The New Energy Debates

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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]January 2007 Volume 20 Number 1[/FONT]

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Tide[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The New Energy Debates
[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Will the new Congress act to change our disastrous energy policy? [/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] By Brian Tokar[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]back[/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]O[/FONT]ne of the most pressing issues facing us all, including the new Democratic-controlled Congress, is what to do about energy policy and climate change. With sweeping changes in the leadership of key congressional committees and heightened public concerns about the consequences of disruptive climate shifts, the time appears ripe for significant changes in U.S. policy. Environmental lobbyists in Washington, however, are bracing themselves for only minimal steps. California Senator Barbara Boxer, the new chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, is planning comprehensive hearings on climate and energy policy—a departure from the approach of her predecessor, the notorious right-wing climate-denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind,” and included popular fiction writer Michael Crichton among his “expert” witnesses. But with many congressional Democrats beholden to automobile, agribusiness, and other corporate interests, Capitol Hill is ready for only incremental changes. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The consequences of inaction on climate have become much clearer over the past year, from ever-more disturbing changes in the daily weather to unprecedented droughts and floods in many locations. Al Gore’s self-promoting, but strikingly graphic and substantive film, An Inconvenient Truth, helped bring the issues to the forefront of popular attention last summer and the consensus predictions of climate experts worldwide continue to point toward impending catastrophe. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] In a particularly noteworthy New York Review of Books article last July, NASA climate expert James Hansen reported that a business-as-usual scenario would result in at least 5 degrees (Fahrenheit) of global warming this century and a concomitant 80-foot rise in world sea levels. This would be enough to flood the homes of 50 million people in the U.S. (inundating most East Coast cities), as well as 250 million in China, 150 million in India, and 120 million—almost the entire population—in Bangladesh. Perhaps equally disturbing, the lines on the map that link regions of equal temperature would double their rate of movement toward the poles from 35 to at least 70 miles per decade. The rate of migration of plant and animal species is only about four miles per decade. In this scenario, more than half the earth’s living species could become extinct, leading to widespread ecological collapse. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] In October the British government released the results of a 16-month climate study predicting significant declines in world food production and water shortages affecting as many as 4 billion people, along with coastal flooding, species extinctions, and a rapid fall in the world’s standard of living. The study, led by Britain’s chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, was front page news across the UK—the Independent proclaimed “The day that changed the climate” when the report was released—while the New York Times relegated it to page 15. Stern and his colleagues projected a cost of at least $7 trillion to the world’s economy for failing to take steps within the next decade to significantly ameliorate global warming. Per capita consumption would fall at least 5 percent on a global average basis; in practice, the less well-off will bear a far greater burden. On the other hand, steps toward stabilizing the climate could save as much as $2.5 trillion per year. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The U.S., with only 4.6 percent of the world’s population, is now responsible for 23.5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for alterations in climate. U.S. emissions per capita are twice that of Germany and Japan, three times France and Italy’s, and five times the world average, according to International Energy Agency statistics. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. economy made significant strides toward more efficient use of energy. Economic growth became decoupled from energy use and nearly as much energy was saved every year as a result of cumulative conservation measures and efficiency improvements as was produced by burning oil. Since 1979, however, public investment in energy research and development has fallen by more than half and private spending has also declined steadily, reaching its lowest level since the early 1960s. Per capita energy consumption has increased by half. While many European economies have struggled to meet Kyoto Protocol requirements, stabilizing and in a few cases reducing CO[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]2[/FONT] emissions, U.S. emissions have steadily increased. [/FONT]​

What Is To Be Done? ​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]T[/FONT]he emerging consensus is that emissions reductions of 60 to 80 percent are needed to forestall the worst case scenarios, and that meaningful steps toward these emissions goals need to begin almost immediately. Is this possible? James Hansen and other analysts have posited an alternative scenario in which CO[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]2 [/FONT]production levels off by the end of this decade and begin to decline rapidly as new technologies kick in by mid-century. This would slow warming to less than 2 degrees, still insufficient to prevent massive habitat losses or the submersion of numerous island nations, but enough to reduce the projected sea level rise to only 15 feet or so. Some economists, however, predict a 30-to-40-year turnover time for significant capital investments on a large scale. So the question remains: can anything be done to head off impending disaster? [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hansen’s confidence that this can occur draws partly on the successful phasing out of chloroflurocarbons (CFCs), once the world learned of these chemicals’ decisive role in the thinning of the earth’s ozone layer, as well as in furthering global heating. “If…growth of CFCs had continued just one more decade,” Hansen reports, “the stratospheric ozone layer would have been severely depleted over the entire planet and CFCs themselves would have caused a larger greenhouse effect than CO[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]2[/FONT].” But when voluntary measures proved ineffective in curbing the use of CFCs, especially for refrigeration, the U.S. and Europe took the lead in negotiating the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which completely phased out the chemicals and promoted the rapid development of alternative refrigerants, coatings, and propellant compounds. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Energy guru Amory Lovins, the founder of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Institute, has been a leading advocate for drastically reducing energy use since the 1970s. He believes we can rapidly lower the energy intensity of the world’s economies and save millions in doing so. His data suggests that the efficiency of oil use can be doubled once again, as it was in the 1970s, mainly through changes in the transportation sector. Ultralight vehicles and biofuels, as well as the retooling of buildings and factories, can dramatically lower energy consumption without requiring dramatic lifestyle changes, he argues. Lovins proposes a mix of fees and consumer rebates designed to favor the most efficient vehicles in each size class, along with targeted changes in government procurement, loan guarantees, and other “market-oriented” measures. He suggests that a $180 billion investment over ten years can eventually produce net savings of $70 billion per year, a significant boon to investors. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Energy experts interviewed by the New York Times in October proposed an equally ambitious research agenda aimed toward major improvements in the efficiency of solar panels, as well as batteries able to store large quantities of energy. These areas have languished since the “energy crisis” years of the 1970s. Battery technologies, for example, barely changed at all from the beginning of the 20th century to the dawn of the hybrid car era, but they are essential for storing energy from intermittent sources like the sun and wind, capturing energy when it is most available and releasing it when needed. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Lovins acknowledges that such changes in technology are “fundamentally disruptive to current business models,” yet he insists that business be in the lead in implementing these necessary changes. While he supports shifts in government procurement toward more efficient technologies—and even large-scale buyouts of people’s old gas guzzlers —he implies that the sum of individual business decisions will be largely sufficient to show the way forward. However, as the history of automobile fuel economy standards shows, industries only alter their behavior on a large scale in a short amount of time when they are mandated to do so and all manufacturers have to follow the same rules. [/FONT]​

