"If America can win a race to the moon, we can win a race for a battery," Bill Clinton said last night on TV, stumping for Hillary. He also pointed out that if our cars got 100 mpg, the rise in fuel prices -- which is inevitable -- will have a much smaller economic impact. In short, he thinks America needs to get its shit together and start leading the world again with innovation.
Easier said than done, in my opinion. We seem to be going backwards at present. All three of the remaining presidential hopefuls claim to be big supporters of corn ethanol.
Keep in mind that there is no such thing as commercially produced cellulosic ethanol, so the following is based on an assumption that may never come to fruition. Imagine for a moment that the picture to the right, a power plant being fed a continuous supply of coal, is instead a cellulose ethanol refinery, and instead of coal in those cars, you have cellulose.
Now, instead, assume it is a power plant again, but keep the cellulose in the train cars.
There have been plenty of tests that burn biomass in coal-fired power plants. It works fine and would be mostly carbon neutral. The only reason we don't burn cellulose in them today is because the cost of growing, harvesting, and shipping this bulky substance can't compete with coal, which is energy-dense and comes from a hole in the ground.
My point here is that the cost of transport will be similar for cellulosic fuel ... except that cellulosic ethanol refineries would also have to build new rail lines from scratch, and 80 percent of the energy in that liquid fuel will be lost as waste heat moving a car.
OK, switch your mental image back one more time to the biofuel refinery, and put the coal back into the train cars. The Nazis made diesel fuel from coal with the Fischer-Tropsch process, and South Africa does it presently. It is a tried and true technology, but unfortunately it retains all the disadvantages of coal.
- Power plant using coal
- Biofuel refinery using cellulose
- Power plant using cellulose
- Biofuel refinery using coal
Let's assume we finally have a price on carbon. Suddenly, coal isn't the cheapest thing going, which possibly makes burning biomass cost competitive. But wait -- the cellulose refineries want that biomass, too. Who gets it? Power plants or fuel refineries?
Coal is more carbon intensive than oil. Coal is our major contributor of greenhouse gases. Who should get it? There isn't anywhere near enough cellulose to meet our liquid fuel consumption, let alone our other energy requirements.
Increase the efficiency of transport by a factor of four and the price of liquid fuel can increase to $14 a gallon without impacting your budget (the Prius was a factor of two). With efficiencies like that, we will be using four times less liquid fuel, and even converting coal to liquid (which I'm not suggesting we consider) would release about three times less carbon than our cars today. That would (in theory) spread our oil use out for something like 200 years and free up our limited biomass (cellulose) to help the other renewables displace coal's CO2 footprint.
Humanity must make radical advances in energy efficiency and find ways to stay happy using much less energy. The internal combustion car was a creature spawned by dirt-cheap liquid fuel. It will soon become history. This idea that we will simply displace gasoline and diesel with ethanol and biodiesel in today's cars is a short-sighted and destructive distraction. The biofuels being produced with today's technologies and methodologies, with a few minor exceptions, are even worse than fossil fuels for global warming and are also directly exacerbating the biodiversity extinction event.
We will always have need of liquid fuels, of course, but we will have to stop squandering it in cars. It won't be a voluntary thing, either. We will get around mostly on electrified transport. A tank of liquid fuel may be in many vehicles, but it will be treated like liquid gold -- something you use only when a battery poops out or you need more range for a short burst. Driving more than, say, 100 miles a day will be something that will need extra budgeting. How many of us drive more than 100 miles in a day, and how often do we do it? How hard would it be to rent a liquid-fueled vehicle for a vacation or road trip? How many people who do live in their cars will find a way not to?
We only have about 50 years of oil left, give or take a decade or two. But one thing is certain: the price is only going up. The priority should not be to find ways to replace it in our cars. The priority should be finding ways to reduce liquid fuel use by a factor of least three or four ... or more.
A comment made in a post by James Hansen has been sitting in the back of my mind:
Available oil reserves will be exploited eventually, regardless of efficiency standards on vehicles, and the CO2 will be emitted to the atmosphere. The climate effect of oil is nearly independent of how fast we burn the oil, because much of the CO2 remains in the air for centuries ... the point is this: oil will not determine future climate change. Coal will.
This argument rests on the assumption that all oil will be burned in the next fifty years or so. However, if it gets expensive enough, and if we can increase transport efficiency fourfold, we may be leaving most of it in the ground for centuries. Cellulosic biofuels, should they ever arrive, may well be competing with power plants for biomass in the future, hobbling our efforts to displace coal. But the biggest danger is that we will begin coal-to-liquid conversion once oil prices make it economically competitive, which would be worse than burning coal in power plants.
