Biomass, part II
Better agronomy for energy crops 14
-
Posted 10:57 AM on 24 Jan 2008
by Vinod Khosla -
Posted in
-
Read More About
Khosla is a technology innovator and venture capitalist based in Silicon Valley.
Related Stories
Climate Citizen: Michael Pollan on agriculture and health care
Tweet for the bees
Soda lobby gets its game on
Add a Comment
You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.
Comments
View as Flat
justlou Posted 6:23 am
24 Jan 2008
The perennial scenario does have the potential for producing the highest biomass yield compared with monocrops yet suffers from the standpoint of annually wiping out a rich community of native fauna including rare and endangered species that will be attracted to these native plant communities. This seems like a steep cost to fuel individual transport.
Permalink
Solarspike Posted 7:37 am
24 Jan 2008
The show stopper for all biofuels is the 10% efficient Internal Combustion Engine. The answer is EV and PV. Get it right and quit wasting our time and your money.
How far can we drive?
Yield in Miles Driven per Acre of Land per Year
Boifuels and ICE vehicles VS PV and EVs
Ethanol - Corn 18,000 miles per acre per year
Cellulosic Ethanol - Switchgrass 32,500
Biodiesel - Soybean 2,400
Biodiesel - Rapeseed (canola) 6,100
Biodiesel - Oil Palm 31,000
Solar - Photovoltaics 2,250,000 miles per acre per year
Solar - Concentrating 2,000,000
Permalink
1Eco Posted 1:22 pm
24 Jan 2008
Can you think of any feedstock that sounds like it could do all of that and has already been banned from growth by the plastics and petro. elite for fear it might start to grab some of their total control of market share?
If Solar, Wind, and Biomass work together for a sustainable future, my guess is it might be possible to find room for all. The low cost provider might simply hold the largest share of the alternative energy pie. Still a very small pie when measured against current low cost energy providers, be it the grid or LF.
Pesently that title is held by coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro. If Solar, Wind, and Biomass do make alternative energy more attractive guess who starts moving into those new energy markets?
Ecosystems empowerment for the rural poor.
Permalink
JohnMashey Posted 2:05 pm
24 Jan 2008
I'm interested in getting more specific comments of the first type on the rest of Vinod's comments, and a little more on the winter crop issue.[To what extent is that geographically determined? or the specific crop combinations? Certainly, some people, some places use winter cover crops. We never grew the soy/corn combination, so I have no experience with thaht one.]
A lot of what he said made a lot of sense, but then I'm many years off the farm, so I'd love to hear of other things that don't make technical sense.
As context, I'm assuming/hoping that:
Cars go serial PHEV and EV as fast as they can, with EV's ramping faster if Better Place works out, and they or somebody create modular battery infrastructure, and if more areas create charign stations (like Fry's Electronics does here).
Some places must get as many cars as possible into PHEV/EV, such as Los Angeles and the CA Central Valley, even if ethanol/biodisel were free. Stanford's Mark Z. Jacobson has done a lot of good work on modeling changes with different fuels, such as: "Effects of Ethanol (E85) versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States."
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/
Put another way, there are some areas where cars at least, have got to stop burning anything (except hydrogen, and I'm not holding my breath), and the less that cars are burning in metropolitan areas, the better ...
3) My concern is not so much cars, but more with Class 8 trucks, railroads, off-road machinery, bigger tractors [I've seen smaller solar electric ones], ships, etc. I'd be happy if everything that was really necessary got electrified, but I certainly expect that those fleets turn over much slower than cars, which sounds like we're going to need fuels for a long time (although diesel seems more important) just to get crops to market, unless a lot of railroads get electrified, including all the abandoned shortlines.
Put another way: suppose gas+diesel were going to disappear in 5-10 years. Would farmers be able to go totally electric, or would some fuel still be needed?
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FertilizerUse/ tables 7, 8, 9 tells me that nitrogen fertilizer prices are going up, that corn uses a lot, and the massive corn farms don't usually have a lot of manure handy. Given that Peak Gas can't be that many decades away, I don't understand how high-fertilization corn production is going to be a long-term thing, i.e., more crop rotation / polyculture / perennials seem like good things to me, since I Don't see how Iowa/Kansas et al turn into big vegetable farms. Am I missing something? I'm not sure how the water issue, especially with the Ogallala, plays out.
Personally, I'd much rather see big chunks of corn-land turn into perennials some of the time., Less corn in the US might raise the percentage of grass-fed meat, lower the amount from CAFO, and provide less HFCS, and less diabetes.
