San Francisco Biofuels Cooperative

San Francisco Biofuels Cooperative in the news

May 18th, 2006 - CBS 5

The city uses right around 8 million gallons a year of diesel. So at a 20 per cent blend, that will be about 1.8 million gallons a year," says Eric Bowen of the S.F. Biodiesel Cooperative.



November 4th, 2005 - SFGate.com Our Cities, Our Selves The greening of San Francisco includes our cars and sewer system
Surreal Estate :: Carol Lloyd column
Last month as I slalomed through the city streets to pick up my kindergartner in my 1989 Mercedes, a latte in a paper cup wedged between my knees, I thought about how slippery the slope of urban life often is.

The Green Festival was coming to town this weekend, and as usual there were a thousand commendable building-related subjects -- bamboo cabinets, eco-friendly solar design, green prefab houses. But I was thinking about cars.

The high price of gas and the even higher cost of war coupled with my commute across town suddenly made the city seem more about cars and fuel than any house or office tower or museum. And like so many San Francisco drivers, I'd been living an existence torn between spouting off about the geopolitics of the oil industry and pumping gallon upon gallon of its increasingly unaffordable dino-juice into my tank.


September 2005
ABC News Veggie Oil cars
This ABC News segment covered the topic of Straight Vegetable Oil powered cars. Several San Francisco Biofuels Cooperative members are in this segment, with a focus on James Nestor.

The video can be seen here. Stills of the video can be seen here.

[ 32mb quicktime video ]

Get Quicktime here.

September 19th, 2005 - Inhabitat.com : How to BREW YOUR OWN BIODIESEL
by: Our very own, Sarah Rich
If anyone still needed proof that world oil resources are diminishing, staggering gas prices have now confirmed it. Now, even as our wallets grow skinnier and SUV sales drop, I can't help but wonder how deeply this new reality is penetrating the American psyche.

Proponents of alternative fuel are fervently pursuing a viable, abundant source of fuel that will maintain our mobility without harming the earth. At present, biodiesel is the most available, affordable and easy-to-use alternative to gasoline. It is made out of either used cooking grease or virgin vegetable oil (corn and soy being the most common). The process of refining oil into biodiesel is quite simple, and the resulting fuel can be used in any diesel engine with no modification to the vehicle itself..

August 30th, 2005 - Treehugger.com : Ask Me About My Gas: Say It With A Shirt
As far as trends go, the biodiesel industry is growing a little slower than the T-shirt industry, but like all things green, the key is giving it mainstream appeal and accessibility. Ask Me About My Gas invites inquiry from uneducated readers of T-shirt text by printing their provocative company name on the shirts. Four styles feature different types of diesel vehicles: a Mercedes, a truck, a semi and a tractor, each with "Ask Me About My Gas" above the image, and a little clue below about the tee-wearer's potentially embarrassing problem: it's biodiesel.

August 22nd, 2005 - Red Herring : Biodiesel in the United States
Oliver Fross, the owner of a small San Francisco-based UNIX consultancy, pulls his burgundy Volkswagen Jetta TDI into the Western Pride wholesale gas station in San Jose and stops beside Pump No. 3. The pump, along with Pump No. 4, has remained unused for more than three hours while a regular flow of buses, semis, tankers, and pickup trucks top their tanks at the thirty-plus other pumps at the station. That's because pumps No. 3 and 4 share the station's only biodiesel tank, dispensing diesel made from soybean and recycled cooking oil, at about $0.50 more than the petroleum-based diesel..

July 10th, 2005 - SF Gate : On the Biodiesel Bandwagon Can the Bay Area's 3 million gallons of used vegetable oil rid us of our petroleum problem?
Economists have predicted that 2005 is the year of the "global oil- production peak," when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce, after which yearly production will decline. Already the effects of this, coupled with the growing demand throughout Asia, have been immediate and dramatic: In 10 months, oil has risen to more than $50 a barrel -- $20 more than it was a year ago. Goldman Sachs has warned of a future "super spike" to $100 a barrel. Fuel at the pump has never been more expensive. And it won't be coming down: remember, this is a permanent crisis. Or so says the Department of Energy: "The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive migration more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."..