Energy dependence seems to be the topic of the day, or at least the last two days. David Roberts posted a link yesterday to an eye-opening article about the surge of interest among the Amish of Ohio for solar PV panels. I had always assumed, wrongly, that the Amish eschewed electricity, period. Actually, they just don't like depending on the outside world.
Meanwhile, renewed violence in Nigeria, a major petroleum producer, is giving oil markets the jitters.
So is home-produced energy always better?
That is certainly a perennial argument made by proponents of biofuels. Yet as the share of corn for ethanol grows (27 percent of this year's U.S. crop), the nation's fuel supply will be increasingly subject to the vagaries of the weather. Here's a foretaste from the DTN Ethanol Center:
Corn has had a couple of wild-and-crazy weeks [on the Chicago Board of Trade], first rallying on planting delays and then collapsing on more planting progress than expected. Corn ran up over 30 cents and then fell over 40 cents. The decline also came into the bullish teeth of an extensive flooding problem in the Western Corn Belt. It is estimated by elevator sources that northwest Iowa will have to be 20 percent re-planted and southwest Iowa has been behind schedule right along. Flooding is also evident in Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota. The Toledo, Ohio, area is also flooded and elevator sources there say 10 percent of the corn will need to be replanted. [Emphasis added.]
It is always salutary to be reminded of the fact that crops yields are affected by factors largely beyond human control: precipitation and temperature. Rutgers University researchers James Eaves and Stephan Eaves made this point in a paper they released earlier this year: because of weather-induced corn yield fluctuations, the supply of ethanol produced from corn is not necessarily less inherently risky than the supply of oil.
That is not, of course to say that there aren't plenty of good reasons to reduce consumption of petroleum products. But the various alternatives are not all less prone to disruption.
Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp
Comments
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dean Posted 6:59 am
15 May 2007
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 9:06 am
15 May 2007
In regions where droughts occur, eucalyptus are known to be at high risk of catching fire.
The southeast U.S. is currently in the midst of such a drought.
Florida is burning NOW.
Eucalyptus plantations have been documented to deplete ground water and cause or exacerbate drought situations.
Nevertheless ArborGen is laying the groundwork for massive plantations of non-native eucalyptus trees genetically engineered to be cold tolerant for biofuels and paper pulp.
These eucalyptus trees have been engineered for other traits which ArborGen refuses to reveal. News articles and reports indicate these traits likely include reduced lignin content and the ability to kill insects.
ArborGen seeks approval from the USDA to allow their genetically engineered eucalyptus trees to flower and produce seeds. There has been no consideration as to what happens if these seeds escape into native ecosystems.
This is an area heavily impacted by severe storms, including tornadoes and hurricanes--seeds from these trees could travel for hundreds of miles.
Once this GE tree flowering and seed production is allowed, it will be easier for APHIS to approve outdoor field trial releases of other GE trees, such as poplars and pines for flowering and seed production. This could spell disaster for our native forests
APHIS is accepting comments on ArborGen's proposal until May 21.
You can find how to write APHIS and learn more about this insane proposal here:
National Effort Launched to Stop Genetically Engineered Eucalyptus Plantations in US Southeast
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5120.cfm ...
Also on this issue: The Center for Food Safety ~
http://ga3.org/campaign/GE_Trees/ide6573ro3e8wb7?
ge=20040818162316710
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:02 am
15 May 2007
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol2
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol3
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol4
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol5
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol6
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol7
What benefit are we supposed to be gaining from it?
Lowering the price of gas?
Cut CO2 emmisions?
Lower air pollutants?
Well it certainly isn't doing any of that.
And whats worse, we're also getting billions of dollars taxed away each year by supporting it.
(0.51 cents/gallon)
Only good way to reduce our demand for foreign oil. Is to reduce our demand for oil.
And the only practical way to do that is by building cars that need less oil.
http://greyfalcon.net/plugins
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Jason Peterson Posted 10:08 am
15 May 2007
Got better mileage.
However, I was less worried about mileage than I was worried about the unintended consequences of doing what I did (or going with a full tank of 85% ethanol). I was mostly worried about higher ignition temperatures damaging my 4 cylinder 1999 engine. But I took the risk.
