Celebrities to help celebrate opening of biofuels plant

Celebrities to help celebrate opening of biofuels plant

By Tim Christie
The Register-Guard
Published: Friday, August 29, 2008

SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel is celebrating the opening of its 5-million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant today with the help of a red-headed stranger.

Well, actually, Willie Nelson is no stranger to biodiesel. He runs biodiesel in his tour bus, and he and his wife, Annie, were among the original investors in the company’s first commercial biodiesel plant in Salem in 2004.

The Nelsons, in Salem to play the Oregon State Fair, will be there today with other investors, customers, suppliers and politicians for the grand opening of the new plant.

"It's very cool to have Willie Nelson involved," as well as Annie Nelson, a national leader in the biofuel movement, said Ian Hill, co-founder of SeQuential Biofuels.

Adding to the cool quotient: Jack Johnson, the Hawaiian surfer/acoustic pop star/environmental activist, and his wife, Kim, recently have invested in SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel. When Billboard magazine published its list of the most environmentally minded musicians, dubbed "The Green Ten," Johnson and Nelson topped the list.

"It’s nice to have that kind of support," Hill said. "It's not just dollars - it's clout and real intelligence coming with it."

The new plant is a joint venture of SeQuential Biofuels Inc., a Portland fuel company born in a Eugene garage, and Hawaii-based Pacific Biodiesel Inc. Co. officials aren’t disclosing the cost to build the refinery, but a $6 million loan from the state Department of Energy’s small-energy loan program helped to pay for it.

The new plant will increase production fivefold over the original 1-millon-gallon-per-year plant, which will be dismantled and sold.

The new plant is still being commissioned, and probably won’t start production for several more weeks, although it should be at full production by the end of the year, Hill said.

Once the plant is producing at the 5-million-gallon capacity, that will trigger the state’s renewable fuel standards for diesel, requiring that all diesel sold in Oregon include at least 2 percent biodiesel.

Hitting that threshold should help SeQuential and the biodiesel industry "tremendously" because it guarantees that a certain amount of biodiesel will be consumed in Oregon, Hill said. The new standard will double demand for biodiesel to about 20 million gallons per year, Hill said.

The opening comes at a time when the biofuel industry is experiencing growing pains. While backers say biofuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions and reduces dependency on fossil fuels, critics say biofuel is driving up the cost of corn and other feedstocks.

SeQuential officials say they're trying to do things differently, by using used cooking oil for about 90 percent of the feedstock, rather than relying primarily on virgin oil from seed crops, and by establishing a local fuel economy.

To gain more control over feedstock prices, Sequential has launched a company called Encore Oils that collects used oil from restaurants around the Northwest. The company also is working on a project in which it will purchase food-grade oils from Oregon farmers, sell it to restaurants, then buy back the used product to put in its fuel.