I repeat: The priority should be finding ways to reduce liquid fuel use by a factor of least three and finding ways to displace coal. This emphasis on finding biofuel substitutes for oil is a short-sighted and counterproductive distraction.
Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp
Two takes on school lunches, plus other tasty morsels from around the web
Comments
View as Flat
amazingdrx Posted 12:40 pm
17 Mar 2008
Pure delusional thinking. It just is not so.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:53 pm
17 Mar 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 1:22 pm
17 Mar 2008
Or come to think of weeds and algae that otherwise are converted to methane that is released into the atmosphere.
We just can't concede this point to the cellulosic fuel proponents.
That extra biomass at risk of fire or methane release from fertilizer run off ought to be biodigested and added back to the soil anyway. that way the portion of the carbon that would be released anyway as methane would be used for clean energy and to build up soil.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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AndyO Posted 1:35 pm
17 Mar 2008
Available oil reserves will be exploited eventually, regardless of efficiency standards on vehicles, and the CO2 will be emitted to the atmosphere.
That may be, but need not be, so. It's not hard to imagine another scenario where a superior transportation method prevails over oil in the marketplace until the oil is left beneath. The longer we leave the oil in the ground, the longer we have to innovate new solutions that can win in the marketplace.
The research community wants to get working but we lack the national leadership for a major research mobilization.
I agree entirely on the need for efficiency and end use innovation. Especially for biofuels, we need to insist on getting the most "miles per acre."
Why everyone thinks of transportation fuels when discussing energy crops is mystery to me. But there's been a lot of work done on energy crops for power, combined heat and power and plain old heat. We can use it in many boilers, especially if gasifying the biomass in combination with existing boilers to displace coal.
In the Senate Farm Bill there are provisions for incentives for "Rural Repowering," which would aid boiler conversion from fossil fuels to energy crops or other biomass. This builds markets in the short term for energy crops. If efforts are targeted to smaller projects we can get a number of them going and get lots of experience.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:40 pm
17 Mar 2008
This is the problem, give them that first false premise and they run with it.
And they can't seem to understand why it is not carbon neutral either. Bizzare.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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AndyO Posted 1:49 pm
17 Mar 2008
Any biomass burned is biomass not returned to the soil, and that puts carbon back into the atmosphere that the plants removed. You could only do this in a carbon neutral way if it were biomass that would otherwise burn, like forest fire feeding dead wood.
That doesn't quite follow. The benefit of energy crops is that fossil fuels are displaced. That means that ancient dinosaur carbon is kept in the ground. The biomass carbon is recently captured from the atmosphere and then returned. It's one carbon cycle. To plan on just amassing unburned biomass is, er, unpractical from a fire safety perspective.
Now, there's also biochar, which does return carbon directly to the soil.
We just can't concede this point to the cellulosic fuel proponents.
Are there really camps?
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:40 pm
17 Mar 2008
In a way this is unfortunate, because instead of being a purely technical problem, it becomes a an urban planning problem, in other words, it starts to involve changes in culture, like denser housing and denser suburbia. But it's really the only way to go -- even if we assumed all cars could become electrified, that would still mean doubling the coal generating capacity, according to my calculations (obviously if you don't use renewables).
It seems as if a substantial part of the population would prefer to live in walkable communities -- witness the much higher housing pridces, the closer you get to the center of many cities -- but the buildup isn't happening fast enough.
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amazingdrx Posted 4:10 pm
17 Mar 2008
To grow that biomass for the fuel that you think provides a clean carbon cycle, plant matter that would normally die and return to the soil is instead burned. The carbon cycle is interrupted.
And there goes your fuel's carbon neutrality.
The dead wood or grass that poses a fire hazard in these times of GHG drought and firestorm emergency would be put into biodigestors. No more fire hazard. Similarly with weed and algae overgrowth in water ways, the biogas would be turned into clean kwh to back up a renewable power grid.
With fertilizer and manure run off acting on dead plant matter from weed overgrowth, methane is released, a 23 times worse GHG than CO2. If the weeds are instead digested and used for clean energy and to produce organic fertilizer, GHG is saved several ways.
Chemical fertilizer releases huge amounts of GHG from fossil fuels in the manufacture, transport, and application. It is also destroying farm economics, leading to financial failure of family farms.
Organic ag and energy policy can go together to make farm waste biogas, solar, and wind farms a whole new source of farm income and inexpensive GHG free energy for consumers.
