The issue with ethanol isn't the conversion process.

It's the scarcity of raw feedstock.
And scarcity of ingredients to make that feedstock.

Just not enough land, water, and fertilizer to do the job.

-David Ahlport

 Wow, that's the same time frame that plugin hybrids are promised to go into mass production and US release.  BYD, the chinese auto maker and Audi/VW already have plugin hybrids in mass production, but US auto maker/government  protectionism has blocked their availability here.

This should be a real battle of the lobbyists.  Flex fuel chip E-85 touts versus plugin hybrid auto makers.  GM claims it wants to be both?  We'll see, if it's still around in 2010.

Tree to gas guzzler fuel projects will be very popular in devestated rust belt states like Michigan, with plenty of forests to burn and send out the tail pipe.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Ir ain't looking so good down here in South Texas, where a cotton seed factory (think hexane reactors for oils and cattle feed) promised diesel made from switchgrass. They even made a small batch in a pilot plant. No new stories since last spring.

You have to hand it to them, the entrepreneur wanted signed commitments to plant units of 100 acres to yield "x" tons of switchgrass with a guaranteed payment, like a hedge. A hurricane (Dolly) and then falling diesel prices made everyone think twice about the deal.

So it wasn't or isn't all about cellulosic ethanol but diesel as well, but neither worked out very well and if semi-normal conditions come back, the farmers will be rotating corn, cotton, and sorghum just like the old days. Meanwhile the big story is the "winter garden" crop where many truck farmers are getting into the organic produce industry, or at least trying to get into higher niche markets (selling to Whole Foods is very tough, actually). Cool, I like that kind of story, for a redneck ole bloke of a state!
-sammie

Onward through the fog

PHEVs -  "but US auto maker/government  protectionism has blocked their availability here"

Yeah, but a lot of biofuel companies have gotten around that with making biofuels that aren't ethanol.

The real hurdle they have to get past is "where do you get all that biomass from".

I'd rather avoid making the discussion all about the other smaller hurdles, because then it provides a false finishing line.

-David Ahlport

Airplanes.

It's going to be a long time before we can plug in a 747 and fly it non-stop across the Pacific.  We need a very concentrated fuel source in this case.

Personal cars, trains, city buses, perhaps even shorter-haul trucks we can power with electricity.

Right now we use about 4% of our oil for jet fuel.  It seems reasonable that we can replace that smaller amount with biofuels without inordinately taxing our available land.

At so many levels biofuel doesn't make sense for personal transportation.

Yeah, we can use biofuels for airplanes. Unfortunately that does not solve the airplane emission problem.

On or near the ground water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing. How much vapor the air can hold is determined by how hot the air already is. Add more water vapor and it condenses back out within hours. Remove extra vapor and nearby oceasns or seas or lakes or rivers or streams or puddles or swimming pools or whatever will evaporate a trifle faster.

But at airplane heights the air is extremely high. Depending on the weather water vapor from planes may remain for days, even weeks or months. So water vapor from planes is reponsible for at least twice the forcing of fossil fuels.  To take a hypothetical case: suppose commercial planes ran on wind generated hydrogen rather than either fossil for biofuels. (I know the technical barriers to this are huge, but accept it as a hypothetical.)  Additional water vapor would makes these hydrogen powered planes worse emitters of greenhouse gases than running them on fossil fuel based kerosene. Heck it be worse from a greenhouse gas standpoint than running them on palm oil you cut down rainforest to grow.

Now that doesn't mean we should actually cut down rain forests to run airplanes, or continue to run them on fossil fuel. Small amounts of sustainable biofuels for the purpose of running airplanes are possible. But, because of the water vapor, we still have to reduce total air miles, even if they run on sustainable biofuel.

There are mitigations at the edge. For example if the airplanes fly lower their water emissions are in a zone where more of them are a feedback, and fewer are a forcing. The thicker air at lower altitudes lowers their fuel efficiency, but the lower water vapor forcing more than makes up for it. Still, if we have to reduce rather than increase airplane fuel efficiency, obviously we will need to lower air miles to make up for that.  

