Domestic Biodiesel Production Plummets
One of my Top 10 Energy Stories of 2009 involved the actions taken by the EU against U.S. biodiesel producers. U.S. tax dollars had been generously subsidizing biodiesel that was being exported out of the U.S. European producers couldn’t compete against the subsidized imports, so the EU effectively cut off the imports by imposing five-year tariffs on U.S. biodiesel.
This was a big blow to U.S. biodiesel producers, and was one of the factors leading to a disastrous 2009 for U.S. biodiesel production. How disastrous was 2009? Per the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), here are the statistics from the past 6 years of biodiesel production:
2004: 25 million gallons
2005: 75 million gallons
2006: 250 million gallons
2007: 450 million gallons
2008: 700 million gallons
2009: 300-350 million gallons (estimate)
The NBB also reports that domestic biodiesel capacity is now operating at only 15%. There have been a number of stories in the past few days covering these developments:
Bad start to 2010 after ‘rough year’ for entire biofuel industry
A federal tax credit that provided makers of biodiesel $1 for every gallon expired Friday. As a result, some U.S. producers say they will shut down without the government subsidy.
A one-year extension of the biodiesel tax credit was included in a bill that was approved by the U.S. House recently, but it never made it through the Senate.
Politics and Energy Policy
I have often complained about the chaos that political leaders cause with inconsistency on energy policy. I will get into the wisdom of this biodiesel tax credit in a moment, but government policy makers need to send clear, long-term signals so energy producers can plan. This has long been a problem for planning energy projects. Wind and solar developers have lived with this uncertainty for years. It seemed like at the end of every year, there was a tax credit that may or may not be extended. The uncertainty often froze project developers, and created unnecessary delays.
The same has long been true in the oil and gas industry. One of the reasons that it has been difficult to get a gas pipeline built in Alaska was government refusal to commit to long-term tax rates. Imagine that you are contemplating spending $26 billion on a gas pipeline, but the government can’t tell you what your tax rate is going to be. If my state income tax doubles, I can move to another state. But it isn’t like you can pick that pipeline up and move it, so it is important that you know that the government can’t double the tax rate in the event of a budget shortfall.
A different kind of government interference – a tendency to attempt to pick technology winners – resulted in cancellation of what I believe was a promising 2nd generation renewable diesel process. I documented the saga in several posts, but the gist was that because an oil company was involved – my former employer ConocoPhillips – Congress voted to specifically deny the biodiesel tax credit for a process that was both more efficient and more cost-effective than conventional biodiesel production.
By killing the credit, COP was placed at a $42/bbl disadvantage relative to biodiesel producers who received the credit, and thus COP decided to cancel the project. I documented that sorry saga here. I also explained the differences between ‘green diesel’ and biodiesel here.
Where to Now?
So where to go from here? We now have a classic dilemma created by the government. Through government fiat, an industry was created. Investments were made and infrastructure was put in place. The problem is that the particular industry that sprang up had little hope of ever really competing without the subsidy. The reasons are alluded to in the link above:
“By the time you buy the feedstock and the chemicals to produce the fuel, you have more money in it than you get for the fuel without the tax credit,” Francis said. “We won’t be producing any without the tax credit.”
I have long believed that there is no future for 1st generation biodiesel. I wrote in an August 2007 essay: “I have said it before, and I reiterate: Biodiesel’s days are numbered.” Note that the year after I wrote that the U.S. biodiesel industry had their best year ever. But the handwriting was on the wall for very fundamental reasons, and the prediction I made in 2007 is playing out now.
There are multiple problems that will make it difficult for biodiesel to ever compete without subsidies. In a nutshell the key problem is that the feedstock costs are linked to fossil fuel prices. The feedstock is generally a vegetable oil and methanol – an alcohol typically produced from natural gas. A second big problem is that biodiesel is an inferior fuel to hydrocarbon diesel (especially in cold weather). Further, the by-product of the biodiesel process is glycerin, which has limited value (especially at the volumes produced when biodiesel production is ramped up).
But this story is worse than simply a fuel that can’t compete. As evidenced by the opposition of the NBB to the extension of the tax credit for COP’s 2nd generation process, 1st generation biodiesel isn’t even a bridge to 2nd generation biodiesel – it is a barrier. Not only is biodiesel chemically different, but 1st generation producers have pulled out the stops to protect themselves against 2nd generation competition. So now we have a 1st generation industry that was already in trouble even with the subsidies that it was receiving, and a 2nd generation industry that could have been much further along were it not for 1st generation interference (which was aided by Congress).
If instead of picking technology winners, Congress had simply raised fossil fuel taxes, we wouldn’t be in this dilemma. With the high level of embedded fossil fuels, biodiesel would have been unable to compete and an industry with no future would not have been created by the government. Green diesel, on the other hand, would start to look a lot better because of the lower level of fossil fuel inputs (particularly for gasification), and we might find plants starting up to produce green diesel from both hydrocracking vegetable oils (the COP process I described) and gasification of biomass (e.g., the Choren process).
What I expect to happen is that Congress will eventually extend the credit, and it will be applied retroactively. But there are no guarantees, so producers are once again left with uncertainty. What should happen – in my opinion – is announcement of a phaseout schedule. I wouldn’t simply eliminate the tax credit cold turkey. That would be a blow to producers who invested on good faith that government support would be continued. But they also need to receive a message that this tax credit will be phased out over the next 3-5 years. At that point, prospective investors will be fairly warned that projects whose economics hinge on continued government subsidies are to be avoided.