Gas guzzling agrichem crops that destroy the carbon sink activity of the living soil will never lower gas prices with fuel farming. And produce twice the GHG of oil with corn based ethanol, and one and a half times the GHG for cellulosic ethanol.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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314159265 Posted 9:17 pm
17 Mar 2008
A fleet of small truck sized wood pyrolysis and wood oil (pre-)refinery units drawn by oxen, strolling thru the forest, taking up dead trees and stuff into their cauldrons, producing char coal to be left there, and diverse fractions of wood oil & tar for consumption by civilization. The wood gas would be used for process heat plus gas-turbinic electricity production.
Distributed carbon negative chemical industry. Could that work?
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Erik Hoffner Posted 11:03 pm
17 Mar 2008
Yes, there are sects in the 'ol Gristmill that will contest all things biofuels including cellulosic, cadres that take a more measured view, those that just hate first generation ethanol, others that attack mostly palm oil for biodiesel...we've got it all, baby.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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amazingdrx Posted 12:08 am
18 Mar 2008
But it wasn't some fuel farm haters that came up with those GHG figures for ethanol from various sources. It was actual scientists. Twice the GHG of oil based fuel for corn ethanol, and 1 1/2 times the GHG for cellulosic ethanol.
Guzzling biomass as gas or burning it up for electricity has been busted. It's a GHG crime against the climate.
Confess and repent fuel farmers and gas guzzlers! Barack? Come on, admit it.
Plugin hybrids charged up from a renewable smart grid rolled out over the next 10 to 20 years is the green replacement for gas guzzling, forget ethanol no matter what it's from.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 12:18 am
18 Mar 2008
Instead of charcoal for soil ammendment, you get partially digested wood chips soaked in organic fertilizer. Robots inject the slurry underground around still living trees and around seedlings planted for reforestation.
Robots that plugin to renewable electric power and are controlled remotely by operators working in a new civilian conservation corps.
The biogas from the wood chips used to backup the renewable power grid.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:05 am
18 Mar 2008
I was also a global warming agnostic until enough evidence showed up. I'm leery, in light of how the other biofuels have turned out, but obligated to reserve judgement until this fuel is actually produced in quantity. That is when it will flush out problems. In theory, a fuel that uses lightly fertilized, rain-irrigated wild grasses from unarable land and lumber waste, etc should be better. In theory it won't displace food crops, carbon sinks and biodiversity the way existing fuels are doing. But existing biofuels were also touted as being green.
You can understand why people are skeptical at this point. But that's good. Skepticism is the backbone of the scientific method. A total lack of skepticism (naïve unquestioning acceptance of a warm fuzzy idea) is what got the present biofuel boondoggle going. Cellulosic won't be embraced with unquestioned enthusiasm the way the existing fuels were.
It's not hard to imagine another scenario where a superior transportation method prevails over oil in the marketplace until the oil is left beneath. The longer we leave the oil in the ground, the longer we have to innovate new solutions that can win in the marketplace
I couldn't agree more.
"...we need to insist on getting the most "miles per acre."
I'm not sure it is that simple. You get a lot more miles per acre from corn than soybeans. You also get a lot more miles per acre from palm oil than corn. And sugarcane, which is consuming the Cerrado, gets a lot more miles per unit of energy input than even lab tested cellulosic--the real measure of profit. Although cellulosic, in theory, will produce more energy per acre than cane, it will cost more to get that energy.
The science has shown that it takes about half a century before you can displace enough oil to make up for putting that carbon sink into the atmosphere (some crop/land combos are 20 years, some are 400 years). But as I said, if the feedstock for cellulosic turns out to be as environmentally benign as its proponents hope, I won't fault it.
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/ethanolenergy.jpg
Why everyone thinks of transportation fuels when discussing energy crops is mystery to me. But there's been a lot of work done on energy crops for power, combined heat and power and plain old heat. We can use it in many boilers, especially if gasifying the biomass in combination with existing boilers to displace coal.
Again I agree. That was a main gist of my post. Energy crops don't need to be liquid fuels. Converting to liquid is energy and money intensive. Liquid fuel use needs to be sharply curtailed with efficiency gains, which are technically obtainable today, combined with culture changes (as Jon pointed out) such as lifestyles that mesh well with partially or fully electrified cars that have a 100 mile range.
In the Senate Farm Bill there are provisions for incentives for "Rural Repowering," which would aid boiler conversion from fossil fuels to energy crops or other biomass. This builds markets in the short term for energy crops. If efforts are targeted to smaller projects we can get a number of them going and get lots of experience.
I'm not familiar with the details of that bill. Certainly, wood stoves and wood pellet stoves are a use of biomass to heat homes. They have been around forever and are not going to make any kind of appreciable difference.
I see nothing wrong with the bill promoting cogen by burning waste wood etc. If it is trying to get people to convert crops into liquid fuels, and then burn them in boilers etc, then it is a farce attempting to increase consumption of liquid fuels in the name of profit. You can burn corn directly without wasting the money and energy turning it into a liquid first.