Yes, flying at high altitudes is a problem, but we're likely to continue to do some.

Again fixing the overall  problem will require a death by a thousand cuts approach.  High speed rail can be electric and could get a lot of planes out of the sky.  We'll still need planes for very long distance travel.  

One could do the math over lower flying to cut down on high altitude vapor emissions vs. saving fuel by getting up into the following jet stream.

true broadband everywhere will also cut air travel. should aim for 100Mbps standard to allow 4-party HD conferencing from any computer.

I was under the impression that the lower energy density of ethanol was an additional major problem  in aviation uses. If this is not wrong, and other fuel options do not manifest as amazin' projects, the future of aviation must either be tied to dwindling supplies of petro-kerosene or it must accept lower payloads. Either way this would make commercial aviation an increasingly expensive option over time and thus liable to swiftly lose market to surface modes and, per hapa, virtual travel. The vapor emission problem might just fix itself.

Myself, I'm inclined to think we'll see fast high-tech sailing ships, both cargo and passenger, before we're done. Cutty Sark, wha' hey!

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

"...we'll see fast high-tech sailing ships, both cargo and passenger,"

Exactly, small hydrofoil sailboats have been designed with kite sails.  They go really fast.

The high velocity winds on the kite and the low friction hydrofoil would make for a kick-ass ground effect hydro-kite plane.  Zoooom...like the cargo carrying Russian plane.

Then ducted fan wind machines in the kite could send electric power down to underwater thrusters on the hydrofoil.

New wave clipper ships.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Futuristic si-fi stuff is fun to think about, but we need "this decade" solutions if we're going to get this climate problem turned around.

We are not going to take a "strange" route to change large scale current practice.  It takes years to sell a new thing to the general public (the folks who have control over the big picture.

Moving ocean cargo by sailing ship is just not going to happen in this decade.  We've got to either find a better fuel source for our existing freighters or drastically cut back on our petroleum usage for ground transportation.

If we're going to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to get all coal and most petroleum out of our energy stream very quickly.

We have alternatives more or less ready to install.  We can make electricity at a reasonable price using wind, solar and geothermal.  We can make PHEVs that would cut our petroleum 75%+.

We might not be able to manufacture enough PHEVs (and find the money to pay for them) quickly but we could start a parallel program of converting existing ICE vehicles to PHEVs.  Start by choosing a few lighter weight, high market penetration cars  such as Civics and Camreys and make conversion packs.  Drop off your car, drive a loaner for a day or two, pick up your new PHEV.  They won't be optimal PHEVs, no regenerative braking, but they might cut petroleum burning by 50%.

This is the sort of thing that we can do now.  The hydrofoil, kite powered heavy freighters are somewhere out in the future.  After we discover an anti-gravity machine so that the cargo weight doesn't figure into the formula.

if there were freight.

They could be used to cut the amount of fuel needed by perhaps 20%.  I'm not sure how easy it would be to fit them to a modern container ship.

If someone can figure that out then that's some help.

Remember that neither kites nor sails work when traveling up wind.  And tacking is a laborious process.

Looks like they've made it to container ships.  The demos I had seen so far were smaller cargo ship platforms and it looked like it would take significant deck space to launch and retrieve.

Too bad Asia is downwind from the US.  Loaded ships require more energy than empty ones.

Well Bob, of course freight would travel slowly, the fast hydrofoil kite ships would be for passengers and air mail.  But hydrofoils and kites can still work on heavy, slow ships to help reduce displacement.

As far as tacking, batteries would recharge from wind generators built into the kite while reaching, then electric thrusters would take the ship on upwind legs of the crossing.

A sailing vessel that goes directly upwind with wind power?  Yep.

Yeah we are talking short term and longer term on a climate cure here.  Short term ground source heating/cooling powered by solar cogeneration is the big GHG and energy saver.  Mid term plugin hybrids and electric rail.  Longer term, commuter rail replacing most air travel.

