The CBC has a checkerboard past, but remarkably, it has never died. In many ways it is a miraculous event, powered largely by pure passion and volunteer energy, and it has emerged as the place for homebrewers, and small scale operators, and community scale biodiesel plants to exchange information and stay up on the latest ideas.

At the Collective Biodiesel Conference there is a lot less snake oil, less specious claims, less big money, and more authenticity than others. The CBC is probably the rightful homeplace of sustainable biodiesel.

Like many in the grassroots biodiesel community, I thought the CBC was defunct a couple of years ago. I watched it emerge on Vancouver Island, of all places. I figured that would surely be a “bust,” so I packed up the family, caught a ferry and jumped in. It was well attended and well organized and I was blown away.

In 2011 it moved to California, under the care of Todd Hill and the folks at Promethean. This year it is headed back to Colorado, which has a rich and varied relationship to community scale biodiesel. I believe it was at a CBC in Colorado where Bob Armantrout made his famous gas chromatography debut. Bob is currently in Ghana trying to spank human fecal sludge into fuel. And Colorado was the home of Charris Ford, who is on his way to Bali to enroll his kid in the greenest school on earth.

Charris is still bitter about losing a nursery rhyme competition to me on a train to Florida many years ago when the grassroots biodiesel community had a conference in Pittsboro and boarded a train to NBB.

Piedmont has been a fan of the Collective Biodiesel Conference from the beginning, and many of our folks have attended and contributed over the years. This year we will be represented by Sam Parker–who currently makes our fuel along side Ray, with the support of the rest of us.

Surely nothing will be finer than Colorado in August, and I am confident that under the stewardship of Dara at Summit Greasecycling, this year’s CBC (get registration details here) will be a deeply successful and edifying event…

James stopped by the Sustainability Pavilion at Shakori Hills and was stunned to learn that Piedmont was making a profit.

I had been on his “Ethics” show back when WCOM was across the street from Weaver Street Market, years ago, when Small is Possible was new. That would have been 2008–when Piedmont was still bumbling around in a pool of dark red ink.

At the time I explained our vision for community scale biodiesel, and micro nodal energy production, and I think he might have dismissed me as a well meaning kook.

At Shakori I explained that we made our first solid profit in 2011, did very well in 2012, and are on track for a profitable 2013. He was delighted, and had me back on the radio tonight.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a copy of the show. He no longer podcasts his work, which means they are just radio waves traveling out into space. Drat. Oh well. The message hasn’t really changed all that much.

At Piedmont we are still chugging along–now much lighter weight with a seven person crew–with the same passion, the same vision, and I suppose the only difference is that we have now achieved economic sustainability…

It was remarkable. 40 people had gathered at the side of their pond to learn about how to organize financing for photovoltaic installations. I wandered down the path and found Megan sitting on a fence rail, with a microphone, talking to the crowd about their mission.

I was mesmerized. “Authentic” came to mind.

The workshop was lead by Giles Blunden, the legendary co-housing architect from Carrboro, and Larry Shirley, the founder of the NC Solar Center and a passionate voice for renewable energy in our state for many decades, and Megan’s husband Tim—another icon of renewable energy.

These people had gathered at Pickards Mountain, for free, and as volunteers, to learn about the tax credits, and economics of solar electricity production in North Carolina. Some of their energy will end up in a new 40KwH system on the roof of their new commercial kitchen. And some will end up with arrays popping up all over the place.

It was fantastic. I showed up as the fuel delivery man, in uniform, and my input was welcomed by the group.

After delivering fuel I returned to the Plant to find the CFSA farm tour in full swing, along with an Abundance Workshop on mushrooms. One of the farm tour volunteers at the gate thought I should buy a farm tour button to pass through, but I think my uniform, and my clipboard of meter tickets let me return home without paying to get into my workplace.

Tonight Zafer and I attended a “Boot Camp” about the NC Legislature put on by the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research. It was held at the Redwoods Group, a famous B Corporation in RTP that supports a current bill to make B Corps have legal teeth in North Carolina.

Maria Kingery from Southern Energy Management was there. Along with Eric Henry from T. S. Designs.

I have to say I was amazed by how informed, articulate, and delightful Zafer was. In public he can check his teenage angst and ennui and turn on the charm. He’s tall, and handsome, with a firm handshake, and tonight he even put me under his spell. I think he gets that from Tami….

Nowadays there are 700 B Corporations–so the movement is growing. And Piedmont won “Best for the World” again.