Most liquid fuels are eserved for transport. That will become more exaggerated as time goes by and the costs of liquid fuels rise. Using it to heat houses and fire boilers is an inefficient use of a resource that is going to get real expensive real soon. That is why oil is not a popular fuel for public power stations today.
My dream vehicle would be a lightweight, plug-in hybrid with a diesel backup motor.I'd fill that small tank maybe two or three times a year.
A car like that is technically feasible today, but not yet economically feasible. . But then, the biofuels being burned today are also not economically feasible. The government has given the illusion that they are with subsidies--a dollar a gallon for biodiesel.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:25 am
18 Mar 2008
From Newsweek:
... Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia, among others. In order to grow biofuels, farmers have gone to fertile land near them, rain forest or grassland, and they have started to grow biofuels. But when you do the calculations, there are immense amounts of soils and vegetation on the earth, and when you clear them, carbon is released. For every one of these cases, where you are clearing native ecosystems to grow biofuels, we found that the amount of carbon dioxide released from cutting the trees, burning some of them, and having their roots decay was much, much greater than the net benefit provided by the biofuels. We found that there was a period of time where you do break even, where the biofuel started providing an advantage. The longest was 400 years and the shortest was 17, but the average was half a century. It might give us a benefit 50 years later, but it's not a very wise environmental policy.
The world needs food; people need food. If I have fertile land, I can't eat electricity. Food demand is going up around the world, which is why the price of food is going up. If you use farmland in North America to grow biofuels, [you're forcing a farmer somewhere else to clear-cut forest to grow food crops]. You've effectively cut down a rain forest. That has a startlingly large effect.
There are many things we can do to use fossil energy more effectively, but it's not ethical to try to deny people in developing countries the right to clear their land to grow food and feed themselves.
We looked at all of the current biofuels that are being made around the world and asked if they were causing native ecosystems to be turned into land that would be used to grow the crop. Essentially, all of them are doing that.
One more thing. Some posters have a habit of jerking chains (not referring to you, Erik). In short order they can get everybody barking. Dialogue goes down the toilet at that point. This has derailed several discussions. I suggest that everyone strive to recognize when your chain is being yanked and do your best to ignore it.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:09 am
18 Mar 2008
He claims that burning biomass in a power plant is not carbon neutral because that biocarbon would otherwise go back to soil. There is some truth there, but it's not that simple.
If you burn biomass for energy, you release a lot of the carbon as CO2. But you don't release all of it. Some of the carbon remains as soot and/or char. How much? I have no idea, though I suspect it would depend on the details of your process. I know that agro-char production extracts the wood gases for energy and leaves behind quite a bit of carbon -- that being the point of the process. Probably a process optimized for energy production would burn more of the carbon, and leave less behind. But there will always be some left over, unless you take heroic measures to make sure that every bit of the carbon burns.
Contrast to the natural carbon cycle: Alot of the carbon in dead grass or trees goes back to soil. But certainly not all of it. Quite of bit of it is released by the decomposition process, as organisms consume the cellulose for fuel. (This is also, effectively, a combustion process, but happening more slowly and at biological temperatures. But it's still all about the oxidation.) How much is released, vs. what stays behind? Again, I have no idea, but I'm sure it depends greatly on the local ecosystem type and immediate environmental conditions.
So the bottom line is, it's not that simple. Energy production from biomass could also sequester carbon. Conversely, many ecosystems will probably not net sequester carbon, because the soil organic matter will break down at the same rate that it accumulates. Complicated.
If anyone who cite sources for the amount of carbon retained from either energy production or biological breakdown, I would be fascinated to be educated on the specifics of this issue.
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314159265 Posted 4:22 am
18 Mar 2008
We could as well burn all that dead wood. Even a complete burn (no charcoal left) would make not much additional GHG, perhaps even less in short sight, for manmade CO2 is less a potent GHG than natural methane.
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:53 am
18 Mar 2008
Collecting deadfall wood for fuel on an industrial scale is probably not a good idea, since the collection process itself would significantly impact the remaining forest ecosystem. But we may have to do something about it anyway, for fuel load reasons.
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amazingdrx Posted 6:23 am
18 Mar 2008
It's just that simple.
Burning it in power plants? Same thing. Small amounts of ash are left to bury, very small amounts.
Pyrolization? 10% is wood gas, the rest is left as char that could be buried. But will it be discarded? Not by for profit industries voluntarily.
Biodigestion, using manure and food waste added to cellulosic biomass. Clean energy production from biogas, organic fertilizer by product that revives dead soil ecosystems.
