The Scheme of the Crop

But like petro fuel government strategy today, a sensible, realistic and achievable national policy does not exist independent of the influence of the petroleum industry. So what we really need first is new human resources in government who are independent and true representative of the people who will advocate to pursue all viable and responsible avenues to a sustainable energy future.

A good part of that must be a restructuring on the socio-political environment that will favor effective conservation, and not at the expense of just people but equally shouldered by business and industry so the waste of commuting is lessened by shortening the distance people and products are transported to get the nations work and commerce accomplished.

This is not a new idea for a more efficient and less wasteful America. Jerry Brown when governor of California advocated a de-centralized "small world" approach to social and economic organization and was called governor "moonbeam"  because of it. Ahead of his time what he advocated a quarter of a century ago needs to be revisited. The distance the food on your table travels to get there is an absurdity as is the horrendous long commutes alone in a car every day so many millions of Americans make to work, are the real causes of our excessive dependence on imported petroleum, and besides ethanol and biodeisel, must be as much a part of the solution.

It takes almost 9 acres of soybeans to produce the same volume of biofuel as a single acre of corn (assuming 45 gallons of biodiesel/acre for soybeans, and 385 gallons ethanol/acre for corn). Ethanol may be energy intensive to produce, but soy-based biodiesel is land intensive.

Yes, corn ethanol is flawed, but it is an immediate short-term gasoline substitute.  Yes, corn ethanol is subsidized, but so is every other alternative energy resource!  We must not lose sight of the strategic imperative to find practical gasoline substitutes that can be rapidly exploited. Consider this: Essentially every car on America's roads today can burn E30 (30% ethanol/70% gasoline blend) without modifications.  Despite recent temporary increases in ethanol prices, it continues to be cheaper than gasoline, on a per-mile basis, when priced fairly; I continue to find E85 (85% ethanol blend) at $2/gallon.

In about three or five years, a sustainable gasoline substitute will become available from next-generation ethanol technology - cellulosic ethanol - which will require very little, if any, non-renewable energy in its production life cycle. Dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be one of many strategic results provided by this technology.  Cellulosic technology will enable the production of vast amounts of sustainable ethanol, most of it from residues and feedstocks that are grown on marginal land that is unsuitable for food production.

Creating market demand and distribution infrastructure, today, with corn ethanol is a key part of the right strategy at the right time so that tomorrow we can take full advantage of sustainable cellulosic ethanol.  

From R-Squared:

It is time to stop believing that Brazil is energy independent because of ethanol, and realize that it is because their energy consumption is 1/6th of ours in the U.S. If we reduced our energy consumption by that amount, we would be energy independent as well

In reality, ethanol is a minor player in Brazilian energy supply. It accounts for less than one-tenth of all the country's energy liquids. The real source of Brazil's self-sufficiency is the country's extraordinary success in producing more oil.

Yet, even with Brazil's favorable climate and sugar's inviting biology, ethanol is already reaching the limit. That's because the land and other resources devoted to ethanol can be put to other uses such as growing food and cash crops

Indeed, today the Brazilian government is actually reducing the share of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline because sugar growers prefer to make even more money by selling their product as sugar on the world market rather than fermenting it into alcohol.

Driving by the Colma BART station the other day (after a hike at the amazing San Bruno Mountain State Park), I noticed a large construction site close to the station.  What did the forward thinking Colma city officials approve for this prime piece of real estate?  What would be built on this piece of land next to a multi-billion dollar rapid transit system that is especially short on riders in this part of the Bay Area?  A car dealership.  A glorified parking lot, with perhaps 20 employees.  Brilliant use of the land next to the hyper-expensive BART tracks!  They must have learned from El Cerrito, a city which surrounded one of their BART stations with big box stores.  Yep, I'm going to ride BART to Home Depot to buy some plywood, gardening supplies and a new BBQ.  Or the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco, where a firestorm broke out over a proposal for a small market with 30 parking spaces or something like that.  

But then there is the tiny town of Hercules battling Wal-Mart over a prime piece of property that the city wants to make into a village-like town square instead of a box surrounded by pavement.  Wal-Mart, of course, claims that they absolutely need that property; otherwise, they will go bankrupt (a slight exaggeration on my part, but they are the biggest corporation in the world.  Can't they be nice for a change?).

