The thick, milky white liquid looks like Elmer's glue, though it's greasy to the touch. It has a sweet, alcohol smell. It's not your father's heating oil, to be sure. But it will do the same job, says Cary J. Claiborne, and a lot more cleanly.
Claiborne is president and chief executive officer of New Generation Biofuels, a Florida-based startup that's producing fuel from vegetable and soybean oil at a small production plant it set up this year in southern Baltimore.
"It's very biodegradable," Claiborne says as he dips his finger into a small bottle holding a sample of a recent batch. "If it didn't have certain additives, you could drink it."
Spurred on by government incentives, companies like New Generation Biofuels are popping up across the country to angle for a piece of a growing market for clean, renewable alternatives to coal, gas and oil.
New Generation, with headquarters near Orlando, has a handful of deals to supply its Baltimore-produced fuel to Maryland businesses, including a contract announced a few days ago to sell up to 1 million gallons in the next year to a gas and oil marketing company on the Eastern Shore. The firm also inked deals recently with a chemical company nearby in South Baltimore and with a greenhouse in Western Maryland.
This week, the firm's biofuel gets a tryout in an East Baltimore health clinic as part of a pilot program to investigate alternative fuels for heating city buildings.
"We're excited about testing their fuel and getting it into the neighborhoods," said Ted Atwood, energy adviser for the city's Department of Public Works. The city recently agreed to a six-month trial of New Generation's biofuel, at a cost of up to $25,000, depending on how much fuel is burned.
The city consumes 10 million gallons of heating oil a year in its schools and municipal buildings, Atwood said, and is looking for cleaner-burning fuels that also will reduce Baltimore's carbon "footprint."
Under Mayor Sheila Dixon's sustainability plan recently adopted by the City Council, the city is committed to improving its air quality and reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-warming greenhouse gases 15 percent citywide by 2015.
Burning New Generation's biofuel should cut down on smog-forming pollution, virtually eliminating emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, said Claiborne, an Ellicott City resident who joined the biofuel venture in 2007 after working for a Maryland pharmaceutical company and Constellation Energy.