The remaining air travel can be converted to more friendly hydrofoil clipper ships and plugin hybrid aircraft after 15 years, go for the really big, easier savings first.  36% of GHG can be addressed with already existing ground source heating/cooling technology.

Nothing wrong with sci-fi speculation, especially when actual prototypes of a particular concept, like hydrofoil kite sailing craft, have already been built and tested.

Just call this stuff "wonder toys" like the curmudgeon crowd does, hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I'm going to be very skeptical about getting people to switch from 500+ MPH jets to 50 MPH boats for a trip from the US to Asia.  I just did it on a plane a couple of days ago and it's pretty danged long at jet speed.

What we might do 15 - 20 years from now is fun to contemplate but it doesn't cut carbon emissions now.  

Now seems pretty danged important to me, based on what the climate scientists are telling us.

"The cool thing about traction kites is that all you need to function is a kite in each of two streams of air moving at different directions or speeds to achieve controlled flight."

That's a new one, different wind streams tapped by different kites.

I have an idea of a sort of underwater "kite" with hydrofoil surfaces Pang.  Serving the function of the keel on a regular sailing vessel. The ground effect ship would hover over the water, using the underwater kite and the kite up in the high wind stream as substitutes for keel and sail.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Air travel tomorow Bob?  I kind of doubt that is going to occur.  Ground source heating/cooling and solar installation, that is ongoing daily.  Wind power build out and smart grid installation, that's happening too.  Cogeneration and conservation efficiency has the shortest payback.

Farm and waste stream biogas power generation continues on a firm financial and GHG-saving footing too.  The Obama administration ought to let the BYD and Audi plugin hybrids, the first to be mass produced, into US markets.

A quicker pace for those efforts would be the best bet for immediate savings.

The reality is that we have most likely already hit the GHG feedback climate tipping point, but politically correct science hasn't recognized this yet.  The arctic ocean and melting permafrost methane readings would have to be injected into the climate models.

I think your demand for an immediate replacement for transcontinental air travel is a bit unrealistic though, hehey.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

We've got big jets, both commercial and military flying with biofuel.  That's today, which is what concerns me, not 20, 30, 40 years from now.

The vapor problem?  That, to me, is the issue concerning near future jet travel.  Perhaps it is something with which we will have to live and find ways to offset.

Real solutions are ones that people will accept.

People are concerned about global climate change but IMO in no way ready to make major sacrifices in lifestyle.  Maybe in 5-10 years if things get much more obviously worse.....

Bob.  Maybe some future algae version will be?  Who knows.  But biofuel from crops, like sugar cane, corn, palm, oil seeds.  Not GHG-free.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Right?

I ask for something to back up your claim...

PHEVs -  "but US auto maker/government  protectionism has blocked their availability here"

And you give me dialog from an old movie?

Bogus.........................

1) It does not introduce "new" carbon into the atmosphere as does extracting and burning sequestered fossil fuel.  It's a recycling of carbon already present.  

And using a perennial such as switchgrass actually sequesters some carbon via the root system which is never plowed up.  Same would be true of trees producing nuts. What is left after fuel extraction could be turned into biochar and buried.

2)  Biofuel does not have to be made from food stuff.  We've got multiple plants under study which can nicely grow in places where we can't successfully grow food.

Don't fall off your soapbox and sprain your ankle.

Go out for a few hours and look at how the vast majority of people are living.  Check how many are recycling, using CFLs, cloth shopping bags, turning down their thermostats and wearing a sweater inside.  Sometimes 'us greenies' get confused and think we're 'normal'.  

We aren't.

If we want to change the amount of carbon (and other crap) that we pump into our atmosphere we need to find ways that cause as little disruption as possible to the lifestyles of everyone else.  The vast majority of humans.

We need solutions today.  Not solutions 30 years from now.  If the climate scientists are correct....

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Screw dreaming.  I'm worried.