This, by the way, is the sort of metric I try to apply to projects. I am looking for projects that can be viable without government support and can operate with low/no fossil fuel inputs. The first item means that governments have much less ability to wreck my project by withholding support, and the latter means that the project should become more attractive in the higher oil price environment that I expect.
That doesn’t mean that initial government support isn’t often helpful, but unless the underlying economics are sound then government support is a crutch I will never be able to throw away. In my opinion this is the case for most U.S. biodiesel producers, which helps explain why industry capacity is presently at 15%.
Disclosures
I want to make two very clear disclosures. First is that as noted, I worked for ConocoPhillips, and I was very pleased at the efforts we were making to commercialize green diesel. The fact that the government caused the project to be aborted by favoring one technology over another was a bitter pill to swallow. Again, I favor projects that are viable without government subsidies, but in this particular case the competing projects did get the subsidies.
Second, as I announced previously I now work for the company that owns the majority of Choren. I came to work for this company because I believe gasification has a long-term future, and I had written favorable articles long before this job opportunity arose. I have, however, had some suggest potential bias toward green diesel because of my link to Choren. What I say to those who might feel that way is the bias toward green diesel was because of my assessment of the technology. That is what led to my link to Choren, not vice-versa.
We don't have a "Good" oil crop in the U.S. Soybeans just don't yield enough "oil per acre." As a result, biodiesel just didn't develop the strong "Lobby" that was developed by ethanol.
They'll get around to reinstituting it, but that's a hell of a way to run a railroad.
I agree with most of your comments, but don't forget that the biodiesel industry will limp on without any tax credit given the biodiesel mandate in RFS 2
I happen to think that biodiesel has the lowest environmental impact of all transportation fuel especially when crop rotations are considered based on LCA.
If you have to drive more than 50k miles a year hauling batteries around makes no sense.
“I have often complained about the chaos that political leaders cause with inconsistency on energy policy.”
I could not agree more strongly with RR. Energy projects last between 30 & 60 years. They may require incentives to get investors to make choices that are riskier but may benefit the public in the long run.
Obama made some promises about renewable energy that I thought that he could not keep. It is not so much of a policy change as a government competency issue. It take more than talk.
Another year-end biodiesel story here: Biodiesel plants idled because of loss of tax credit
Tax shenanigans are not limited to alternatives. In 1998 Congress and the DOI offered lower royalties and tax incentives to companies willing to invest in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, at a time when oil was selling for less than $10 per barrel. When prices recovered, they tried to change the rules.
RR nails it. Subsidies are crack cocaine for the energy supply industries. Might make the chosen recipients fly high for a while, but there will be an inevitable crash.
And it is not just subsidies. I have personally been involved in two cutting-edge technology projects for oil recovery which were cancelled after extensive research — because of uncertainty about possible future government regulatory policies.
The biggest obstacle to keeping the human race warm & well-fed is not technology, not resources — it is politics.
It's fascinating that Kit P worries about people driving 50,000 miles per year when the average commute is ~22 miles per day (about 5500 mi/yr). Hmmm, doesn't he say that his own needs are taken care of by an old Toyota driving a few miles a day?
A Chevy Volt charged both at home and at work could get up to 80 all-electric miles in commuting. That's up to 20,000 electric miles per year (5 days a week, 50 weeks/year). If you add weekends and a fast-charging capability to top off the battery during brief stops (e.g. highway rest areas) the electric mileage could be much higher. That's with a relatively small usable battery capacity (8 kWh); using a bigger battery or more of the total could increase that quite a bit.
(Increasing the total is a distinct possibility. The 40-mile limit is set by the DoD expected to yield CARB's warranty lifetime. A non-California spec Volt using the same battery could just discharge it further, trading off possible calendar life for lower liquid fuel use.)
I don't expect the Volt technology to be a block-buster hit with Minnesota corn farmers, but I wouldn't be the least surprised to see it become very popular with young couples in LA, Phoeix, Houston, and Atlanta.
Personally, I'm not nearly as concerned with the year 2035 as I am 2015. The next decade could get rough.
We don't have a "Good" oil crop in the U.S. Soybeans just don't yield enough "oil per acre."
Rufus~
It's not that good oil crops won't grow here, it's just that our farmers would rather grow the "Big Four" subsidized crops of soy, cotton, rice, and corn.
There is no reason our farmers couldn't grow sunflower and rapeseed (canola) both excellent oil crops.
The reason they don't is a matter of policy, not because of any limitations of soil or weather.
I wouldn't be the least surprised to see it become very popular with young couples in LA, Phoenix, Houston, and Atlanta.
That would be young couples wealthy enough to afford a $40k ride. That pretty much means young couples in the professional classes. (lawyers, bankers, doctors, etc.)
Unfortunately for GM, those kind of young people are more likely to buy foreign (BMW, Audi, etc.) instead of a "blue collar" Chevy.
I still think GM made a major mistake in branding a car as expensive as the Volt as a Chevrolet. (Chevrolet has traditionally been for the lowest socio-economic demographic.)
Wendell, Oil Palm is an "Excellent" oil crop (600 + gal/acre.)
Sunflower, and Rapeseed (at 100 gal/acre, or less) are Not excellent oil crops.
Rufus~
Let me know when we have an oil palm plantation in the U.S.
But you're right, "excellence" is relative.
And it is not just subsidies. I have personally been involved in two cutting-edge technology projects for oil recovery which were cancelled after extensive research
That's interesting. May I asked what it involved?
OD
That would be young couples wealthy enough to afford a $40k ride. That pretty much means young couples in the professional classes. (lawyers, bankers, doctors, etc.)
