The Green Café
Fueling a Revolution
by Mark Inman
Portrait Photos by Rob Daly

It goes without saying that the coffee industry is married to many forms of transportation. Trucks, burros and buses take coffee cherry from the farm to the mill, trucks take the finished green coffee to the docks, ships transport the coffee to our ports, trucks deliver green coffee to the roastery, and finally trucks deliver our coffee to distributors and accounts. Because transport plays such a pivotal role in our industry, our fuel choices have a significant collective impact on the environment.
   While the growth in hybrid vehicles is impressive, hybrid technology does not currently offer a means of powering the large diesel trucks and ships we depend on to move coffee.
   However, there is a "green" alternative that will not only drastically reduce negative impacts on the environment, but also will allow farms to be self-sustaining and agriculturally strong countries to enter the fuels market with plant-based green fuel crops. This movement has the potential to develop an entirely new agricultural economy. This "new" fuel is actually not new at all. It was intended as the fuel to power diesel motors when the technology was invented in 1910. This fuel is called "Biodiesel."
   Dr. Rudolf Diesel actually invented the diesel engine to run on a myriad of fuels, including coal dust suspended in water, heavy mineral oil and various vegetable oils. Dr. Diesel's first experiments were catastrophic failures. But by the time he showed his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, his engine was running smoothly on 100-percent peanut oil. In 1911 he stated, "The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it." Diesel foresaw that his technology might be a way to cope with changes in future fuel supplies. "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today," he speculated in 1912. "But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time." It was only after Diesel's untimely death in 1913 that his engine was modified to run on the polluting petroleum fuel we now know as "diesel."
   Nevertheless, his invention, coupled with his visionary ideas on agriculture, provide the conceptual foundation for a society fueled by clean, renewable, locally grown fuel.
   Today's Biodiesel is a fuel made from vegetable oil that runs in any diesel engine. Biodiesel can be made from any vegetable oil, including oils pressed straight from the seed (virgin oils) such as peanut, soy, sunflower, canola, corn, coconut, and hemp. Biodiesel also can be made from recycled cooking oils from fast food restaurants. Even animal fats such as beef tallow and fish oil can be used to make Biodiesel fuel. Biodiesel is made through a chemical process called transesterification whereby the glycerin is separated from the fat of vegetable oil. What remains are two products - methyl esters (the chemical name for Biodiesel) and glycerin. The by-product glycerin is used in commercial applications such as soap, toothpaste and cough syrup.
   Biodiesel is better for the environment because it is made from renewable resources and has drastically lower emissions than petroleum-based diesel fuel. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar. Since it can be made from renewable resources such as soybeans and corn, it has the potential to decrease a nation's dependence on foreign oil, and thus contribute to the strength of that nation's own economy.
   Overall Biodiesel emissions are lower than gasoline or diesel fuel emissions. Compared to diesel, Biodiesel produces no sulfur, no net carbon dioxide, up to 20 times less carbon monoxide and more free oxygen. Biodiesel has the following emissions characteristics when compared with petroleum diesel fuel:

• 100-percent reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2)
• 100-percent reduction of sulfur dioxide (SO2)
• 40- to 60-percent reduction of soot
• 10- to 50-percent reduction of carbon monoxide (CO)
• 10- to 50-percent reduction of hydrocarbon (HC)

Biodiesel is especially effective in reducing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), specifically the following carcinogenic PAHs:

• 97-percent reduction of phenanthren
• 56-percent reduction of benzofloroanthen
• 71-percent reduction of benzapyren
• 13-percent reduction of aldehydes and aromatic compounds