We need some practical solutions now, not Jetson jetpacks next century.

Biofuel does not have to be made from food stuff.  We've got multiple plants under study which can nicely grow in places where we can't successfully grow food.

We need solutions today.  Not solutions 30 years from now.

Bob, tell me how these two concepts can coexist in your mind. The present imperative, with which many here would wholeheartedly agree, and the pie-in-the-sky of CE, perpetually a decade or three from solving all our problems. Do we not see just a tiny anomaly here? That little  "under study" thing? The little problem of finding land NOT devoted to food production or other useful purpose which is somehow going to produce vast quantities (truly, VAST quantities) of harvestable biomass? The other little problem that we're not even five-to-ten-years close to a commercially-viable way to get the useful energy out of the biomass and into a fuel tank?

Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, we should consider the energy habits of the american people as perhaps just a little bit more adjustable than the physical laws of the universe?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

With biofuelishness Bob.  Whatever biomass gets sent out the gas guzzler tail pipe is carbon that is not sequestered in the soil.  And if it is agri-chem biomass that starving farmers burned a rain forest down to grow?  Add in a huge GHG climate debt for the combustion, chemical fertilizer, transportation, and loss of natural carbon sequestration.

Renewable electric transportation is as close as we can get to GHG-free travel.

If biofuel could be obtained from algae that doesn't take up land area that could sequester carbon, that would fit the notion of a carbon neutral biofuel.  But that's a big "if".  Somewhere down the road, after we eliminate 90% of combustion with renewable energy and conservation.

It's strictly an experimental project, like nuclear power, "clean" coal, and cellulosic ethanol.  Barely worthy of research dollars once real solutions, like plugin hybrids, solar cogeneration, waste stream biogas/organic farming, wind, wave, and ocean current power turn this climate and economic disaster around.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Do you realize that you have a short list of "X-approved" solutions and that you go out of your way to find fault with things that are not on that list?

I do have a specific agenda.  I am a lobbyist for my own personal think tank..er  icehole.  All the various pieces of an energy/ag policy that fit together to make a whole symbiotic solution.

Complete with a compromise position for the other alternatives that I am not in favor of.  This is a virtual street corner, isn't it?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Show us where the 'wasteland' is that can grow enough jatropha, or anything else, to put even a small dent in our fossil fuel usage. One jet, one flight, half and half vegetable oil: is that really your 'practical solution, now'? Have you looked into oil product per acre, how many acres are available, how many goats (and the folks that depend on them) will go hungry?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Got a reference, Bob, where I can look these up?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

can be grown in New Zealand?

Will they have any left over for export? And where will they put all the sheep?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Barack do these in this order:

Institute a 6 cent per kwh subsidy directly to home, farm, and business owners for solar, biogas/organic fertilizer, wind, and conservation, with funds diverted from fossil, nuclear, and agribizz subsidies.

Use part of the the diverted subsidies for million unit orders of plugin hybrids, solar cogeneration systems, and ground source heating/cooling for government use, local, state, and federal.

Manage the growing manufacturing base and recovering economy with careful re-regulation.

Get set for upcoming years of rail reconstruction and electrification and a massive subsidized build out of great plains and offshore wind and water energy production, water desalination, and weather engineering.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Go to your library and get a basic book on the analysis of human behavior.

Pay attention to response cost and resistance to behavior change.  Also to time to payoff issues.  

The land requirement data is on the web.  You look it up if you are interested.

It's an interesting crop as it would bring significant income into areas where people today have very few ways to earn more than a survival income.  And, as I said, we would grow it on waste land, not prime sheep grazing countryside.

Please do some research before going negative on things that you haven't studied.  

Wind farms.  They currently produce electricity equal to or lower than any new installed production methods.

Inefficient appliance buy-back programs.  Did that in CA long ago and got a lot old energy hog beer refers out of garages and replaced them with models that did the same job while using 50% or less power.

White/light colored roofs and pavements.  Low cost reflecting of heat back out of our atmosphere.  Read Joe's more excellent current article.

