Biodiesel for Christmas!

I missed this from the Ann Arbor News last month:

Ann Arbor will soon have its first two public biodiesel stations at local Meijer stores, as the city continues to lead the way to creating a more environmentally friendly transportation system.

The city recently received a $24,500 grant from the Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services energy office to partner with Meijer and the Michigan Soybean Council to construct two public biodiesel stations. Biodiesel is an environmentally cleaner alternative to diesel fuel.

One station will open before Christmas and the other will open in the spring, said Dave Konkle, the city's energy coordinator. One station will be built at the Meijer store on Carpenter Road and the other at the Meijer store at Ann Arbor-Saline Road.

I believe these will be B20 pumps, that is 20% biodiesel, 80% petrodiesel. I've currently got over half of tank of B100 in my VW which will probably get me into mid or late October, at which point I'll have to switch to B20 for the winter. Unless I take a long trip, one or two tanks of Meijer B20 will probably get me to spring!

For those readers not from the region, Meijers is a Michigan-based huge-box retail/grocery store chain, very similar to Wal-Mart in terms of what you can buy inside (and in their approach to unions). They seem to compete fairly successfully with Wal-Mart locally. I can't say I like them, but I dislike them less than Wal-Mart. I guess it's like Kerry versus Bush. Anyway, putting in the biodiesel pumps is a feather in Meijer's cap, as far as I'm concerned.