MARKET DEVELOPMENT
Victoria, BC Tour Buses Run on Cooking Oil
Victoria, BC Tour Buses Run on Cooking Oil
18/04/2013 (Troy Media) - In less than a decade, the Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative has gone from selling 20 litre jugs at the farmer’s market to selling 150,000 litres a year to local customers, a bus touring company and soon enough, the local county.
The Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative’s processing facility in Duncan B.C. looks like a microbrewery. Tanks, pumps, hoses and other assorted machinery are all reminiscent of the brew master’s trade. But unlike the yeasty smell that you get at a brewery, the biodiesel processing facility has the faint hint of French fries.
And when you ask a long-time customer about why they spend the extra-money for their homemade diesel she’s got a quick answer.
“I got involved because I wanted to get off fossil fuels,” says Lynn Wytenbroek, a founding member. “I prefer to be on 100 per cent as much as possible. I’ve even driven out to Alberta with the trunk of the car full of biodiesel so I didn’t have to fill up at a gas station.”
When Wytenbroek says 100 per cent she means B100, the designation that refers to a fuel comprised of 100 per cent biofuel.
Biodiesel is a safe, clean, ready-to-use alternative transportation fuel that, in this case, is made with used vegetable oil. It can be put into almost any diesel engine and produces far less pollution like black smoke and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
A study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a lab of the U.S. Department of Energy, found in a life cycle study that buses using 100 per cent biodiesel (B100) produced 78 per cent less carbon dioxide emissions.
While customers like Wytenbroek help you get off the ground, it’s customers like Cruise Victoria Services (CVS) which help you scale up. CVS is a sightseeing and tour operation that’s run out of Victoria, B.C. and they have a fleet of 19 buses.
They switched to B20, or 20 per cent biodiesel in 2007.
“For the first six months we didn’t even tell our driving staff that they were running biofuel. Ultimately, when we did announce it, everybody was quite surprised because there was zero impact in terms of the overall operation with the exception of lower overall emissions,” says Gary Gale, managing director with CVS.
The company gradually ramped up to B100 and it is, as far as I know, the only company in North America running a major fleet of buses on biodiesel fuel.
“Customers love it,” says Gale.
It’s a little serendipitous, but as CVS Cruise Victoria ramped up their demand for biodiesel fuel the Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative was able to tap into the waste vegetable oil from the 220 cruise ships that dock at Ogden Point in Victoria every year.
“And that’s a great sustainable closed-loop system, recycling the waste product from the cruise ships and turning it into a value-added biofuel that is then used to take those tourists around Victoria,” Brian Roberts, the president of the cooperative.
Half of their feedstock now comes from those cruise ships with the other half coming from restaurants.
However, the biodiesel from the Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative costs more than your typical litre of petro-diesel. When I was visiting it was about a $0.50 cent premium – petro-diesel was $1.29 and the biodiesel was $1.78.
Wytenbroek says it’s worth it: “My $1.78 per liter goes into this community. It stays in this community and that helps the local economy. That’s very important; it’s like buying local food, which I also do precisely for that reason.”
The Cowichan Bio-Diesel Co-operative is now in the process of installing a second biodiesel pump that will provide B100 and various mixtures of bio/petro-diesel fuel to the vehicles of its members which now includes project partner the Cowichan Valley Regional District.
Biodiesel will never replace petro-diesel by itself, but getting not just people but cars as well to “eat” locally means less of a dependence on a volatile, unhealthy commodity.
The Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative’s processing facility in Duncan B.C. looks like a microbrewery. Tanks, pumps, hoses and other assorted machinery are all reminiscent of the brew master’s trade. But unlike the yeasty smell that you get at a brewery, the biodiesel processing facility has the faint hint of French fries.
And when you ask a long-time customer about why they spend the extra-money for their homemade diesel she’s got a quick answer.
“I got involved because I wanted to get off fossil fuels,” says Lynn Wytenbroek, a founding member. “I prefer to be on 100 per cent as much as possible. I’ve even driven out to Alberta with the trunk of the car full of biodiesel so I didn’t have to fill up at a gas station.”
When Wytenbroek says 100 per cent she means B100, the designation that refers to a fuel comprised of 100 per cent biofuel.
Biodiesel is a safe, clean, ready-to-use alternative transportation fuel that, in this case, is made with used vegetable oil. It can be put into almost any diesel engine and produces far less pollution like black smoke and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
A study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a lab of the U.S. Department of Energy, found in a life cycle study that buses using 100 per cent biodiesel (B100) produced 78 per cent less carbon dioxide emissions.
While customers like Wytenbroek help you get off the ground, it’s customers like Cruise Victoria Services (CVS) which help you scale up. CVS is a sightseeing and tour operation that’s run out of Victoria, B.C. and they have a fleet of 19 buses.
They switched to B20, or 20 per cent biodiesel in 2007.
“For the first six months we didn’t even tell our driving staff that they were running biofuel. Ultimately, when we did announce it, everybody was quite surprised because there was zero impact in terms of the overall operation with the exception of lower overall emissions,” says Gary Gale, managing director with CVS.
The company gradually ramped up to B100 and it is, as far as I know, the only company in North America running a major fleet of buses on biodiesel fuel.
“Customers love it,” says Gale.
It’s a little serendipitous, but as CVS Cruise Victoria ramped up their demand for biodiesel fuel the Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative was able to tap into the waste vegetable oil from the 220 cruise ships that dock at Ogden Point in Victoria every year.
“And that’s a great sustainable closed-loop system, recycling the waste product from the cruise ships and turning it into a value-added biofuel that is then used to take those tourists around Victoria,” Brian Roberts, the president of the cooperative.
Half of their feedstock now comes from those cruise ships with the other half coming from restaurants.
However, the biodiesel from the Cowichan Biodiesel Cooperative costs more than your typical litre of petro-diesel. When I was visiting it was about a $0.50 cent premium – petro-diesel was $1.29 and the biodiesel was $1.78.
Wytenbroek says it’s worth it: “My $1.78 per liter goes into this community. It stays in this community and that helps the local economy. That’s very important; it’s like buying local food, which I also do precisely for that reason.”
The Cowichan Bio-Diesel Co-operative is now in the process of installing a second biodiesel pump that will provide B100 and various mixtures of bio/petro-diesel fuel to the vehicles of its members which now includes project partner the Cowichan Valley Regional District.
Biodiesel will never replace petro-diesel by itself, but getting not just people but cars as well to “eat” locally means less of a dependence on a volatile, unhealthy commodity.