A biofuels fact

At least, I consider it a fact unless someone has evidence to the contrary. I heard it from Erwin Bergman, a retired engineer and Cully Association of Neighbors volunteer, who over several years has earned my respect as someone who does the homework and states facts more often than not. I will tell you up front that I have not had time to check on this one.

I attended the Columbia Slough Watershed Council annual dinner a couple of weeks ago. It’s one of my favorite fundraiser events – fun and light-hearted, while recognizing extraordinary volunteers and staff. This year, my friends Richard Towle and Gyrid Hyde Towle were honored with Leadership Awards for their work in the Children’s Arboretum in East Columbia, along with Erwin. So after the event, I hung around chatting like you do, and snagged a moment with Erwin to congratulate him. Except Erwin being Erwin, and me being me, my follow-up question wasn’t “Got any big vacation plans this year?” but “How is the Colwood Golf Course rezoning process going?”.

And that led to a discussion about our shared recognition of the need for high speed rail from Vancouver BC to San Diego, and then on to biofuels. From Erwin:

It takes 57,200 gallons of fuel to fill the tank of a Boeing 747 airplane once. Rapeseed or canola provides 50 gallons of biofuel per acre. So it would take the annual production from 1,144 acres to fill a Boeing 747 one time.

It doesn’t seem quite so feasible to use biofuels to grow our way out of oil dependency, in light of that example, does it?