While you may have heard about efforts to clean up diesel truck emissions, you may not be aware that the same efforts are being directed toward the maritime industry. This is being done through two avenues, the EPA and the IMO. While you recognize EPA, IMO won’t be familiar to you. It’s the International Maritime Organization, mostly concerned with large scale shipping. For several years a movement has been afoot to clean up diesel emissions, both visible in terms of smoke and invisible polluting elements. Engine manufacturers the world over are redesigning their products in hopes of developing greener engines. In this country, the state of Alaska deserves credit for putting pressure on visiting cruise ships to clean up.

The EPA, together with some oil industry money, has funded engine replacement programs. We’re seeing some of that at whale watching Monterey Bay; unfortunately several of the engine replacements have gone into wrecks of boats, the hulls of which will never outlast the engines themselves. While cleaner by comparison with what they’ve replaced, they’re still burning diesel, an inherently low grade and dirty fuel; still fossil based and non-renewable. Enter biodiesel.

It’s processed from soy or canola oil, or even recycled from cooking oil. It burns much cleaner, has a higher flashpoint and provides equal performance. It’s pretty expensive, as high as $4 a gallon, but when mixed with diesel, engines burn cleaner and require little in the way of costly modification. The exhaust emissions of sulfur oxides and sulfates, major components of acid rain, are essentially eliminated when biodiesel is burned in engines. Also, the use of biodiesel considerably reduces unburned hydrocarbons, one of the major contributors to the formation of smog.

So, why hadn’t it been here on the Monterey Bay? It might have been as simple as no one had thought of it yet. Or, the cost, usually over twice what we pay for petroleum diesel, had been the limiting factor. But, it’s more complicated than that. Marine fuel docks California are under the scrutiny of no fewer than 6 different regulatory agencies. To introduce biodiesel would not only be expensive for the boater, but also for the fuel dock; not to mention a mountain of paperwork.

We got lucky with Woodward Marine, our local fuel dock in Moss Landing. Dennis Long, the manager, was interested right away. But, he added, with fishing down, he was selling less fuel, thus making less money. The expense of putting in a separate biodiesel tank and running the lines was out of the question. We put our heads together and came up with a solution.

Dennis and I located a fuel distributor he had used in the past who dispensed biodiesel. Dennis agreed to let him fuel us at his dock, and levied just a token surcharge for his trouble.

The reaction of our passengers was dramatic. They loved the smell, which they said ranged from that of baking bread to French fries. Our seasickness rates dropped, plus, they liked supporting an innovative idea and one that was beneficial to the environment.

Because this new supplier turned out to be unreliable, we found another. He fueled us for a year until financial troubles caused him to close his doors. Because fuel tanks in a marine environment attract water which causes bacteria to grow, and because biodiesel has a scouring effect on fuel tanks, we spent a small fortune at first replacing fuel filters. We felt this was an acceptable expense, considering the good we were doing. We used biodiesel for two years and would still be using it if he had a reliable supplier.