PHEVs and PHEV retrofits.  While we wait for  affordable quick charge battery packs so that we can go BEVs.

Serious research/upscaling efforts into thermal solar (with storage), hot rock geothermal, and tide generation.  All have existing proof of concept installations producing (I believe) grid parity electricity.  

Pursuit of non-food land biofuels for long haul transportation systems (planes, ocean freighters, etc.) which may never  be electrified.

Massive conservation retrofits for private and public buildings financed by government money (where necessary) with payback to the government via energy bill savings over time.  No net increase in monthly bills to the owner and eventual decreases in monthly bills.

Widespread "forcing" to CFLs.  Add a tax to incandescents and a subsidy to CFLs to bring about a market switch.  Multiple times a year we can buy new CFLs for $0.50 here in NoCA thanks to utility company support.  How that we're seeing "normal looking" CFLs coming to the market resistance to switch will greatly decline.  Force people to save money by gently pushing them into a better way.

Figure out how to get the cost of ground effect heat pumps down.  A lot.  I just don't understand the current price structure.  Perhaps we need to fund development of "ditch witches" than can cut a 30' deep trench.  The plumbing is minimal and cheap.  Again, use government money if necessary to install the systems for free and use the saved energy differential to pay back the government.

These are the sort of things that I like.  We can do most of them right now.  They will pay for themselves.  None cause people to change their lifestyle in any noticeable manner.

We need more stuff like this.  

The land requirement data is on the web.  You look it up if you are interested.

References, Bob? Mine say it just doesn't pencil out. Here's one: David MacKay's "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" assembles comprehensive data and runs ALL the numbers in about as thorough a manner as I've seen - corn,, rapeseed, sugar beet, miscanthus, switchgrass, sugarcane and yes, jatropha. Bottom line: "biofuels made from plants [in a non-tropical country] can deliver so little power, I think they are scarcely worth talking about."

Then, even it were viable, where would we plant it?It's an interesting crop as it would bring significant income into areas where people today have very few ways to earn more than a survival income.  And, as I said, we would grow it on waste land, not prime sheep grazing countryside.

What areas, Bob? Where is this waste land? Please help me out and be specific. If it's in the U.S., what's the current use? If not in the U.S. do we just, like, take it? Why wouldn't they want the land for their own use? Then of course, this would not be a backyard crop. It's an extremely low-density source, around 0.18 W/M2 at best - meaning huge acreages to bring even minimal energy to market. What benefit would such intensive industrial agriculture bring to the indigenous population? Big ag has an appalling track record in its treatment of pre-existing populations. Why would this be any different? Or don't you care?

Please do some research before going negative on things that you haven't studied.

I've read plenty on this, seen no actual data that even remotely supports your position. Everything seems to point the other way... but hold on just a minute - how about YOU supply the evidence to support YOUR arguments?

Go to your library and get a basic book on the analysis of human behavior.

Pay attention to response cost and resistance to behavior change.  Also to time to payoff issues.

Enough with the BS. You said there are laws of human behavior. Where? What? Google the term and see what you get (hint: nada, nothing, zilch).

Bottom line - you'd LIKE to get carbon emissions under control, and you'd LIKE american behavior not to have to change, so you'd LIKE CE to be viable and effective. You can probably find plenty of folks who'd like the same things - not smart people probably, but plenty of 'em. Problem is, reality doesn't care what you or I or anyone would like. Everything I've read says CE is unlikely to do the job. If you think I'm wrong - SHOW ME THE DATA!

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

"I just don't understand the current price structure"

That's the million unit government order part of the plan. Refrigerators and air conditioners are dirt cheap, for instance, and they have similar parts to ground source heating/cooling systems.

Direct circulation for cooling and heat envelope heating is even simpler than heat pump ground source heating/cooling.

Were these systems to become as ubiquitous as furnaces and water heaters nearly evertone could afford them, with government help for the lower income people.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin