Comments Vinod Khosla has made

My thoughts

Some of you have raised some legitimate questions, which I wanted to try
and answer here:

- Brazilian Ethanol: I tend to agree that Brazilian, sugar-based ethanol
has significant advantages over corn ethanol, and I support eliminating
the tariff on it. However, I don't believe its a solution by itself. It
is a starting point but we need more land efficiency or more gallons of
fuel produced per acre (ideally more miles driven per acre with fuels
beyond ethanol) and cellulosic can do that much better than food crops.

- Cover Crops: One can leave enough of a cover to avoid top soil loss,
and one leaves the root system in the soil where the microbial
communities are. One also prevents nitrogen runoff into our streams and
leaves it in the soil for the next summer food crop. This approach
leaves some of the extra carbon captured as CO2 by the cover crop in the
soil and takes some for fuel as biomass, still far better than what is
done today - which leaves the soil barren and results in nitrogen and
top soil loss. One can mix in legumes to fix additional nitrogen in the
soil as biomass crops for fuel don't need a "pure" crop so polyculture
cover crops would do just fine. One can in this scheme reduce the amount
of nitrogen during the summer crop cycle (and reduce nitrous oxide)
while harvesting biomass.

- Transporting Biomass / Effect on Food Prices, If you look at our
papers, we've consistently advocated for local plants - in fact, I've
specifically noted that feedstock transportation beyond a 50-100 mile
range is not economically realistic. Infrastructure means a lot more
than old ethanol plants. Its pumping stations, storage facilities all
over the country for distribution and blending of ethanol which now
exist, and most of all flex-fuel cars. The cellulosic ethanol produced
in Georgia or Florida or Washington or New England or Canada will share
much of this. Winter cover crops in places like Texas , Maryland,
Alabama, and North Caroline will be part of the mix along with waste
wood form forest operations in Washington or the North east.

As for the idea that displacing corn is going to increase food prices
significantly,  we've had many different versions of this complaint;
firstly, the argument was that corn ethanol is responsible for high food
prices (USDA Chief Economist Joe Glauber noted that "On the
international level, the President's Council of Economic Advisors
estimates that only 3 percent of the more than 40 percent increase we
have seen in world food prices this year is due to the increased demand
on corn for ethanol."  The USDA also noted previously: "Given that foods
using corn as an ingredient make up less than a third of retail food
spending, overall retail food prices would rise less than 1 percentage
point per year above the normal rate of food price inflation when corn
prices increase by 50 percent."), and now you're suggesting that
removing this corn is going to raise food prices? Moreover, look at the
impact biofuels have had on our energy costs already - "According to the
International Energy Agency, the biofuels production that has been
available to the United States and European markets over the last three
years has cut the consumption of crude oil by one million barrels a day.
At today's prices, that's a savings of more than $120 million per day."

- All biofuels are bad:  Some biofuels are awful, yes but painting them
all with a broad brush is just illogical. Study after study has shown
the environmental benefits of cellulosic biofuels, from NREL to the DOE
to multiple university studies. As to the idea of consuming less energy
- sure, but are we magically going to get people to stop driving, or
turn off their cars? There is a difference between blue sky, achieve
nothing idealist and pragmentalists (I consider myself one). Efficiency
is certainly a part of the solution (and we have over 15 investments in
efficiency of every type form lighting to engines to appliances), but
its not the solution by itself. We can't change consumer preferences by
lecturing at them - you have to provide people with alternatives they
want while trying to influence their "wants" by education (not rants!).

- Other fuels: butanol, other cellulosic fuels, and biodiesel: For what
its worth, we have invested in companies that are attempting to jump
start ethanol, and go to butanol or other future fuels (Gevo, Amyris,
LS9, Kior, to name a few). I've also said before that  RFS shouldn't
designate a winner (ie, one particular cellulosic fuels)- rather, it
ought to suggest that fuels that can meet the required "full life cycle"
environmental thresholds be eligible. That leaves the job of picking the
best technology to the market. We also have many investments (Transonic,
Ecomotors, Tula for engines and Seeo, Firefly and others in batteries)
attempting to cut oil consumption in half through better efficiency.
Biodiesel is a great idea made from cellulosic feedstocks but food crop
based biodiesel is the wrong thing and will not achieve either cost
effectiveness (ability to compete without subsides) or land efficiency
(gallons of gasoline equivalent per acre). Jatropha and algae may go
part way their but unlikely they will be as cheap as cellulosic fuels.

Criticism of biofuels is certainly fair game, and I think its important
to have these debates, but I see biofuels (done right) as the best and
only realistic, scalable solution in the near future.

regards,
Vinod
On Not all biofuels are the same; we can do biofuel well or poorly posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 Responses

Biomass, Soil Carbon, Biodiversity, Land and more

To see my answers on the question "Where will biomass come from" and "what will it do to water, biodiversity and soil carbon" please come back next week. We will propose ways to improve biodiversity, reduce fertilizer input (when growing row crops in rotation with biomass crops), actually increase soil carbon content on strictly rainfed crops. Range and Coskata have already reduced water use to 75% below that of corn ethanol. The four criteria for a good fuel are "CLAW"
C- cost below gasoline
L- low to no land use; use of degraded lands to restore their biodiversity and carbon/microorganism ecosystem.
A- Air quality or carbon emissions
W- Water use

Hope fully I can answer all three next week in a three part series.On Hybrid emissions: Facts and numbers posted 1 year, 10 months ago 34 Responses