Given that rare/endangered species aren't likely to be hanging out in corn anyway, I'm not quite sure why it's worse for the fauna to have perennials, even if it isn't better, although maybe "nursery fields" help. (?)
Anyway, I'd love to hear more specific issues.
-John Mashey
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 2:54 pm
24 Jan 2008
In the mean time, we need to continue to critique special interests manipulating the government for personal profit: corn ethanol, soy biodiesel, cellulosic, or any other grand scheme that comes down the pike that can't stand on its own without robbing the public larder. It is easy to show what is wrong with a fuel like corn ethanol because it is in production. You can't say that a fuel that does not exist is good any more than you can say it is bad. These posts are repetitive lectures, parroting data that's been on the net for years.
What we need is a debate, but then again, debating the merits of a fuel that does not exist would not make any sense either, so, never mind.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Pangolin Posted 8:34 pm
24 Jan 2008
Is it even possible to contemplate returning some portion of the Great Plains to wild grazing land or does it all have to be turned into a fuel station for our automobile addiciton? I personally think that if we don't get our heads out of our ass(es) we are going to find the ecosystem doesn't like us anymore.
We could be there already.
Put the Carbon Back
Permalink
justlou Posted 10:10 pm
24 Jan 2008
Winter cover crops: In the breakbasket region of the US where grain crops dominate, there is no technically feasible means of getting enough biomass produced between the row crop cycles in Vinod's magical dormant season unless we want to put a greenhouse cover over the entire country (some conservative commentators claim this will be a benefit of global warming). Many corn farmers in this area of Illinois begin planting in early April. Winter cover crops would have only been resuming their growth in March. So, where is the window for growth and harvesting of any significant biomass? Plus, the winter cover crop would likely have to be killed early with tillage or herbicides to reduce competition with the main crop. Cover crops can take up significant quantities of soil moisture that the main crop needs for establishment.
I did not say that I was against using perennials as feedstocks for ethanol or that it shouldn't be done. Only that there could be significant collateral ecological impacts that need to be foreseen. The perennial crops will attract and harbor many species that will not have the ability to escape when those crops are harvested for fuel. And once the crop is harvested, where is the refuge for those that can escape?
I was referring specifically to the idea of polyculture plantings utilizing native prairie species. It should also be noted that these types of habitats are not easy to establish from seed and that the quantities of seed available are not abundant and thus relatively expensive. It also takes about 5 years for these reconstucted prairies to mature to their greatest production capacity. So how many farmers would put that much investment into a planting that requires a lot of management (that competes for time and attention with their main crops), greater risk of establishment failure, much expense, and a delayed payoff, especially when corn is hovering at $5.00 per bushel and soybeans are reaching almost record heights? Only significantly high subsidies would steer them in that direction.
There are also other issues like the possibility of creating tremendous ecological problems with escaped alien species. It is very likely that Monsanto, Syngenta and others will come up with herbicide resistant cultivars of these energy crops. What happens if these cultivars escape into native plant communities or share their genes via wind blown pollen with native ecotypes?
Before we start ratcheting up the technology for a future driven by biomass fuels, we better have some idea of where all this might lead. By seeking plug ins and alternate fuels to the technologies and infrastructure monster we have maybe we better head back to the base of the branch that got us in this mess to begin with and discover a better branch. The branch we are on is bearing a heavy load of ugly and very costly fruit.
Permalink
JohnMashey Posted 1:16 am
25 Jan 2008
In any case, talk about fertilizer use. How is the current amount of corn going to be kept growing?
-John Mashey
Permalink
justlou Posted 1:37 am
25 Jan 2008
The current amount of corn will be kept growing until the fuel and the fertilizer runs out or becomes too expensive to produce it (phosphorus and potassium about doubled in price and nitrogen increased by 50 to 70% in the past year). And despite what the proponents say, switchgrass would also deplete the soil of nutrients and would require fertilization to maintain adequate levels of productivity. Not as much as corn, but this is not going to be some self sustainable production system like the cellulose advocates state.
Permalink
JohnMashey Posted 11:43 am
25 Jan 2008
What is a plausible evolution of corn-belt farms over the next few decades, especially after:
fertilizer gets real expensive
petroleum gets real expensive
some transport costs get more expensive
I.e., let me pick Iowa as an example, say via:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/IA.htm and
http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_3.html
(but pick another state if it makes sense).