I believe you are way way off on that. Take a drive around your neighborhood. How many chevy tahoes and trucks do you see? These are in the same price range as the volt. Actually, the volt could be cheaper with the tax credit.
Of course with the stricter credit guidelines now in place, you could very well be right.
OD
EP, PLEASE keep writing on The Ergosphere. Over and out.
How many chevy tahoes and trucks do you see? These are in the same price range as the volt.
I see a lot, though not as many as I once did. But though those Tahoes may be in the same price range, the buyers of those Tahoes are not the same demographic that would find a Volt attractive.
The demographic that is willing to take out a big car loan (or work a second job) in order to drive a Tahoe — and make a statement doing so — is not the same demographic as the "young couples" that GM hopes might buy a Chevy Volt instead of a Prius, Audi, VW turbo-diesel, etc.
"May I asked what it involved?"
Both projects were in California. One involved in essence modifying sulfur-mining technology to extract very heavy oil from a known onshore resource, injecting all flue gases & side-streams back into the reservoir to increase recovery. Technically, the process was really cool!
The second involved using ultra-long reach drilling technology to develop a known near-shore shallow oil field from drilling pads inland. The project would have improved public access to the beach and left it unspoiled for recreational use. It would also actually have improved existing air & water quality, since part of the project involved capturing hydrocarbons from natural under-sea seeps. Energy plus a cleaner environment!
Both projects would have met all then-existing regulatory standards. The unacceptable risk to investment was the strong possibility (certainty?) of future changes in laws & regulations – at local, state, or federal levels.
Both resources are still there. When people in California are all unemployed & hungry and the State is (even more) bankrupt, they will probably get developed eventually. Probably by that time with less care for the environment than we would have shown.
"If instead of picking technology winners, Congress had simply raised fossil fuel taxes, we wouldn't be in this dilemma."
What's the goal here Robert? If the idea is to supplant fossil fuels we have abundant supplies of, I'll be one of the folks bitching to my congressman. Coal and natural gas can help us get through peak oil in one piece. An import tariff on crude oil is perfectly reasonable though. Desirable even.
We often hear that high gas prices hasn't helped wean Europe off oil. That's probably because Europe is hooked on the tax revenues.
"Energy Taxation Directive. In 2003, the EU’s framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity was amended to allow Member States to grant taxreductions and/or exemptions in favor of renewable fuels under certain conditions. However, to minimize the tax revenue loss for Member States, the final tax on biofuels intended for transport use may not be less than 50% of the normal excise duty."
Europe's goal is tax revenue. Our goal is energy independence. Some folks would like to ban all those icky fossil fuels. They would rather flare off natural gas than heat homes with it. Thankfully,they're in the fringe minority. Why not put a $10 per barrel import duty on crude oil,and increase it $10 each year until the problem is gone?
As expected, the Norwegian Parliament previous evening voted to accept the Government's proposal to introduce a tax on biodiesel. The vote was 86 for and 83 against the tax, Norway Post reported on 27 November. Beforehand it was clear that the Labour Party's coalition partners, the Socialist Left Party (SV)and the Agrarians (Senterpatiet), had had to grudgingly fall in line and vote for a tax they did not really want. The biodiesel tax exemption had been an agreed on measure to move towards more environmental friendly fuels, but in the proposal for next year's budget, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labour Party decided that the road tax should be levied on all fuels. The tax on biodiesel will be introduced with 50% next year and the full tax by 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/yjzm69f
Europe is hooked on taxes.
I thought it was a bad idea, for different reasons back in 2005:
http://www.grist.org/article/bad-idea/#comments
It's interesting to look at the comments under that article. I was trolled for years by a biodiesel distributor who went so far as to publicly accuse a local environmental group of targeting female patrons to harass at his gas stations.
Also note that most of the reasons given in the comments for supporting food-based biodiesel have fallen by the wayside. Back then the enviro types envisioned it being a locally grown, refined, and distributed product, in alignment with their local food fantasies.
RR said: "That would be a blow to producers who invested on good faith that government support would be continued."
Didn't they know exactly when the credit was slated to end? Were they not gambling as entrepreneurs that it would be continued?
If the main stated goal of biodiesel was to reduce oil imports, why were they allowed to export 80% of it (by taking advantage of a loophole our incompetent government created and took its time fixing)?
If they could not stay afloat with the subsidy and by exporting it, how will they stay afloat with just the subsidy now that they can't export it?
How would a gradual phase out would do anything but delay the inevitable?
Note that these are all rhetorical questions ; )
A Chevy Volt charged both at home and at work could get up to 80 all-electric miles in commuting.
Sorry, E-P, I just don't see the Volt getting off the launch pad. At least I'm not alone.
I still think GM made a major mistake in branding a car as expensive as the Volt as a Chevrolet.
Yup. That's one mistake.
The most serious is to overhype the vehicle. After that much overpromise, underdelivery is almost a given.
Yet another good post by RR.
Tax fossil fuels. KISS.
Oil palms? Yes, to date they are a very warm weather crop, and yields are rising handsomely.
But there is such a thing as a "cold weather" oil palm, and it might work in down in Florida and Louisiana, as well as Southwest (if there is water).
The Chevy Volt should have been an ultra-sexy Cadillac. And, no, the Volt won't be a success at $3 a gallon. At $6 a gallon, they couldn't build enough of them.
Everybody beats up on Waggoner, but he made a good point when he asked for predictability of higher gasoline prices and taxes.
If the USA would simply commit to 25 cents a gallon in increased gasoline taxes, every three months, for four yesrs, we would crush OPEC and sell lots of CNG and PHEVs.
