Sustainability

home heating made greasy

By Jim Malloy

More in the Fall 2009 issue

In 2004, our company, T.H. Malloy & Sons made an attempt to reduce our emissions and reduce our dependency on petroleum, big business and big oil.
We switched our fleet of 15 home heating fuel delivery trucks and service vans to biodiesel. 
Here in Rhode Island, we stand on the rocky terminal moraine of the last glacier from Quebec heading south to the Atlantic Ocean. We are in the populated east, the cold north but are nicely temperate due to the warming affect of the ocean currents.
Due to climate, size and population density, Rhode Island and the other five New England states are in the only region of the U.S. to consume more fuel for heating than for transportation.
Thus, while trying to reduce emissions and dependency on foreign fuel for our transportation needs, it seemed ironic to be delivering petroleum for home heating.
We needed to take the obvious next step, use biodiesel for our heating needs.
When I, the idealistic, crunchy leftist libertarian grandson joined the family business and introduced the idea of biodiesel for home heating, I was met with great resistance from the three senior heating systems technicians with an accumulated 85 years experience. This turned out great: they really put biodiesel to the test, and it passed.
Starting off, we opted to blend in small amounts of biodiesel to avoid the potential issues of clogging and system failure on a cold winter's night.
During the winter of 2004, we asked family members, co-workers and friends to make the switch to biodiesel for their home heating needs. We started with a 20% biodiesel blend in newer systems and a 5% blend in 20-40 year old systems.
We found improved performance with no modifications. Soon, we started using B100 at our garage, office, family members' and co-workers' homes with great success.
As most readers have probably long since realized, generally car and truck manufacturers have been deeply connected to the oil industry for decades and they have been very reluctant and slow to embrace biodiesel. 
With much pressure, slowly, small blends of 5% and 20% biodiesel were approved. 
But, as we all well know, B100 works extremely well. 
The same reluctance to accept biodiesel has occurred in the home heating world as well.  The horror stories and potential failings have been widely advertised. 
We have to realize that these manufacturers have been in business with the petroleum industry for many decades.  Their reluctance to approving a community-created fuel should come as no surprise.
In sourcing our biodiesel, T.H. Malloy & Sons seeks to use and distribute local, renewable and sustainable biodiesel.
We know the environmental, political and social reasons to switch to locally crafted sustainable B100 for heating homes.
We are fortunate to be aligned with a great local collector of restaurant waste oil, biodiesel producer Newport Biodiesel.
Across the nation there is a "greenwashing" happening. Companies want to appear environmentally sensitive, and even petroleum distributors have gotten in on the action. 
I have now changed my strategy with using the term Bioheat® due to marketing reasons. I noticed that many petroleum companies offering a 2% blend were showing up in internet search engines.
Bioheat® fuel is the industry-accepted term for any amount of pure biodiesel blended with conventional high or low sulfur home heating oil, a minimum of 2%.  
While the term "biodiesel for home heating" was not appearing in web searches,  I see a great value in using the term Bioheat as a gateway term to introduce fuel consumers to the STRONGER stuff, B100.  
The change of opinion of the senior service technicians at T.H. Malloy & Sons was due to their diligence, persistence and open-mindedness.  All now personally use B100, and have made great strides in making B100 available to our community.

Author Jim Malloy’s grandmother founded T.H. Malloy & Sons. In Rhode Island, T.H. Malloy & Sons have been in home heating business since 1935. Coincidently, since the naming of the business 73 years ago, there has not been a girl born in the Malloy famil