New Yorkers turning to biodiesel for heat

If the Big Apple's initiative helps reduce emissions, other cities and states may follow suit.

from the September 18, 2007 edition

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New York's wider use of the fuel for heating will receive a major kick-start as the city implements Mayor Michael Bloomberg's environmental vision, called PlaNYC. The city will start to add a 5 percent biodiesel blend to the oil it buys for city-owned buildings next year. By 2012, it plans to have all its buildings using a 20 percent blend, called B20.

The shift will also vary the city's supplies.

"Fuel diversity is important," says Ariella Rosenberg Maron, who works in Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. "As we become more and more dependent on natural gas, we need to consider ways to mitigate the financial and other impacts of disruptions to our natural-gas supply, such as we experienced during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina."

The use of biodiesel could also get a major boost from legislation before the City Council, which would mandate that all fuel-oil users for heating buy a blend of B20 by 2013. The city has 1 million households that use heating oil. "This is an opportunity to go after some sizable clean-air gains," says council member James Gennaro (D) of Queens, who is sponsoring the bill.

Included in the legislation is a requirement that the biofuel come from a "sustainable" source. "We don't want people to clear-cut forests to grow soybeans," says Mr. Gennaro.

Potential suppliers of the fuel are already gearing up. Metro, a major supplier of fuel oil, has plans to build a 110 million-gallon refinery in Brooklyn for biodiesel. Tri-State Biodiesel is collecting the waste cooking oil from 700 restaurants, shipping it out of state for processing and reselling it in the city. The company has plans for a biodiesel refinery in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn that will process 3 million gallons a year.

"We will be able to expand [the refinery] if the market bears it," says Brent Baker, president of Tri-State. "We will also work with our national network to bring in barge loads of biodiesel for winter."

However, the nascent refineries were planned before Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) vetoed legislation that would have extended a bioheat tax credit for four years. He said the bill was passed by the Legislature outside the budget process. Without the tax credit, biodiesel can be more expensive than regular heating oil. "The tax credit did a great job of bridging the cost gap. Hopefully it has just been taken away temporarily," says Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the New York Oil Heating Association.

The loss of the tax credit was a surprise to Seiden at the co-op. He quickly got on the phone to call the politicians who sponsored the legislation. "I hope something can be worked out after it's reintroduced later this year," he says. "It would be heartbreaking to go back to the old polluting junk."

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