And keep a lot of money home.
Boomtimes USA. So easy too.
"Tax fossil fuels. KISS."
I'm all for taxing imported oil Benny. That would encourage domestic production and help wean us off OPEC. But,taxing coal and natural gas would be counter-productive. It would bump up electric rates and discourage CTL and CNG. Taxing all fossil fuels would be foolish at this juncture imo.
If the USA would simply commit to 25 cents a gallon in increased gasoline taxes, every three months, for four yesrs, we would crush OPEC and sell lots of CNG and PHEVs. And keep a lot of money home.
Dream on, Benny.
In this country "energy policy" means going to King Abdullah, cap in hand, and begging for more oil. Neither party's prostitutians have the stones to stand up and change this.
And, of course, we're happy to ignore where 11 of the 15 hijackers came from.
Maury-
I accept your correction.
Tax gasoline.
I would like to tax imported oil, but that probably violates trade agreements. Taxing gasoline is entirely an internal matter.
Optimist: I think it was something like 21 out of 24 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and no one has ever explained who trained them, or enticed them into Al Queda.
The Saudi thug state finances an global chain of extremist Islamic schools, thought by many to be jihad training grounds.
So, we spend trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan for the right to spend hundreds of billions annually on Mideast oil. And that oil money finances more extremism.
Well, if you shoot yourself in the left foot, then aim for the right foot so you don't lose your balance. Then, just for complete balance, take aim in between the middle of your legs….
"And, of course, we're happy to ignore where 11 of the 15 hijackers came from."
As well as the ringleader and the ideology that motivates them. When we defeated Japan,we made the Emperor publicly proclaim he wasn't God. We could at least compel King Abdullah to proclaim that mass murdering women and children won't get these "holy" warriors to heavan with 72 virgins. The Al Saud family created and nurtured the Wahhabi cult. And they're creating terrorists a lot faster than we can kill them.
Tax! Tax! Tax! Maury is right — Eurotrash politicians are interested on in immediate tax revenue, not in transitioning to a sustainable non-fossil world.
But why do the alternate energy crowd call for taxes on their competitors?
This is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Instead of taxing fossil fuels to make them more expensive, we should be aggressively seeking ways to make alternate fuels cheaper. Compete on an open playing field — make energy cheaper for everyone, which will bring up the standard of living globally.
Only pessimists think that alternate fuels are born losers which will never be able to compete head to head with fossils. Now, the subsidized Politically Correct alternate fuels we have today are indeed losers — but we can do better than corn ethanol and the rest!
Promote research. Simplify & rationalize taxation. Roll back excessive regulation. Encourage innovation. Let new alternate fuels win in the marketplace by providing the consumer with something better & cheaper than fossil fuels.
Let's have less defeatism, folks!
It is fascinating E-P how some of us can see different solutions for different needs rather than be fixated on one solution. During the first energy crisis, I commuted 50 miles a day with a significant portion on unpaved mountain roads. I used a 4wd diesel PU and a new Tercel when the snow was not too deep. Also had a 2wd IH Travelall (to pull the tailer) that would go anywhere with chains while carpooling the sixth fleet.
I now have a soft desk job and a big sail boat. I can assure you that driving an expensive $40k car to get dinged up in parking lot is not my priority. My 20 year old Ford Ranger 2wd PU does just fine.
I did buy my wife a new luxury Toyota, it is called a Corolla. It has all the luxury she wants and we have a road trip car.
I will be happy to again explain why I think PHEV is a bad solution and DOA with consumers but I expect readers here have heard it all before.
Did I mention that I think biodiesel is a good solution.
Quoth Wendell: "It's not that good oil crops won't grow here, it's just that our farmers would rather grow the "Big Four" subsidized crops of soy, cotton, rice, and corn."
No, it's much more than that. Even the most prolific oilseed crop can't come close to meeting US demand for motor fuel; 50 million acres in a crop yielding 100 gal/ac doesn't even meet 1/5 of US distillate requirements. Higher plants can't even get close; they can't capture enough carbon. Biofuels in general will only be niche products in an economy dominated by electricity.
Optimist: I said that the Volt should have been a Cadillac (and more generally that luxury cars should be first to go PHEV), but the idiots at GM can't figure out that it's possible to upsell "green" as a complement to "quiet", "smooth" and "feature-rich". This is why Toyota is moving to own the US auto market.
But Toyota is not introducing its first PHEV into a "luxury" vehicle either.
I will be happy to again explain why I think PHEV is a bad solution and DOA with consumers but I expect readers here have heard it all before.
What is your solution then Kit, when decline sets in? No personal transportation?
OD
oh, I see you said biodiesel. You really think that has a chance of scaling up?
OD
OD
I will be dead when or if the decline sets in. I see lots of solutions. These will scale up. Resourceful people always find solutions. Those that are waiting for the nanny state to take care of them may have to do without for a while. It may take time to retrain personal injury trial attorneys to productive members of society.
The rate of scaling up only has to be as fast as the decline. We saw how fast nuke power replaced electricity, it took about 10 years in the US. There is also a lot of heating oil that can be replaced by geothermal heat pumps. Commercial shipping can use nuke plants in stead of oil just like on the nuclear cruisers did.
Look how fast ethanol and biodiesel scaled up when the proper incentives were introduced. Finally modular HTGR can produce H2 for FT process. Also CTL and GTL.
How many solutions do you need OD?
"Instead of taxing fossil fuels to make them more expensive, we should be aggressively seeking ways to make alternate fuels cheaper."
