Pack your party hat and your sustainably made kazoo if you’re headed to Phoenix for this year’s annual event. Two new decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency should make this a banner year for biodiesel. In October, the EPA approved raising the ethanol blend rate in gasoline to 15%, from 10%. The agency also announced that petroleum manufacturers must blend 800 million gallons of biodiesel into their U.S. product mix in 2011 and 1 billion gallons in 2012. (Biodiesel producers moved just 500 million gallons of the stuff in 2009.) According to the EPA, biodiesel, made from animal waste and agricultural oils, reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 86% when compared with petroleum. But this conference shouldn’t be a nonstop celebration: The $1-per-gallon biodiesel tax credit has yet to be resurrected. Passed in 2004 to encourage use of the fuel, the credit expired a year ago, and efforts to renew it have gotten lost in the legislative shuffle. — ADAM BONISLAWSKI
SUN, FEBRUARY 06
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National Biodiesel Conference and Expo
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