energy.agwired.com

The other day, I told you about about how the Morris K. Udall Foundation was making its annual cross-country trip promoting environmental and Native American issues and how this year it is doing under biodiesel power (see my post from June 12th).

The Philadelphia Enquirer caught up with the group at one of its first stops after leaving Washington, DC:

The group arrived Tuesday in Philadelphia from Washington and spent the night in a dormitory at Temple University.

“Here in Philadelphia, we’re looking at water quality and biofuels,” said Bret Strogen, 25, a Udall scholar from Berwyn and a graduate of the University of Delaware.

Savanna Ferguson, 23, a graduate of Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Wash., viewed the trip as an adventure.

“I’m looking forward to spreading our message, writing for the blog and meeting new people and seeing new places,” she said.

You can view the bus trip blog at http://blogs.udall.gov.

Suffolk County, New York is switching all of its 439 public works trucks to run on biodiesel. The move comes as neighboring Nassau, switched its 270 trucks to the biofuel as of the first of this year.

According to this story in Newsday, officials unanimously approved the move for the end of next year. The switch comes after both counties did their own pilot projects for the last couple of years:

“The beauty of biodiesel is that it burns cleaner and you can use the same infrastructure,” said sponsor Legis. Daniel Losquadro (R-Shoreham). The only difficulty in switching to the new fuel — made up of low-sulfur diesel fuel and 20 percent soybean or waste vegetable oil — is that it initially acts as a detergent when placed into diesel tanks, creating the need to change filters more frequently at first to prevent clogging.

Losquadro said Suffolk was using about 100,000 gallons a year during the biodiesel pilot project and will increase fuel use to 400,000 gallons when the switch is complete.

A spokeswoman for the National Biodiesel Board says the county joins more than 100 cities switching to biodiesel. San Francisco, California, which switched all of its trucks to biodiesel, and Arlington County, Virginia, which is using it in its truck fleet and school buses, afre the two biggest ones to make the change.

U.S. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) is the sponsor of a new measure designed to ensure that a portion of America’s future diesel fuel supply is renewable.

In a release from the National Biodiesel Board (of course, the NBB heartily endorses this bill), the Biodiesel Promotion and Quality Assurance Act would up the amount of biodiesel and “bio-based replacement diesel” that refiners blend into diesel to 1.25 billion gallons by 2012:

“Biodiesel is a fuel that holds great promise in terms of moving our country toward energy independence,” Durbin said. “This bill will create incentives for producers and consumers alike and will allow this important alternative fuel source the chance to become a mainstream alternative to foreign oil.”

Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Thomas Carper (D-DE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) are co-sponsoring the bill. And as mentioned above, the measure has the endorsement of the NBB:

“This legislation would set a floor for biodiesel demand, which will help ensure that the promising biodiesel industry continues delivering benefits to America,” said Joe Jobe, NBB CEO. “In addition to economic growth and pollution reduction, biodiesel delivers fuel refining capacity, something this nation desperately needs. Having a demand floor in place will help provide needed stability and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which benefits all Americans.”

If passed, oil refiners would blend 450 million gallons of biodiesel and bio-based replacement diesel starting next year with the 1.25 billion gallon goal by 2012. The biodiesel would also be required to be registered through the Environmental Protection Agency in line with the Clean Air Act, and would have to have an ASTM standard. There would also be a federal inspection program to ensure quality standards set by ASTM.