It's a chicken and egg thing Kinuach. We've seen how oil prices can do somersaults at the first hint of tight supplies. Biofuels,on the other hand,will take years to scale,even when profitable. We have to build capacity now,so we're ready for crunch time.
All this global warming is killing my fruit trees. We're going through a hard freeze this week in the New Orleans area. That hasn't happened since the mid-80's. Tonite is expected to hit a record low. Where's all that CO2 whenya need it?
This is America. We don't do Energy "Plans" very well. We operate off of "Price Points."
$10.00 more in the price of oil, and we're getting pretty close to $3.00 gasoline. I think the odds are getting pretty good for $3.25 + gasoline this summer. Corn won't run up like last year, so we'll be looking at $1.00 spreads in some areas (between E10 and E85.)
Of course, when the EPA approves blends higher than E10 the oil companies will start bidding up the price of ethanol. This will "trap" the retailers that jumped in and installed E85, and Blender Pumps.
And, around, and around we go. With less demand for gasoline (due to the use of more ethanol,) less Diesel will be produced, thus raising the price of diesel relative to gasoline. All of a sudden Biodiesel will be back in vogue.
Free markets are a mess (especially, with a little "help" from the gummint,) but, eventually, they'll get you where you want to go.
You just gotta be careful not to slip on the blood.
And, of course, you gotta be real, real careful it's not Your blood.
rufus wrote: Of course, when the EPA approves blends higher than E10 the oil companies will start bidding up the price of ethanol. This will "trap" the retailers that jumped in and installed E85, and Blender Pumps.
So, are you saying that it would be better for you, as a flex fuel vehicle driver, if the EPA does not approve a blend higher than E10?
Sure, Clee. At least in the Short run.
In the long run, though, I win when the country wins. And, the "country" will win when we have more homegrown fuel, and less imported from the Middle East, and Venezuela.
Regular unleaded was $2.89 a gallon in Los Angeles over the holidays. Much of the drive back to New Orleans was $2.69 to $2.79 a gallon. The lowest I saw was $2.46 outside of Dallas. The snow along I-40 was beautiful,especially around the Grand Canyon. We're expecting sleet and snow thursday. That ain't supposed to happen around these parts. Not two years in a row,at least.
It can't be proven that the Modern Grand Maxima was responsible for global warming. And it can't be proven that the current Grand Minima will be responsible for record lows over the coming decades. We don't know why sunspots affect temperatures so much. The correlations are there,we just don't know the why's. Scientists don't know a whole lot of anything when it comes to climate. The Arctic Oscillation is something else scientists are clueless about. All we know is,a positive phase means hotter weather,and negative means cooler weather. Right now,it's in extreme negative territory. Off the chart negative territory. Grab some blankets folks.
Here in western Turkey we are having a record warm winter – warmest in 150 years the news said.
The December average low was 7 deg F above the historical average. No complaining from me of course!
Global warming, global cooling or just weather – İ suppose it is just changing weather like everywhere else.
Here in Ireland we are having an unprecedented freezing spell. Heading into our fourth week without a thaw. Regular overnight temperatures are 10 below zero (pretty much a record). If you know Ireland you know that winter days are often as warm as summer days. December was the coldest for 25 years, but that was only because the cold snap only started half way through.
I don't know why there should be a correlation but our cold wet summers of the last three years have been mirrored by unusually hot dry summers in Southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, with many forest fires. Maybe Turkey's now hot because of the unusually cold northern winter.
My amateur theory is that there's only so much European heat to go round, so if you get extremes in one area you get the opposite extreme elsewhere … probably related to the position of the jet stream.
Look how fast ethanol and biodiesel scaled up when the proper incentives were introduced….
Incentives? That's a euphemism for tax breaks, subsidies, and protective tariffs.
That's getting perilously close to old-style "command economies."
Couldn't it just be that business models that rely on tax breaks, subsidies, and protective tariffs aren't very good models to start with?
"Couldn't it just be that business models that rely on tax breaks, subsidies, and protective tariffs aren't very good models to start with?"
Right on, Wendell! If the Political Class want to provide "incentives", why not follow up on the model that the US Air Force has used — signing contracts to buy specified (large) volumes of synthetic jet fuel at specified prices.
The military signing contracts for large amounts of biofuel amounts to nothing more than political appointees and senior officers kissing Obummers back side.
For some reason we are still getting more air flow up from the south which is great in the winter and not so great in the summer.
Get used to that colder weather Pete. Scientists are beginning to find the physical factors related to sunspot activity. Maybe they just weren't interested before? For instance,temperatures in the thermosphere average 800 degrees fahrenheit during solar minimum,and 1700 degrees during solar maximum. The effect is exagerated during prolonged minimums. They also found that solar wind speeds are cut in half,from 600,000 kms. per second,to 300-400,000 kms. per second. More low-lying clouds are formed during a solar minimum,leading to cooler temperatures. A prolonged minimum,like the one we're currently experiencing,can increase low level cloud cover by 6% or more. A deep minimum always leads to two or more weak cycles in the future. Translation: Much cooler temperatures over the next 25 years.
Don't expect to hear a lot about arctic sea ice for the next few decades. Sea ice extent is back to its 30 year average already. Al Gore will see his shadow and pop back in his hole any time now.
The military signing contracts for large amounts of biofuel amounts to nothing more than political appointees and senior officers kissing Obummers back side.
Russ~
I disagree. The Air Force encouraging and contracting for large amounts of synthetic jet fuel is a national defense issue. It shows proper due diligence and that they are thinking ahead.