Cellulose produces methane when it is submerged in wetlands and exposed to gfertilizer and manure run off. Organic fertilizer doesn't run off.
Yes, regular logging creates havoc in the forest. Modern equipment designed for least inmpact, and safety, efficiency, and productivity can remedy most of that damage. It's that or devestating mega GHG releasing firestorm in many western forests.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Pangolin Posted 9:04 am
18 Mar 2008
Combustion- 99% of carbon released to atmosphere + carbon cost of transportation
Cellulosic ethanol- up to 150% of carbon released to atmosphere due to knock-on effects.
Pyrolisis/Biochar to fertilization
Cellulose to pyrolisis yield= heat + biogas + biofuel liquids + char (30% original carbon)
Char as fertilizer binds equal carbon in soil fungi= 60% of original carbon sequestered on geological time scales.
Char as soil amendment reduces methane and NOX release from soils compared to fertilized soils reducing fertilizer inputs and GHG outputs from farmland.
This appears to be valid in all temperature/hydrological regimes where plant growth is abundant. It doesn't work in dry sand or Antarctic conditions.
Cellulose to compost/digestion
Cellulose to digester = biogas (methane) + H2O + CO2+ biosolid nutrient fertilizer
In tropical regimes (no ground freezing)- Biosolids as fertilizer promote several (3?) growth cycles before being converted to CO2 (see laterite soils, or dig under a redwood forest). Long term carbon sequestration is 0% as hydrological cycles are more limiting to plant growth/forest cover in these regimes. Any advantage afforded by additional fertilization is temporary.
In temperate regimes with ground freezing....Biosolids as fertilizer promote several (4?) growth cycles that encourage deep root growth.
Freeze thaw cycles push the aerobic region of soils above dead root mass promoting carbon sequestration in soils.
The percentage of carbon sequestration would be unknown and very site specific.
Plowing, removal of forest cover or climate change from a temperate to a tropical regime all release stored carbon.
Given that we have several gigatons of excess carbon in the atmosphere now and limited means of sequestering that carbon the method that sequesters the MOST atmospheric carbon should be given precedence. If you are locally setting up a cellulose digester and a pyrolisis rig is anywhere within the budget ballpark pyrolisis should be used in preference.
In none of the above cases can we pull enough cellulose from the ecosystem to fuel automobiles at anything resembling present rates of fuel consumption. In any case asphalt roads are going to be prohibitively expensives (see your city council minutes) very, very soon so don't look forward to driving your plug-in hybrid very fast or far.
Cellulose is not an industrial solution to anything.
Put the Carbon Back
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Orfintain Posted 11:14 am
18 Mar 2008
2)I think alot of confusion comes from the term cellulosic ethanol I see people crunching numbers for paralysis (which is a waste removal technology that generates fuel as a bi-product)
This should not be confused with more efficient enzymatic digestion methods which are in various stages of research
Undgrad Student in Biological Systems Engineering VT
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Ron Steenblik Posted 1:05 pm
18 Mar 2008
Conventional ethanol is the best choice for a sustainable biofuel [?!!], according to research recently conducted by Context Network LLC. On March 7, the Iowa-based consulting firm released a 56-page paper, titled "A Review of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, and Its Impact on U.S. Grain and Oilseeds Production", which assessed whether the requirements of the EISA could be met and the impact of those requirements. It was assessed in three time frames: short term (2008 to 2010), medium term (2011 to 2015) and long term (2016 to 2022).
According to the paper's principle author, Jim Murphy, the most significant finding was that cellulosic ethanol has little chance of becoming a major contributor to the biofuels market. "While there's high hopes for cellulosic ethanol, it's going to develop much more slowly than people think," he said. The paper noted that there are only two cellulosic ethanol pilot plants currently operating in the United States. Other demonstration plants won't begin producing until 2010 or 2011, making the short-term EISA requirement of having 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2012 unattainable.
Medium- and long-term outlooks also failed to provide positive results for cellulosic ethanol. "It becomes a more chronic situation as time goes on," Murphy said. "The law mandates blending of 16 billion gallons [of cellulosic ethanol] by 2022. Our estimate is that, at best, we're going to reach somewhere around 3 billion." [My emphasis]
The Executive Summary [PDF warning] of the study itself concludes, ominously, that "EISA will solidify the shifts that have taken place in agriculture and permanently reallocate the distribution of agricultural commodities in the U.S. and the rest of the world."
These are only my personal opinions.
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Tom Philpott Posted 1:44 pm
18 Mar 2008
Victual Reality
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:03 pm
18 Mar 2008
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/eia-forecasts-s.h ...