Are Biofuels The Answer? ​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]O[/FONT]f all the possible solutions to our current energy problems, biofuels are by far the most aggressively promoted today. Stories in all the major newspapers and national magazines, even ads from major auto makers, suggest that ethanol fuel and biodiesel are the keys to conserving oil, reducing pollution, and preventing climate change. Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing hundreds of millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the U.S. today, or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed. It’s literally a “modern day gold rush,” as described by the New York Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main beneficiaries of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The Times reported last summer that some 40 new ethanol plants were then under construction in the U.S., aiming toward a 30 percent increase in domestic production. Archer Daniels Midland, the company that first sold the idea of corn-derived ethanol as an auto fuel to Congress in the late 1970s, has doubled its stock price and profits over the last two years. ADM currently controls a quarter of U.S. ethanol fuel production and recently hired a former Chevron executive as its CEO. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Several well-respected analysts have raised serious concerns about this increasing diversion of food crops toward the production of fuel for automobiles. WorldWatch Institute founder Lester Brown, long concerned about the sustainability of world food supplies, says that fuel producers are already competing with food processors in the world’s grain markets. “Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in grain production this year,” reports Brown, a serious concern in a world where the grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank can also feed a person for an entire year. Others have dismissed the push for ethanol fuel as little more than the subsidized burning of food to run automobiles. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The biofuel rush is having a significant impact worldwide as well. Brazil, often touted as the the most impressive biofuel success story, is using half its annual sugarcane crop to provide 40 percent of its auto fuel, while increasing deforestation to grow more sugarcane and soybeans. Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being bulldozed for oil palm plantations—threatening endangered orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and countless other species—in order to serve the booming European market for biodiesel. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet or merely another corporate push for profits? Two recent studies aim to document the full consequences of the new biofuel economy and realistically assess its impact on fuel use, greenhouse gases, and agricultural lands. One study, originating from the University of Minnesota, is moderately hopeful in the first two areas, but offers a strong caution about land use. The other, from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, concludes that all domestic biofuel sources—the ones currently in use as well as those under development—produce less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The Minnesota researchers attempted a full lifecycle analysis of the production of ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy. They documented the energy costs of fuel production, pesticide use, transportation, and other key factors and also accounted for the energy equivalent of soy and corn byproducts that are available for other uses after the fuel is extracted. Their paper, published in the July 25, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that ethanol production offers a modest net energy gain of 25 percent, resulting in 12 percent less greenhouse gases than an equivalent amount of gasoline. The numbers for biodiesel are more promising, with a 93 percent net energy gain and a 41 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The researchers cautioned, however, that these figures do not account for the significant environmental damage from increased acreages of these crops—including the impacts of pesticides and nitrate runoff into water supplies—or the increased demand on water, as “energy crops” like corn and soy displace more drought tolerant crops such as wheat in several Midwestern states. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The most serious impact, though, is on land use. The Minnesota research paper reports that in 2005, 14 percent of the U.S. corn harvest was used to produce nearly 4 billion gallons of ethanol, equivalent to 1.7 percent of current gasoline usage. About 1.5 percent of the soy harvest produced 68 million gallons of biodiesel, equivalent to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of gas usage. This means that if all of the country’s corn harvest was used to make ethanol, it would displace 12 percent of our gas; all of our soybeans would displace about 6 percent of diesel use. But if the energy used in producing these biofuels is taken into account—the fact that 80 percent of the energy goes into production in the case of corn ethanol and almost 50 percent in the case of soy biodiesel—the entire soy and corn crops combined would only satisfy less than 3 percent of current gasoline and diesel use. This is where the serious strain on food supplies and prices originates. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The Cornell study is even more skeptical. Released a year earlier, it was the product of an ongoing collaboration between Cornell agriculturalist David Pimentel and engineering professor Ted Patzek of the University of California at Berkeley and was published in the journal Natural Resources Research. This study found that, on balance, making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil fuel than the net energy produced and biodiesel from soy results in a net energy loss of 27 percent. Other crops, touted as solutions to the apparent diseconomy of current methods, offer even worse results. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Switchgrass, for example, can grow on marginal land and presumably won’t compete with food production (recall George Bush’s mumbling about switchgrass in his 2006 State of the Union speech), but it requires 45 percent more energy to harvest and process than the energy value of the fuel that is produced. Wood biomass requires 57 percent more energy than it produces and sunflowers require more than twice as much energy than is available in the fuel that is produced. “There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” said David Pimentel in a Cornell press statement. “These strategies are not sustainable.” [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The Cornell/Berkeley study has drawn the attention of numerous critics, some of whom suggest that Ted Patzek’s background in petroleum engineering disqualifies him from objectively assessing the energy balance of biofuels. Needless to say, in a field where both oil and agribusiness companies are vying for public subsidies, the technical arguments can become rather furious. An earlier analysis by the Chicago-area Argonne National Laboratory (once a Manhattan Project offshoot) produced data much closer to the Minnesota results, but a response by Patzek pointed out several potential flaws in that study’s shared assumptions with an earlier analysis by the USDA. In another recent article, Harvard environmental scientist Michael McElroy concurred with Pimentel and Patzek: “nfortunately the promised benefits [of ethanol] prove upon analysis to be largely ephemeral.” [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Even the extraction of ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane, touted as the world’s model for conversion from fossil fuels to sustainable “green energy,” raises questions. The energy yield appears beyond question: it is widely suggested that ethanol from sugarcane may produce as much as eight times as much energy as it takes to grow and process. But a recent World Wildlife Fund report for the International Energy Agency challenges this approach to future energy independence. It turns out that 80 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions come not from cars, but from deforestation—the loss of embedded carbon dioxide when forests are cut down and burned. A hectare of land may save 13 tons per year of carbon dioxide if it is used to grow sugarcane, but the same hectare can absorb 20 tons of CO[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]2[/FONT] if it remains forested. If sugarcane and soy plantations continue to encourage deforestation, both in the Amazon and in Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forests, any climate advantage is more than outweighed by the loss of the forest. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Genetic engineering—which has failed to produce healthier or more sustainable food and also fails to create a reliable source of biopharmaceuticals without threatening the safety of our food supply—is now being touted as the answer to more sustainable biofuel production. Besides manipulating crops for nominally more efficient conversion to fuel, biotech companies are proposing huge plantations of fast-growing genetically engineered trees to temporarily sequester carbon and ultimately harvest them for ethanol. Genetically engineered trees, with their long life cycle, as well as seeds and pollen capable of spreading hundreds of miles in the wild, are potentially a far greater environmental threat than engineered varieties of annual crops (see Z Magazine, March 2006). Even Monsanto, long the most aggressive promoter of genetic engineering, has opted to rely instead on conventional plant breeding for its biofuel research, according to the New York Times. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Despite all these concerns, however, biofuels still prove advantageous in many local applications, such as farmers using crop wastes to fuel their farms and people running cars on waste oil that is otherwise thrown away by restaurants. New innovations, such as extracting a diesel substitute from pools of oil-rich algae, may also make an important difference in certain settings. But as a solution to long-term energy needs on a national or international scale, the costs of a society-wide conversion to biofuels may far outweigh the benefits. [/FONT]​

