Thursday, August 27, 2009
Area entrepreneur takes plan to White House
Dean Price of Henry County visited Washington this week to discuss alternative energy.
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
Dean Price holds his hand in front of a tractor running on biodiesel, which produces exhaust that smells like french fries cooking.
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Back from an energy briefing at the White House this week, a Henry County entrepreneur said he achieved his goal of informing federal leaders about his vision for regional, vertically integrated biodiesel plants as an alternative to importing oil for transportation.
"They are listening," Dean Price, co-owner of Red Birch Energy of Martinsville said. "They are looking for solutions to this problem."
Price is concerned by the heavy use of fossil fuels, which supply more than 80 percent of the nation's energy and trigger environmental, political, economic and other consequences. He thinks there is a better way -- local fuel production from plant materials -- and he has a prototype up and running 43 miles south of Roanoke.
Price and business partner Gary Sink went to Washington on an invitation to the Regional Energy Leadership Briefing. The White House briefing, timed to coincide with Congress' ongoing consideration of climate change legislation, took place Monday.
Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environment Quality, told the forum the Obama administration's broad aim is "to get our country running on clean, domestic energy," according to a video posted on YouTube. And to do that in a way that creates jobs and cuts pollution.
Price and Sink contract with farmers to produce canola seeds, crush the seeds to produce oil and process the oil into diesel motor fuel that they sell straight or in a petroleum blend at the refinery. It's located at the Red Birch Country Market in Bassett Forks.
"It's selling great," Price said, describing his customers as operators of big rigs, commercial vehicles, farm equipment and passenger cars of the Mercedes and Volkswagen brands. Diesel engines require no modification to run on the blend, which went on sale a year ago this month.
Price, who farmed and owned travel stops for a living before he became a fuel producer, said he envisions a network of such facilities across the state and nation, based on his prototype, which cost about $1 million.
To enhance the prototype, Price said Wednesday he expects to receive federal stimulus funds for two improvements at the facility.
First, he intends to install food-grade seed crushers. Once they're running, he intends to sell his canola oil to restaurants for $6 to $8 a gallon for use in deep fryers, pick it up when the oil is spent and use that material as the biodiesel feed stock instead of virgin canola.
Second, he intends to install an electrical generator that burns glycerine, a biodiesel byproduct. He wants to generate enough electricity to take the Red Birch market and biorefinery off the grid, he said.
Red Birch, he said, represents "a perfect model to show that this can be done by the Joe Schmoes of the world, which is me."
When he got home, Sink wrote a summary of the visit that read in part: "Our primary objective and purpose is to develop a sustainable green energy model that will engage the farmers of this land along with local business leadership. We believe our model meets our objective."
