There's no company in Pennsylvania quite like Lake Erie Biofuels. The company operates Pennsylvania's first large-scale biodiesel production facility, which is one of the five largest biodiesel plants in the nation.

Built in 2006 on a former brownfield site, the $54 million Lake Erie Biofuels plant became fully operational in fall 2007 and now produces 45 million gallons of biodiesel annually and more than 136,000 gallons per day. The plant, which employs about 40, is situated on the shores of Lake Erie and features an in-plant railcar and tanker truck load-out system, for which the company bought the largest fleet of rail tank cars in the Eastern United States.

The plant consists of two 10,000-square-foot buildings that house equipment, a tank farm with more than 4 million gallons of capacity, a laboratory complex and a blending, loading, and distribution complex. With labs for quality testing and a quality assurance program, the biodiesel that comes out of the plant is the highest quality in the industry.

The company is not only unique in Pennsylvania, but it stands out among other plants in the U.S. because of its ability to make biofuel from both plant and animal feedstock; most biodiesel plants are built to use only one kind of feedstock.

For it's contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, Lake Erie Biofuels received the 2009 Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence. The company was credited with reducing CO2 emissions equivalent to taking 50,550 automobiles off the road in its first six months of commercial operation.