Over the course of 2007, our team has had several meetings and interviews with a fascinating young entrepreneur named Atul Deshmane, president of Whole Energy, an up-and-coming biodiesel and alternative fuels company with operations in the U.S. and Canada. We’ve learned a lot from Atul and have done stories about him that have appeared on this site. But we decided to go meet some of the more unique end users of Whole Energy’s fuels, so off we went on a one-day tour of northwestern Washington state.

First stop was the fire and emergency services department in the city of Marysville. They had recently converted all their vehicles, including fire trucks and ambulances, from standard gasoline to biodiesel. Evidently all vehicles are running fine, and we were able to shoot some nice video of the gleaming red trucks.

Next we paid a visit to Whatcom Construction near the city of Bellingham, which is just south of the Canadian border. We spent some time chatting with and interviewing Loren Vander Yacht, a veteran estimator. Whatcom Construction has been around for more than 50 years, but it wasn’t until 2006 that they converted their fleet to biodiesel. They run B20 in many of their dump trucks and B99 in some of their pickups. Loren runs B99 in his company pickup truck and says he’d be running the same fuel in the vehicle if it was his own. These guys are sold on Whole Energy’s biodiesel fuels!

Then we went down to the water to check out the Gato Verde Adventure Sailing Company. They’re located at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal in the historic Fairhaven part of the city, which is also the terminus of the famous Alaska Ferry. The Gato Verde is actually a boat: a very large catamaran skippered by Todd Schuster. He’s been sailing and teaching sailing literally since he was a kid, and boy does it show. Todd gave us the royal tour of the Gato Verde (which means “green cat” in Spanish – green for being environmentally sound, cat for catamaran), and then took us out for a ride around the harbor. Between his battery packs and sail, the biodiesel motor never kicked in at all during our ride. He told us the boat tour we took that day cost two cents in electricity. A boat ride for two pennies! Todd claims the Gato Verde “has the smallest carbon impact of any boat on the west coast.” Until we find a boat that’s greener than the Gato Verde, we’re inclined to believe him.

Watch this space for more stories about alternative fuels and the interesting ways people are using them to save energy and reduce carbon footprints and dependence on foreign oil.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Production Logs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.