      Biodiesel is convenient and can be used on any type of diesel motor without modification. These engines can run 100-percent Biodiesel, 80/20 blend of Biodiesel/petroleum-based diesel, or with a splash-blend (i.e., when Biodiesel can not be found, regular diesel can be added to the tank with no negative impact on performance). Biodiesel degrades about four times faster than petroleum diesel fuel. The degradation rate of petroleum diesel triples when blended with Biodiesel.
   Because Biodiesel can replace or blend with petroleum diesel with little or no engine modifications, it is a viable alternative in several categories of the marine industry, including recreational boats, inland commercial and ocean-going commercial ships, research vessels, and the U.S. Coast Guard fleet. Today, much of the emphasis is on recreational boats, which consume about 95 million gallons of diesel fuel annually. However, Biodiesel is becoming more commonly used in the shipping industry. For the container ships that transport the world's coffee supply, a recent study found that vessel operators report a noticeable change in exhaust odor. The reduction in smell and change of odor are easier on ship workers. In fact, the smell is often compared to the smell of French fries. Users also report no eye irritation. Since Biodiesel is oxygenated, diesel engines have more complete combustion than those fueld by petroleum.

   The cities of Berkeley, Calif., and Columbia, Mo., as well as the U.S. Armed Forces and more than 200 public and government agencies have all made the commitment to switch to Biodiesel. In the cases of Berkeley and Columbia, all city vehicles (including snow plows, city buses, garbage and fire trucks) are running on 100-percent Biodiesel. In saluting the adoption of the policy, Sen. Jim Talent R-Mo.) said, "Biodiesel is vital to value-added agriculture." The U.S. Armed Forces, making a commitment to lessen their dependence on foreign oil while supporting U.S. soybean and corn farmers, has begun to transition their fleets to Biodiesel.
   As of this writing, three coffee companies have committed to running their entire delivery fleet on Biodiesel: Dean's Beans of New Salem, Mass., Thanksgiving Coffee Co., of Fort Bragg, Calif. and Taylor Maid Farms, of Sebastopol, Calif. The latter two companies have chosen 100-percent Biodiesel fuel over the available 80/20 blend, and have contracted with Yokayo Biofuels, located in Ukiah, Calif., to deliver Biodiesel to their roasting plants. Yokayo is currently charging $2.32 per gallon for the fuel-about 57 cents more than for petroleum-based diesel fuel available in the area. Because Yokayo is a cooperative, the price of fuel is based on the volume of fuel sold to its members. As volumes go up, the prices should go down. As Biodiesel becomes more widely available, nationwide pricing should fall dramatically. Biodiesel sells nationwide for between $2 and $2.75 per gallon.
   Aside from the benefits mentioned above, Biodiesel's real advantage to our industry lies in the ability of coffee-producing countries to become more energy-independent by diversifying and growing corn and soybeans. This would offer three main benefits:

• In most developing countries the cost of in-country-produced Biodiesel would be much less than their petroleum-based diesel fuel (which costs almost double what we pay in the United States).
• It would offer these countries greatly improved air quality. In most developing countries, all transportation (personal, public and industrial) is diesel-powered. Petroleum-based diesel fuel is notoriously polluting and the cause of many respiratory illnesses.
• It would allow rural farmers to be more self-reliant because Biodiesel can easily be created on the farm.

   The benefits offered by Biodiesel loom even larger when one considers the hidden social costs of petroleum. It pollutes our air, water and soil at every stage of its extraction and use. As a major contributor to global warming, the burning of fossil fuels also undermines the long-term stability and even viability of economies, such as coffee, which are based on agricultural products. Biodiesel, on the other hand, will support a farmer by providing a market for oil-based seed crops that can be grown sustainably and create hardly any negative environmental impacts. Moreover, domestically produced, renewable sources of energy are a stabilizing factor in a global economy too often shaken by the insecurity and conflict associated with fossil fuels.
   If you are interested in learning more about this product, please visit the following Web sites: www.biodiesel.org, www.biodiesel.com and www.afdc.doe.gov/altfuel/biodiesel.html. While I firmly believe that the coffee industry has been a leader in many environmental and social improvements, we should always be inclined to do more.

Mark Inman is co-founder of and roastmaster for Taylor Maid Farms, a certified-organic herb farm and coffee roastery in Sebastopol, California. He is also founder of the Organic Coffee Association of America. He can be reached at mark@taylormaidfarms.com.