Posted on 02/17/2006 7:33:27 AM PST by ZGuy
Proposals for an alcohol-fueled end to dependence on foreign oil do not sit lightly on the American landscape. Can they fit within our borders at all?
State Of The Union speeches tend to cross using figures with speaking figuratively, and this hybrid rhetoric can bear strange fruit, like the switchgrass mania spreading up K Street like kudzu. Math has never been the Beltway's strongest suit, and it will take a while for many in DC to realize that biofuel, like the solar and wind energy franchises already on offer, suffers from sheer lack of real estate.
Solar ranching translates into paving areas the size of Massachusetts with silicon panels. But farming out the fuel supply means putting multiples of Texas under the plough. Even corn as tall as an elephant's eye yields less than half a gallon of ethanol per acre per day. And biotech might, at best, wring another quart out of fertile farmland.
That's just not enough -- it takes hundreds of millions of gallons of gas a day to run America's cars, trucks and tractors. A switch grass combine's mileage makes an Escalade look like a Prius rolling downhill. It would take upwards of a billion extra acres -- a million square miles -- to fuel the nation's transport.
A billion mile furrow is a long row to hoe -- decades of Green evangelism have failed to make alternative fuel crops a reality. A Federal subsidy program could command their planting, but the President's SOTU proposal amounts to reducing oil imports by less than 0.7% a year.
Before we're taken for a rimde on the switch grass hay wagon, let's reexamine another sort of American biofuel -- the fossil biomass underfoot. It contains millions of times the solar energy agriculture can store in a year, and vastly more hydrogen than the nation's oil and gas reserves, ANWR included. It is called coal, and we can get energy out of it and into our gas tanks.
Remember the "Energy Crisis"? It evoked National Academy of Science reports that still hold lucidly detailed answers to most of the energy policy questions junior congressmen, and op-ed writers, are asking anew today. The information revolution hasn't changed the laws of thermodynamics or the facts of fossil fuel geology since the 1974 Oil Shock. Reading studies of real resources may not be as fashionable as donning Green sackcloth, but the fact remains that America already has a four-century fuel reserve that's organic and pesticide free. For those fearful of climate change, it's also completely invulnerable to weeds, blight, hail, drought and hurricanes: fossil sunshine is immune to foul weather.
Coal's environmentally sound conversion presents complex problems, but four decades of research have already solved at lot of them. Wade through the National Academy of Science reports arising from the original "Energy Crisis" and you'll find that while premature attempts to convert oil shale and high hydrogen coal to liquid fuel were doomed by the petroleum price collapse of the '80s, coal and shale based synfuels have been historically supplied at about half the petroleum prices prevailing today (prices that have also assured nuclear electricity's economic future). Fuel farming may have its hour in the spotlight, but it will gather more applause if summoned by the invisible hand of economics than shoved on stage by the White House and the Greens.
With the War on Terror in progress, 17% of our oil still comes from the Mideast. Gasohol could allay our dependence, but what of the prospect of oil states retaliating? If biofuels debut prematurely, OPEC could drown them in the cradle by turning on the pumps, because average world oil production costs remain well under $18 a barrel. Petroleum reserves are not yet so far depleted that OPEC could not wring another Oil Glut from them. The road downhill from Hubbert's Peak is a mighty long one, and while futures traders may perceive the world's oil storage tanks as half empty, some mighty large reserves remain half full.
Biodiesels are the ultimate answer, I believe.........
Corn looks like a good fuel to me.
I agree, although the fuel should be coupled with a plug-in electric hybrid.
Excellent article. :)
When a "fuel" or a "product" or a "way of life" is subsidized by the federal government (meaning we, the taxpayers, get the HONOR of funding it) then rammed down our throats through action by our various state governments...you know it's something we don't want or need in the first place.
If the availability of ethanol causes OPEC to have to drop prices dramtically, you would consider that a bad thing?
Are you referring to the ethanol tax credit or the petroleum industry's oil depletion allowance?
The holy grail, complete electric, may be closer that ever, with the new lead-acid battery technology announced last week.........
Electricity provided by nuclear, of course.....
Re-read the article, substitute a few words and you have a similar conclusion for bio-diesel.......... not enough crop yield. At least not yet.
Per acre corn production has increased about 75% in the past 20 years, I think soybeans have had similar increases. Plus there's a lot of acreage in government programs that could be brought into production. That's still not enough.
The big increases will have to come through bio-engineering. That will happen, but not in 2007, or anytime this decade.
Bio is a supplement, but that's all.
That "plug-in" electric hybrid has "plug-in" to a generating plant somewhere. That plant, more often than not, is oil or coal fired. Unless it's a nuclear plant, you're defeating the purpose of having a "plug-in" hybrid car. You'd be using just as much energy to "charge" your vehicle while it's standing still as you would generate while it was in motion (regardless of what fuel you used).
Hardly economical or green-friendly.
Brazil is doing so well cutting down the Amazon and planting sugar cane for bio-fuel.
The biofuel mandate in Minnesota had to be waved because of the current cold spell. At low temperatures, the methyl ether separates out from the distillate.
Plus all the free popcorn you can eat!
Which explains why we're paying $60 a barrel.
The free market works so well in the energy business.
Interesting article at http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/issues/articleID.18976/article_detail.asp on this topic.
All forms of energy do not individually supply the total needs of our economy. Should we eliminate nuclear because it does not supply 100% of our needs?
Bio-diesels can be made from many different oil producing plants, some of which are not food crops. Soybean oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, canola oil, tung oil, linseed oil, and the bothersome "popcorn tree" can all be used. There are many others and some can be grown in the poorest soils that won't sustain food crops, the popcorn tree being one. Yes, huge areas would be necessary, but there are huge areas now that are not producing anything but weeds or sage brush. Bio-diesels are beneficial because they even run on used oils, after moderate filtering, that are now re-cycled into soaps and plastics. The technology is not new and can be installed even as retrofits on current engines...........
I'll do whatever it takes to let the mideast starve themselves back to pre 1800 population levels.
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