Biodiesel — How Does It Reduce Emissions?

Jacob Kingston plays an active role in the biodiesel manufacturing sector through Washakie Renewable Energy (WRE), a company headquartered in Plymouth, Utah. Under Jacob Kingston’s management, WRE oversees a substantial biodiesel production company.
When biodiesel is burned in an engine, it emits far less greenhouse gasses and other pollutants than are released during the burning of fossil-fuels like petroleum diesel. The more greenhouse gasses enter the atmosphere, the greater the effect on climate change.
In fact, biodiesel is a largely carbon-neutral fuel, meaning it does not add much new carbon to the atmosphere. The secret to its near carbon-neutrality owes to the plant oils from which biodiesel is refined.
These plants, like corn and soybeans, grow thanks to energy from the sun. Throughout their lifecycle, plants take in carbon dioxide from the air. After they’re refined into biodiesel and burnt as fuel, that carbon is released into the air to be taken up again by plants. The cycle is neutral in the sense that the amount of carbon taken up is the amount of carbon that’s released. However, since some petroleum fuel is burned in the production of biodiesel, the fuel is about 80 percent carbon-neutral in the final calculation, a drastic improvement over petroleum-based fuels.