Some of us want to celebrate. Some of us want to yawn. And while all of us are grateful, there are some questions on our project about the value of awards in general…

Here is Fast Companies‘ take on the “Best for the World Awards.” They make the point that smaller companies can easily score higher than larger ones. We think that is true. We used to have 25 employees. Now we have 7. Happy to be a profitable “micro enterprise…”

That said, about twenty folks gathered at the new, improved, Sustainability Pavilion where we weathered the storm.

We sold some books. Rebecca Hren joined us. She’s the author of The Carbon Free Home and The Solar Buyers Guide for Home and Office.

I was lucky on the bookshelf front. Lori Langdon was in town. She’s a designer who used cardboard scraps and rocks to make my new bookshelf look fecund.

We drank wine from Benjamin Vineyards discussed the state of the world and reveled in festival camaraderie. There is a certain solidarity which develops amongst those who ride out the rotten weather at Shakori.

We awoke cold, wet, and grateful for morning sun.

I nursed a coffee (which I don’t normally drink), and sold some books, while people gathered to discuss green building with local legend Michael Chandler. I did my usual biofuels talk, with my lab jars of liquids, and it was filmed by a fellow who is making a documentary about Piedmont.

Tearing down Shakori is always a drag. Today I picked up Dave and Lisa’s teardrop trailer (which I timeshare), and the chess pieces, and the unsold books. It’s kinda hard to shake the post Shakori Let Down Blues.

We pumped a few hundred gallons of fuel, saw some bands, had dozens of meaningful conversations, and returned to to work imagining what the Sustainability Pavilion could be…

Jordan put in the order that the Sustainability Pavilion go up a notch—and everyone has put their shoulders to the wheel. Fazie is painting a “carbon cycle” mural which can be seen from the ticket booth. Matt has built a lockable bookshelf so that resource materials can be stored—and sold. We scored a “Sustainability Fair” banner that looks like it is left over from Grassroots Miami. (Here’s my video about that one—by the way).

Luke replaced the weeds with a beautiful pad of Chapel Hill grit. And David Boynton from Southern Energy Management tricked out a solar powered LED lighting setup that will mean the place will be a sustainably lighted destination at night. There’s even a 12volt charging station that is solar powered—for computers and cell phones and such…

Carol has the idea that we will sell books. Her new book, Financing Our Foodshed is big news around town—she is selling boxes of them, and I’m guessing her brisk sales will continue through Shakori. (Here’s my video about that one—by the way).

She’s staging a “Green Drinks” session at the Sustainability Pavilion on Friday night. Everyone is invited. We are thinking that those not interested in intellectual discussion might come for free wine and spirits.

And we are hoping that the facelift—including a giant chalkboard so that passersby can see what sessions are coming up—might increase traffic to the Pavilion.

We’ll see.

It is always a beautiful thing to see Shakori Hills rise from the earth.

1 – Green Dining Guide

Brian and John will review as part of the data committee and get some feedback to Katie regarding current build and next steps. On a related matter, John and Brian will reach out to Gary and loop Lyle in to have a bigger discussion about how we should set up the database, given the recent database issues that have hobbled Piedmont and the Coop alike.

Database issues – database has to talk to efeuling – $150.00 for an EPROM – read visa directly – question: should we lock up the pumps to allow for direct swipe of visa card? Board indicated Piedmont should consider it. Membership expiration – admin and membership maintenance is far too manual. We need a new, more automated approach. Data Committee will take this into consideration as part of the overall database and card swiping issues.

Bank card services go directly into quick books – so, updating member billing info is one stop shop – bigger question is how do we maintain separate view of customer attributes?

2 – Carolina Biofuels

We discussed the fuel distribution situation in Durham, oil collections in Durham, and our relationship with Carolina Biofuels.

3 – RSB certification

Piedmont is the first to receive it – we need to have a boarder discussion with both the membership and the public at large about what that means – regulatory cost per gallon would be an interesting calculation – intern project? – need to get this message out to the membership in the context of why it matters – john and I will add the regulatory cost-per-gallon project to the data committee to-do list.

4 – LCA
Triangle life cycle analysis – They’d like for us to have QR codes at the pump – talks about the Coop’s LCA, how it drives B corp certification. Lyle mentioned that what would really be helpful is a code that goes to, say, mypiedmont.coop – context, content, usage – essentially an on-demand “statement”

5 – Pricing discussion
We have a price-inelastic good – and we need to remind members of all the reasons “why they buy.” – Think of it like a wheel with each value proposition a spoke – and NONE of them are really about price (sustainability, green, local, energy independence, etc.). RINs are temporarily back – when they are high, Piedmont makes more money on the trail – when RINs are low selling to oil companies makes more economic sense. This creates a more durable demand situation for Piedmont that helps the Coop. On another note, $1/gallon from Feds goes away Dec 31 – therefore need to maintain a mix of each—Aim is to be economically sustainable.