The AF was also developing their own coal-to-jet fuel plant a couple of years ago, but have dropped that for reasons I don't understand.
Coal-to-liquid fuels (gasoline, methanol, diesel, and jet fuel) will be our back-up, emergency reserve when the sierra hits the fan.
As someone said the other day, when the sierra really hits the fan, coal-to-liquid fuels will become our salvation, and the enviro-concerns will be thrown out the window as though they never existed.
Maury,
Quit spreading your lies! If what you say is true, how on earth are they going to force western societies to power down while taxing us to death? We must tax every individual based on how much carbon they are spewing. It is the next bubble, you see.
OD
I strongly suspect that CTL is more expensive than electric vehicles, as well as far less efficient. If we had as much subsidy for EVs as for synfuels, we'd see which one is really the future-proof option. Unfortunately, Congress has been too busy picking winners among its contributors to do that.
I strongly suspect that CTL is more expensive than electric vehicles, as well as far less efficient.
EP,
Probably true, but the Air Force is not going to be able to fly a B-2 or F-22 very far on electricity. (Or for that matter will American Airlines be able to fly a B-757 very far.)
There are some things for which liquid fuels will always be best.
I'm afraid the AGW theory is dead in the water OD. Global mean temps are down half a degree in the last 6 years,while CO2 levels have increased 5%. None of the computer models forecast a cooling planet. How could they,since CO2 levels will continue to rise? Shorter growing seasons are a lot more worrisome than melting glaciers. Try feeding 6 billion people when the best farmland is frozen 6 months out of the year. Perhaps we can provide incentives for people to burn more CO2. Except,more CO2 isn't helping much.
Shorter growing seasons are a lot more worrisome than melting glaciers.
How true. We should be putting our best minds to work on how we will stop, or adapt to the next Ice Age. We are now still recovering from the Pleistocene Ice Age, and as surely as God makes little green apples, there will be another Ice Age to follow.
"It always gets warmer after an Ice Age — until the next Ice Age."
Unfortunately,our vaunted wise men are a bit slow these days Wendell. A frozen Beijing and record snowfall across much of the US is just a result of global warming….LOL.
http://tinyurl.com/yh74mgn
Northern China is currently experiencing the heaviest snowfall in six decades.
More than 11 inches (28 cm) of snow fell on Seoul on Monday, the heaviest in a single day since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937.
http://tinyurl.com/yfq2s8a
Last year,it snowed in Baghdad….and New Orleans. The low tomorrow night is forecast to be 22 degrees here. I'm south of the lake. I don't think we've ever had a temperature that low.
Arctic air and record snow falls gripped the northern hemisphere yesterday, inflicting hardship and havoc from China, across Russia to Western Europe and over the US plains.
There were few precedents for the global sweep of extreme cold and ice that killed dozens in India, paralysed life in Beijing and threatened the Florida orange crop. Chicagoans sheltered from a potentially killer freeze, Paris endured sunny Siberian cold, Italy dug itself out of snowdrifts and Poland counted at least 13 deaths in record low temperatures of about minus 25C (-13F).
The heaviest snow yesterday hit northeastern Asia, which is suffering its worst winter weather for 60 years. More than 25 centimetres (10in) of snow covered Seoul, the South Korean capital — the heaviest fall since records began in 1937.
Guo Hu, the head of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, linked this week’s conditions to unusual atmospheric patterns caused by global warming.
http://tinyurl.com/yfnnztd
It's too cold because it's too hot….LOL.
Unfortunately,our vaunted wise men are a bit slow these days Wendell. A frozen Beijing and record snowfall across much of the US is just a result of global warming….LOL.
Laugh if you must, but more extreme weather is no laughing matter.
Not sure that extreme weather is becoming more frequent, but it sure seems that way…
Optimist: I said that the Volt should have been a Cadillac (and more generally that luxury cars should be first to go PHEV), but the idiots at GM can't figure out that it's possible to upsell "green" as a complement to "quiet", "smooth" and "feature-rich".
E-P, I agreed (Yup. That's one mistake.). I also agree with everything you say about GM management. You think Ed Whitacre will be able to shake things up enough to save GM?
This is why Toyota is moving to own the US auto market.
Nope. Toyota is gaining market share by the age-old method of under-promise and over-deliver. The exact opposite of what GM is doing.
But you can wait five years for the first articles of "Why the Prius succeeded and the Volt failed" to appear in (what would be left of) the auto media.
I strongly suspect that CTL is more expensive than electric vehicles, as well as far less efficient.
Don't share your optimism for EVs. Just seems like CTL/BTL offers much more choice in terms of feedstock (energy source) with the added convenience of using existing infrastructure.
We'll see how it plays out.
"Laugh if you must, but more extreme weather is no laughing matter."
I think it's hilarious that record cold snaps are blamed on global warming Optimist. This may be the first time the planet's gone straight from a Solar Grand Maxima to a Grand Minima. There's no modern precedent,at least. Of course it's going to wreak havoc with the weather. I just read an article about Peru's mountain people facing extinction due to merciless cold weather. The blame was placed on global warming,once again. Some really smart folks have trouble believing that big light in the sky has more affect on the climate than us mighty humans. These scientists are so into their pet theory,they'll blame any weather event on global warming. Even another ice age.
"We often hear that high gas prices hasn't helped wean Europe off oil. That's probably because Europe is hooked on the tax revenues."
Maury, I'll challenge you on this one.
While it is probably true that they are hooked on the tax revenues (same as most governments are on alcohol and tobacco taxes), I would suggest that the high tax regimes have actually reduced their oil usage, or at least, ensured it does not reach US levels.