Promoting A Transition ​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]W[/FONT]hichever alternatives prove to be the most viable for addressing our nearand longer-term energy needs, their development and full deployment will require massive investments of labor and capital, as well as a dramatic shift in investment priorities in both the public and private sectors. How can such a transition come about? [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Proposals for financing a transition to a low-energy scenario tend to hinge on one or more widely advocated approaches, including energy taxes, capand-trade systems for CO[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]2[/FONT] emissions, renewable portfolio and performance standards, and public works programs or incentives mandating specific changes in technology. A full economic analysis of these alternatives is beyond the scope of this discussion, but some general comments on their differing political and environmental implications are clearly in order. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Energy taxes are a proposed solution long favored by many environmentalists and some politicians. Al Gore, for example, has proposed a gradually increasing tax, proportionate to each fuel’s level of carbon dioxide emissions. He suggests decreasing social security taxes at the same time so as to make the overall result revenue-neutral. One difficulty with energy taxes, though, is that it is difficult to design a system that doesn’t disproportionately hurt those who are less well-off and invariably spend a much larger proportion of their income on energy. A recent study from economists at Stanford and NYU suggests that energy demand is sufficiently inelastic that price increases would have to be three to four times greater than a straightforward policy analysis might suggest. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The problems with emissions trading have been discussed in detail elsewhere (see ZMagazine, February 2006). It is the solution favored by advocates of “free market environmentalism,” and was enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change following then-Vice President Gore’s intervention in the proceedings. Carbon trading creates an entirely artificial “carbon market” on a global scale, one highly prone to manipulation and abuse. It also encourages environmental damage, such as the conversion of native forests to faster-growing commercial tree plantations by companies and governments seeking to profit from carbon credits or offsets. In the global South, this invariably leads to displacement of peoples whose livelihood depends on the forest. The wholly voluntary, corporate-supported carbon trading system currently operating in the U.S., under the auspices of the Chicago Climate Exchange, has been criticized for inflating the benefits of very small changes in emissions and offering credits for some practices that make no real difference for the climate at all. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Performance and portfolio standards appear more promising, but have high political hurdles to clear. They can require increased public intervention in the hallowed “free market,” something that has become politically unfashionable in recent decades. Performance standards include mandated fuel economy goals for automobiles—which have not changed in the U.S. since the late 1980s—and standards for the efficiency of household appliances, which have steadily improved over the past two decades despite efforts by the Bush administration to slow the process. Portfolio standards are a more recent invention and have been adopted by more than 20 U.S. states, mandating utilities to obtain a certain minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy resources. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The 2005 federal energy bill mandates that at least 7.5 billion gallons of automotive fuel be obtained from renewable sources by 2012. The most tangible expression of this policy is a 51 cents per gallon subsidy for ethanol, which could be expanded to promote a much wider range of renewable technologies. Public investment to support advances in energy efficiency, as well as solar and wind energy technologies, could prove far more cost effective than subsidies targeting ethanol production. One new study commissioned by the International Institute for Sustainable Development reports, with no intended irony, that current U.S. biofuel subsidies could purchase 30-140 times as much savings in greenhouse gas emissions if invested in existing “carbon markets.” [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] In recent years the most innovative steps toward reducing energy use and promoting renewables have come from the state and local levels. California’s recent energy legislation—which helped Arnold Schwarzenegger bolster his environmental credentials prior to the November election—mandated reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from industries and automobiles and required builders to offer photovoltaic roofing tiles, among other measures. California utilities are now only allowed to enter into long-term power contracts with facilities that meet the highest emissions standards. While many state-level programs also emphasize emissions trading, including a recent program that includes seven northeastern states, they allow a variety of approaches to be implemented and tested, challenging two decades of inaction at the federal level. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy,” the inventor Thomas Edison told a colleague shortly before his death in 1931. “I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Seventy-five years later, solar energy is still considered too speculative by conventional capitalist standards. Despite his large investments in subsidized ethanol production, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told the New York Times that he would not back solar power because it did not show a profit without subsidies. Genuinely forward-looking energy technologies are still at a significant disadvantage compared to “quick fixes” like ethanol. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Similarly, no one has yet figured out how to make a fortune on conservation and efficiency. While Amory Lovins and others have demonstrated for 30 years that it is possible to reap huge savings at minimal cost from investments in energy efficiency, corporations prefer to seek even greater short-term gains from worker layoffs, outsourcing production, and other socially disruptive measures. As predictions for climate changes become ever more severe, we need to confront the reality that the needs of the planet, and of a genuinely sustainable society, remain in fundamental conflict with the demands of wealth and profit.[/FONT]​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Brian Tokar directs the Biotechnology Project at Vermont’s Institute for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org). His books include Earth for Sale (South End, 1997) and Gene Traders (Toward Freedom, 2004). [/FONT]​

 

[Mike_Van]

The idea that we should focus on the most drought-tolerant crops, and those that require the least fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide for biofuels makes so much sense, I doubt it will be supported by the corporate agribusiness interests.

Hemp (seed for oil & cellulose for biomass) is the perfect example that would fulfill all of the above, but which is least likely to receive the endorsement it needs. Corn and soy are quite tough on the environment, if conventional farming methods are used. Go figure...

 

[rotarykid]

The New Energy Debates
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Will the new Congress act to change our disastrous energy policy? [/FONT]



[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]By Brian Tokar[/FONT]


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]back[/FONT]


One of the most pressing issues facing us all, including the new Democratic-controlled Congress, is what to do about energy policy and climate change. With sweeping changes in the leadership of key congressional committees and heightened public concerns about the consequences of disruptive climate shifts, the time appears ripe for significant changes in U.S. policy. Environmental lobbyists in Washington, however, are bracing themselves for only minimal steps. California Senator Barbara Boxer, the new chair of the Environment and

Public Works Committee, is planning comprehensive hearings on climate and energy policy—a departure from the approach of her predecessor, the notorious right-wing climate-denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind,” and included popular fiction writer Michael Crichton among his “expert” witnesses. But with many congressional Democrats beholden to automobile, agribusiness, and other corporate interests, Capitol Hill is ready for only incremental changes.

The consequences of inaction on climate have become much clearer over the past year, from ever-more disturbing changes in the daily weather to unprecedented droughts and floods in many locations. ​

Al Gore’s self-promoting, but strikingly graphic and substantive film, An Inconvenient Truth, helped bring the issues to the forefront of popular attention last summer and the consensus predictions of climate experts worldwide continue to point toward impending catastrophe.

In a particularly noteworthy New York Review of Books article last July, NASA climate expert James Hansen reported that a business-as-usual scenario would result in at least 5 degrees (Fahrenheit) of global warming this century and a concomitant 80-foot rise in world sea levels. ​

This would be enough to flood the homes of 50 million people in the U.S. (inundating most East Coast cities), as well as 250 million in China, 150 million in India, and 120 million—almost the entire population—in Bangladesh. Perhaps equally disturbing, the lines on the map that link regions of equal temperature would double their rate of movement toward the poles from 35 to at least 70 miles per decade. The rate of migration of plant and animal species is only about four miles per decade. In this scenario, more than half the earth’s living species could become extinct, leading to widespread ecological collapse.




In October the British government released the results of a 16-month climate study predicting significant declines in world food production and water shortages affecting as many as 4 billion people, along with coastal flooding, species extinctions, and a rapid fall in the world’s standard of living. The study, led by Britain’s chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, was front page news across the UK—the Independent proclaimed “The day that changed the climate” when the report was released—while the New York Times relegated it to page 15. Stern and his colleagues projected a cost of at least $7 trillion to the world’s economy for failing to take steps within the next decade to significantly ameliorate global warming.