Maybe the Marvel Mystery Oil helped so my engine didn't catch fire. Maybe it was the will of the gods. Maybe it was something else.
Regardless, I have not done it since.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:22 am
15 May 2007
If you blew a fuel line your car would be a big inferno.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:33 am
15 May 2007
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/fuels/rfg/420f06035.htm
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JMG Posted 5:31 pm
15 May 2007
Remember, according to one of the smart guys at RealClimate.org, we don't have enough oil and natural gas to drive to double atmospheric CO2 levels--we run out first. But we have MORE than enough coal to quadruple (or more) the original 280 ppm CO2.
So, if we're thinking about energy dependency, let's worry about getting off the fuel that's going to kill us first, and that would be coal. And getting off coal means dealing with the way we use electricity.
Phillip Schewe's book "The Grid" (at p. 252) cites the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) for the proposition that the minimum level of electrification needed for a society to begin to surmount poverty is 1,000 kWh annually per person. Also says that Americans, on average, use about 13,000 kWh.
What occurred to me when I read that was that, given that we already are wealthy and do not have past energy deficits to deal with, that, with some intelligence and effort, it should be possible to reduce our demands for electricity for every person in this country to that 1,000 kWh/person-year level--meaning that each person, instead of being responsible for burning 13,000 pounds of coal to be burnt (we use coal for about half our power nationally, and it's roughly 2 pounds coal per kWh), we would only be calling for 1,000 kWh annually, or 85 kWh per person per month.
If we reduced our electric demand to about 8% (1/13) of current, we would not have to burn any coal at all, nor would we need to stress over whether to run nukes. In fact, we wouldn't have to have any fossil fuel for electric at all--hydro accounts for about 8% of the grid supply now. Of course, it's not all in the right place, but there are resource strengths in evergy region that would allow locally produced electricity to shoulder the load without breaking if we would limit ourselves to this goal.
That would mean that we'd actually attain energy independence, at least for electric power. But electricity will get you through times of no liquid fuels far better than liquid fuels will get you through times of no electricity.
So how about we take all the vast amounts of human energy that we're devoting to trying to keep the "insolent chariots" running around, combine it with the energy being spent on "$100" laptops, and devote all that energy and intelligence to the far more important and useful problem: making 1,000 kWh per person per year sufficient for a decent life for all.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:51 pm
15 May 2007
In particular high density, cheap, batteries with long cycle lives.
^^^ To store renewable electricity.
And high torque effecient electric motors
^^^ Ideal for pumped storage, and geothermal drilling
But overall the idea being, by putting both the cars and the grid into one unified problem we only have to invest infrastructure resources in one area.
But more fundamentally it brings the concept front-and-center to the general public that
"the only way these cars are going to get greener is if the grid gets greener."
_
Largely though we should cut down on the Oil first, since if we don't, from a more functional standpoint then the next step would be shifting to liquified coal.
And getting stuck with the option of coal or more coal wouldn't be such a good one.
By lowering our Oil usage rate now, it ensures that we can continue to use Oil for backup electricity for our cars ;D
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Ron Steenblik Posted 2:00 am
16 May 2007
I think one needs to separate consumption for heating and cooking from other consumption (e.g., lighting, clothes drying, computers), however. Somebody living in a home in an area with a mild climate (e.g., San Diego) with a gas cooker, gas-heated hot water, and gas heating is going to achieve that target a lot easier than somebody stuck in an all-electric home where the summers are hot summers and the winters cold.
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JMG Posted 3:08 am
16 May 2007
People in more extreme climates have one set of challenges; people in milder ones have a different set--like parting with their ginormous plasma screen TVs.
We may well find that people in the more extreme climates can reduce their electric use more dramatically than the people who already don't use electricity for heating, hot water, and cooking. They might only be doing 8,000 a year, but it's all lifestyle for them; most people are a lot more invested in their lifestyle than they are in their furnaces--they pretty much don't give a rip about what fuel they're using, so long as there's heat.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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sunflower Posted 4:16 am
16 May 2007
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Jason Peterson Posted 5:16 am
16 May 2007
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ethanol Posted 7:37 pm
05 Jul 2007
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