The success of New York City’s 2 percent biodiesel requirement in heating oil … a mix known as bioheat … was recently touted during a webinar hosted by the National Biodiesel Board (NBB).

City Councilman James F. Gennaro, who spearheaded the Big Apple’s bioheat mandate, explained that New York started with using biodiesel in its heavy duty truck fleets. That success led to including biodiesel in the city’s one billion gallon a year heating oil plans.

“I saw this as a great way to move in a very good direction and help us clean the air in New York City.”

After a couple of years of work on the city legislation, the council was able to agree on a 2 percent mandate that puts 20 million gallons a year of the cleaner-burning, renewable fuel into the heating systems. Gennaro tips his hat to several local New York City businesses that have worked to grow the local biodiesel industry, including Metro, Tri-State Biodiesel and Sprague Energy, among others. New York City Councilman James F. Gennaro

NBB’s Director of Sustainability Don Scott applauded the city’s efforts to clean the air, create jobs and reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

“[The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] found that biodiesel made from animal fat, recycled greases and waste products reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent (compared to conventional petroleum).” And biodiesel made for soybean oil reduced those greenhouse gas emissions by 86 percent … even 57 percent if you use the controversial indirect land use change formula, well above the EPA’s advanced biofuel standard. Plus, Scott points out that the biodiesel industry employs 23,000 Americans with the potential of those jobs climbing to 78,000 workers. Finally, he says it stems the country’s billion-dollar-a-day foreign oil habit.

Gennaro says he’d like to see New York’s model repeated elsewhere across the country.

“This is the direction that we should be moving in.”