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amazingdrx Posted 2:03 pm
18 Mar 2008
Biodigestors are already in wide use on farms and sewage plants. Pyrolysis? Experimental so far.
"The percentage of carbon sequestration would be unknown"
1.8 tons of cO2 per acre per year on Minnesota natural prairie. The prairie soil was 20 feet deep when first plowed. Carbon stored for millenia. That's what organic fertilizer from biodigestion could restore to devestated farm land.
Organic fertilizer is different from fertilizing tropical fields with agrichemicals as in Brazil. But I can see pyrolisis combined with biodigestion in tropics. Terra preta soil appears to hold colonies of active soil bacteria from being washed out by rain.
Soaking char in organic fertilizer from biodigestion could produce a soil structure like that of the prairie.
Anyway, all the chemically destroyed soil from agrichem farming would become carbon sink if it were revived with organic fertilizer. Add some char along with the fertilizer. that's fine. Experimentation is needed with pyrolisis.
Biodigestion's benefits atre proven. Pyrolisis of manure is a waste of energy and resources. Better to biodigest it with a portion of cellulose biomass. And char wood based cellulose.
Interestingly, in more and more dairy farms, wood chips are used for cow bedding, then the whole mess with manure and bedding is digested producing electricity with the biogas. The partially digested chips are dried and used for bedding again. they are better the second tiime around.
Several breweries are now running biogas from their waste through solid oxide fuel cells, with waste heat providing cogebnerated steam. Wood gas from pyrolisis would also run these same fuel cells. Providing more electricity at a cheaper cost than combustion.
Waste heat could power the pyrolisis and produce either process heat or more electricity with a secondary turbine.
These solid oxide fuel cell/turbine power plants have been clocked at 70% efficiency.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 2:14 pm
18 Mar 2008
On top of the studies predicting that cellulosic ethanol will release 1 1/2 times the GHG of gasoline.
It should be dead, but instead it's the most widely discussed energy policy provision in this election cycle. Media is behind the curve. No wonder Barack can only give a mention of plugin hybrids.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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314159265 Posted 9:58 pm
18 Mar 2008
Other benefits aren't perhaps that easily measurable/redeemable, like nutritient absorption, reduced nitrogeno GHG emission.
But, if those animal factories had to dearly pay for the pollution from their manure dumping/runoff, they might like to pay some "carbon farmer" to suck it up with biochar.
Direct them subsidies to the most carbon efficient farms.
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radrerun Posted 7:12 am
19 Mar 2008
One, there isn't enough discarded wood to make enough fuel for the long-term.
Two (the most important point in my mind that fellow enviros infuriatingly forget), although the project is touted as being able to bring a monetary advantage to reinvest in a disadvantaged neighborhood (read: poor and in the ghetto[I live there, too]), the particulate matter that would be belched forth would be detrimental to the surrounding community and its inhabitants. Scrubbers have not been included in the potential plant design, as far as I know.
The current Phillips neighborhood (already host to a superfund site) wouldn't benefit from this in the slightest.
So not only should people be worrying about the fact that there's a huge irony in continuously growing energy to MAKE energy, we need to remember that the trendiness of this biofuel movement has more to be worried about than excited for in terms of health.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:16 am
19 Mar 2008
Well, on Monday, 10 March, they posted their final posting on Biopact. It makes interesting reading. Basically, they have decided to leave reporting on biofuels to others and to concentrate on promoting biochar production, especially in the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Here is an excerpt:
Biopact creates the Biochar Fund
Ideas and people come and go, debates shift and opportunities change. Over the past years Biopact has been instrumental in getting a simple message across: if biofuels are going to produced, it would be interesting to take the potential of the Global South into account. The message has added a perspective to a debate that has kept growing more complex and controversial. Biofuels for transport offer certain social and environmental advantages when they are produced in a smart way. But their (indirect) effects can just as well become so problematic that they outweigh these benefits.
...
There is a new land use strategy that could make more sense. It is based on biochar -- charcoal obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass -- used as a soil amendment. Biochar cures unhealthy soils and makes them fertile. This way, slash-and-burn farmers can halt deforestation, and grow more food and biomass. Biochar also doubles as a carbon sink for which credits are available.
If biochar is used as the central ingredient of a holistic development approach, it offers an opportunity to help end hunger amongst communities at the forest margins, it can help slow deforestation, it may contribute in a significant way to reducing emissions from land use change and it can be coupled to renewable energy production amongst people currently without access to modern energy services.
The Biopact sees an interesting opportunity in the concept. This is why it has created the Biochar Fund, a small social profit organisation aimed at rethinking ways to tackle the interrelated issues of hunger, deforestation, energy poverty and climate change. ... [The article continues.]
I wish them luck.
