Biodiesel in Minnesota: 15 Years in the Blink of an Eye

by Tom Slunecka (Biodiesel Magazine) ... Fifteen years ago, March of 2002, a gallon of unleaded gas averaged around $1.36 a gallon. ... Minnesota became the first in the nation to require that all diesel fuel sold in the state contain at least a 2 percent blend (B2) of biodiesel.

It may not have been the lead topic on the evening news, but those of us who’ve spent our lives in rural communities and worked in agriculture saw promise. Hard work remained, as it would be another three years before implementation, but the ensuing decade has seen great progress.

The biodiesel movement in Minnesota was never going to be an overnight sensation, nor a flash in the pan for that matter. The passage of the B2 legislation was a painstaking process.

“Biodiesel wasn’t unknown and in fact at that time, there were a lot of rural legislators that knew about it,” recalls Mike Youngerberg of the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council. “There was definitely some pushback from the petroleum and trucking industries. It was quite a bipartisan effort in the end, but it took time.”

Jim Willers of Beaver Creek, Minnesota, was another farmer who made many a trip to the state capitol in the early 2000s to push for the B2 mandate. A sense of dedication to his profession drove him during those long days and nights.

“This is using your own product, whether it be ethanol or biodiesel,” Willers says. “If you raised the crop that produced the fuel, you use the crop that you’re raising.”

Those spearheading the effort to put biodiesel on the map in Minnesota were forward thinkers, according to Scott Hedderich of Renewable Energy Group Inc.

“These guys were truly visionaries,” Hedderich says. “Not only to be a visionary, but to lay out a piece of legislation as thoughtful that they did, with important milestones, and off ramps if things didn’t work out, really is a testament to the activism and brain power that they had. It’s really impressive.”

At the Minnesota Farmfest Show in Redwood County, Minnesota, in 2007, then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty laid down the gauntlet with a 20 percent renewable fuels proposal. Needless to say, it raised eyebrows in the state capitol as well as among the farmers in attendance, including Youngerberg.

“I think his desire was to be a green governor,” Youngerberg says. “That drove him. The governor came along with this 20 percent liquid renewable fuels thing and in a lot of ways surprised the soybean and biodiesel folks. Now we’re going to lay out a path to B20? There was a lot of discussion with the governor’s office and that’s where we came to talk about B5, B10 and B20.”

Pawlenty established the Minnesota Biodiesel Task Force in 2003 to begin implementation of the B2 mandate, and later charged it with promotion and education regarding the proposed B20 mandate.

More legislative battles ensued over the years but the writing on the wall was clear: Minnesota was moving to the forefront of the renewable fuels movement. In 2014, Minnesota became the first state in the nation to require 10 percent biodiesel, or B10, in diesel blends sold during the summer months. B10 is required from April 1 to Sept. 30 and B5 is required during the remaining winter months. Beginning in 2018, the summer blend will increase to B20.

In just 15 years, Minnesota’s biodiesel industry, which had to grow to meet the requirements of the B2 mandate, transformed itself into a 74 MMgy industry.

According to the American Lung Association of Minnesota, during the 10-year period with biodiesel as a fuel standard for Minnesota, a reduction of more than 7.4 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to more than 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, has already been realized. Over that 10-year period, ALAMN estimates it is comparable to removing the emissions from 706,649 passenger vehicles or 17,998 railcars of coal.

With those types of numbers, biodiesel has surprisingly found itself as not a darling of the environmental movement in the state.

“They saw diesel as dirty for so long,” Youngerberg says. “I think they just wrote it off, and you couldn’t do anything about it. These days, with the current state of technology of diesel engines, we’ve got diesel running as clean, if not cleaner, than gasoline.”

The trucking and oil companies will continue to develop new arguments and stalling tactics as the move to B20 approaches.

“They’re hoping to get a delay and get Gov. Mark Dayton out of office and pray for a new governor to get rid of all of this,” Youngerberg says.

“I grow soybeans and at one time, I was a process operator at a biodiesel plant,” says Chris Hill of Brewster, Minnesota. “So I grow it. I’ve processed it. And I’ve used the end product on my farm. So it really has come full circle for me.” READ MORE