National Biodiesel Day on Monday marked the birthday of German inventor Rudolf Diesel, whose original design used peanut oil. Today, vegetable oil is the idea behind biodiesel.
For close to three decades, Pacific Biodiesel has been plugging away in Hawaiʻi using crops for fuel and recycling cooking oil waste from restaurants.
The Conversation caught up with co-founder Kelly King, also a former Maui County councilmember, to talk about the company's expansion to Kauaʻi and what the scale-up means for the state's sustainability goals.
She said the company is working toward producing all of its feedstock in Hawaiʻi, plus having enough feedstock to build another biodiesel refinery. Its sole refinery is in Keaʻau on the Big Island.
In January, the company announced it would expand its fuel crop project to Kauaʻi as part of an agreement with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers laboratory. The project will demonstrate a renewable biofuel produced from local oilseed cover crops such as sunflower.
"We've already set up most of the farm system with these three big silos and the augers that transport — once we get the seeds into the silos — the seeds into the holding tank inside the mill. We've ordered crushing mill equipment that's actually about 10 times more the volume than we've been doing on the Big Island. So it's going to be more efficient," King said.
Once the oil is extracted, the resultant meal can also be sold to Kauaʻi farmers to feed their livestock.
Pacific Biodiesel already has a contract to sell biodiesel to the Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative.
"All of the utilities now recognize that in order to get to 100% and address the state mandate by 2045, they need to have a percentage of firm power. We finally got HECO to give us an estimated number of what that is, and they're saying, the last I heard, it was somewhere around 12% of their energy would be biofuels," King said.
Editor's note: Pacific Biodiesel is an underwriter of Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 18, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Sophia McCullough adapted this story for the web.
