Greenleaf Biofuels’ initial project is a 10 million gallon per year (mgy) biodiesel plant located in New Haven, Connecticut. The plant will initially utilize waste vegetable oil (WVO) for its feedstock and eventually expand production to 20+ mgy. This would make it the largest biofuels plant in New England.
The plant will be sited within the fuel tank storage farm area of New Haven harbor – the largest such fuel storage farm between New York and Boston. This area is also a key distribution hub for home heating oil in the state, where each year approximately 400 million gallons of heating oil are sent inland via pipeline or truck. New Haven is also home to 750,000 barrels (nearly half) of the Northeast Heating Oil Strategic Reserves.
The national biodiesel industry has been severely hurt due not only to the recent recession, but also to the first generation model the industry was originally built upon. This entailed primarily large (50 mgy+), capital intensive plants, that were soybean-oil based, and that were located in the Midwest – close to the soybean fields. This model has three faults:
- the plants were too large in relation to their immediately addressable market
- soybean oil is an expensive feedstock and a victim of the food vs. fuel debate
- the Midwest location was far from East and West coast transportation and heating oil demand centers.
We believe Greenleaf’s New Haven project addresses all three faults.
- Our plant is of moderate size and moderate cost
- Our initial waste feedstock is half the cost of virgin soybean oil
- Our destination location affords us the opportunity to sell all of our product locally
We are excited to bring clean, domestically produced biofuel, for use in hearting oil and transportation, to the New England region.
For more detailed information on this project, please contact us at ir@greenleafbiofuels.com.
