Mile high

Electric cars get better mileage 14

coalFrom a study published in this week’s Science Express ($ub Req’d):

Bioelectricity produces an average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol…

Given the limited area of land that is available to grow biofuels crops without causing direct or indirect land use impacts, bioenergy applications should maximize the efficiency with which a given land area is used to meet transportation and climate change goals.

Bioelectricity is the act of making electric power by burning biomass for boilers or turbines instead of fossil fuels like coal.

In a nutshell the study says that an electric car using electricity generated by burning biomass will get 81% more miles per acre than a car using cellulosic ethanol. That is equivalent to improving the purported American average of 24 mpg to 44 mpg, which coincidentally is also the improvement achieved by the Prius and Insight.

I touched on this subject in an article titled Misplaced Priorities over in Grist last year. Imagine replacing the coal in the above photo with corn or wood or hay. Something has to give.

Corn ethanol was also part of the study and as you might have guessed, faired much worse than cellulosic. Not studied by this paper are environmental impacts and costs:

Specifically, the competitiveness of biomass ethanol depends on the cost of petroleum, whereas the competitiveness of biomass electricity depends on the cost of coal, wind, hydro, solar, and nuclear.

Which of the above energy sources will be increasing in cost and which will be decreasing?

The study looked at pure internal combustion cars and pure battery powered electric cars. It did not look at plug-in hybrids, which would eliminate range constraints imposed by today’s battery technology.

The paper also said:

Two leading technology developments, cellulosic ethanol and electric vehicle batteries, provide alternative pathways for bioenergy-based transportation. Biomass can be converted into ethanol to power internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) or converted into electricity to power battery electric vehicles (BEVs). It is uncertain which pathway could reach technical and economic maturity first. The cellulosic ethanol pathway benefits from commercially available flex-fuel vehicles but requires significant investments in infrastructure as well as technology advancements to reduce costs for energy conversion. The bioelectricity pathway shows promise in existing distribution infrastructure and emerging commercial offerings of battery electric vehicles that meet technology challenges of range, cost, and charging time. Electricity produced from biomass is a near-term renewable energy source that can be implemented with biomass boilers, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants, or co-combustion with coal.

What we have here is a battle forming up between increasingly electrified transport (hybrid—plug-in-hybrid—fully electric) and corn ethanol powered internal combustion engines (cellulosic is and will probably always be just five years from economic viability). One side is championed by consumer demand being met by market forces and the other side is championed by our politicians who force us to pay to turn our own food into fuel and then pour it down our throats. These are the same politicians who subsidize oil with one hand and its competitor, biofuels with the other. If it hasn’t dawned on you yet that our politicians are not capable of solving complex problems like this, maybe it’s time it did. Take matters into your own hands. Make your next car purchase a hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or full electric when they arrive (on dealer lots next year).

The Renewable Fuels Association and the National Biodiesel Board are going to have their hands full debunking all of this peer-reviewed rubbish being published in rags like Science (see here and here).


You can listen to a Science podcast here.

My real name is Russ Finley. I live in Seattle, married with children. Suffice it to say that although I am trained and educated as an engineer, my passion is nature. I very much want my grandchildren to live on a planet where lions, tigers, and bears have not joined the long and growing list of creatures that used to be. In an attempt to minimize the workload on Grist editors responsible for turning my submissions into intelligible articles, I will also be posting on a seperate blog called Biodiversivist, which will contain articles in addition to those submitted to Grist.

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  1. stevereel's avatar

    stevereel Posted 8:19 pm
    08 May 2009

    Excellent story. I've been waiting for years for a reliable hybrid plug in or full electric with more range, say 200 miles on a charge. I live in a rural section of central Florida and a commuter designed electric car will leave me stranded.

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  2. Ken Johnson's avatar

    Ken Johnson Posted 9:21 pm
    08 May 2009

    But photovoltaic power produces something like 1000% more vehicle kilometers per acre than bioelectricity.

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  3. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 8:03 am
    09 May 2009

    But aren't long-range electric vehicles also 5 years away also?  And might that not be so bad?  Do we have to have long-range vehicles, in the long-term?  What about slow electric vehicles that don't kill people? And they've been on the market for a long time, they work, and they're not that expensive.  Yeah, I know that's a very unpopular idea, but something to consider.

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  4. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 10:09 am
    09 May 2009

    Jon,I agree. Inexpensive, around town electric cars should have a niche. The ones on the roads today all use lead acid batteries. They weigh more than the car in many cases. The car gets slower and slower as they discharge. You can only discharge them half way or they will be damaged. They are slow to charge and worst of all, you will have to replace them all in just a few years. They are not viable. It is all about the battery. That is about to change. A battery factory is being built in Indiana as I write to support the hybrid and electric car industry. There are several competing battery designs out there finishing field testing. Some are still lead-based but have life cycles similar to lithium based (you won't ever have to replace them).It seems to me that a car company could offer options. You could get a hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or an all electric around town version, all using the same battery pack. The cheapest by far would be the all-electric, all things being equal.

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  5. amazingdrx's avatar

    amazingdrx Posted 11:04 pm
    09 May 2009

    It looks like BYD has won the battle, 16k and a 60 mile range.  But will consumers ever be able to buy them with scams like ethanol in the way? 

