National Biodiesel Day on Monday, March 18, marked the birthday of German inventor Rudolf Diesel, whose original design used peanut oil. Today, vegetable oil is the idea behind biodiesel.
Kelly King co-founded Pacific Biodiesel on Maui in 1995.
For close to three decades, the company has been plugging away in Hawaiʻi using crops for fuel and recycling cooking oil waste from restaurants.
Marking the Occasion on Hawai‘i Public Radio
On March 18, 2024, Hawai‘i Public Radio’s “The Conversation” caught up with co-founder Kelly King, also a former Maui County councilmember, to talk about the company’s expansion to Kauaʻi and what the scale-up means for the state’s sustainability goals.
She said the company is working toward producing all of its feedstock in Hawaiʻi, plus having enough feedstock to build another biodiesel refinery.
Its sole refinery is in Keaʻau on the Big Island.
As HPR’s article notes, Pacific Biodiesel already has a contract to sell biodiesel to the Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative.
“All of the utilities now recognize that in order to get to 100% and address the state mandate by 2045, they need to have a percentage of firm power. We finally got HECO to give us an estimated number of what that is, and they’re saying, the last I heard, it was somewhere around 12% of their energy would be biofuels,” King said.