Per capita consumption would fall at least 5 percent on a global average basis; in practice, the less well-off will bear a far greater burden. On the other hand, steps toward stabilizing the climate could save as much as $2.5 trillion per year.



The U.S., with only 4.6 percent of the world’s population, is now responsible for 23.5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for alterations in climate. U.S. emissions per capita are twice that of Germany and Japan, three times France and Italy’s, and five times the world average, according to International Energy Agency statistics.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. economy made significant strides toward more efficient use of energy. Economic growth became decoupled from energy use and nearly as much energy was saved every year as a result of cumulative conservation measures and efficiency improvements as was produced by burning oil.

Since 1979, however, public investment in energy research and development has fallen by more than half and private spending has also declined steadily, reaching its lowest level since the early 1960s. Per capita energy consumption has increased by half.

While many European economies have struggled to meet Kyoto Protocol requirements, stabilizing and in a few cases reducing CO2 emissions, U.S. emissions have steadily increased.

What Is To Be Done? ​

The emerging consensus is that emissions reductions of 60 to 80 percent are needed to forestall the worst case scenarios, and that meaningful steps toward these emissions goals need to begin almost immediately. ​

Is this possible? James Hansen and other analysts have posited an alternative scenario in which CO2 production levels off by the end of this decade and begin to decline rapidly as new technologies kick in by mid-century.

This would slow warming to less than 2 degrees, still insufficient to prevent massive habitat losses or the submersion of numerous island nations, but enough to reduce the projected sea level rise to only 15 feet or so.

Some economists, however, predict a 30-to-40-year turnover time for significant capital investments on a large scale. So the question remains: can anything be done to head off impending disaster?



Hansen’s confidence that this can occur draws partly on the successful phasing out of chloroflurocarbons (CFCs), once the world learned of these chemicals’ decisive role in the thinning of the earth’s ozone layer, as well as in furthering global heating. “If…growth of CFCs had continued just one more decade,”

Hansen reports, “the stratospheric ozone layer would have been severely depleted over the entire planet and CFCs themselves would have caused a larger greenhouse effect than CO2.”

But when voluntary measures proved ineffective in curbing the use of CFCs, especially for refrigeration, the U.S. and Europe took the lead in negotiating the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which completely phased out the chemicals and promoted the rapid development of alternative refrigerants, coatings, and propellant compounds.



Energy guru Amory Lovins, the founder of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Institute, has been a leading advocate for drastically reducing energy use since the 1970s. He believes we can rapidly lower the energy intensity of the world’s economies and save millions in doing so.

His data suggests that the efficiency of oil use can be doubled once again, as it was in the 1970s, mainly through changes in the transportation sector. Ultralight vehicles and biofuels, as well as the retooling of buildings and factories, can dramatically lower energy consumption without requiring dramatic lifestyle changes, he argues.

Lovins proposes a mix of fees and consumer rebates designed to favor the most efficient vehicles in each size class, along with targeted changes in government procurement, loan guarantees, and other “market-oriented” measures. He suggests that a $180 billion investment over ten years can eventually produce net savings of $70 billion per year, a significant boon to investors.



Energy experts interviewed by the New York Times in October proposed an equally ambitious research agenda aimed toward major improvements in the efficiency of solar panels, as well as batteries able to store large quantities of energy.

These areas have languished since the “energy crisis” years of the 1970s. Battery technologies, for example, barely changed at all from the beginning of the 20th century to the dawn of the hybrid car era, but they are essential for storing energy from intermittent sources like the sun and wind, capturing energy when it is most available and releasing it when needed.



Lovins acknowledges that such changes in technology are “fundamentally disruptive to current business models,” yet he insists that business be in the lead in implementing these necessary changes.

While he supports shifts in government procurement toward more efficient technologies—and even large-scale buyouts of people’s old gas guzzlers —he implies that the sum of individual business decisions will be largely sufficient to show the way forward.

However, as the history of automobile fuel economy standards shows, industries only alter their behavior on a large scale in a short amount of time when they are mandated to do so and all manufacturers have to follow the same rules.

Are Biofuels The Answer? ​

Of all the possible solutions to our current energy problems, biofuels are by far the most aggressively promoted today. Stories in all the major newspapers and national magazines, even ads from major auto makers, suggest that ethanol fuel and biodiesel are the keys to conserving oil, reducing pollution, and preventing climate change. ​

Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing hundreds of millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the U.S. today, or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed.

It’s literally a “modern day gold rush,” as described by the New York Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main beneficiaries of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production.



The Times reported last summer that some 40 new ethanol plants were then under construction in the U.S., aiming toward a 30 percent increase in domestic production. Archer Daniels Midland, the company that first sold the idea of corn-derived ethanol as an auto fuel to Congress in the late 1970s, has doubled its stock price and profits over the last two years.

ADM currently controls a quarter of U.S. ethanol fuel production and recently hired a former Chevron executive as its CEO.



Several well-respected analysts have raised serious concerns about this increasing diversion of food crops toward the production of fuel for automobiles. WorldWatch Institute founder Lester Brown, long concerned about the sustainability of world food supplies, says that fuel producers are already competing with food processors in the world’s grain markets.

“Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in grain production this year,” reports Brown, a serious concern in a world where the grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank can also feed a person for an entire year. Others have dismissed the push for ethanol fuel as little more than the subsidized burning of food to run automobiles.



The biofuel rush is having a significant impact worldwide as well. Brazil, often touted as the the most impressive biofuel success story, is using half its annual sugarcane crop to provide 40 percent of its auto fuel, while increasing deforestation to grow more sugarcane and soybeans.

Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being bulldozed for oil palm plantations—threatening endangered orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and countless other species—in order to serve the booming European market for biodiesel.



Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet or merely another corporate push for profits? Two recent studies aim to document the full consequences of the new biofuel economy and realistically assess its impact on fuel use, greenhouse gases, and agricultural lands.

One study, originating from the University of Minnesota, is moderately hopeful in the first two areas, but offers a strong caution about land use. The other, from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, concludes that all domestic biofuel sources—the ones currently in use as well as those under development—produce less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops.



The Minnesota researchers attempted a full lifecycle analysis of the production of ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy. They documented the energy costs of fuel production, pesticide use, transportation, and other key factors and also accounted for the energy equivalent of soy and corn byproducts that are available for other uses after the fuel is extracted.

Their paper, published in the July 25, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that ethanol production offers a modest net energy gain of 25 percent, resulting in 12 percent less greenhouse gases than an equivalent amount of gasoline. The numbers for biodiesel are more promising, with a 93 percent net energy gain and a 41 percent reduction in greenhouse gases.



The researchers cautioned, however, that these figures do not account for the significant environmental damage from increased acreages of these crops—including the impacts of pesticides and nitrate runoff into water supplies—or the increased demand on water, as “energy crops” like corn and soy displace more drought tolerant crops such as wheat in several Midwestern states.



