“Reuters via Yahoo! News ^ | 6/13/07 | Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a further greening of the Big Apple, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday the city will incorporate biofuel made from corn and soybeans into oil used to heat city buildings starting in 2008. The plan will reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, improve air quality and support small, family farmers, “
Hey Bloom-Ass.
How will burning a substitute substance which you have to burn more of to get the same amount of energy reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
This won’t help small farmers either, but it will make your ADM stock go up.
They’d do way better to build a gasifier and feed it the city’s garbage. Use the syngas to generate electricity and get rid of the garbage at the same time. I’m sure New York’s average daily amount of garbage is enough to feed a gasifier. If not, supplement with coal.
Back during the Great Depression, there was a move to use corn grain for fuel to heat homes. The price of corn was so low then farmers couldn’t afford to ship it to markets.
Corn grain burns directly, and corncobs are great kindling to get a fire started if dipped in kerosene first. A whole industry on the conversion of potbellied stoves to burning corn grew up in the Midwest.
And rather than going through all the industrial processing, the corn could be used directly as fuel. Of course, only the ash was left, but if the only purpose is generation of BTU’s of energy, then direct combustion of the grain is probably as efficient as coal, and with a CARBON-NEUTRAL output.
The process could be made even more efficient with a spray of water on the hot embers. When water hits incandescent carbon at about 1,000 degrees or so, there is a conversion of the carbon and water to form free H2 gas and CO, carbon monoxide. Both of these molecules reburn, hotter than the original flame, and the carbon is totally consumed. Virtually NO ash remains, that mostly minerals like potassium and phosphate, both excellent fertilizers.
And how about New York City go to urban farming, in vacated skyscrapers, using hydroponics? That would solve a lot of the problems with transporting foodstuffs in, and reusing some of the converted sewage waste as fertilizer for these same hydroponics farms.
Talk about sustainable agriculture. This is their opportunity to practice what they preach for everybody else.
Manhattan Island. Totally self-sufficient at last.
How does substituting biofuel for petroleum reduce the carbon footprint?
Bet there’ll be a sharp rise in fires in city office areas. Space heaters plus mountains of files in cardboard boxes should prove interesting. City’s electric bills will skyrocket as well.
My wife is a Director level Environmental Scientist with the City. She attended a 2030 planning session yesterday and came home with a 250 page book that details Bloomberg’s vision. It is remarkably ambitious in every area from transportaion to housing to parks and frankly, a lot of it makes sense but will prove un-doable. We are using the plan as a guide to where we should buy real estate.