Biodiesel, renewable diesel can help meet carbon reduction goals

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Biodiesel, renewable diesel can help meet carbon reduction goals

The National Biodiesel Board is cautiously optimistic the biodiesel and renewable diesel industries will benefit from the new administration’s focus on climate.

Matt Herman is the director of environmental science with the National Biodiesel Board.

“We think we offer a lot for the new administration coming,” he says. “Both biodiesel and renewable diesel have fantastic greenhouse gas reductions and they also can significantly decrease air quality pollution that’s associated with fossil diesel. We’re really hopeful because we hear, out of the new administration, the message for unity and the need to work together as a country and we think that biofuels provide a huge opportunity to bridge that gap between the coasts that desire to move as quick as possible on these environmental policies to reduce emissions and the Midwest and the growers and agricultural community that stand ready to provide raw materials to make biofuels and remove petroleum.”  

He says biodiesel reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 75 percent.

“Any emission we can reduce today is far more valuable than reducing emissions tomorrow,” he says. “I think that’s a huge strength that the biofuel and agricultural community can bring to this conversation.”    

NBB CEO Donnell Rehagen say biodiesel and renewable diesel can help meet carbon reduction goals across the country.

“Biodiesel and renewable diesel are two of the cleanest-burning liquid fuels in the marketplace,” he says. “We’re very proud to finally have an opportunity to speak about that in an environment that is looking for opportunities to reduce that carbon. Biodiesel and renewable diesel have always been able to do that—that’s not something new to our product, it’s just that it wasn’t really a priority of the marketplace over the last 10 years or so.”

Brownfield spoke to Herman and Rehagen during the virtual National Biodiesel Conference. The event concludes today.

Audio: Matt Herman

Audio: Donnell Rehagen