The most serious impact, though, is on land use. The Minnesota research paper reports that in 2005, 14 percent of the U.S. corn harvest was used to produce nearly 4 billion gallons of ethanol, equivalent to 1.7 percent of current gasoline usage. About 1.5 percent of the soy harvest produced 68 million gallons of biodiesel, equivalent to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of gas usage.

This means that if all of the country’s corn harvest was used to make ethanol, it would displace 12 percent of our gas; all of our soybeans would displace about 6 percent of diesel use.

But if the energy used in producing these biofuels is taken into account—the fact that 80 percent of the energy goes into production in the case of corn ethanol and almost 50 percent in the case of soy biodiesel—the entire soy and corn crops combined would only satisfy less than 3 percent of current gasoline and diesel use. This is where the serious strain on food supplies and prices originates.



The Cornell study is even more skeptical. Released a year earlier, it was the product of an ongoing collaboration between Cornell agriculturalist David Pimentel and engineering professor Ted Patzek of the University of California at Berkeley and was published in the journal Natural Resources Research.

This study found that, on balance, making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil fuel than the net energy produced and biodiesel from soy results in a net energy loss of 27 percent. Other crops, touted as solutions to the apparent diseconomy of current methods, offer even worse results.



Switchgrass, for example, can grow on marginal land and presumably won’t compete with food production (recall George Bush’s mumbling about switchgrass in his 2006 State of the Union speech), but it requires 45 percent more energy to harvest and process than the energy value of the fuel that is produced.

Wood biomass requires 57 percent more energy than it produces and sunflowers require more than twice as much energy than is available in the fuel that is produced. “There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” said David Pimentel in a Cornell press statement. “These strategies are not sustainable.”



The Cornell/Berkeley study has drawn the attention of numerous critics, some of whom suggest that Ted Patzek’s background in petroleum engineering disqualifies him from objectively assessing the energy balance of biofuels.

Needless to say, in a field where both oil and agribusiness companies are vying for public subsidies, the technical arguments can become rather furious. An earlier analysis by the Chicago-area Argonne National Laboratory (once a Manhattan Project offshoot) produced data much closer to the Minnesota results, but a response by Patzek pointed out several potential flaws in that study’s shared assumptions with an earlier analysis by the USDA.

In another recent article, Harvard environmental scientist Michael McElroy concurred with Pimentel and Patzek: “nfortunately the promised benefits [of ethanol] prove upon analysis to be largely ephemeral.”



Even the extraction of ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane, touted as the world’s model for conversion from fossil fuels to sustainable “green energy,” raises questions.
The energy yield appears beyond question: it is widely suggested that ethanol from sugarcane may produce as much as eight times as much energy as it takes to grow and process.

But a recent World Wildlife Fund report for the International Energy Agency challenges this approach to future energy independence. It turns out that 80 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions come not from cars, but from deforestation—the loss of embedded carbon dioxide when forests are cut down and burned.

A hectare of land may save 13 tons per year of carbon dioxide if it is used to grow sugarcane, but the same hectare can absorb 20 tons of CO2 if it remains forested. If sugarcane and soy plantations continue to encourage deforestation, both in the Amazon and in Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forests, any climate advantage is more than outweighed by the loss of the forest.



Genetic engineering—which has failed to produce healthier or more sustainable food and also fails to create a reliable source of biopharmaceuticals without threatening the safety of our food supply—is now being touted as the answer to more sustainable biofuel production.

Besides manipulating crops for nominally more efficient conversion to fuel, biotech companies are proposing huge plantations of fast-growing genetically engineered trees to temporarily sequester carbon and ultimately harvest them for ethanol.

Genetically engineered trees, with their long life cycle, as well as seeds and pollen capable of spreading hundreds of miles in the wild, are potentially a far greater environmental threat than engineered varieties of annual crops (see Z Magazine, March 2006).

Even Monsanto, long the most aggressive promoter of genetic engineering, has opted to rely instead on conventional plant breeding for its biofuel research, according to the New York Times.



Despite all these concerns, however, biofuels still prove advantageous in many local applications, such as farmers using crop wastes to fuel their farms and people running cars on waste oil that is otherwise thrown away by restaurants.

New innovations, such as extracting a diesel substitute from pools of oil-rich algae, may also make an important difference in certain settings. But as a solution to long-term energy needs on a national or international scale, the costs of a society-wide conversion to biofuels may far outweigh the benefits.

Promoting A Transition ​

Whichever alternatives prove to be the most viable for addressing our nearand longer-term energy needs, their development and full deployment will require massive investments of labor and capital, as well as a dramatic shift in investment priorities in both the public and private sectors. ​

How can such a transition come about?



Proposals for financing a transition to a low-energy scenario tend to hinge on one or more widely advocated approaches, including energy taxes, capand-trade systems for CO2 emissions, renewable portfolio and performance standards, and public works programs or incentives mandating specific changes in technology.

A full economic analysis of these alternatives is beyond the scope of this discussion, but some general comments on their differing political and environmental implications are clearly in order.



Energy taxes are a proposed solution long favored by many environmentalists and some politicians. Al Gore, for example, has proposed a gradually increasing tax, proportionate to each fuel’s level of carbon dioxide emissions.

He suggests decreasing social security taxes at the same time so as to make the overall result revenue-neutral. One difficulty with energy taxes, though, is that it is difficult to design a system that doesn’t disproportionately hurt those who are less well-off and invariably spend a much larger proportion of their income on energy.

A recent study from economists at Stanford and NYU suggests that energy demand is sufficiently inelastic that price increases would have to be three to four times greater than a straightforward policy analysis might suggest.




The problems with emissions trading have been discussed in detail elsewhere (see ZMagazine, February 2006). It is the solution favored by advocates of “free market environmentalism,” and was enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change following then-Vice President Gore’s intervention in the proceedings.

Carbon trading creates an entirely artificial “carbon market” on a global scale, one highly prone to manipulation and abuse. It also encourages environmental damage, such as the conversion of native forests to faster-growing commercial tree plantations by companies and governments seeking to profit from carbon credits or offsets. In the global South, this invariably leads to displacement of peoples whose livelihood depends on the forest.

The wholly voluntary, corporate-supported carbon trading system currently operating in the U.S., under the auspices of the Chicago Climate Exchange, has been criticized for inflating the benefits of very small changes in emissions and offering credits for some practices that make no real difference for the climate at all.




Performance and portfolio standards appear more promising, but have high political hurdles to clear. They can require increased public intervention in the hallowed “free market,” something that has become politically unfashionable in recent decades.

Performance standards include mandated fuel economy goals for automobiles—which have not changed in the U.S. since the late 1980s—and standards for the efficiency of household appliances, which have steadily improved over the past two decades despite efforts by the Bush administration to slow the process.

Portfolio standards are a more recent invention and have been adopted by more than 20 U.S. states, mandating utilities to obtain a certain minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy resources.



The 2005 federal energy bill mandates that at least 7.5 billion gallons of automotive fuel be obtained from renewable sources by 2012. The most tangible expression of this policy is a 51 cents per gallon subsidy for ethanol, which could be expanded to promote a much wider range of renewable technologies.