These are only my personal opinions.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:43 am
19 Mar 2008
They are actually putting their efforts to something useful.
Biomass is a great way to sequester carbon.
Assuming it's trees that don't get cut down, or if you bury it.
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:12 pm
20 Mar 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 4:24 pm
20 Mar 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:57 am
28 Mar 2008
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/reworld/stor ...
This is vastly more efficient than trying to turn it into liquid first. But buried way down in the article we find this line:
"although current high world grain prices are providing competition [for cropland to grow biomass]."
an innovative, integrated supply chain for secure fuel supply in partnership with local suppliers such as Thames Valley Energy, a not-for-profit renewable energy agency. The security of fuel supply for the required 130,000 tonnes of biomass annually, particularly during winter, was a risk factor at the start of the project, but this has been overcome by developing co-operative arrangements with suppliers.
Site tenants at STE can direct waste wood, non-recyclable paper, packaging and cardboard to the SH&P plant, thus reducing waste disposal costs and diverting a reusable resource from consuming landfill space. Fibre Fuel Limited, a subsidiary company of SH&P, coverts this non-recyclable fibre, such as waxed cardboard, laminates, photographic paper and mixed papers, into fuel cubes. To improve the calorific value of the fibre fuel, non-PVC plastics are added, up to a volume of 15%. The Fibre Fuel cubes are then used in the SH&P plant, a process which avoids 100,000 tonnes of material being disposed of in landfill.
More than one quarter of SH&P's wood fuel is sourced from within 50 miles (80 km), which returns £3 million ($6 million) each year into the rural economy. Suppliers of large biomass (forestry and tree surgery waste) or wood waste (sawmill offcuts) deal directly with SH&P.
Thames Valley Energy (TVE) is one of two companies that acts as resource aggregator for small and medium producers and has a contract to provide SH&P with 10,000 tonnes of woodchip per year for 15 years starting in 2006. TVE liaises with local sources of wood such as tree surgeons, woodland clearance operations, foresters, contractors and farmers with dedicated short rotation coppice willows.
Initially, most of the material will be clean chipped wood from tree surgeons, but TVE hopes that by 2021, 70% of the supply with be from short rotation coppicing (SRC) of willows. Farmers growing coppice are offered a guaranteed minimum price for dry wood chips delivered to SH&P, with a possible premium. The growers group established by TVE currently has 14 members growing 110 hectares and the organization is seeking to increase its membership and the numbers of farmers growing willow coppice, although current high world grain prices are providing competition.
Farmers who plant SRC on set-aside land may qualify for a planting grant - worth £1000/hectare ($2000/ha) in 2006 - and still receive their Single Farm Payments. `Our fifteen year short rotation coppice contract with Slough Heat and Power offers local farmers a fantastic opportunity to diversify into energy crop production, thereby allowing them to save greenhouse gas emissions and improve local wildlife,' said Dr Gillian Alker, of TV Bioenergy Coppice Limited, a company growing willow coppice with local farmers.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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turanga leela Posted 8:11 am
23 Apr 2008
Completely from the standpoint of stopping global warming, there are huge uncertainties about the possible benefits of replacing fossil fuel consumption with biomass, be it for liquid fuels or gasified in a CHP (combined heat and power) operation. The most biomass we can sustainably remove in the US--that's not touching any land set aside for conservation purposes, only using crop waste, forest product industry waste, dedicated energy crops like miscanthus or forage sorghum or what have you, "used chip fat" as Monbiot says, etc.--is one billion tons. NREL did a study on this back in 2004, commonly known as the "Billion Ton Study." This would displace roughly 20-40% of our current fossil fuel use, and that % depends heavily on the efficiency of conversion. We really have no idea where it will fall along that continuum because there are few next generation biomass liquid fuel companies operating, and all of them are operating in an experimental capacity. Hence, as BioDiversivist says, there isn't yet a product that's entering the marketplace. The efficiency variable will only become clearer with time, but we need to get everyone's heads wrapped around the fact that NO MORE THAN 40% of our current fuel use will EVER be met with biomass in ANY form. Period. And probably considerably less than that.
