DrBoost wrote: Can a guy that has more than 100,000 miles on WVO (yes, the industry calls it waste vegetable oil, or SVO for straight vegetable oil) speak from experience? A bio or WVO running diesel does not produce less emissions than a modern gas or diesel engine. WVO produces less emissions than the same engine running diesel though, that's more of an apples-to-apples comparison anyway.
I agree with you post, but the debate here isn't about what comes out the tailpipe necessarily. Its simply where the carbon came from in the first place. Dragging up carbon from miles below the earth vs. using SVO or WVO which has carbon that is primarily sourced from the atmosphere.
Its a matter of adding carbon to the atmosphere that was originally miles below the surface versus burning carbon from veggies that had to remove carbon from the atmosphere before you released it in your car.
Of course there is some fossil fuel involvement in the harvesting and processing of the oil, but far less than just burning fossil fuel in your tank.
The big benefit to veggie oils (from an emissions standpoint) is that most of the carbon dumped into the atmosphere had previously been removed from the atmosphere by the plants that produced the fats. The actual compounds coming out of the tailpipe might be similar, but the origin of the carbon is what is different.