Public investment to support advances in energy efficiency, as well as solar and wind energy technologies, could prove far more cost effective than subsidies targeting ethanol production.

One new study commissioned by the International Institute for Sustainable Development reports, with no intended irony, that current U.S. biofuel subsidies could purchase 30-140 times as much savings in greenhouse gas emissions if invested in existing “carbon markets.”

In recent years the most innovative steps toward reducing energy use and promoting renewables have come from the state and local levels. ​

California’s recent energy legislation—which helped Arnold Schwarzenegger bolster his environmental credentials prior to the November election—mandated reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from industries and automobiles and required builders to offer photovoltaic roofing tiles, among other measures.

California utilities are now only allowed to enter into long-term power contracts with facilities that meet the highest emissions standards. While many state-level programs also emphasize emissions trading, including a recent program that includes seven northeastern states, they allow a variety of approaches to be implemented and tested, challenging two decades of inaction at the federal level.



“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy,” the inventor Thomas Edison told a colleague shortly before his death in 1931. “I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Seventy-five years later, solar energy is still considered too speculative by conventional capitalist standards.

Despite his large investments in subsidized ethanol production, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told the New York Times that he would not back solar power because it did not show a profit without subsidies. Genuinely forward-looking energy technologies are still at a significant disadvantage compared to “quick fixes” like ethanol.



Similarly, no one has yet figured out how to make a fortune on conservation and efficiency. While Amory Lovins and others have demonstrated for 30 years that it is possible to reap huge savings at minimal cost from investments in energy efficiency, corporations prefer to seek even greater short-term gains from worker layoffs, outsourcing production, and other socially disruptive measures.

As predictions for climate changes become ever more severe, we need to confront the reality that the needs of the planet, and of a genuinely sustainable society, remain in fundamental conflict with the demands of wealth and profit.



Brian Tokar directs the Biotechnology Project at Vermont’s Institute for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org). His books include Earth for Sale (South End, 1997) and Gene Traders (Toward Freedom, 2004).




Now maybe I can read it

 

[esperman]

How about using larger lettering & putting some breaks between the paragraphs so what you written will be easier to read .

I tried to read what you wrote , in the current format its' just too hard to read .

loved your in depth analysis.

 

[slotracer577]

When I was in College, one of my professors talked about his first project out of school. It was on how to ferment biomass and then distill it into a fuel to be used. He said what they found was the most effiecient method of converting the biomass to usable energy was to burn it. Just burn it and make it into electricity. Sort of funny since he did this in the early 70's.

Probably the best way to use corn for energy is to burn it in coal powered power plants, but that isnt sexy enough for the politicians. Ethanol is not a great use of corn. If you want the same power level you need to use about twice as much, so you need almost 2 gal of E-85 to equal the energy of one gal of gas. Or if you want the same milage, you get half the power. Not a good trade off in my book, although I have seen some 600+ hp street cars on E-85. The E-85 also makes a mess of the injectors.

John

 

[03_01_TDI]

Archer Daniels Midland, the company that first sold the idea of corn-derived ethanol as an auto fuel to Congress in the late 1970s, has doubled its stock price and profits over the last two years. ADM currently controls a quarter of U.S. ethanol fuel production and recently hired a former Chevron executive as its CEO.

Take some time to read about the HUGE tax breaks and politcal kickbacks.

 

[Mike_Van]

ADM, not the sort of company that deserves my money...

"Archer Daniels Midland, one of the nation's largest agricultural producers pleaded guilty to price fixing, and agreed to pay $100 million in fines, the largest criminal antitrust penalty ever. ADM, which calls itself the supermarket to the world, is a $13 billion grain company which produces corn syrup, corn-based fuel, and food and animal feed supplements used in thousands of products. ADM has more processing capacity than any other company in the world. As part of the plea agreement, ADM admitted to price fixing in two of its major products, Lysine used in livestock feed, and citric acid found in soft drinks and detergents..."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/october96/adm_10-15.html

Yeah, I know, it was ten years ago...

 

[nh mike]

When I was in College, one of my professors talked about his first project out of school. It was on how to ferment biomass and then distill it into a fuel to be used. He said what they found was the most effiecient method of converting the biomass to usable energy was to burn it. Just burn it and make it into electricity. Sort of funny since he did this in the early 70's.

Probably the best way to use corn for energy is to burn it in coal powered power plants, but that isnt sexy enough for the politicians. Ethanol is not a great use of corn.

Just burning it is the most efficient way of "freeing" the energy - the issue is how much can we capture, and turn into the form we want it to be in. If the goal is making electricity, then yes, just burn it directly. If the goal is producing a high energy density fuel suitable for powering automobiles, just burning it isn't a great option, since we don't have a means currently of efficiently storing enough energy from electricity onboard a vehicle for a long driving range, and with quick recharge/refill times. It has nothing to do with just burning it not being "sexy enough for the politicians".

If you want the same power level you need to use about twice as much, so you need almost 2 gal of E-85 to equal the energy of one gal of gas. Or if you want the same milage, you get half the power. Not a good trade off in my book, although I have seen some 600+ hp street cars on E-85. The E-85 also makes a mess of the injectors.

More like 1.5 times as much. How does the E-85 make a mess of the injectors?

 

[TurbinePower]

Probably the best way to use corn for energy is to burn it in coal powered power plants, but that isnt sexy enough for the politicians. Ethanol is not a great use of corn. If you want the same power level you need to use about twice as much, so you need almost 2 gal of E-85 to equal the energy of one gal of gas. Or if you want the same milage, you get half the power. Not a good trade off in my book, although I have seen some 600+ hp street cars on E-85. The E-85 also makes a mess of the injectors.

Only ancient injectors, John. Your other alternative to overfueling to compensate for lower energy density is to take advantage of ethanol's differing properties to reduce normal losses involved in maintaining the gasoline-fired engine operating parameters required for burning said gasoline. That is, ramp up the compression a good two or three points and cut back on the aggressive cooling systems. Employ a little judicious ceramic coating for piston tops and cylinder heads, and you have an engine that could very easily be just as powerful and actually more fuel efficient than the gasoline engine it replaced; it's downside is that it must now run solely on high octane fuels, so you won't have a "flexfuel" vehicle. Ethanol, natural gas, or similar would be required to run such an engine because of the compression ratio. But because of how cool-burning ethanol is, even with a reduced cooling system you wouldn't have to worry so much about overheating.

Another option to increase power from such an engine, and ramp up the compression even more, is to use computerized, precision metered water injection instead of overfueling to prevent knocking conditions. But now you're being terribly inconvenient to the poor stupid consumer who doesn't want to know anything about how their car works and just wants to shove a pump nozzle in, gas and go. Ooops, prejudices showing. But anyhow, with a water-injection anti-knock setup (Which would also work for high, high compression gasoline engines as well) you would now also have a secondary tank that would need to be filled with distilled or otherwise prepared water in addition to the gasoline/ethanol tank.

But all of these are very viable, very possible solutions; just, nobody wants to use them.

I guess they make too much sense.

