Hawaii Takes the First Step to Being a 100% Biodiesel State

The State of Hawaii is taking a big step toward becoming a green state with the policy they have enacted with Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) in association with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The new policy will insure that the state's electric companies, Hawaiian Electric, Maui Electric and Hawaii Electric Light, will only purchase biodiesel fuel that will be produced only from sustainable feed stocks that are only grown locally. And it will only purchase palm oil that is in compliance with the rules that have been established by the international Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. This move is the beginning of an end of dependency on fossil fuels and is the start of environmentally friendly energy in Hawaii.

The electric companies in Hawaii make up the largest utility that uses petroleum diesel fuel in the country. When they have completed the transition away from petroleum diesel, they will become the largest used of biodiesel in the county. The use of biodiesel fuels is being pursued is the fact that the growing of the vegetation that will eventually be made into biofuels will not put more carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere. It will, instead, recycle the carbon dioxide.

Before the policy was put into action, it underwent a review by a panel of academic experts in both Hawaii and California. Their aim was to make sure that it will encourage the development of a constant, sustainable supply of locally manufactured biofuels and that the feedstock is enough to meet the demand as well as to make sure that the forests and the other environmentally sensitive areas in Hawaii are protected. They also held a series of public meetings to get the views of the citizens on the project.

They did follow up on some of the suggestions put forth at the meetings and one of the offshoots of those meetings was making the policy clarify that when they go to buy palm oil from other countries to convert into biodiesel that they will make it a rule that the suppliers as well as those anywhere in the supply chain are subject to an independent audit to make sure that the following rules are followed.