That said, it's an important 20-40% if you subscribe to the Pacala-Socolow wedge model of climate change (maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here--I'd love to hear any objections to that model, though, because I haven't heard any yet besides objections to the inclusion of individual technologies, such as coal with CCS, nuclear, or biomass). Today, the world consumes a total of 350 quadrillion British thermal units (Btus) of energy per year. That's a lot of energy--and nearly all of it comes from fossil fuels. The wedge model is designed to help 1) stabilize emissions, meaning level off the use of fossil fuels, and then 2) reduce GHG emissions by at least half by midcentury, the goal outlined in the IPCC report--the "middle of the road" compromise between the low and high end. Most environmentalists, including my organization, take the high road--at least 80-90% by midcentury, and that's an important point to make. Pacala and Socolow point out that you need six wedges just to level off emissions and about a dozen more to bring the total GHG down by half. And each "wedge" represents the maximum capacity for each technology. Conservation and efficiency are one wedge--nuclear is another, wind is another, hydro is another, biomass is another, and so on. Hydrogen is not included, one because it's an energy carrier and not a producer, and two because it's not available today. Their biomass estimates include food crop based fuel and biomass gasification, not cellulosic ethanol. So what would happen if you removed all biomass from the model? You'd have to make it up with something else. The model assumes full capacity for solar, wind, conservation, efficiency, and geothermal--the best liked options, at least amongst the more strident in the environmental community. So if you max those out, what have you got left? Coal with CCS, nuclear, and various technologies that apply to those industries. Keep in mind, too, that this model applies to all energy needs--electricity, heat, and transportation fuels--and if you were to meet all transportation needs through electricity, as some advocate on this board, you'd be adding that demand to the grid. All of this is just to say that those who are advocating biomass energy strategies aren't necessarily in the pocket of some industry or other, nor are they dupes--some of them are taking a look at the energy system as a whole and trying to figure out how we're going to rebuild the darn thing from the ground up.
Now, to the point about all biomass energy increasing atmospheric GHG concentrations--to a point, that's correct. But it misses the point that the amount of carbon in the plant matter depends on the type of plant. In the case of annuals, especially domesticated plants like corn, that's true, because we've bred those plants to put as much carbon into the fruit as possible. They are not designed to be hardy or last more than one season. In the case of native perennials, over half of the carbon is sent down into the roots, where it becomes incorporated into the soil because of the deep root structure of those plants. This is also why corn and other food crops are highly prone to erosion, whereas native perennials are not. If you were to mow off those grasses, make bio-oil and char through pyrolysis, and then incorporate the char without a full tilling, you'd be returning most of the char to the soil. Now, of course that means that the more char you return, the less carbon is available for the fuel. But that's okay because we are looking at the low end of that 20-40% range anyway, and in the utopian future that all of us from Grist will implement through a hostile takeover, we will ration fuels and only allow liquid fuels to be used in situations where there are no substitutes (aviation, emergency vehicles, some shipping of vital goods to places where there's no rail infrastructure, etc). I would also highly recommend enforcing a policy in which any cellulosic ethanol plants that may be operating should be required to capture and geologically sequester the off-gassed CO2 from the fermentation process in deep saline aquifers.
Finally, you may have caught my facetious tone because we aren't running the world from our desktop computers as we type away into the blogosphere, much as we would like to. Those of us who are designing policies should look at the things that are most technologically feasible and cost effective and prioritize those for research and commercialization funds. In that scenario, biofuels may or may not make the cut--I for one am leaning towards the "maybe yes" side because I continually hear from researchers in the field that the main barriers to next generation fuels are cost-related and not technology-related. I also strongly encourage people not to give up at the first sign of technological difficulty--if we did, we would never have flexible PV cells and we'd still have 50 megawatt turbines for farm use only, and solar thermal would be a joke, much the way cellulosic fuels and hydrogen are today. Finally, as much as I've noticed you all love to hate Vinod Khosla, if it wasn't for easily-dupeable venture capitalists with lots of cash to throw around, we'd never commercialize any advanced technology--except maybe if we can get the military to spend some of its ginormous budget on things like PVs, hydrogen, fuel cells, and advanced biofuels. But then we'd have to deal with the military, and I'm not so keen on the idea.
Looking forward to your responses to my long winded and rambling post--and thank you, BioDiversivist, for keeping the discussion going about these vitally important issues, and for not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, then moving onto the next "magic solution," only to be disappointed that that one isn't 100% perfect either.
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Biodiversivist Posted 11:25 am
28 Apr 2008
I think we are going to find ways to radically cut energy use and also find ways to generate it in environmentally benign ways. To do that we have to remain vigilant and skeptical. Ideas that sound good at first (most ideas) but are eventually found wanting (most ideas), wither on the vine in a free market. Bad ideas that have the support of government and vested interests can suck capital via tax dollars for decades.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Backcut Posted 2:13 pm
28 Apr 2008
In the long run, it's better for us little guys to have a diversified energy base and competition for our energy dollars.
Great post, Turanga. We all could use a dose of reality once in a while. A buddy of mine has waiting on cellulosic ethanol to be economically viable for many years now but, still hasn't made that big investment. Maybe I'll work for him if he jumps into the game.
Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com
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