Jan 18 2011
Expansion is on the cards for the biofuel business run by the proprietors of the Cedar Creek Café located in the Slocan Valley. In September 2010, Paul and Clare Kelly had purchased a small scale biofuel business and ran their delivery truck on waste vegetable oil.
They have been both making and selling biofuel on a small scale. Paul disclosed that they had a little test fleet consisting of family and friends. Currently, they wanted to commercialize it serving larger fleets.
The local snowcat operators had shown their interest in biofuels and hence the Kellys have approached the Village of New Denver, where maintenance vehicles had to use biodiesel to comply with the town’s sustainability plans. At present, they were collecting waste oil from around 80 restaurants in the Kootenays. Paul revealed that they had the capacity to produce diesel fuel with very low carbon footprint rates, as their entire manufacturing process was operated on a post-consumer by- product. He mentioned that Virgin agri-biodiesel was highly detrimental to the environment and their product was very different from it. The plant includes a 12 kW generator for heating and pumping and runs on waste vegetable oil. Within the next three months, they had a plan to increase their generating capacities from 150,000 to 425,000 liters.
Clare commented that research indicated commercial fleets consumed the majority of diesel fuel and hence that should be the area, which needed to be transformed to counter climate change. Larger fleets that could run on biofuels need to shift to biofuels. She also revealed that before their fuel could be used in commercial fleets certain standards need to be met. They had a plan of complying with EU’s standards as Canada did not have any standards set thus far. The fuel could be used in any vehicle running on diesel without any alterations.
According to Paul, their customers had so far driven about 25,000-30,000 kms without any issues so far from September 2010 onwards. They had purchased the equipment from somebody who had run it for nine years. The Kellys knew that commercial or municipal contracts would make them eligible to be a registered fuel producer and tax collector. They had requested support from Katrine Conroy, the local MLA, and also from the regional district for this venture. Paul had been working with biofuels since 2005 as he had worked at a natural foods store located in Calgary, and at the same time run his own vehicle on waste vegetable oil.
Source: http://cedarcreekcafe.ca/