It's called a Flux Capacitor and Doc Brown already thought of it. (:^D)
Posted on 05/10/2006 5:51:48 AM PDT by Dark Skies
On the search for alternative fuels, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vinod Khosla says the answer is clear as gin.
Delivering the keynote address at a Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research forum, titled "Prosperity Despite Expensive Oil: Energy Solutions for California, America and the World," on April 21, Khosla endorsed ethanol technologies, which produce "biofuels" out of switchgrass, wood chips, corn and recycled fast food oil.
"Within the next five years, we can be irreversibly down a trajectory that doesn't need any petroleum in this country," Khosla said. "We can do this in all of the United States for less than half a billion dollars."
During his speech, titled "Biofuels—Think Outside the Barrel," at the Schwab Center to about 100 energy scholars, economists and policymakers, Khosla outlined three "action items" for switching to biofuels:
--70 percent of all new automobiles should be flex-fuel vehicles, giving drivers the option of gasoline or ethanol;
--10 percent of gas stations in the United States should distribute ethanol to "achieve criticality";
--Create a tax on cheap oil to stabilize oil prices in the unlikely event they should fall below $40 a barrel. (Oil is currently $72 a barrel.)
"I don't think oil will ever [fall to] $40 a barrel until an alternative appears," Khosla said. "If an alternative appears, we will see the manipulation of oil prices to drive alternatives out of business. This [tax] is to assure Wall Street that [it] will not be subject to oil price manipulation by Saudi Arabia."
Khosla said those who own fewer than 25 fuel stations would not be included in the 10 percent of stations required to distribute ethanol, to keep "mom and pop" gas stations from bearing the burden of ethanol distribution.
"There are lots of things that make sense but will never happen because the interest groups are not aligned," Khosla said, addressing questions from the audience about "greener" alternatives such as solar, wind or hydrogen power.
"Biofuel is the only viable solution," he said. "It's a faster and lower-risk path to a renewable future." Scientific consensus says global climate change is due to an accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, fossil fuels like gasoline contribute to two-thirds of this buildup. This points to the need for a cleaner energy source that can be brought to consumers quickly.
Khosla is co-chairing a November ballot initiative in California with Hollywood mogul Stephen Bing to reduce petroleum consumption. By taxing oil production in California, the nation's third-largest oil producing state, the initiative would create funds to boost alternative fuel production.
"This is not a green objective," Khosla said. "This is an economic objective." An alternate fuel source could help curb inflation, create tax revenue and new jobs, lower the risk of costly military interventions abroad and ultimately reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Considered one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capitalists, Khosla earned an MBA from Stanford in 1980 and went on to co-found Sun Microsystems with Scott McNealy, Bill Joy and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, he began his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures.
Experts speaking about topics spanning from energy to economics preceded Khosla's keynote address. Stanford Professors Michael Boskin, Lawrence Goulder, Franklin Orr Jr., Geoffrey Rothwell, James Sweeney and Frank Wolak were among the 13 speakers, who also included California State Controller and gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly.
Ethanol is the best way to ensure cheaper fuel, create secure and diversified energy sources and maintain farm economies, Khosla said. "Even though they won't acknowledge it today, oil companies are best equipped to build biorefineries on a large scale." Some of the "more progressive" companies, like BP and Shell, are aggressively looking at ethanol, he added.
"My hope is that the oil companies will get convinced that they need to be in the business," Khosla said. "I believe at some point they will be investing. And that would be a wonderful thing."
What is the energy equation for these fuel sources? How much energy does it take to produce them versus making gasoline from oil? How much energy in the final product versus gasoline? At what price per barrel of oil do they become more cost effective than oil?
The Kennedys have been running their cars on alcohol for some time now.
It's called a Flux Capacitor and Doc Brown already thought of it. (:^D)
What are the fertilizer and harvesting and processing costs of this?
Bump
See post #7 for link.
The University of New Hampshire has a very interesting site on comparisons, and they are looking at the problem differently than the midwest farmers are.
Increasingly, I am starting to believe that a better solution than ethanol is electric vehicles, or at least they will be if we can get batteries that are cheap enough, light enough, and have sufficient storage capacity for an operating range and speed comparable to conventional autos. Once we have that just build nuclear plants to meet the higher power demand. Problem solved.
Ethanol from Cellulose (e.g. switchgrass or corn stover)The energy balance from corn, then, is slightly positive. However, ethanol can also be derived from another source, namely, cellulosic feedstocks such as corn stover or switchgrass. In this case, the energy balance is much improved, as shown in Table 1 of this paper by McLaughlin and Walsh. Their data show that while the energy gain from corn grain is 21%, the energy gain from converting switchgrass to ethanol is 343%! The downside, of course, is that conversion technologies are not ready for primetime yet, as shown in the the USDA-DOE study mentioned above--the cost per gallon of ethanol from cellulose fermentation is about $1.50.
Source: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~brummer/ag/biomass2.htm
Less than gasoline.
Though the idea of runing a car on gin must have merit. Pat's been running his car (into walls and other cars) on alcohol for quite a few years now. He might actually get some decent fuel mileage if he'd quit using obstacles to stop his car and learn to use his brakes instead....
Darn, ya beat me to it.
By the way, I like this VC's idea of putting a tariff on imported oil to prevent manipulation by OPEC.
Agreed, but the problem is implimenting it. It's part of President Bush's energy policy, but an amazingly diverse number of "no nukes-NIMBYs" special interests keep closing the door on building more.
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