Recent CT Viewpoints in favor of widespread heat pump deployment needlessly paint an inaccurate picture of renewable biofuels and their potential to decarbonize hundreds of thousands of Connecticut homes alongside other strategies, such as electrification.
In their April 30 op-ed, “No, heat pumps won’t break CT’s grid,” Oliver Tully and Jayson Velazquez discount the environmental benefits of blending renewable biofuels into heating oil, stating, “Today, the majority of biofuels are made from energy crops like soy and corn that provide little to no climate benefit.” To support this, Tully and Velazquez point to a 14-year-old inconclusive study that focuses on the indirect land use change (ILUC) associated with corn ethanol, a common blend stock of gasoline (not heating oil).
For a more current look at the climate implications of biodiesel and renewable diesel — both heating oil blend stocks — Tully and Velazquez need not look as far back as 2010, when early-stage indirect land use change accounting models yielded greatly inflated emissions estimates.
Nor need they look beyond the very journal they cite, Environmental Science & Technology, which, in May 2022, published an Argonne National Laboratory study concluding that, “Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions reductions for producing biodiesel and renewable diesel from oilseeds and waste grease range from 40% to 86%, after considering land-use change estimations, compared with petroleum diesel.”
Hardly inconsequential, those numbers are only improving as agricultural practices and technologies become more efficient and reliant upon cleaner technologies.
Contrary to Stephen Lewis’ recent statement that heating fuel suppliers “want to keep us hooked on fossil fuels,” these multigenerational family businesses have been leading the charge to transition Connecticut homes to renewable biofuels.
And for good reason.
In California, where policy makers have embraced low-carbon renewable fuels, biodiesel and renewable diesel are generating the greatest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector, exceeding those from the electrification of cars, trucks, and buses by almost four to one. Today, clean fuels in California account for 60 percent of the diesel fuel used in the state. Like petroleum-derived diesel fuel, heating oil can be immediately displaced by these fossil-free, drop-in alternatives without any need for expensive equipment modifications or system changeouts.
Tully, Velasquez and Lewis are right to advocate for robust investments in clean energy initiatives and technologies to help Connecticut meet its emissions reduction targets. But they should do so based on the merits of those technologies, rather than downplaying the merits of clean, commercially available biofuels that can be utilized to make meaningful progress towards our shared climate objectives — starting today.
Jamie Densmore is the third-generation owner of Densmore Oil; Stephen Dodge is Director of State Regulatory Affairs for Clean Fuels Alliance America.