Bio-Fuels Bite the Dust

I don't have the reference, but someone told me that if we switched to biofuel, we would starve because we would need all of the land available to make the fuel - and there would be nothing left for food.

What is it with people? Whenever alternative power solutions are presented or tested, there is always a Chicken Little faction that has to point out that it isn't perfect and we have to look elsewhere or disaster looms. It seems that 'someone' thinks that there is a solution out there that is universal, safe as apple pie, and could be implemented perfectly on a week's notice. Until people change their perception of what actually works, and how it should work, we're gonna be stuck with what we have. Bio-fuels make good sense for certain sectors and countries, but obviously not all. Wind power makes sense for on-the-spot power generation, but not much as a central power source. Etc, etc.

Pete

Uh, is that because everybody would be parked alongside the road instead of driving, stoned out of their minds? d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

I'll bet, though, that the OECD is probably right that biofuels, as they're produced via the intensive farming we practice in the US and Europe, are a net loser in environmental terms, and they're probably worse than the government claims in terms of net energy production. A lot of energy goes into making chemical fertilizers.

I did a calculation to satisfy a co-worker last year, based on Chevron's claim that they had raised the production of soybean biodiesel to 60 gal. per acre (it was in one of their print ads). I figured it would require 30% of the arable land in the US to produce enough for our current consumption of diesel -- just diesel, not including gasoline.

Of course, that's not the whole story. But it has to make you cautious.

-- Ed Huntress

Not if we grew hemp for fuel ;)

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

Did you include all the off road diesel and home heating oil diesel in your calculation, or just transportation fuel diesel?

The bottom line is that in some 30 year or so, solar energy is just barely getting to the point of being viable if not economical for mass market distributed (individual, not utility scale) use. The new bio-fuel stuff is just starting out and has a lot of maturing to go both in technology and in determining what usage is actually appropriate.

Solar does poorly with attempts at utility scale use due to the large areas of environmental impact necessary for utility scale use, while individual use on existing rooftops works well without the environmental impact. I expect bio-fuels to ultimately be found to be viable mostly for farms where they can be produced from waste to provide fuel for use on those farms and not to be sold elsewhere.

I don't know, I just had some DOE figures on total diesel consumption to work with.

It's questionable if, or when, solar is going to be economical. It's pretty well acknowledged that it's a big loser if you don't have substantial government subsidies.

There are conflicting stories about whether an honest energy audit would show any net *energy* gain for PV, even now. The US government has been saying we passed break-even over a decade ago and I have seen some figures that suggest a 20% - 25% net energy gain. But _The Economist_ hedged its conclusion on that as recently as six months ago. They say it's still questionable whether there's *any* net energy gain with PV, in the real world and in typical installations. It just consumes too much energy to make crystalline silicon. And other sources have said that the lifespan used for the optimistic energy audits (25 years' life for PVs) are 'way too optimistic on the average.

I don't claim expertise on any of this, just that I've been interested enough to follow along casually and I'm hesitant to get excited about all of it. On the other hand, it appears to me that it's almost inevitable that a very large portion of our energy over the latter part of this century will come from nuclear fission. When you see the numbers on breeder reactors, it looks like no contest anywhere.

Maybe. The big wild card in the longer term is cellulosic ethanol. Will it, or won't it?

-- Ed Huntress

That is only true for SOME biofuels. It depends on the crop and the type of land it needs to grow on. I agree the use of corn to produce biofuels is maybe not such a good idea. But there are biofuels from plants that can be grown on land that cannot be used, or is marginal, for farm products.

There was a thing about a decade ago about a cactus that grows in desert areas that can produce a fairly good synthetic gasoline. Those are the kinds of crops that should be pursued.

IMNSHO,

The only viable short term ~20yr alternative to oil and coal is nuclear as it is a "green" energy source, if not renewable. Longer term, after we use nuclear to fill the gap and give us time to ramp up less mature technologies, I see the most viable source to be tidal generation.

Unlike wind and solar, tidal generation has very minimal environmental impact for large scale production. Unlike wind tidal is a very consistent regular source. Tidal generation requires vastly less area of impact than solar for a given level of generation due to the tremendous available energy density. Tidal generation efficiency is better than solar an the technology is simpler, requiring less maintenance.

Unlike on/offshore wind farms which give NIMBYs fodder due to their visibility, tidal generation has a low profile and minimal visibility. Unlike Wind witch gives NIMBYs fodder with potential bird strikes and background noise, Tidal generation has no appreciable impact on sea life and produces no noise. The energy required to build a tidal generation plant should be vastly less than it's service lifetime generation potential.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little focus on tidal generation at the moment since it's a less visible type of project and therefore has less PR value.

This ppears to be yet another case of getting 9 women pregnant so you can get a baby in one month.

It appears to be correct that if no additional crops are grown, then hunger will result from the diversion of food stuffs to fuel production, given that there was no great surplus, and indeed chronic malnutrition/famine in many areas. However, note that one of the steepest run-ups has been wheat, which is not used to any extent in bio-fuels, to the extend of a pasta strike in Italy. click on

No solution is ever so good that the fast buck scam artists can't screw it up.

The whole idea was to use alternative, non-food plants on marginal and/or unutilized land, not divert food crops/production to fuel use. And what happened to all the crop surpluses that the governments pay billions for????

Unka' George [George McDuffee] ============ Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.

