BY JIM BARON

LINCOLN — Looking at Michael and Lee Ann Conway’s small red house as you zip past it on Route 146, you wouldn’t think it was on the cutting edge of the green energy revolution.

But for five years now, the Conways have been heating their home, which is tucked away behind another house on Breakneck Hill Road, with a biodiesel blend, regular home heating oil mixed with the grease and oil from restaurant fryolators and other cooking appliances that the restaurant owners would otherwise have to pay to get rid of.
They are the end users of a circle of Rhode Island commerce that spawned a new company, Newport Biodiesel, which employs five people, that provides Cumberland’s T.H. Malloy Biodiesel and Heat with a dependable supply of fuels to distribute to customers and use in their own trucks, and relieves restaurants of their waste grease and oil. It also generates an environmentally-friendly, non-petroleum-based heating fuel that has a stable cost, not subject to the fluctuation of crude oil prices, and, to whatever small extent, lessens the country’s dependence on foreign oil.
“When the Malloy company started experimenting with it, the possibility of heating my home with the biofuel was brought up to me,” Michael Conway said Monday. “I had a lot of faith, if the Malloys said it was a doable venture, I was in and five years later I’m pretty happy with it.
He uses a blend that is 20 percent biodiesel, “so my guess is that’s about 200 gallons of biofuel I have burned, so that’s 200 less gallons of home heating oil.” Conway said the price is about the same as regular home heating oil.
“The savings weren’t my issue of getting involved in it,” he said. “I know that matters to a lot of people, but to me it was keeping Rhode Islanders employed (at T.H. Malloy and Newport Biodiesel) and its green.
There is no noticeable difference from using regular heating oil, Conway said.  “Maybe the color of the smoke that comes out of the chimney is a little different,” but, no, he joked, the burning fuel does not smell like French fries.                                                           
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse paid a visit to the Conways Monday to highlight the virtues of the locally generated biodiesel fuel.    
“Rhode Island waste is being converted by Rhode Island businesses to create warmth for Rhode Island houses,” Whitehouse told reporters who had been invited to the gathering.
“Every gallon that goes into Mike’s house is a gallon that did not have to be pumped in from the Middle East, the revenue isn’t going to support countries that don’t much care for us and put us on the losing end of the biggest wealth transfer in history.”
Whitehouse said Congress has passed tax credits and other benefits for blended fuels as well as renewable energy tax credits. “There’s a whole variety of support that Congress has created and there is further support now being considered at the state level.”
In fact, the RI Senate is scheduled to vote today on a bill introduced by Newport Sen. Louis DiPalma that would make blended biodiesel motor vehicle fuel that is manufactured in Rhode Island eligible for exemption from state fuel taxes, currently 30 cents per gallon. The way the law is interpreted now, only fuel that is 100 percent biodiesel qualifies for the state exemption. Much of the current technology, however, requires blended biodiesel, or biodiesel mixed with regular diesel, and a range of federal incentives allow for blending of biodiesel. Depending on a variety of factors, federal tax credits can range from 50 cents to $1 per gallon in tax credits.
A similar bill has been submitted in the House by Newport Rep. Russell Jackson and is awaiting action in the finance committee.
Jim Malloy of the Malloy fuel distributorship says his company’s fleet of 17 trucks have travelled about 1.7 million miles since they started filling up with biofuel in 2004. He said they distribute about a million gallons a year now, a mark they first hit three months ago. When they started in 2004, they dispensed only about 30,000 gallons a year.
He said the company has about 1,000 biofuel customers, split roughly half and half between home heating and vehicle fuel.
The trucks will come around to bring fuel to homes, but drivers whose cars and trucks run on diesel can come to their building on Scott Road in Cumberland and fill up. They also deliver to fleets around the state.
Malloy said he is looking forward to the state passing the tax credit, noting that if it weren’t for the federal tax credits that range from about 50 cents to $1 a gallon, the venture wouldn’t be cost effective. “The producer gets the tax credit, he passes it on to me and I pass it on to the customer,” he explained.
Any diesel engine or oil furnace can run on biodiesel with little or no modifications.
Chris Benzak, a partner in Newport Biodiesel, says biodiesel “is as old as the diesel engine itself,” noting that when inventor Rudolph Diesel created the first diesel engine, he ran it on peanut oil.
“What we are doing is providing a sustainable fuel product based on known technologies,” Benzak said. “Instead of making it on a homebrewed scale, we’ve put it into an industry-wide scale that is based on sustainable product. We don’t have soy fields in Rhode Island, but we can take advantage of sustainable biodiesel through fryolator grease and our restaurant partners around the state.
One of Benzak’s largest sources of raw materials is the Gregg’s restaurant chain. Owner Mike Briggs said disposal of the used grease and oil has always been an issue. “Thirty years ago, people used to pour it right down the floor drains into the sewer system. That certainly couldn’t go on for very long. Collecting it became pretty commonplace, but it was hard to dispose of. There weren’t too many companies that wanted to handle it and if they did they didn’t do a very good job with the area you kept it in and the messes they made.
He said when Newport Biodiesel came in, “one of the selling points for me was that they were very adamant about keeping the area that we collect it in clean. If they make a mess, they will clean it up. It became something we don’t think too much about.”