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  6. amazingdrx's avatar

    amazingdrx Posted 9:27 am
    10 May 2009

    Look out if walmart buys BYD, auto showrooms at walmart?  They already sell tires and do oil changes.  Obama could encourage walmart to build US auto factories.  This whole ethanol scam, and other scams to keep gas guzzling going flies in the face of a real free market hurricane of change.Electric "fuel" costs the equivalent (in miles driven per dollar) to 70 cents per gallon.  If you have solar panels on your home or garage electric fuel would be free, after a few years payback period.  Detroit and the oil industry is fighting a losing battle, do we want our economy to go down with them?Wouldn't it be better to make GM and Chrysler  adapt?  Than make US all bankrupt?  We own their sorry asse(t)s now.

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  7. hapa's avatar

    hapa Posted 11:24 am
    10 May 2009

    the benefits of making transportation fuel-agnostic during a period of high uncertainty -- and of giving mass transit and other high volume carriage priority access to new liquid fuels -- should be apparent to anyone who doesn't wish they'd been born a rockefeller.

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  8. Clifford Wells's avatar

    Clifford Wells Posted 1:24 pm
    10 May 2009

    I live in an area where they grow a lot of sugarcane, so most all the packers burn bagasse for their power boilers and electrical needs.  Bagasse (one of my favorite words, pronounced "bag-azz") is simply sugar cane leaf that didn't make it into the cane grinder, and spent cellulose.  It must be dried in a rotary kiln and then burned in special boilers that meet all state and EPA requirements.  The new facility down here in the Rio Valley makes enough steam and electricity to sell some to other customers and the electric grid. Faced with declining landfill space and a growing population, several folks are starting to talk about WTE (waste to energy) incinerators to reduce the trash volume and sell the electricity.  The amount of yard waste that includes branches and leaf matter is truly incredible - vast piles of bio-fuels just rotting, waiting to be ground up and turned into mulch.  The problem is, many of these "mulch mountains" catch on fire and can burn for weeks if not months, and they do create a nasty liquid called "leachate" that can affext the groundwater. Simple answer:  burn it in a WTE incinerator that captures the heat potential in the cleanest and most efficient manner possible.  You could burn a good part of the MSW waste-stream as well.The part I am not so sure about is using a mono-culture approach to bio-electrical generation, unless it is a natural process such as with sugarcane bagasse.  Are you suggesting that we grow millions of acres of corn and switchgrass and other crops so we can burn it? Or was this just an example of the futility of making white whiskey out of corn to power cars?

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  9. human power Posted 6:39 pm
    10 May 2009

    What a great idea. Let's definitely burn all the biomass we can get our clear-cuttin' hands on. Considering recent (2007) research demonstrating that the particulates dumped into our air from combustion impacts I.Q. to the same extent as lead paint chips, we have only our children's minds to lose. And, who needs clean water? Burn everything that grows so we can all enjoy our just desserts: heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, impotence, cancer, and, did I mention intellegence-deficient children?What is more important to us, our children and grandchildren or driving everywhere we go? Our choice shows every day.

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  10. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 6:56 pm
    10 May 2009

    DrX,Your link led to two other links of interest:http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/04/13/chinese-plug-in-hybrid-byd-f3dm-has-sold-just-80-copies-in-fou/http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/04/14/wang-chuan-fu-byds-ceo-drinks-battery-fluid-to-prove-a-point/http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/index.htmLooks like they are testing that plug-in with fleets. Affordable all-electric cars with the range of today's cars are a long way off.Or how about this, HapaIf these fuels are so great, why don't we mandate their use in all military vehicles, Hummers, tanks, ships and planes? I suspect they could consume every drop we could make.Clifford,The latter.

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  11. taunger Posted 7:24 pm
    10 May 2009

    If the politcal battle is what you make it out to be, the endgame is predetermined.  the heartland states where ethanol is produced wil not be able to compete with the political power of the high population coastal states where electricity and mass transit will make more and more economic sense.  manufacturing will need to have cars that people in that area can afford, and that will mean electric  

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  12. Clifford Wells's avatar

    Clifford Wells Posted 7:25 pm
    10 May 2009

    Thanks for the reply, Bio-D (if I may be so personal).  And I'm sure you were playing with Hapa by suggesting we use ethanol as a strategic fuel. Ethanol is the worst possible strategic fuel. Strategic means "military." If you don't count it's horrible expense and lack of power density, it's flash-point makes it extremely dangerous and the fact that it is hydrophilic (water loving") means you can't hardly store it, pipe it, or even ship it.  Worse yet, even when metered with the best machinery to blend ethanol with gasoline, the stuff tends to separate in cold temperatires and stratify, which can lead to some vehicles running on E100 and others on E-zero.  As far as running ethanol in ships, planes, and trains, that is simply not going to work.I'm not kidding, wthanol is NOT a strategic fuel. It's an oxygenate for gasoline engines used to lower carbon monoxide levels. What part of that do you not understand, other than a few quarts of it might make a nice fuel for camping out this summer with a Coleman Lantern and stove?

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  13. hapa's avatar

    hapa Posted 9:16 pm
    10 May 2009

    yeah actually i think, since CTL or vaporware are the other possibilities, oil price increases will drive militaries around the world to greater use of surveillance and robotics, which have lower energy costs. "down with telecommurder!" the signs will say.

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  14. drewtiss Posted 11:23 pm
    30 Jun 2009

    What I am waiting right now is the Ford Magna car. Awwesome genuine ford parts. Having a 120 mpg is quite something to be wait upon.

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