Steckel said a year of dysfunction and pessimism in Washington,
DC, often felt like the industry was "stuck in a bad movie."
"There was this manufactured suspense from the repeated
delays in the RFS volumes, and every time we felt like the end-
ing was coming, the directors threw in another unnecessary
twist to string out the plot," Steckel said. "And we still haven't
seen the credits roll."
Biodiesel industry awards
The National Biodiesel Board honored a variety of industry
champions at the meeting.
Of particular interest to FON readers, and certainly a
familiar name to most, was the Innovation Award pre-
sented to Tom Butcher, Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is one of the premier U.S.
Department of Energy national laboratories and the leading
technical institution for heating oil research in the world. Dr.
Butcher is the head of the Energy Conversion Group and has
been at Brookhaven for 30 years. He has played an instrumen-
tal role in the technical research that has been done over the
last six years that formed the basis for the balloting of perfor-
mance specifications for 6% to 20% biodiesel blended into
traditional heating oil as a new fuel grade in the ASTM D396
fuel oil standard. His groundbreaking work documenting the
positive field experience with biodiesel blends and provid-
ing the research background were major factors in address-
ing questions brought up by the NORA/NBB-lead Bioheat
Technical Steering Committee.
www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | March 2015 15
Fuels
l F O N
NBB CEO Joe Jobe (left) and NBB Chair Steven J. Levy of Sprague Operating
Resources LLC (right) present Brookhaven's Dr. Tom Butcher with the organiza-
tions Innovation Award.
