Sumit Majumdar talks about Buffalo Biodiesel and the local market for biofuels

The distinctive smell of fryer grease is pervasive. Sumit Majumdar, president of Buffalo Biodiesel Inc., stops at a giant concrete receptacle. “This will hold 13,000 gallons of grease,” he says.

Sumit Majumdar (photo by Rose Mattrey)

The grease in the concrete tank is in the first stage of the refinement process. Trucks will take the it to Rochester for refinement before it returns to Buffalo. In this congealed state the grease, which fills the receptacle to just inches below its capacity, appears solid.

When Majumdar started his company in 2005, there were three employees. Today the company employs 25 people. This sort of growth is evidence of a trend that this country, and the globe for that matter, have experienced in the last few years. Going green has evolved from a goal championed by a small group of largely ignored do-gooders to a widely popular movement that is now part of the marketing strategy of some of the world’s larger corporations, including IBM, Starbucks, and Ikea.

When Majumdar first began collecting fryer grease from restaurants, it was free: The establishments were happy to avoid the cost that waste management companies charged for disposal. Today he has to pay restaurants for their grease to stay competitive. This, he says, is indicative of the growing demand for biodiesel in the US.

Buffalo’s restaurants continue to provide much of the raw material that Buffalo Biodiesel uses. However, the grease from local restaurants does not completely fill Buffalo Biodiesel’s needs, so Majumdar collects grease from as far away as Montreal, New York and Detroit.

Behind the building two of Mujamder’s 11 trucks are parked. All of the company’s trucks run on 100 percent biodiesel so long as temperatures allow. During the winter a blend of petroleum diesel and biodiesel is employed to combat the congealment of the biodiesel in low temperatures. Employees dressed in white coveralls and wearing goggles and gloves pull grease-soaked cardboard containers from a tractor trailer and empty the soon-to-be fuel into oil drums, smiling and joking over the banter of a 97 Rock disc jockey. The truck has just returned from New York City, where it visited hundreds of restaurants collecting their discarded grease.

Competition for the discarded fryer oil used to make biodiesel is strong in Western New York, but Mujamder’s is the only company that operates locally. Before Buffalo Biodiesel there were no biodiesel producers in Buffalo who succeeded in meeting EPA standards. Two companies, which Majumdar labeled “the incumbents” but refrained from naming, both hail from Texas. These large-scale, out-of-state companies made it difficult at first for Buffalo Biodiesel to break into the market. The local dearth of “green” fueing stations selling biodiesel and E85 (ethanol-based fuel) directly to consumers was an impediment, too, and continues to be.

“That’s what they really need in Buffalo, two or three green stations. With E85 and biodiesel,” Majumdar says.

Lack of demand is not the reason for the lack of green stations, he says. “I get at least maybe a dozen calls a week: ‘Hey, do you have any bio? Can I come in and fill up my Volkswagen?’

“You’ve got people who are coming in from out of state, say Ohio, and they’ll be online looking for a biodiesel pump because they are coming through Buffalo and they’ll make the call to figure out whether or not they can fill up here.”

Buffalo Biodiesel is neither equipped nor licensed to sell to individuals, so Majumdar has no options to offer bio-seekers.

“There’s so many biodiesel pumps out there. There’s so many gas stations selling biodiesel. I don’t know why it’s not the case over here.” Of a recent trip through New Hampshire, he recalls, “There’ll be a piece of wood with a hand-written ‘biodiesel available.’”

While biodiesel offers many advantages, it is not the perfect solution to the environmental problems that are caused by petro-fuel consumption. Buffalo Biodiesel recycles fryer oil to make its product, but that is not the case for much of the biodiesel produced in this country. Some biodiesel is made from soy beans grown exclusively for the purpose of making fuel. This “virgin biodiesel” drives up the price of soy, just as ethanol production drives up the price of corn, causing problems for those who already have trouble affording food.

Fueleconomy.gov, a Web site established by the federal government that provides consumers with advice and facts on fuel choices, states that “the production and use of biodiesel creates 78% less carbon dioxide emissions than petroleum diesel.” There follows a litany of other harmful pollutants that are either eliminated or reduced by burning biodiesel instead of petroleum diesel. However, though biodiesel gives off less greenhouse gases in total than petroleum diesel, it gives off more nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Most argue that the increase in nitrous oxide is outweighed by the reduction of other pollutants, and by the fact that biodiesel does not release sulfur in to the air, one of the main contributors to acid rain.

Biodiesel does offer some practical obstacles. In Western New York, when temperatures dip below a certain point, biodiesel begins to congeal and is thus unusable unless blended with petroleum diesel. A blend of five percent biodiesel or less must be employed or the fuel will still congeal in the frigid Buffalo winter. Aditionally, most automakers do not honor warranties if more than two percent biodiesel is used in the vehicle.

Biodiesel costs more than petroleum diesel, meaning that companies are buying biodiesel not to increase their profit margin but because they value the green aspects of the product. Majumdar’s largest local customer, the scrap metal company Metallico Inc., has taken many steps to become an environmentally friendly business, one of which is to use biodiesel as much as they can in their daily operations.

“You have companies like Metallico that are pro-environment, so they’ll bring biodiesel in,” Majumdar says, but “there are very few companies, especially in a hard-hit area like Buffalo, that are willing to pay for it.”

Majumdar ushers us into a cavernous room with giant green tanks rising to the 20-foot ceilings. He says the tanks hold 124,000 gallons of biodiesel, most of which will be used elsewhere.

Because of the lack of demand in Western New York, most of Majumdar’s customers are outside of the region. The reach of outside demand is surprising. He has sold his product globally, shipping biodiesel to far-off countries such as Germany, Ireland, China, and Spain. Some European countries have put a greater onus on consumers and companies to go green, passing legislation that requires all diesel engines to be fueled by a certain percentage of biodiesel. Majumdar says this sort of legislation is what New York State and the rest of the US need to jump-start the demand for biodiesel.

Some states, such as Washington, are bringing this sort of legislation to the table. According to renewablenergyworld.com, when Washington’s biofuels law foe in to effect on December 1, “it will require all diesels sold in the state to contain a minimum of 2% biodiesel and all gasoline to contain a minimum blend of 2.5% ethanol.”

So far, legislation in New York State has aimed to encourage rather than mandate the use of biofuels, and has yet to yield results.

“What’s happened is that a lot of the tax credits or certifications that were approved haven’t trickled down to our level,” Majumdar says. “For example, there’s a clean energy enterprise registration which allows clean energy companies to get Empire Zoning anywhere in New York State. The problem is you can’t certify your company as a clean energy enterprise because there is no approval process at this time, and it’s been in the books for a couple of years now.”

As for his own company, he’s not bothered by the lack of government aid. “I think tax credits are a crutch. This business hasn’t received a penny of tax credits, or subsidies, or grants. So we’ve done it on our own.”.