Biodiesel Finds a Home in the Northeast

By Scott Fenwick, Technical Director at Clean Fuels Alliance America
Published in SIGMA IGM Magazine | July/Aug Issue

Speaking at Clean Fuels Alliance America's annual conference in 2023, Kevin Beckett, CEO and president of oil burner manufacturer R.W. Beckett Corp., announced that after years of research and development, the company's much-anticipated B100 residential burner was finally entering production.

About the size of a home office printer, this 100% biofuel compatible burner is poised to unjam the heating oil industry's road to carbon neutrality, enabling fuel oil customers to eliminate fossil fuels from their homes for $700 on average without a single government rebate.

"We believe we have the fastest carbon-reduction solution for the Northeast while providing safe, reliable, and affordable heat," Beckett said.

With competitor Carlin Combustion Technologies revealing its own B100 model, and Energy Kinetics introducing a line of B100-compatible heat and hot water boilers - the industry's leading equipment manufacturers have now paved an affordable, equitable path to fossil-free heating for more than 4 million oil-heated homes across the Northeast.

"The advantage that our industry has is that our cost of decarbonization is nominal at best," says Michael Devine,
president of the National Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA). "Our transition costs to our customers are minimal."

By removing the blend ceiling for biodiesel, the industry has also cleared a major hurdle in achieving the objectives set forth in the Providence Resolution, a landmark commitment made in 2019 to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The resolution, which was unanimously approved by over 300 industry leaders, calls for a 15% reduction in GHG emissions by 2023, a 40% reduction by 2030, and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

According to a new analysis by NORA's Dr. Tom Butcher, the industry is already well on its way, surpassing its 2023 goal with a nearly 26% reduction in emissions. Along with increased use of biodiesel blends (commonly marketed as Bioheat® fuel), Dr. Butcher credits energy efficiency improvements in boilers and warm air furnaces for the bulk of the reductions. To achieve the 2030 goal of the Providence Resolution, Butcher says, the average blend level for biodiesel or renewable diesel will need to be 29% industry wide.

Analysis by economic consulting firm Bates White found that a 30% average blend level would cut emissions by
approximately 7 million metric tons of CO2 per year, which corresponds to the net emissions reduction from adding 1.6 million heat pumps - i.e. tripling the current share of residential heat pumps in the region.

"Decarbonization of fuels currently used to heat homes and businesses can offer a cost-effective means to meet interim GHG reduction goals," the study concludes, "easing the challenges of rapid electrification and the required buildout of renewable generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure."

While biodiesel (BD) has been blended into the region's middle distillate pool since the advent of the Renewable Fuel Standard, renewable diesel (RD) has just recently penetrated the Northeast market, where 82% of all U.S. heating oil is consumed.

Building on last year's data from 12 B100 field test sites on New York's Long Island and six sites in Massachusetts, NORA is seeking to increase the number of test sites using renewable diesel, or RD/BD blends, for the upcoming season.

"The home heating industry has evolved over the centuries from wood, whale oil, and coal to heating oil," said Devine. "Now we are in the process of the transition to renewable liquid heating fuels, and NORA is working hard to solve the technical barriers for us to achieve 100% liquid renewable heating in the not-so-distant future."

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