Consider these numbers (from the CIA factbook).
The EU has 494 million people, and uses just under 15 million barrels of oil a day, for 0.03 bbl/person/day. The US has 307 million people, and uses 19.5m bbl/day, for 0.064bbl/person/day, almost twice the EU amount.
Another, and perhaps better, comparison is oil consumption per unit GDP. Coincidentally, both the EU and the US have a 2008 GDP of about $15 trillion ($US, purchasing parity basis for EU)
So the EU needs one barrel per day for one million dollars of GDP. In the US, it is 1.3 bbl/day for the same $1million of GDP.
By either measure, the EU is clearly less oil dependent than the US. (they also get HALF their oil from the middle east, which is another powerful incentive to conserve).
Of course, high fuel taxes are only part of the story. You also pay an annual tax based on the engine size of your vehicle, they have more dense cities with higher transit use, etc etc.
BUt there is no question that high fuel prices there minimise wasteful and frivolous oil consumption – you won't see many people using heating oil, for example.
So while there is a steady and lucrative tax stream, the average fuel cost of $7/gallon is powerful incentive to minimise waste and maximise efficiency, and the gross oil and economic data would seem to show that this has and is happening.
Now, getting the government to then put that tax revenue to good use, or giving it back in income or other tax cuts, is a whole different story..
Paul,there's no doubt that high gas prices cut consumption. The question was,why haven't high gas prices in Europe led to more alternative fuels or electric cars? Europe made the mistake of getting hooked on the fuel tax revenues. If they tax biofuels at the same rate,how will they ever get off mideast imports? I don't know if the EU taxes electricity at the same high rates. I suspect they do though. Otherwise,EV's would probably have made more inroads.
Looked up some of those electric rates. The UK is only twice the US average,at 18 cents per kwh. Germany has a rate of 30 cents per kwh. Italy 37 cents. Denmark 42 cents. It's easy to see why Europe hasn't migrated to EV's.
"The question was,why haven't high gas prices in Europe led to more alternative fuels or electric cars? "
Now that IS a good question. I would argue that it has led to more alternative fuels – the mere fact that biodiesel is being sent from here to there shows that is is a better business environment for biofuels. Europe also makes much greater use of woody biofuels, with the almost complete replacement of heating oil by wood pellets (of which they also imported over one million tons from BC last year).
They are also doing farming of short rotation woody crops, for the same purpose.
There is also lots of use of biogas from landfills and sewage treatment plants, this has been happening for decades, so it doesn't make news anymore.
Now granted, there are only a couple of cars running on wood, but they have used wood to replace heating oil so that same oil can be used in their diesel cars. They also have many more cars running on CNG. In effect, they have removed the least value uses for oil, reserving it almost exclusively for transportation (and petrochemical) uses.
So I would say they are further down the path of alternative fuels than we are, but both have a long way to go.
As for electrics, well, they face the same (unsolved) battery issues as anyone else. But, they do have a lot of electric, urban transport already, with trains. It would take a lot of electric cars in LA to approach the number of people riding electric trains in London. When I lived in Central London, only one person I knew even bothered owning a car, you didn't need it in the city and you rent one if you are doing a country road trip (or plan your trip around the trains – they are just so cheap.
They do tax electricity, and more importantly, everyone is on peak and off peak rates. Oddly enough, electricity is a cheaper retail energy than natural gas, so you don't see a lot of NG furnaces for home heating. Europe has lots of coal but not much NG, so this is no surprise.
The upshot is, that ALL energy in Europe is expensive, by our standards, and people, cities and countries adapted to this decades ago.
I think we will see more use of alternative fuels there, particularly woody and waste to energy. As for alternative transportation fuels, I would say their main approach, to date, has been to use trains, and we will continue to see more of that.
No question electric cars would be welcome, but I'd say LA is in more desperate need of them than London or Paris, or any other city with well developed train systems. That said, making and selling an electric car there would be easier, beacaue people are used to small cars, so an electric Smart or Mini will be a big seller, whereas here GM (perceives) they have to do a "full sized" car, making their task that much harder.
The issue of the fuel tax on biofuels does bring up a prickly question. while it's fine to give a an initial tax break on them, the fuel tax does pay for road maintenance, and whether vehicles are running on fossil or biofuels, roads still have to be maintained, so biofuels will ultimately have to face this fact.
Europe did make extensive use of alternative fuels, particularly wood gasification, in WWII, when there wasn't any oil for private use. After the war, cheap oil changed all that, but expensive oil may start to change it back, and no oil (or a severe supply interruption) would do so in a big hurry.
The Baltic countries are probably the leaders in alternative fuels, and certainly wood based ones, where memories of oil starvation from WWII are still around, let alone the price shocks from the 70's.
None of this makes alternative fuels cheaper or easier to implement, but they are more motivated there than we are here.
Maury,
Didn't see your last post before putting up mine, but those electricity prices quite something, eh?
The nightime rates are usually less than half, so everyone waits until 10pm to run the washing machine, dishwasher, use night store heaters, etc.
But you can see why they made such an effort on wind turbines, and biomass heating. Here in rainy BC our electric rates (we call them "hydro rates") are all of 6-7c/kWh, so there aren't many wind turbines here, though not for lack of wind.