 

[Mike_Van]

Very interesting post, TurbinePower. Lots of intelligent designs never go far, for a variety of reasons. The ability to burn the cheapest low-octane gasoline AND having the ability to burn E85 (irrespective of the MPG hit) seems to be the Detroit mantra of the day. Ethanol-compatibility is partially what allows the Big 3 to keep building other huge inefficient vehicles.

The 5-passenger 80 mpg diesel-hybrid concept GM built in 2001 is an example of a great idea that went nowhere.

 

[rotarykid]

I think now that it is in a format that I can read without my eyes going crossed ,

Even if you don't believe that global warming isn't a real issue much of what is said can't be argued with .

I for one have a hard time believing that the last 150 years of use the atmosphere as a CO2 sewer has to have an effect .

We , being the people on the planet have released more CO2 unnaturally through the burning of oil & coil than was released over the few 1.000,000 years from natural means . And all of that CO2 released at one time , in a very short time . That has to have had an effect on the world climate .

And on the "fact" that the production of bio fuels in the article I completely agree . It is correct that without a real policy change that includes the mandatory increasing of fuel economy standards on all lite duty transport they will accomplish nothing but the wasting of more energy .

And what can & should be done to change course ,

I agree that taxes must be increased to reduce waste . And the immediate stopping of the production and sale of high consumption wasteful & Useless transport like the current low mpg SUVs & full size pickups is the best place to start with conservation .

Another policy to go along with this is the taking off of the roads of these vehicles through the use of waste taxes that make them unaffordable to continue to waste oil in .

I guaranty that their removal from our roads wouldn't even be a dissuasion if we suddenly had a shortage of oil . We currently have & have had the tech for 20 years required to build any class of passenger vehicle that can return 40 mpgs in almost all types of use .

Only with the hard choices that are required to get our country out its' current energy mess which was created by bad governmental policies over the last 20 years are biofuels any help at all .

I've been making & using BD for over 10 years but our low numbers of diesel powered lite duty vehicles are too low accomplish anything . Only if we change course immediately banning low mpg lite duty transport of all types can we guaranty that the US can ever hope to make a dent in our crude oil consumption .

The low number of us VW & MB diesel drivers can't hope to ever change what we drive in high enough numbers to make a real dent in the amount of oil we waste every day .


And My blood pressure goes up every time I hear that E-85 crap quoted as a way to help to our energy woes . Without the banning outright & the complete removal of the current big 3 low mpg crap filling their showrooms & our roads could anything we do ever make a dent in our oil consumption . Short of real change in governmental policy all our current efforts are just window dressing .

Until our leaders must stand up and say that we all must change how we look energy use . And that is in all of our interest to do this now . And that the bullsh!t conservation talk about E-85 corn based & Bio diesel talk of it saving us from ourselves is just that talk without real policy changes .

 

[slotracer577]

Only ancient injectors,

Well the injectors that were so dirty were from a late model mustang than was putting about 630 hp to the ground on E-85. They had been in the car for about 6 months when they were removed to add larger ones. They were the limiting factor in HP production .

Now you say that using E-85 you can improve an engines efficiency. You are right, but E-85 has 28% less energy per gallon than regular gas. You would need a huge increase in efficiency to even get the same milage and power that is currently enjoyed by consumers. Note that the milage drop by a E-85 user on this board in his caravan is right at 28%. Now that is what is expected.

In my opinion E-85 is purely political pork. There are huge subsidies and that is what makes the $$ for all the alchohol companies. The average consumer does not have enough information to realize that when you run E-85 you will either lose milage or power or both depending on if the injectors can provide enough fuel to support a stoichometric ratio of the E-85. Corn probably isnt even the best grain to use, but it makes the most $$ for ADM.

Now Bio make from WVO seems to make a lot more sense since it is already a waste product. Granted it isnt going to solve the energy issues due to low volume.

The real solution IMHO is to raise fuel prices really high and the market will correct. People will drive less or buy more efficient vehicles. My commute went from 50 miles per day to 120, so I stopped driving my Taco and bought a jetta. Now the fuel cost savings doesnt pay for the new car, but I sure feel better no filling up every 2 or 3 days.

John

 

[TurbinePower]

Now you say that using E-85 you can improve an engines efficiency. You are right, but E-85 has 28% less energy per gallon than regular gas. You would need a huge increase in efficiency to even get the same milage and power that is currently enjoyed by consumers. Note that the milage drop by a E-85 user on this board in his caravan is right at 28%. Now that is what is expected.

Yes, there is a substantial difference in the BTU/gallon content between ethanol and gasoline. But, and this is the critical but here, there are also a several exploitable advantages present in ethanol that cannot be applied gasoline, not the least of which are the cooler burn and high octane rating.

So E85 has 28% less BTUs per gallon than gasoline. Okay, cool. How much of the BTUs in a gallon of gasoline are blown straight out the tailpipe or absorbed into the coolant system? Let's focus on the latter for a second.

Gasoline, with its high BTU content, burns very hot. This sets up a sizable thermal gradient between the burning fuel/air charge and the coolant, encouraging quicker heat migration from hot to cold. Insulators placed between the hot and cold reservoirs (burning charge and coolant, respectively) are only going to be able to do so much when faced with that kind of gradient.

But then on the other hand you have ethanol, which burns much cooler (Due to both general burn characteristics and the lower BTU content) so the gradient is much more shallow. Insulators will have a much greater impact, as the gradient between the two reservoirs is much smaller; you aren't forcing heat across the insulator as much. This fact alone may be part of why some people don't suffer the predicted 28% mpg loss when running E85; their combustion chambers were in some fashioned designed with an eye toward reducing that gradient, and with the smaller gradient brought about by the burn characteristics of E85 the effect is sufficiently amplified to maintain economy despite the lesser energy content. In this case, a lesser thermal gradient means less heat lost to the coolant system, which in turn means such "unlost" energy can go into the expansion of the air charge, producing useful work.

And as it's 3AM here, I'm going to stop before I start rambling...

 

[TDIMeister]

The most efficient form or source of energy from both an economic and energy balance basis is one that requires NONE or at least the MINIMUM amount of processing and transformation of the primary energy source to arrive at the final consumable energy product (e.g. combustible fuel or electricity) to derive the useful work. This is not rocket science.

However, primary energy is often not suitable to be used as is (e.g. powering cars on coal, unrefined crude oil or uranium ore).

Each and every technical process involves energy losses, some worse than others. Direct photovoltaic cells would seem to be an ideal process since it produces electricity directly from solar radiation, but with current technologies, costs per kWh are relatively high and energy density per required area is low. Efficiency is low but is secondary to the above factors since the sun shines regardless and doesn't cost anything in dollar or emissions terms. Ditto wind, wave, tidal and hydroelectric generation.

For all its clear disadvantages, powerplants fuelled from residual oil, coal and natural gas offers the best energy balance from the latent energy content of the primary source to the final consumable energy product (electricity).

