Heating fuel, biodiesel advocacy campaign inspires action

The March 8 virtual launch of Project Carbon Freedom, a coordinated effort by the heating oil industry and National Biodiesel Board to advocate for legislation that supports the growth of renewable liquid heating fuel in the Northeast, generated more than 500 advocacy letters from 14 states in less than 10 minutes.

The live advocacy and launch event, hosted by Eric Slifka, president and CEO of Global Partners LP, a New England-based fuel wholesaler, and Donnell Rehagen, CEO of the National Biodiesel Board, kicked off a multistate grassroots effort to promote renewable liquid heating fuel as an affordable, equitable, and immediate carbon reduction strategy for roughly 5 million heating fuel customers across New England and New York. Nearly 300 stakeholders from across the country were in attendance.

“We are one of the fuel sources out there that can deliver—cleaner than natural gas—clean home heat,” Slifka said. “We’re made up of family businesses, we’re a niche industry—we are exactly the story that legislators are looking for because we can effect change today.”

While putting biodiesel together with heating oil is nothing new, Rehagen said that it’s time to put the people behind the two fuels together to let lawmakers know that thousands of family businesses stand ready to deliver an immediate, common-sense clean energy solution.

“If we can achieve what we’ve already achieved as a group of fragmented individuals and competing businesses, just imagine what we can do when we join forces behind a unified purpose,” Rehagen said. “Project Carbon Freedom is that purpose. It represents our shared story, but it also represents our shared responsibility to tell that story.”

At last count, the PCF launch letter, which is still available on the PCF website, had generated 677 advocacy letters to legislators across the Northeast and beyond.

“If we don't tell the story of our industry and of our business,” said Slifka, “somebody else is going to frame it in a way that is disadvantageous to us … This is an industrywide call to action that will require an industrywide response.”

To access the recorded launch of Project Carbon Freedom, click here.