From evanaevens:

However, corn ethanol is a strategic short-term bridge to a long-term solution. We must today aggressively create market demand for ethanol and create ethanol distribution infrastructure, relying temporarily on today's flawed corn ethanol, so that tomorrow we will be ready to rapidly exploit the full potential of next-generation sustainable ethanol.

And here from fotographx:

I believe both ethanol and biodeisel should be looked at as first steps towards replacing petroleum with plant based resources that are re-newable. The plant resources and their cultivation can be expanded and diversified as processing and distribution infrastructure is constructed.

This concept makes little sense to me. Buying soy-based biodiesel (or corn-based ethanol) will not promote more efficient means of producing these fuels in the future. Making biofuels out of soybeans and corn will actually hinder the development of infrastructure for future improvements in biofuel technology because they will compete with it on the market. In short, you cannot use a refinery designed to make biodiesel out of soybeans (or ethanol out of corn) to make the same fuel from say, switch grass or algae. You would have to tear it down and start all over. Can you imagine politicians from States that have invested billions in infrastructure to make biodiesel from soybeans actually voting in a manner that would dismantle that infrastructure? The bigger the soybean-based biodiesel (and corn-based ethanol) industries get, the harder it will be to replace them with better technologies, and the harder it will be to take the present subsidies away, especially when much cheaper foreign biofuels are wanting to unload in our ports.

Installing ethanol and biodiesel resistant rubber in fuel systems is a cheap quick fix that can be done anytime, even postproduction. Buying fuel made from soy and corn won't do anything to promote those kinds of changes. Carmakers are doing it now purely as a cheap gimmick to sell cars.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

These are rational in the short term, but will come back to haunt us in the long term.  Major fixes are needed up and down the entire land-use and taxation system.

Solar delivers the crude oil equivalent of 38,000 gallons per acre of desert.  That equivalent can produce as much electrical power as 38,000 gallons of oil in a power plant.  We have the infrastructure to distribute electricity to electric cars.  A plug-in hybrid is a better transitional technology.

Ethanol sounds like a public information program for political cover, like coal CO2 sequestration.

What's wrong with this picture? Isn't GM an automaker? Shouldn't GM focus on much more fuel efficient vehicles, such as hybrids, rather than new fuels? GM seems to be trying to create the impression that we could all drive flex-fuel Hummmers AND reduce foreign oil dependency with E85.

While that isn't surprising, it is sad how many politicians seem to be buying into that rhetoric, including Hillary Clinton most recently. I have really become jaded by modern day politics. Perhaps politicians have always been so worthless? Ultimately, it seems it is completely up to organized groups of average citizens to make a difference.

Chad Snyder
www.soultek.com

making efficient cars would be stepping up to that problem ... but so far ...

I'm not really surprised by GM, just disappointed by so many politicians.

Chad Snyder
www.soultek.com

When it comes to "crop waste," which is often what politicians tell us the fuel is extracted from, our soils need that biomass, not our car engines.  Ref:  books of Bill Mollison, John Jeavons, Howard Yana-Shapiro, et all.

Neither corn nor soy are farmed using sustainable agricultural techniques.  Both crops are notorious in the GMO realm, both crops are monocropped, soil depletion issues, water issues in an age of climate change, I could go on, but read Yana-Shapiro's book if you're interested.  Switchgrass has recently been proposed - another monocrop, still has the land-use issues and many of the agricultural issues listed above.

In addition to the land-use issue, there is the distillation issue.  Many of these biofuels and blends are extracted using fossil fuels to do the extraction process (the politicians leave that little detail out), some with a 1:1 ratio (one unit of fossil needed to extract one unit of biofuel).

Biofuels of all sorts are being touted as the new "great thing" which will solve our problems, but they really are just a temporary and niche solution.  Yes, they may ease our societal pain as we transition, but the original letter by Heidi Werner gives the only sustainable solution:  We must design ways to make it possible, practical, fun and cool to stop driving.  


J Poyourow author of Legacy: A Story of Hope for a Time of Environmental Crisis LegacyLA.net

Take a close look at any photo of a desert solar plant - the roads for access and maintenance, the disturbance to wildlife, plants and soils from suddenly becoming traveled and shaded.

