but I'll accept the characterization as accurate.

Remember, we know how to make ethanol from cellulose today.  It just costs a fortune per gallon, to wind up with a fuel that's inferior to petroleum and isn't even all that energy efficient once you start talking about scaling it up so that the feedstock has to be harvested and transported.  

So what we're really talking about by talking about a "transition" to cellulose is that we're saying that we want it cheap--we want to be able to keep doing everything we're doing today, for not much more money than we pay today.  

Bad news folks, cellulosic ethanol seems most likely to come on stream in the same way that fuel cells come on stream--for very specialized applications where the high costs are not a barrier (space travel, for the fuel cells, for example).

The more you study websites like Robert Rapier's i-r-squared and the links he discusses, the more you think that "Holy Grail" is actually a pretty good description of the entire cellolosic ethanol frenzy--a madness like the madness that overtook Europe in the days of the Crusades.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

Hey, all:

If the emissions change is the only thing you measure, corn ethanol may have some value, but when we take into consideration the properly entire spectrum of measurements that should be used to assess it, not in a million years.  Two of the simplest measures not considered here are food cost increases and loss of habitat and consequent loss of biodiversity.  With greater demand for corn as fuel, food costs will be forced up, and with higher prices, demand to put more and more marginal non-ag land into cultivation.  A row-crop field can easily be considered to be one species removal away from being a parking lot.   AS such, corn ethanol is NOT sustainable. Never will be.

With cellulosic ethanol, the picture is much the same, only once removed from the above scenario.  In fact, it can even be worse if grazing land is converted for harvest of cellulose. This will put more pressure on grazing land and its biodiversity, and perhaps increase demand for feedlot cattle feeding.   I can think off the top of my head of 5 invasive grass species in my part of my state of Texas, and with cellulosic ethanol, there would certainly be more introduced.  One has to ask the question, what is lost when we exploit the supposed abundance of cellulose for ethanol?   We continue to try to satisfy the demand for fuel for a out-of-control transportation system at the expense of what other system or resource?    

AS such, despite the big margin in the comparison chart, neither corn or cellulosic ethanol should be seriously considered.  Because, if we are considering the full range of measures, AS WE SHOULD, they simply do not stack up.   We all know that cherry-picking our data is a flawed action.

Conservation, efficiency, less demand, and solar are the ingredients in the jelly glass real world analog of the Holy Grail.  Ain't near as flashy, I know.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  

Another thing to slow em down.

BioButanol would need to pass EPA Tier 1 and Tier 2 air quality standards tests.

This alone takes a couple years.

Priority should be given to solutions that cut CO2 emissions with proven technologies.  Hybrid cars are already with us.  In the short run we can use hybrid technology to make the fossil fuels we use a great deal more efficient.  This would mean concentrating on things like improved battery technology.  It would be very nice if we could plug in our hybrid cars at night, and have a battery capacity that would allow 50 miles of day trips.  100 miles range would be even better.  A solarvoltaic skin on our cars would help extend daytime range.  Commercial vehicles could be required to have even longer battery ranges.  

Electricity for our future plug in hybrid cars could come from non-carbon sources, wind, solar, and nuclear.  Ya I know you guys are all screaming.  Nuclear power is with us, it has been used for over a generation, and in terms of the harm that it has done to us humans, it is far safer than coal.  Nuclear power is not going to destroy the planet.  It is the only carbon free energy source that can produce power on demand today, at any time, and in large enough amounts to replace fossil fuel electricity sources.  You can either prattle on about untested technologies, or you can decide to go with what works, and solve our CO2.  

Corn to ethonol solutions are questionable wars to limit CO2 pollution and socially irresponsible. Cellulosic Butanol may have a future, but we have to ask, how much biomass is available for conversion?  And what is its best use.  It would be extremely desirable to have a bio-source jet fuel.  We can drastically reduce the carbon emissions associated with the generation of electricity and automobile transportation through the use of existing technologies.  We should start solving the problem by implementing what we already know we can do.  
 

Charles Barton

Bart A. would probably be able to find the name, but I'll give you the punch line as I recall it from a talk archived at globalpublicmedia.com about the proceedings of a fairly high level/serious energy conference held in, I think, Nov. 2005 in Alexandria.  Bob Hirsch spoke, as did Matt Simmons and other heavyweights.  All the audio tracks from the conference were available @ Global Public Media for download and listening.

(GPM is an invaluable archive of voice/video presentations on energy issues.)

Anyway, one speaker on the technical track of talks was a Ph.D who talked about spending his career pursuing ethanol as an alternative liquid fuel; he said that even if cellulosic ethanol could be made for a reasonable price in dollars, you quickly wind up upside-down in terms of the energy expenditure needed to gather up and transport all that biomass.  

The people building the plants want big ones to obtain economy of scale, but that just means a bigger radius around the plant needs to be dedicated to gathering the delivering feedstock materials.

Smaller plants obviously require less area be devoted to them, but lose the process economies.

I recall one number from the talk quite clearly--he said that biomass ethanol (as opposed to from seed crop like corn) plants couldn't exceed 7000 gallons per day without becoming energy losers.

So yes, in addition to all the other issues that warn that the siren song of cellulosic ethanol is really just that, there is an important limit on what you can do in terms of siting the plants and how big you can make them before they create a treadmill that simply exhausts you.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

No that's good news.  Maybe cellulosic ethanol subsidies won't get quite as much momentum as corn ethanol subsidies have.

When will corn ethanol subsidies be dropped?  When will cellulosic ethanol subsidies be dropped?  Before they get rolling?

Is there even one cellulosic ethanol plant in the production stage?  Or are they only producing stock scams, subsidy payments, and kickbacks to politicians?

If cellulosic ethanol is real, then why do oil monopolies feel so comfortable in raising gas prices so high?  Think about it, they don't believe the hype, otherwise why risk losing market share to ethanol?

Plugin hybrids could still take them by surprise.  With only GM threatening to mass produce them they still feel safe.  GM made the volt and let it die afterall.  But how are they going to stop Toyota and honda from going plugin once their trade protector Darth Cheney is deposed?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Meant to say "GM made the EV1 and let it die".  Jinx.  Will the Volt ever be mass produced?  Highly doubtful given the hydrogen fuel cell hype entering the volt scenario recently.

Will the Volt hype scare Toyota and Honda into producing their own electric car with a backup generator that runs on regular from the gas station?  Japan imports all their fossil fuel.

The same reason we see parallel hybrids from Japanese automakers, might just scare a real gas saving design out of them, an economy version of the Volt.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog