San Francisco (BCN) - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom joined city, state and federal officials Wednesday to announce a state and federal grant-funded pilot project in which the city's first brown grease-to-biodiesel plant will be built.
Newsom joined members of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Energy Commission and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission at Roe Restaurant Wednesday afternoon to announce plans to construct the plant as part of the city's Oceanside Treatment Plant.
The city received $1.2 million in grants from the California Energy Commission and EPA to build the plant, which will take brown grease, a mix of used oils and food scrapings produced in restaurants and residential kitchens, and use it to create multiple forms of alternative energy.
The grease, which was previously a waste-only product, will be put to use to make high-grade biodiesel for vehicles, lower-grade boiler fuel for running sewage treatment plant equipment, and converted methane to run the treatment plant.
SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington said that while a handful of plants around the country have tried converting brown grease to biodiesel, the San Francisco plant would be the first of its kind in the nation to generate the three different types of energy sources.
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