Diamond-Cut Life

Brrr . . . . we’re suddenly needing to run the heat in the morning, so it’s definitely autumn here in Portland, Oregon. We just filled our oil tank for the winter with biodiesel, B20 this time, from Star Oil, who bought it from SeQuential Biofuel.

This will be the second winter we’ll have been heating with biodiesel. I have to admit that last year we bought B99, which means 99% vegetable oil, as opposed to this year’s B20, which is 20% vegetable oil.  The reason we bought B20 this time is that it cost $1.40/gallon less than B99. And the B20 cost us a bit more than straight petroleum, but it’s worth it to us to be reducing our carbon footprint.

If you’re wanting to be a greener household and biodiesel isn’t available to you where you live or you can’t afford to pay the premium for it, then focus on energy conservation, which can be just as powerful a way of reducing your carbon footprint as switching to biodiesel.

We use less than one 275-gallon tank of oil a year because we only run the heat when we are in the house, awake (our heat at night is a down comforter and each other.) And we see 68 degrees as an appropriate temperature because we wear cozy things like fleece in the house. We have a timer on the thermostat that turns it down at night in case we forget, and turns it on in the morning ten minutes before we get up.

Probably the biggest single factor in the carbon footprint of our home heating is that our home is a modest size (two bedrooms, one bathroom plus an unheated upstairs). While we could afford a larger house, we’re not interested in buying one because it wouldn’t make us happier. We’re happy where we here on Mt. Tabor, near the lushly forested park, on frequent busline #15, with B20 biodiesel running in our furnace.

Similar Posts:

• Heating Our House With Biodiesel
• Cooking For Climate Change, Part 1
• Biodiesel Now Yielding 3.5 to 1?