Biodiesel has a seat at
the table and earns it
Carbon reduction matters to
environmentally conscious
consumers, and they will use
their buying power to make
it happen. If a fuel company
can claim an 85% reduction in carbon
intensity vs. petroleum, it stands to
attract a lot of activist customers.
That is exactly the value proposition at
SeQuential. The Eugene,
OR-based biodiesel
company is achieving an
outstanding “carbon score”
by collecting used cooking
oil, refining it efficiently,
and selling finished
product to both wholesale
and retail channels across
a tight geographical
footprint.
SeQuential is systematic
about driving down carbon
intensity, according to co-founder
and CEO Tyson
Keever. “Our feedstocks
are 99.9% used cooking
oils. We use B99 in our
trucks. We have solar
panels on the roof of our
production facility, and
we have really high yields
and methanol recovery.
We also have the greatest
high-density concentration
in the country of stations
that sell B20 or above, so
we have a really low carbon score on the
delivery component.”
SeQuential now produces more than
8.4 million gallons a year and supplies
100 locations, but they started small. “A
bunch of guys got together in 1998 and
formed a club called Eugene Biosource,”
Keever explained. “We were home-brewing
biodiesel in the garage, with a
55-gallon drum and a boat loader.”
In 2002, Keever co-founded
SeQuential, using financing from friends
and family. “We bought a truck and
began delivering biodiesel to people’s
homes in 55-gallon drums with little
hand-cranked pumps,” he said. “We also
did ‘parked retail,’ where we parked at
a certain spot for four hours as a kind of
mobile retail pump for people’s cars.”
SeQuential partnered with Pacific
Biodiesel in 2005 to build a 1-million-gallon
plant in Salem, OR. Then in
2008, they built a new, larger plant,
and they have since tripled its capacity
to 17 million gallons a year while also
acquiring 15 cooking oil and rendering
companies. “We now collect from the
Mexican border to the Canadian border,”
Keever said. “Our tagline has evolved
to be, ‘Collect, refine, refuel,’
which reflects our model of
vertical integration.”
The disciplined focus on
reducing carbon intensity is a
reflection of Keever’s nature.
“This is the way I like to
approach life. I got my degree in
planning. My wife is a planner.
We invest in good equipment.
Our core values are innovation,
relationships, results, and
— one of my favorites —
conscientiousness. We look at
the big picture and build the
company to last.”
Building the business has
been a pleasure. “We’ve got
a great team and a great
community around us, and I
think we are demonstrating
that the economy and the
environment can work together
to create jobs and clean
tailpipes,” he said. “I feel good
about going to work every day.”
SeQuential is a BQ-9000 producer and
marketer. “I was resistant to that at first,
but going through the process has made
us a better company and standardized
a lot of our procedures. I think it is
Producer
Tyson Keever
CEO, SeQuential
30 Biodiesel Success Stories