Safe Renewables Corporation has begun supplying fuel for the nation’s first, 100 percent biodiesel-powered electricity generating turbine plant. Located on a portion of SRC’s 250-acre property in Conroe, Texas, the plant, owned and operated by Biofuels Power Corporation, will produce up to ten megawatts of electricity for delivery direct to the grid.

“This is a breakthrough for our company and the biodiesel industry as it represents the first commercial generating plant wholly powered by renewable fuel in the United States,” said Jeffrey Kissel, SRC Chairman, President and CEO. “We are pleased that SRC has pioneered in perfecting the technology required to achieve this important energy advance.”

Biodiesel is a clean burning, environmentally friendly alternative fuel made from oils derived from farm crops and animal fats. SRC will supply up to one million gallons per month of pure biodiesel (B100) for the plant. The feedstock will primarily be poultry fat, sourced from large poultry processing operations in Texas, making the electricity produced by the plant an indigenous, renewable Texas product.

As one of the few companies producing commercial quantities of biodiesel in the United States, SRC uses a unique, proprietary process at its plant in Conroe, Texas that is capable of switching among multiple vegetable oil and animal fat feedstocks. It is the only biodiesel fuel supplier today that serves both the transportation and public power generation markets.

“The new operation is particularly appropriate in the Texas market where an estimated 3,000 megawatts of new power generation will be required in coming years. It is becoming increasingly difficult to use traditional power-generating fuels, such as coal, due to harmful emissions,” Kissel noted. “Biodiesel produces low levels of emissions in power generating applications.”

Earlier in 2007, SRC began supplying biodiesel for the power company’s first five-megawatt test plant using generators. That plant provides power to Oak Ridge North, a suburb of Houston near the SRC biodiesel facility.

A graduate of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Kissel worked for many years in the petroleum and environmental engineering industries prior to his becoming head of SRC. He has already begun to migrate the company’s expertise back to Hawaii, a fuel-starved state relying largely on imports of petroleum and coal for power generation, responding to investigations by the state’s largest utility seeking to work with the Public Utility Commission’s mandates for use of renewable fuels.

From Hawaii to Maine, government mandates are increasingly requiring utilities and others to accelerate their efforts to generate electric power using renewable fuel sources. Environmentally conscious power companies are seeking to meet more of their electricity generating needs using renewable resources, including biodiesel.

“Biodiesel production linked to power generation facilities provides a useful solution for regionalizing power production for municipal, industrial and military customers, and peak shaving backup for utilities,” Kissel concluded. “This combination provides a powerful solution for the increasing energy demands of our economy.”