Bay Area and Northern California Biodiesel Roundtable

Sept 13, 2003

Oakland, CA

On September 13, 2003, the Berkeley Biodiesel Collective hosted a convergence of biodiesel and vegetable oil proponents and activists to discuss ways of collaborating regionally on issues of common concern to local groups and individuals. Fifty attendees came from as far as Chico in the Central Valley and Laytonville and Fort Bragg in Mendocino County. Most people came with the idea of networking with other people working on similar projects to increase our overall effectiveness.

The half day event started with a round of introductions and updates on various projects in the region related to biodiesel. We heard from the Ecology Center, which recently helped the City of Berkeley switch its municipal fleet to biodiesel; several biodiesel user/producer cooperatives; a small South Bay company that is manufacturing small production units for sale; several small-scale local distributors; and many people involved in the work of outreach and organizing.

Afterwards, we broke into four discussion groups centered on specific, timely topics. These were: Fleets Switching to Biodiesel, Organizing Coops, Policy and Advocacy, and Bulk Distribution Programs. The summary of each of these sessions is posted separately (see main BBC webpage).

For the final component of the meeting, everyone came back together into one group to hear reportbacks from each breakout session. What happened next was that the group began a process of identifying shared ideas of what future directions to take. The Policy and Advocacy Breakout session had already begun doing this, and now all the attendees started brainstorming.

What resulted was a discussion of how the National Biodiesel Board increasingly doesn’t seem to represent small scale producers and distributors and end users, and is out of step with a lot of the goals and values of people on the ground like ourselves. The NBB is having an annual meeting in Southern California in February 2004, so we decided to begin to organize ourselves around having a parallel event at the same time as well as attending their meeting. Until then, various people and groups are planning meetings to work out our positions and logistics for a parallel event.

If you would like to be part of this process, please send an email to berkeleybiodiesel@yahoo.com and we will make sure you are put on the right list.