I just had an article published at Financial Sense . The article is Ethanol Investing: Counterpoint. In the article, I review the potential of ethanol as a fossil fuel replacement, then discuss the differences between the U.S. and Brazil that makes Brazil’s energy independence “miracle” possible, and I conclude by evaluating some risks in ethanol investing.
I am starting to get a few e-mails about the article. Since you can’t comment at Financial Sense, I thought I would open up this thread for anyone who has any feedback. As always, constructive criticism is appreciated. If you have any questions about how some of the numbers are derived, spotted an error that needs to be corrected, or just want vent, this is the place.
RR
Hi Robert,
I read your article on Financialsense and did like what you said. The essential point is that the ratio between the BTU content of ethanol and the BTU content of the fossil fuel spent in producing ethanol is 1.09. I assume that figure reflects present technology. However, as long it can not be proved beyond doubt that an improvement of the existing technology can not push that ratio towards 1.5, I feel strongly that we need to build an ethanol industry on a small scale in order to allow for long term research on the most effective way to produce ethanol.
You are right. Ethanol will never solve our energy crisis. The long term solution is simply to use only a fraction of the energy we use today.
The ideal form of energy for surface transportation is electricity. Unfortunately, we do not presently know how to store the large amounts of electricity required (assuming that we could produce the required amounts of electricity somehow). It could well be that fossil fuels are the best forms of energy storage medium. Question: Could we possibly produce methane using solar energy (photovoltaic elements and wind) as a form of energy storage medium to be used in cars? The required carbon dioxide could be obtained from burnig coal in power stations while the hydrogen could be obtained from water using solar electricity. This idea is rarely considered.
Question: Could we possibly produce methane using solar energy (photovoltaic elements and wind) as a form of energy storage medium to be used in cars?
I don’t know about methane, but I have read various schemes for producing fuels from captured wind or solar energy. It would be quite easy to produce hydrogen in this manner.
RR
Very well-written, and I hope it gets a lot of attention. The sooner we deflate the hype around ethanol (and the other boondoggles like hydrogen) the faster we can get focused onto real solutions.
Hello Robert,
Found your piece on Financial sense. Would you please comment on Butanol. Do you feel that the same limitations apply to those you attributed to ethanol? I am most interested in your observations.
Would you please comment on Butanol. Do you feel that the same limitations apply to those you attributed to ethanol? I am most interested in your observations.
Butanol’s star is rising. I am getting a lot more questions about butanol as fuel. I wrote an article a while back covering the issues. Especially look at the comments following the article:
Bio-butanol
I previously worked a lot on butanol distillation. I did some calculations today, comparing the energy requirements to those of ethanol. The requirements for butanol are much, much lower than for ethanol. I am thinking about doing another article on butanol in the near future.
Cheers,
RR