland and distributes biofuel along I-5. The advantages of this are twofold; it not only creates an alternative to burning fossil fuels, it decreases the need to use oil for transport.Business owners also reported that their delivery trucks get better gas mileage when they use biodiesel. Biodiesel burns about twice as efficiently as gasoline.
While scientists, including professor of petroleum engineering at the University of California Berkeley Tad Patzek, agree that biofuel cannot completely replace fossil fuels in the United States, Oregonians are right to be doing everything they can to preserve what we have left in our oil reserves and use cleaner, more efficient, renewable sources of fuel. We applaud SeQuential Biofuels for its contribution to this practice, and we encourage other business owners to follow the examples of people like Jim Bernau, president of Willamette Valley Vineyards, who are doing their part by switching to using biofuel in their businesses.