Know that there are other places to put solar collectors, for instance every rooftop in every town and city we have.  Then the power sources are right were we need them, local, decentralized.  No, the power companies won't like this, because it "pulls the plug" on their Empire:  the massive interstate trunklines, the grid.

In addition to the semi-rigid panels which one usually sees, there are other collectors coming into the market.  Flexible solar panels are now available to be laid like roofing shingles on existing warehouses.  Sheer solar collectors are now available which can surface our existing skyscrapers.  Panels are now quite efficient, and can generate power at any latitude.  So, don't fall for the propaganda, we don't need to mutilate our desert ecosystems to go solar.

Sunflower also presented solar within the context of a discussion on transportation fuels.  I think solar is a great option for our geographically-fixed power needs (buildings, etc) but I'm skeptical it would do much for us for transportation.  I did see a Solar Prius on Earth Day in Santa Barbara, but the website stats on that make it sound pretty limited.  So, I repeat what I said in my last post:  We must design ways to make it possible, practical, fun and cool to stop driving.

J Poyourow author of Legacy: A Story of Hope for a Time of Environmental Crisis LegacyLA.net

New solar technology must be so economically attractive that India and China (and everybody else) adopts solar energy instead of coal energy.  The solar environmental footprint is materials, energy of manufacture, and sun shade.  

Solar pv on roofs have technology and economic issues.  I wish roof-top and building-wall solar electricity would pencil out in terms of energy metrics and ROI, but that must wait for new photovoltaic technology.  (Plastics are not sun friendly.)

Buildings with solar thermal technology can be cost effective and such buildings could liberate natural gas and oil heating (and coal electric heating) for other purposes.

The sun falling on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State equals the energy of US imported oil.  Pristine desert environments are not required for gigawatts of low-cost solar power.

With the new quick charge lithium batteries electric cars charged by solar power and the other renewable electric power sources are THE future of transportation.

I agree on desert solar, plenty of space on rooftops, over parking lots, and even over highways is available, it is not necessary to use any extra wilderness.

But areas in deserts that have been devestated by indusrtrial use could be converted to solar furnace powered silicon/PV cell fabs, for instance.   Any land that has been polluted and destroyed by the oil or mining industries or military use could be used for renewable energy in a way that rehabilitates that land.

That actually benefits natural ecosystems with restoration.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Coincidentally, I tried to research batteries last night.  Someone had told me the batteries in a Prius were toxic to the environment, moreso than the enviro gains we got from using Priuses.  I don't agree with that tradeoff analysis, but I did learn that the newer batteries aren't quite so clean and recoverable as we'd wish them to be.

Apparently reclamation on the litium ion battery (which Toyota is moving toward on future models so that they can get 100+mpg ) is "in its infancy" - they are merely able to recover a few metals, and that is under extreme heat.  The article didn't say how that heat was generated, but I think we can all guess pretty easily.  

Lithium ion is potentially explosive, and so it needs to be maintained within a fairly narrow band of temperature range.  That would seem to limit its applications.  Additionally, a lot of lithium ion batteries fail within the first 2-3 years, they don't make it out to the full lifetime as reliably.  Thus it sounds like there is quite a waste stream.  one of many sources  My point being, lithium ion sounds really great, but there seem to be some hidden nightmares.  

I really think "the future of transportation" is going to be as in the original quote from Umbra:  "We need to design our cities and suburbs with fewer cars as a guiding principle. We need to welcome greater density in our housing. We need to fund mass transit more than we fund highways."  Together with society-wide reevaluations of our perceived need for transportation and our belligerently-asserted right thereto.


J Poyourow author of Legacy: A Story of Hope for a Time of Environmental Crisis LegacyLA.net

I have several articles linked from here and my website and on the energy blog.  The truth is out there.

 Lithium from these new batteries can be safely and economically recycled in a solar furnace.

Have a nice day!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Yes, you can count on Triple A, the automobile and highway building industries, and their subsidiaries and protectors.  But make no mistake about it, if you offer to pay the average American household a cash rebate amount of money at the end of a year provided they drive significantly fewer miles over a year's time (or no miles), they will try their hardest to earn it.

After that, you could get Americans conserving on energy use in their home much more than do now, too, by applying the same principle - that using less (fuel derived energy) is best".  But that is the topic, for another story I suppose.