6 – Annual meeting

The board agreed to extend their terms of service into the mid summer—postponing the usual springtime annual meeting and annual report.

7 – Greensboro

Spot approval on Guilford College campus but pot of money to get it done expired. We’ll consider Piedmont’s Greensboro zoning approval to be our “flag on the moon.”

Other business:
Membership drive in Wilmington – incentives? Contest?

McCayne just bought nine acres and the house next door, and one of her first acts upon taking possession was to call our electric Coop and have the light removed. I could see it from my front door—a half mile away, and I am delighted to see it go.

I had a trouble light at my abandoned farm house when I first moved to Moncure. The electricity to the house didn’t work, but the light shone brightly through the night. I had it removed so I could see the stars. I like seeing moonlight on the wall, but I came to abhor the constant coal fired variety spit out by my trouble light.

For a moment there Tami and I were real estate developers. We did a 450 acre development across the creek called Abeyance. And in doing so we wrote covenants that would apply to the land. The covenants were innovated for their day—no minimum house sizes—no trouble lights—that sort of thing.

Covenants are promises, and promises get broken. But the one about trouble lights held fast. At one point Susan Harris saw and electrical company truck coming in to install one at her new neighbor’s place, and she stopped it. “Those aren’t allowed here,” she said.

I was once at a meeting of our Economic Development folks, and when it came time to enumerate our community assets, I put “night sky” on the list. Everyone looked at me funny. I thought that if Chatham could protect its night sky we would be a much more desirable location.

There are some abandoned mobile homes across the road from Abeyance which drag everybody’s real estate values down. One time I arranged with the owner to remove them myself, but before it could happen the owner reversed his decision. All I managed to get rid of was the trouble light.

After all the lots had been sold Tami fashioned herself a “renovator.” She would buy derelict homes, fix them up, rent them out, or sell them. We means we have owned a lot of the houses in our neighborhood over time. And each time we have removed a trouble light (or two).

We lost our shirts on the house that is now owned by David—since we bought it without the money to renovate it—but we did manage to remove its trouble light. Nowadays Tami tells the story, “Lyle would buy houses just to get rid of the light,” which of course is ridiculous fiction.

But all told I believe McCayne’s is the tenth light to leave our neighborhood over the last twenty one years. Which means our bend in the road has actually been getting darker during our time here.

Driving home late last night I spotted a new light that I had not previously been aware of. Its orange. Sodium vapor? It’s at the house beside McCayne’s new place—previously drowned out by her light….

It’s a space filled with weird ideas. And it has its share of weird people. And fantastic claims.

The basic gist of biochar is that a feedstock is combusted in a high temperature, low oxygen environment. So it doesn’t “burn,” exactly. Rather, it “gasifies.” Gases that ignite sustain flames, and what is left after the process is “biochar.”

The idea is that the “biochar” will cling to nutrients, and water, and create a “reef” in the soil which substantially adds to soil health—while sequestering carbon at the same time.

Which means it is often presented as a magic bullet. It will sink carbon and add to food yields at the same time. Perfect. Anything that perfect attracts nutjobs, and the biochar space has its share. Albert is not one of them. He’s a realist. And he contributed a chapter to my upcoming, Small Stories, Big Changes; Agents of Change on the Frontlines of Sustainability—so I need to be kind toward him.

I set about making my own biochar about a year ago, and failed miserably. My friend John Bonitz is a biochar fanatic, and he pointed out that my efforts had largely lead only to “torrified wood.”

As a largely failed gardener, I added “failed biochar maker” to my list of titles.

One of my problems with the biochar space is that it is a waste of energy. Making it for the sake of making it is ridiculous. 80% of the energy that goes into its creation is given off in heat. So if you are not heating something—like a greenhouse, or a dinner, or a shop full of friends—don’t waste your time making biochar.

Last month Tami and Abundance staged the Farming Strategies in Today’s Changing Climate conference. Laura Lengnick was the keynote, and she spent some time at our house. She is an expert on soils, so I jumped at the chance to dig into biochar with her. She’s a biochar skeptic—pointing to the specious claims and the lack of science that surrounds the space. She might believe in magic, but not so much when it comes to life in the soil.

So I felt better about my biochar flops.

