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Hmmm...
Posted on 03/19/2009 10:03:24 AM PDT by Fractal Trader
Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world's largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.
The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell's controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.
The company said that many alternative technologies did not offer attractive investment opportunities. Linda Cook, Shell's executive director of gas and power, said: "If there aren't investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won't put money into it. We are businessmen and women. If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
So I guess that everything that Obama is going to proposer is unprofitable.
“So I guess that everything that Obama is going to proposer is unprofitable. “
Yep. And the biofuels that Shell will continue invensting in will drive up the price of food. WHERE ARE MY NUKES?
Just because an investment isn’t attractive, is that reason for not doing research? Who is going to bite the bullet when it comes to actually trying to research fuels other than bio or petro?
And the reason why is that you can store biofuels.
You can’t store the energy created by wind and solar sources quite so easily... unless we’re talking of using biomass as a solar power capture method.
Hey - without biofuels, how else are we gonna starve the poor and hungry and minorities and women and children and polar bears?
Least now we ain’t gonna be choppin’ up no birds ....
“WHERE ARE MY NUKES?”
I’ve never seen a period of time in my life when virtually every logical and common sense solution is completely ignored and total idiocy is embraced instead.
Biofuels aren’t just ethanol. BioDiesel is probably the biggest one, and can come from biological waste products. And, even if they do focus on ethanol, it can be made from sugarcane a la Brazil, which crop is much less costly and less related to food production.
>And the reason why is that you can store biofuels.
Personally I *like* the idea of BioDiesel... Diesel itself is a superior fuel to gasoline in many applications, vehicles most notably. BoiDiesel could be made to work off of byproducts of our food industry, like when you open a can of chili or somesuch and see that the fat’s all been separated and floating on top. You know that they must have some excesses of fats that they’re getting rid of, why not process those waste-products into BioDiesel? (The same with used cooking oils from fast-food places and such.)
Why spend money researching something that is a waste of time?
If round wheels work just fine, why spend money to study ways to use square ones?
Wind/solar are stupid ideas that will never work on a large scale. It would take a battery the size of Europe to store it.
This will have an impact on the ability of wind farms under development to find an investor, purchse turbines, and then move to construction/operation. Especially with many other investors on the sidelines due to their inability to use PTCs and MACRS depreciation (no taxable income, no need for tax credits).
Well, they could get some reeeeeally big capacitors - make that lots and lots of reeeeeeally big capacitors . . . .
“You can’t store the energy created by wind and solar sources quite so easily”
Sure you can. By using 100% of them as they are available, you do not need to use the water behind a dam, saving it for when it is required.
....Bob
This guy does.
bookmark for later.
I would think it may be viable on a small individual basis, but anyway, what do we do, just leave it to the future generations to fix? Seems like we should be doing our part.
I think there is a lot of potential in the conversion of algae to diesel. Any idiot can grow algae with sunlight and water. I understand that the conversion of algae to diesel is relatively easy.
just wondering, why can’t ‘bio-fuels’ be made from grass clippings and then ‘non-food’ portions of food crops and the like?
a lot more green growing stuff goes into waste then the food produced by it
“Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world’s largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.
The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell’s controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.”
The headline is misleading. It sounds like they are going to continue some biofuels work but the main focus will be on cleaner use of fossil fuels. And for what its worth, biofuels is NOT a very cost effective option when oil is less than a $150/barrel. Nor can it be scaled up adequately to meet more than a small % of our liquid fuel demands.
I have just returned from a long trip on which I purchased Shell diesel fuel several times. They have a new campaign, nitrogen additives in all gasoline.
The nitrogen program must be part of this effort. What does the nitrogen do?
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