The slow acceptance of biodiesel is surprising. Strictly speaking, I guess one is just temporarily sequestering the CO2 in the fuel until you burn it, but that is better than burning up petroleum reserves (especially when it requires massive devastation to dig up tar sands.)
I think people have a bad feeling using large quantities of plant products to fuel their life, that could alternatively feed starving thousands, especially when it takes "7.6 pounds of soybean oil required for each gallon of biodiesel."
Again, it's better than digging up petroleum, but it can be hard to shake up the status quo when people feel they're stealing from starving children.
In comparison, it takes about 1/4 of the energy in a barrel of oil to extract and refine it from tar sands, as this MIT thesis contends. Maybe that's more just a comparison of energy density - I wasn't able to find a comparison of the number of joules of energy to bring biodiesel versus tar-sands petroleum to market, but I suppose it would be similar.
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/29589/52906785.pdf?sequence=1
Also I understand that biodiesel can 'sludge' at subzero temperatures, making for tough cold-weather starts, though not an insurmountable problem as they mention in the paragraph. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Low_temperature_gelling
It's just unfortunate that, at the time when biodiesel was gaining traction, its cost was about 20% higher than regular diesel. (Fig 3 at http://www.c2es.org/energy/source/renewables/biofuels/biodiesel)
Also I understand that biodiesel can 'sludge' at subzero temperatures, making for tough cold-weather starts, though not an insurmountable problem as they mention in the paragraph. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Low_temperature_gelling
It's just unfortunate that, at the time when biodiesel was gaining traction, its cost was about 20% higher than regular diesel. (Fig 3 at http://www.c2es.org/energy/source/renewables/biofuels/biodiesel)
If only market conditions had been slightly different at the time, it might have taken off.
I think biodiesel will take off once mass production of biofuels from algae is sorted out, either in floating bags in the ocean (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/#.U_0WY0CCPCQ)
or strung up in the desert
(http://www.oilgae.com/algae/cult/des/des.html)(http://people.uwec.edu/jolhm/desertsouthwest/Posters/Algae%20Biofuel%20Production%20in%20the%20United%20States%20Southwest.pdf)
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