He's earned the name as the operator of the only pump in Toronto retailing biodiesel, a blended fuel made from low-sulphur diesel and, most commonly, vegetable oil. Biodiesel Mohammed, known more formally as Mohammed Gabr, has been operating the Petro Green service station since 2005.
Though he serves regular diesel as well, he says the demand for biodiesel among his customers has been steady as a trend toward more sustainable fuels spreads across the province, and as prices for traditional petroleum have climbed. Biodiesel costs only a few pennies more per litre than traditional diesel, says Gabr.
"My customers travel," said Gabr of the dedicated following his alternative fuel has inspired. "I know some people that come from Guelph or Burlington, they come here every three weeks, they top up their gas tanks, and they fill four or five cans."
Customers are turning to biodiesel for both environmental and performance reasons, added Gabr. He hears everything from raves about smoother-running cars to engines that produce less smoke to a better-smelling gas than regular diesel - biodiesel, in fact, smells more like french fries.
Environmentally, biodiesel is considered a "clean" fuel in that it reduces emissions significantly compared to traditional diesel and is produced from renewable resources.
Brian MacDonald, vice-president of sales and marketing for Canada Clean Fuels, a biofuel provider headquartered in Etobicoke, says the interest in biodiesel has increased substantially since the company began offering it in 2000.
Canada Clean Fuels provides virgin soy oil-based biodiesel to a range of clients in southwestern Ontario — primarily municipalities and transit systems, including those in Oshawa, Brampton, Burlington and Richmond Hill.
In Brampton, where Canada Clean Fuels stores its biodiesel tanks, the entire transit and municipal fleet run on biodiesel. The company also provides the fuel inside Gabr's east Toronto retail pump.
Though biodiesel is easily substituted for traditional petroleum diesel in most vehicles, constraints on temperature and, theoretically, engine compatibility, see most biodiesel providers offering fuel blends somewhere between five and 50 per cent biodiesel, with the remainder made up by traditional diesel.
The blend most commonly offered to Gabr's customers is 20 per cent biodiesel and 80 per cent traditional diesel, otherwise known as B20.
In Ontario's cold climate, higher-percentage blends of biodiesel are riskier in the winter months, as users must work around biodiesel's "cloud point" - the temperature at which the fuel begins to develop a viscosity and wax crystallization that renders it inefficient.
To play it safe, many biodiesel providers in Ontario will restrict their blends to as little as B5 (five per cent) or B10 (10 per cent) in the winter months. However, MacDonald points out that Canada Clean Fuels, which maintains its pure unblended biodiesel at 54° C year-round, will offer whatever blend their customers wish to buy.
Not only does biodiesel have environmental advantages, it's offered companies such as Petro Green and Canada Clean Fuels an opportunity to carve out a niche where, so far, little competition exists.
"(Biodiesel) opens some doors into areas where we normally would not be supplying, such as some of the municipalities," said MacDonald.
"We as a small distributor, a reseller of fuels, generally don't have the opportunity to compete with the majors. For instance, if Imperial Oil is bidding on a tender and we're bidding on a tender, we can't compete with them. They own the oil and they own the refineries - their pricing is going to be substantially different from ours. But biodiesel gives us a little bit of an advantage."
And just as Brampton Transit opted to run an environmental route, the Toronto Transit Commission recently switched its fleet of 1,500 buses and approximately 150 wheelchair-accessible vehicles to biodiesel.
Though the TTC had experimented with natural gas-powered buses, the technology proved unreliable and costly. The organization began testing B5 in the winter months and B20 in the summer months, eventually switching the entire fleet to B5 in spring of this year.
It conducted 18 months of testing to ensure that the transition would be both efficient and economical.
"The final answer is it's not costing us any more and it hasn't changed the amount of fuel that we're using," said TTC deputy general manager Bob Boutilier. "After having gone through this and seeing the results, I can't understand why somebody wouldn't go to some type of biofuel mix. Five per cent is small, I understand it doesn't contribute a tremendous amount of benefit to the environment, but it does contribute some benefit."
The tender for the project went to Calgary-based Suncor Energy, parent company to retailer Sunoco. The company is contracted to supply more than 120 million litres of fuel to the TTC through 2007.
Suncor purchases its pure unblended biodiesel from a U.S. source. It then blends its canola-based biodiesel at a Toronto facility and delivers it to commercial clients including the TTC. Though the firm doesn't currently offer a retail biodiesel product, it plans to pilot 10 sites with B5 in the coming year.
Suncor's director of government relations and communications, Patricia Anderson, says she sees biodiesel as an emerging resource that will grow in popularity as market awareness increases.
"I think the retail and the wholesale customer has to start to feel more comfortable around the fuel, what it is, how it runs, what it will be like in their engines," said Anderson.
"It's a product that's really fantastic in terms of its benefits, but you can't mess around with it. Car engines are developed a certain way and trucks as well. It's important that we're harmonizing with motor-vehicle builders to make sure it works."
Many manufacturers won't certify their engines as safe for use of biodiesel concentrates higher than five per cent - an obstacle the TTC encountered.
"The engine manufacturers would accept warranty claims on engines operations at five per cent," said Boutilier, but no higher. "Their concerns are there are no standards, there's no long-term study, there's no saying what the impact might be on the vehicle."
Boutilier believes the government should be working to set the standards needed for biodiesel to become an everyday resource - a transition that would see a great deal of environmental benefit.
"There doesn't seem to be any leadership of getting on with this issue of when can we get to 10 per cent or 20 per cent. Why can't we get the bus manufacturers on our side? Why can't we get the government to come up with standards that would allow them to do their tests?" he asked.
"There are still people that are hesitant - they're just worried about the chemical composition. I would not want to be buying McDonald's or Harvey's fat. That's why we went with pure soy," said Boutilier. "You pay a lot more for a vegetable-based pure than something that's animal fat or out of the grease skillets, but at this point it's well worth it."
(Liz Clayton can be reached at clayton@businessedge.ca) |