What are Iowa farms likely to look like, 10, 20, 30, 40 years off? (I figure 40 is enough to make oil and natural-gas-based fertilizer really expensive). Compared to what they grow now, what will they likely be growing? What should they be growing? Is that how you think they should look, or should they be something else? Do you think farmers will be able to make more money? I've seen one comment that the mid-west should turn into vegetable farms. Is there any plausibility to that? Anyway, what do those mid-west farms grow and who do they sell it to?
Anyway, Grist often has a lot of posts that are in effect proposing farm policy, and a few are from experts, but an awful lot are from urbanites who've apparently never forked manure on a real farm :-)
Hence, knowledgable opinions are valued, and since the farm population is now ~2%, there aren't as many around as there used to be.
-John Mashey
Permalink
MissCanthus Posted 2:55 pm
25 Jan 2008
But if we succeed in producing 'local' electricity at competitive cost, (and CHP is made to economically work), then electricity may yet become a 'biofuel'
In the UK, we ARE progressing well towards competitive electricity cost from biomass. But where land and economic costs are lower, delivering local electricity and heat can be economic, sustainable, and carbon efficient. It will benefit poorer communities without huge investment, and subsidy. Just think what electricity and heat could deliver, when generated locally, and usuable for transport as well!
Bical Miscanthus
Permalink
JohnMashey Posted 3:16 am
26 Jan 2008
Again, I assume we electrify anything we can, and think ahead to the time when fossil fuels are no longer being burned, for whatever set of reasons.
a) at one extreme, some people think that the whole idea of biofuels is Evil.
b) at the other extreme, some think they are The Solution.
c) Some people want to use biomass primarily to generate electricity [especially in areas where wind & solar are not as cost-effective].
d) Some people agree with c), but think that some transport applications will either be very difficult or very expensive to do with electricity, and the extent to which those transport applications exist (or not) will depend primarily on biofuels.
a) As I recall, you import food (and other things), of which much comes by ship.
b) You also have a lot of international air travel. I note that the UK wishes to build a 3rd runway at Heathrow to handle predicted increases in demand. [Personally, given Peak Oil, I'm not sure airplane-as-flying-bus will be so prevalent by the time that work is done... Actually, I think it's an open question whether air travel will survive, which I guess is one of the reasons Richard Branson is interested.]
c)You do have the Chunnel, so the UK is not quite the island it once was.
d) You have plenty of railroads, and (compared to N. America) higher density and shorter distances for travel, i.e., the combination of:
electrified trains
electric cars
and some hybrid trucks
should work pretty well. Unlike the US, I've always found UK passenger trains pretty useful, and the Chunnel trip from London to Paris beats the airport combination.
BUT, can you tell us: what's your model for a post-petroleum UK, especially for shipping & air travel:
how much of UK's trade comes from shipping that could be replaced by more Chunnels, or maybe by battery-powered short-distance boats?
how much UK shipping is longer-distance? What's your model for handling that?
-John Mashey
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 3:42 am
26 Jan 2008
But it is just that, fantasy.
Reduce oil use with plugin hybrids and electric powered mass transportation and oil will last until better technology makes liquid fuel combustion for transportation obsolete. Long range trucks and buses, not replaced with electric rail, could be powered with resonant induction recharge strips under the surface of special charging lanes.
As land and water based transportation goes off liquid fuel, air travel can use the remainder, untiil even aircraft are converted to plugin hybrid. Battery technology could approach the power density of liquid fuel fairly quickly with breakthroughs like ambient temperature superconduction. Meanwhile the liquid fuel for takeoff could be produced with algae solar collector technology mounted on roofs.
But even takeoff might be electric powered someday soon. Think about resonant superconducting inductive power transfer from under the runway surface.
These are better fantasies than peak oil.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Steve Erickson Posted 5:06 pm
27 Jan 2008
One system he left out is intercropping and its variants, such as alley cropping. This is really just polyculture that is more spatially explicit. For example, different crops grown in alternating rows or blocks. In the biofuel fantasy, the perennial cellulose crop would be grown in alternating rows or blocks with annual soil miners (corn, soy). There are lots of variants and higher yields per unit area for the soil miners are typical due to improved soil structure, organic matter, nutrients, etc., as well as microclimate amelioration. If the system is more structurally diverse, then microclimate improvement is probably more pronounced. For example, in the PNW of the US, strips of N-fixing Red Alder trees being managed by coppicing with pasture or annual crops in-between.
The Prairie Dog system actually has a lot of potential, but a system of using chickens to harvest the crop might be more realistic. Add a mixmaster to the fuel tube on the biodiesel tractor and you've got a sustainable system! Sorry, all you vegans and vegetarians out there. I just couldn't resist.
Steve E.
Whidbey Environmental Action Network
Permalink