And I was fine with that, until Kathleen invited me to speak at the North America Biochar Symposium in the fall. She couldn’t care less about my inability to integrate biochar into my gardens. What she wanted was my perspective on waste to energy, small scale production, and my “systems thinking” approach.

When Katy heard I was going to a biochar conference, she suggested I go on a “biochar date” with Amber Gruene, her good friend, and one of our long standing members. Apparently Amber is doing something with biochar at NC State.

And when Kathleen heard I had messed around on the edges of biochar she suggested I go on a “biochar date” with Josh Kearns, who had recently set up shop at NC State. Josh is a clean water guy, who makes biochar for filtration purposes. He has a non-profit called Aqueous Solutions that does clean water stuff in the developing world.

Clearly the universe was speaking to me. So today after my Clean Cities meeting I headed to lunch with Amber and Josh. We geeked out hard on combustion, fabrication, chemistry and biochar. At one point Josh invited me back to his lab so that we could make a batch.

He turned to Amber and said, “Do you think I will get thrown out of the program if I make some biochar in the parking lot?”

But that is exactly what we did. We schlepped his homemade paint can stove out to an empty space—it was Easter break after all—we packed it with pine pellets, soaked a handful in methanol and fired it up. We did nothing with the heat. When we were cold, we stepped into the sun.

About an hour and a half later, I carefully carried a tinfoil casserole pan across campus, filled with hot biochar. I looked like I was headed to a church supper, or a potluck.

Josh is a scientist. He’s a biochar expert who is as skeptical as Dr. Lengnick. In order to not grab all of the nutrients from the soil, biochar needs to be “charged.” One way to charge it is with urine. If it gets pre-packed with nitrogen before entering the soil, there is less chance it will grab the nitrogen it finds there when it arrives.

Which means I have a beautiful pan full of biochar that needs attention. Tonight it is the kitchen. I might want to “charge” it in the yard.

Biochar is a fascinating space, filled with unknowns. Varying feedstocks, temperatures, and combustion technologies produce varied results—creating a product that is ready to be charged in various ways and integrated into varying soils. There is a generation of work and discovery to be had in this space.

I plan to charge my prize biochar up and integrate it into a raised bed of crummy local soil. Next to it I will put another one without biochar. Then I will plant them with the same vegetables, sit back and see if one does better than the next. It could take years to see results—I’m jazzed about it…

I said, “We do at least one a year.”

He said, “It feels more like a hundred.”

I thought about it, and I don’t know the answer. One a year for eight years would be eight. Plus every other year for two other buildings would be eight more. Plus events which would be at least eight more. Plus a couple of Certificates of Occupancy (not counting the ones needed for the B100 Community Trail).

I don’t know the actual, but put me down for 36.

Last night Zafer sat down his broom and said, “That’s good enough.”

I replied, “I think you should give it a final sweep.”

“They care about how well swept it is?

“If you were inspecting a place, and it needed to be swept, would you look harder than if it was spotless?”

Z went back to his broom.

Artie was our inspector today. I know them all. And Artie is tough. He has no problem opening a door, or heading up a stairwell to look around. Over the years the Chatham County Fire Marshal’s office has taught us a lot. And we’ve taught them as well. We have sort of found our way through biodiesel production together.

Artie’s boss is Tom Bender. Tom is tough, and quick to remind you that he doesn’t make the rules—he just enforces them.

On three occasions over time we have hit an impasse with Tom’s office. Each time we have been invited to “appeal” to their bosses in Raleigh, our state capitol, and each time we have had resolutions in our favor. It is not their fault that they don’t know how to interpret code references for the storage of B100 in a strawbale building. There are none. This stuff gets hammered out along the way.

Fire Marshals have a lot of discretionary power. I’ve noticed this when opening dispensing stations in the five counties in which we operate. Sometimes words have two meanings. And sometimes regulations are interpreted differently.

One inspection that has stuck with me was the one Tom did shortly after my brother Mark died. We were due. And I was in a fog. I didn’t even have our sprinkler system inspection done. Normally they check that. Tom flunked us.

And in doing so he walked me out to his government issued SUV and said, “Are you OK?”

Instead of talking about code violations we talked about life and death and family and grief. He was compassionate. And he gave us a chance to get our act together for a re-inspection.

As Fire Marshal, Tom’s job is to meet the school bus to tell the kids their Mom has died in a fire. Every time someone in Chatham County dies in a fire it is on his watch.

Today we passed another fire inspection. On the one hand I am grateful to have it behind us. On the other I am grateful for the pre-requisite spit shine we did to make it happen, and most of all I am grateful for Piedmont’s current track record of safety…