Read about both approaches at:

FINANCIAL INCENTIVES FOR REDUCING HIGHWAY TRAVEL
AND ENERGY DEMANDS IN WISCONSIN
http://www.danenet.org/bcp2006/vmr.pdf  

I think the clamor for biofuels is the second energy plague, following hydrogen. Hopefully there won't be anymore.

Niche markets and opportunities (and Willie Nelson) aside, it is hard to see a long term viable market for biofuels.

Biodiesel makes no sense at all. Far too little plant material is made up of the long-chain esters needed to produce it. It is great to make from some waste source that would otherwise be thrown away, but this can only contribute a very tiny proportion of the diesel we use today. Probably less than one percent.

Ethanol makes great sense as a fuel ADDITIVE to replace MTBE, but the economics are much less favorable as a significant fuel component itself.

Even if made from cellulose (like switchgrass) ethanol requires a more difficult production process and results in only about half the energy content of fuel product compared with using the same biomass to produce methane.

True, methane is harder to handle, but at half the price, it doesn't take many refuelings to pay for compressed tank storage.

On the other hand, if plug-ins can be made to work, the lower amount of fuel needed could justify a higher price for a liquid, synthesized fuel. But then ethanol would be competing against plain old gasoline.

Like hydrogen, experts (and investors) like to wrestle with the medium, while forgetting where the source might be. Biomass can only be expected to produce about 6-10 percent of our fuel needs in the U.S., so at best, it's only a partial solution. But even in this limited context, ethanol and biodiesel are bad choices.

Much better arguments can be made for methane or even methanol. I'm not a personal fan of methanol because it is bulky for a liquid fuel, not particularly clean to burn, and the deadly-poison-in-small-amounts thing going against it.

I'd really like to meet these investors. Maybe they would like some bridges to drive their ethanol-powered cars over.

(end quote)

Frankly, I'm concerned that people like Umbra (or Popular Mechanics, for that matter) are so at ease in passing forward bad information on energy.  You are really gatekeepers in all of this, and allowing bad ideas (like biodiesel) to pass through your blogs without comment and critique is essentially contributing to the confusion on this.  If you aren't able to examine energy issues critically, then find someone to help you.

Sincerely,

Jim Beyer


Build plugin hybrids that run on renewable methane. That's all that's needed.

These fuel cell microturbines run great on methane at 75% efficiency.

And since a plugin would need fuel only when it's plugin mileage is exceeded, maybe 20 miles with todays batteries?  Then figure a very small tank of compressed methane WOULD do it.  

Dispense with the internal combustion, use the fuel cell/microturbine to extend the mileage to say 300 miles with only the equivalent of a few gallons of gas, in compressed methane.  Methane is great because it's so easy to make from waste and/or algae in solar collectors.

Here's the fuel cell/microturbine info/links.

 http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/2/19/1772543.html

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

And what about recreation and appreciation for the outdoors? Denser cities promote consumerism and lack of environmentalism, since the children growing up in them are simply not aware of the outdoors, and do not become interested in the environment in general. No only are there studies related to this notion, but I can speak from personal empirical evidence, having known both people from urban and rural childhoods (as well as having been in both).

I do agree that denser housing with a developed transportation network maybe the answer to counteract the suburban spread (both in land and in waist), but I am unconvinced that denser CITIES are.

Further, I would love to see some sort of a poll (an honest one) of enviros on this blog to see how many would much rather live in a 200-300 sf studio or small one bedroom in the city rather than a 1000 sf house somewhere closer to the 'wilderness'.

You could probably get away with a 30KW (40 HP) unit for a car (with ultracaps) but they are pricey.  They last a long time though.

The combination with fuel cells is interesting.  This might mean that a small (neighborhood) power plant might have a better efficiency than the 60% obtained with combined-cycle technology (which have to be quite large).

Build plugin hybrids that run on renewable methane. That's all that's needed.

Capstone has a bus sized turbine.  A car sized one would be tiny.  And a fuel cell in the 30kw range would be very small too. Lighter, smaller and with a small fraction of the moving parts of a comparable internal combustion engine.

I think the bus turbine generator is 250 kw?  They have smaller backup power turbines too.  They backup power for computer servers and provide heat for buildings using methane in fixed locations.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin