Biodiesel purveyor Martin Tobias on the radio at KCBS

Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, was scheduled to be on KCBS for a minute yesterday and ended up staying on air for about three, according to Imperium Renewables. The two KCBS hosts asked Tobias about how biodiesel is now cheaper than diesel (about twenty to twenty-five cents a gallon in the Northwest, where the show was taped). Tobias called biodiesel the cheaper, cleaner, renewable fuel. The hosts then asked whether biodiesel will continue to be cheaper in the future and also about which vehicles can use biodiesel (Tobias answered calmly, even though I'm sure he's heard this question over and over). They then quickly debated ethanol versus biodiesel, with Tobias saying that biodiesel gives a better return on energy input than ethanol
"The difference with biodiesel is that you don't have to heat the oil up quite as hot," he said.

I wasn't quite as impressed with Tobias' comment that waste vegetable oil is not renewable because you can't go to McDonald's and ask them to fry more French fries, but you can always grow more soybeans. I suppose this is technically true, but I doubt there are many WVO users who would shirk at using virgin veggie oil if all the restaurants were out of oil. The fact that they're recycling WVO makes it cleaner than virgin oil, doesn't it?

You can listen to the clip here.

[Source: Imperium Renewables]