What does NOT make sense from an energy balance standpoint is to process coal, oil or gas using CTL, refining and GTL methods to produce the fuel that would THEN be burned in powerplants, although there would be definite advantages of emissions that would be separated, handled and disposed of more easily than do so AFTER they have been burned in boilers or gas turbines or simply released into the atmosphere.

Strictly from an energy balance standpoint (from a "well-to-wheel" analogy), what absolutely does not make ANY sense whatsoever IMO is to burn hydrogen in internal combustion engines, especially in the current state of the production of hydrogen. Most hydrogen today is generated in industrial quantities by steam-methane reforming. First, you need energy for the conversion process (heat, and a lot of it). This often comes from either burning something, currently often coal, oil, or gas, or from resistance heaters consuming electricity largely produced from -- you guessed it -- coal, oil or gas. Secondly, you also require a methane or carbon source like natural gas, or oil, or coal. The methane can be directly reacted with steam to form H2, and a secondary process uses a by-product, CO to produce more H2. CO may also be added from incomplete oxidation of carbon in oil or coal or coke (another possible byproduct of the other methane-steam reforming process) to generate the CO.

Even direct electrolysis of hydrogen consumes electrical energy, which in most areas still rely heavily or entirely on fossil fuel generating plants. So although on the surface hydrogen is emissions free at the point of consumption, its production at every step involves energy conversion processes -- with significant losses -- and with current technology, reliance on fossil fuels and carbon-releasing sources.

To add insult to injury, the hydrogen that one fuels a car, containing only about HALF of the energy of the primary sources used in its production, is then burned in an ICE that returns an aggregate efficiency of about 15-20% at the wheels, resulting in a total real "well-to-wheel" efficiency of between 7.5-10%. This means that from an energy equivalence standpoint, you would come out even to burn 10 to 13 times the BTU equivalent amount of coal, oil or natural gas!!!

Fuel cells somewhat improve that balance since it can return efficiencies (starting from the point of consumption of hydrogen on-board to the power delivered at the wheels) of 25% or more.

Although this may seem damning on my part against hydrogen, let me go on to say that I believe that hydrogen CAN BE an ideal fuel (energy carrier). If produced using similar methods as today (steam-CO reforming or electrolysis), the heat for reforming can come from waste process steam from powerplants; thermal solar farms; geotherms; or direct burning of biomass. The carbon source would come from biomass (harvested from natural sources or residual, NOT farmed). For electrolysis, hydrogen can be produced directly from electricity generated from renewables (photovoltaics, wind, wave, tidal, hydroelectric), or from nuclear energy (I'm not going to go into an endless debate about the pros and cons of that...).

Coming back full circle, the point still remains, the best and most energy-efficient process is the one that requires the least amount of fooling around with, and where that fooling around is necessary, to use renewable sources with the best possible efficiency. In the absence of any energy solution to our current technology that meets this criteria, in addition to being minimally polluting and convenient to transport (along transmission lines or in one's vehicle), it is also of absolute importance that we use the least quantity of these energy products, regardless of whether it may be electricity, gasoline, (Bio-)Diesel, ethanol or hydrogen, as possible.

 

[RC]

... it is also of absolute importance that we use the least quantity of these energy products, regardless of whether it may be electricity, gasoline, (Bio-)Diesel, ethanol or hydrogen, as possible.

Without this approach we are going nowhere, and fast. There is no way in this world that we can fuel our present level of energy consumption with any source know or unknown to man... just ain't happening.

We need smaller more efficient cars/buildings closer to needed goods/services and less consumable throwaway junk requiring massive amounts of energy to produce and transport if we wish to continue our existence here at any level of creature comfort and peace. Our man made systems are beyond the limits of the natural world's continued capital withdrawal. Our present folly is beginning to bump up to reality, with no real plan B to fall back on. Should prove to be interesting.

 

[TDIMeister]

To add insult to injury, the hydrogen that one fuels a car, containing only about HALF of the energy of the primary sources used in its production, is then burned in an ICE that returns an aggregate efficiency of about 15-20% at the wheels, resulting in a total real "well-to-wheel" efficiency of between 7.5-10%. This means that from an energy equivalence standpoint, you would come out even to burn 10 to 13 times the BTU equivalent amount of coal, oil or natural gas!!!

Reading my post through, which was typed in haste on-the-fly, I should clarify the boldened part. The 10-13X figure, although fairly accurate (varies depending on the hydrogen production process and the reports that study this type of energy stream analysis), can be easily wrongly interpreted. If you consider the pure amount of energy it takes to propel you, your vehicle, your passengers and your cargo a given distance, with hydrogen-fuelled ICE you'd be consuming 10-13 times the equivalent amount of energy latent in the primary energy source(s) that went into the production of that hydrogen.

A given amount of gasoline or Diesel fuel has more than 80-90% of the latent energy of the total amount of crude oil from which it was derived. Here we're not talking yields of different fractions per barrel of oil. Compare that to the approximately 50% energy efficiency of hydrogen from derived primary energy based on current technology and economics. That means that even with gasoline/Diesel guel, you'd be consuming anywhere from 5.5 to 8 times the energy equivalent quantity of primary energy as what is actually needed to propel you in the same conditions as in the above hydrogen example. Still a very significant loss, but here mostly due to the energy conversion inefficiency from the tank-to-wheel.

To compare in as similar terms as possible, you have to consider the useful energy derived in propelling the vehicle from the final fuel in the tank (e.g. gasoline, Diesel, hydrogen), to all of the intermediate process inputs to create that fuel starting from the primary energy source(s).

As stated above, a given amount of hydrogen only has about half of the BTUs as that from the primary energy sources (assumed here to be coal, oil or natural gas) that went into the production of that hydrogen at every step. Meaning you'd have to consume almost twice as much BTUs from primary energy to have the same amount of energy in hydrogen as gasoline/Diesel to drive your car.

Another point I want to make before someone brings it up: Discussing total, or aggregate, efficiencies from the fuel tank to the road, I stated a figure of 15-20%, and I maintain that this is not significantly different between ICEs running various fuels. Although modern SI engines can achieve peak thermal efficiencies approaching 35% and CI engines 45%, on the average vehicles operate at conditions far below peak efficiencies. The 15-20% figure still represents more-or-less the state-of-the-art for ICE powered cars.

 

[slotracer577]

So E85 has 28% less BTUs per gallon than gasoline. Okay, cool. How much of the BTUs in a gallon of gasoline are blown straight out the tailpipe or absorbed into the coolant system? Let's focus on the latter for a second.

About 30% of the energy goes to actual work, about 30% out the exhaust and 30% to radiator. You are still talking about big efficency gains to make up for the lower energy content. If we could get those gains from running alchohol, why not run E100 or M100?

I personally see about a 2mpg drop in fuel economy when I have to run E10 here in CO in the winter. I sure which I didnt have to run the stuff.

John

 

[TDIMeister]

Efficiency is not going to change just from using different fuels on essentially the same engine design. It would require complete redesign, and even then, the efficiency gains can only amount to a few percent, based on current technology and what can be economically produced.

We have the technology and can get 100 MPG Diesel-electric hybrids with every state-of-the-art technology you can name, but it simply won't go to production because it would be too damn expensive and the technology not yet mature.