Tripling Of Soybean Prices Putting Biodiesel Businesses In The Press - Star-Tribune

High prices have thrown off the business plan at Peace Coffee. But it's not the price of coffee or oil that's the problem. It's soybeans. The conscientious Minneapolis seller of fair trade coffee makes a point to fuel its delivery van with biodiesel. Last year, it could. Now, with skyrocketing prices of both soybean oil and diesel fuel -- key ingredients in biodiesel -- the company is hard pressed to find anything but the standard diesel sold at pumps.

"When we made the commitment to buy the van, we did it because we were committed to biodiesel and believe it is a better way to power a vehicle for us," said Lee Wallace, the company's CEO. But the lack of availability has the company concerned. "It's a struggle." In yet another ripple caused by the high price of food, a threefold increase in the average price of soybean oil has sparked a dramatic slowdown in the nation's biodiesel industry. Biodiesel plants have shuttered. Construction delays at new plants are widespread. Locally, the only metro area gas station that sold biodiesel has shelved plans to bring it back, citing its high cost.

"It's priced itself out of the market," said David Morris, an energy expert with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Minneapolis think tank.

Still, in the middle of the upheaval, the state earlier this month passed a biodiesel mandate that calls for 20 percent of diesel sold in the state by 2015 to come from renewable sources.

EDIT

http://www.startribune.com/business/19221709.html?location_refer=Your%20Money

so the sharks in our ocean, the predatory speculators can't instantly rush in and drive the price up on a certain promising commodity, just so they can make a quick buck. In fact, if I were the federal government, I would set aside certain fuels as off limits to speculators and only open to those who actually buy and take physical possession of certain commodities on the basis of national interest and security.

But one go even further, and put all energy, fuel, and food commodities off limits to the greedy ass speculators! They are trying to get back the money they lost on the housing bust, and now we are paying for it in high fuel costs, and high food costs.

I am not a fan of the car culture, but to the extent that it exists and continues to exist, the diesel will be the engine easiest to fuel, because of the miracle fuel DME.

I have written on this fuel elsewhere: A Car Love-in: Supercritical Biomass Gasification and DME Motor Fuels.

Recent Developments in the DME Fueled Diesel Engine: A Key Climate Change Technology.

On Alternate Fuels and Reality: Hydrogen, Dimethyl Ether, and Fluid Fuels. Best options.

The Utility of Light: Getting Real with the Existing Energy Infrastructure.

Banning Oil: Dimethyl ether, Hydrogen, Nuclear Power and Motor Fuel for Cars and Trucks.

Several plants in China already operate - more are under construction. Japan is set to build a domestic plant after Japanese companies built the Chinese plants.

Iran and UAE have plans to build DME plants.

Regrettably all of these plants rely on dangerous fossil fuels, but DME can be made by hydrogen of carbon dioxide.