There are steady advances however. One outfit has produced very small but very efficient PV cells, where light from a fairly large area is focused onto the silicon. It produces power roughly equivalent to the surface area of the lenses, but requires vastly less silicon.

Then there are the companies that are working to produce PV sheets of plastic that would reduce the cost by a large factor. They are less efficient, but if cheap enough, could be available to many. Imagine if were cheap enough that nearly every home could afford it, and installed it?

Bottom line though, given what we know today, there is no one solution. It will take a combination of whatever is appropriate for a particular region, COMBINED with a reduction in power consumption. That would be a combined reduction, more efficient motors, electronics, lighter vehicles, and even getting over the notion that it's normal to have virtually the full range of veggies and fruits in the supermarket year round. How many jets enter the US every day just so we can have fresh grapes, bananas, etc, not to mention the trucks running the roads to deliver them?

I've started buying veggies from a local organic farm. No fuel burned for transport, and they are fresh and taste better than what's in the market. Tomatoes that taste like, well, tomatoes, and strawberries that are naturally sweet and really have some taste. Costs a bit more, but we can't have our cake and eat it too. Not for long anyway.

Sadly, I think many of these lessons will not be learned until things have gotten much much worse.

Jon

Unless you're talking about wave generation, my impression of tidal is that it's hellishly intrusive on the coastal environment. You have to dam something up to make it work.

Am I wrong about this?

-- Ed Huntress

Exactly my point about solar not being viable for utility scale application. If however you get a cheap PV material that can be applied to every single roof in the country in low maintenance batteryless grid-tie configurations then you could have a huge impact on RE production without much of any new environmental impact, unlike attempts at utility scale production covering square miles with collectors. Distributed generation is the only way solar will likely be viable in our lifetimes.

Distributed PV generation on everyone's roof and utility scale tidal generation. Free electricity for anyone who is able to use an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle. Improved public transit systems. Greatly reduced demand for liquid transportation fuels i.e. gas and diesel, making bio-fuel replacements for those more viable.

Certainly increased conservation and more efficient usage. Something that has been steadily occurring, though not at a pace that satisfies the eco-loons who want an instant return to stone age energy consumption. I note that the use of more energy efficient lighting, HID and fluorescent, has made huge gains and in any commercial environment these days you are unlikely to see any other sources in use, save for some halogen in jewelry display cases. A great many homes are now using mostly CF lighting (I use mostly CF) as well.

Only where legitimately viable. Mindlessly insisting that everybody should be driving tiny little econoboxes only serves to turn the public off to the idea of smaller vehicles as a whole. A great many people have regular need for a larger vehicle and they aren't going to give them up, period.

What can be done is to may it economical for those people to have a second small high efficiency vehicle for tasks that do not require the cargo capacity of the larger vehicle. At present, increased property taxes and insurance costs make such a second vehicle uneconomical.

I have a large pickup truck, which I regularly use to transport large loads, and under such use it is a pretty efficient vehicle. Recall that MPG is not a measure of efficiency, it is a measure of economy. A measure of efficiency has to also factor in the work done, i.e. cargo moved, which is something that MPG does not account for.

For the tasks where I do not need the big truck capacity, chiefly grocery shopping, there is essentially no savings to be had from using a little hybrid vehicle as the grocery trip is 6 miles round trip and at 6 miles once a week, the difference between 10MPG and 50MPG is negligible.

The additional taxes and insurance on a second vehicle, not to mention the vehicle cost itself would make such a second vehicle a money pit, so until something is done to reform taxes and insurance, expect to see me grocery shopping in a 7,000# truck.

Some things can be done to improve efficiencies in that process, but as a percentage of our total energy usage, it is insignificant. We should however, *not* be importing produce from other countries while the same items are in season in this country.

I like to buy local as well, however I look for a non-organic farm as I do not wish to support the false notion that organic is better than non organic. Organic produce has lower yields and in many cases uses more energy to produce than a non organic equivalent. This is particularly the case when you compare conventionally organic farmed items like tomatoes and lettuce with industrial scale non organic hydroponically grown equivalents.

Do you think lessons will ever be learned? Look at thousands of years of history and the same problems occurring over and over and over again. Lessons are never learned for any appreciable length of time, they may be learned in the short term but are rapidly lost on successive generations.

The tidal generation I'm referring to involves no dams and no waves, it is based on solidly anchored buoys. When the tidal level lowers the buoy anchor cable retracts into the buoy to remain tight to the ocean floor. When the tide comes in the buoyancy of the buoy produces tremendous tension on the anchor cable which is used to spin the generator as the buoy slowly rises (and the anchor cable extends) until the tide maxes out. There were some recent innovations in this design that simplified it and improved efficiency.

At any rate, a low profile buoy bobbing up and down with the tide has extremely low environmental impact and there is a massive amount of available energy at high densities waiting to be captured.

That certainly sounds interesting, and it sounds extremely simple. Why don't we have them now?

-- Ed Huntress

'Cause we're stupid???

Also, they aren't flashy, easy to show off PR items like wind turbines and solar panels.

I don't know if we really want that to get around, Nick...

-- Ed Huntress

Hemp is one of the most efficient plants and grows in poor soil unsuited for food. The Constitution is written on hemp paper and the founding fathers wore hemp clothing

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

I agree.

Why not? Like the dairy truck that makes the rounds a bio-fuel truck could go from farm to farm.

-- Mark