As for vehicles, with their small, diesel cars, they average twice the mpg we do – a diesel Mini does 65mpg hwy – better than a Prius, and sexier too…
Paul,I can't imagine what life would be like if gas prices tripled,and electic rates quadrupled. I'd probably ride a moped and live in a coffin. Europeans must like it though. They haven't guillotined their leaders lately,at least.
paul wrote: Europe also makes much greater use of woody biofuels, with the almost complete replacement of heating oil by wood pellets
Sounds impressive. Do you have a source for that? I'm not having much luck. This article published today would suggest otherwise.
http://www.heatingoil.com/blog/heating-oil-price-trend-for-january-5-8¢105/
"A variety of factors combined to produce yesterday’s price spike in crude and heating oil. Sustained cold weather in the US Northeast and in Europe, two large heating oil markets
Clee, I should have bit my tongue on that one, or checked the data more carefully. This is close to true in the UK and Sweden, but not everywhere else.
A more accurate statement would be "the rapidly increasing replacement of heating oil". Of course, it is not all with woody fuels, some places are going to NG, or even back to coal. But most of the growth in woody fuel consumption is for displacing heating oil.
In Germany, Sweden, Italy and the UK, their heating oil consumption has dropped 40% since 1996, while in some other countries, such as Spain and France, it has actually increased slightly.
http://www.eurofuel.eu/eng/facts.asp
We still have this contradiction of turning edible oils into vehicle fuel (at great expense) when we could displace heating oil with biomass (at much lower expense) and use the oil in vehicles. This trend is happening, but slowly.
And, of course, the biomass is produced and processed locally, not imported.
Maury, keep in mind that energy has always been expensive there, and their cities and people have grown accordingly. Their winters are not nearly as cold as here (Russia excepted), and their houses are smaller (by half), as are their cars, so the cost to an individual is not as great as the difference in energy prices might suggest.
There are two ways to reduce energy costs – reduce prices or reduce consumption. In Europe it's all about reducing consumption, and here, it's all about reducing (or at least restraining) prices – I think that their approach is the better long term solution.
And for the US, changing tack now is extremely difficult, and no politician is willing to impose any "energy inconvenience" (higher prices or reduced availability) on the people.
American (or other) innovation may yet come through, but it's hard when the only way is by (selective) government support. This means projects are designed and selected to maximise funding rather than maximise results or benefits. Something it would seem that RR and Kinu and doubtless a few others here have experienced first hand.
Good post Paul.
Simple put, there are good ways of going thing and not so good ways. Liquid fuels are a good way of storing energy for transportation. It will be produced in the economic order unless incentives are provided based on perceived needs of society.
Government has figured out that taxing what we like is a good way to raise revenue. It is especially rewarding to the loons in charge of the nanny state because they like taxing what we like doing because if we like doing it must be wrong.
The interesting thing about nanny state loons first tax us to prevent us from polluting out bodies with inhaling nicotine and drink ethanol, then they protect us from trace pollutants. I might understand but the nanny state loons want to legalize dope. Maybe so they can tax it and require warning labels.
Logic will only get you so far, than just sit back watch and see how it turns out.
Paul — Canada uses more energy per capita than the US or EU. But let's not condemn the Canadians for their wastefulness — the difference has a lot to do with climate & population density. Same with the difference between the US and the EU.
One statistic which sticks in my mind is that France alone (smaller than Texas) uses about as much energy as the entire continent of Africa. To some eyes, European claims of "energy efficiency" might seem like a really sick joke.
Bottom line is that the human race – all 6,500,000,000 of us – needs more energy. Lots more energy.
Energy efficiency is not going to supply it. Today's unsustainable politically correct alternatives to fossil fuels are not going to supply it. It is time for common sense, and for innovation.
The depressing lack of innovation shown in Europe suggests that high taxes on fuels are not the solution. I like the X-Prize approach to encourage innovation in means to accomplish a clearly-established end.
But there is going to have to be "innovation" in regulation too — a recognition that over-regulation is clearly part of the reason for Europe's failure.
Not sure that extreme weather is becoming more frequent, but it sure seems that way…
Optimist~
I expect the weather has always had its extremes at abut the same frequency — it's just that the extremes are much more widely (and rapidly) reported now.
Take the blizzard of 1968 along Colorado's Front Range when I was in college. It closed our campus for four days, but outside of Colorado Springs and El Paso County, I doubt few people were even aware of it.
Kinu,
I have experienced first hand the high energy usage here, when I shared a house and heating bill in Calgary! Now i just experience it with the amount of wood I chop.
I find a more interesting comparison is oil consumption per capita or per GDP, as in most (non OPEC) countries it is predominantly used for transport fuel, and thus is a good indication of the economy structure, rather than the climate. In that regard, Canada and US are equally bad – Australia uses 2/3 the oil per capita as Canada, and is equally as spread out and urbanised, and as I said Europe is half.
So to say they have "failed" is a relative term, they have been more successful in most respects of energy efficiency than we have. That said, I agree with what you think the Africans would say.
The topic of population fascinates me, as places like Africa, India and China, with billions of people, all want western lifestyles, and at Copenhagen practically demanded that we subsidise them to achieve it. I am of the opinion that if they are going to be as good global citizens as they would like us to be, then they should limit their populations to western population densities. Fewer people sharing the same resources = higher standard of living.
Something's gotta give, but I have never heard that seriously discussed, other than in the context of China's one child policy.
I am of two minds about the X-Prize. Fundamentally, it's a great concept, and worked with Lindbergh, SpaceShipOne, etc. But they way they have done the auto prize, where your 100mpg car must also have a "viable" business plan and a backer willing to produce 10,000 a year introduces a very subjective element – the best/most fuel effiecient car might not win. I could come up with a a world beating car, and my idea would be to use an X-prize victory to get the attention of potential manufacturers. Instead they want me to achieve that first, which limits participation to well funded and connected teams, at the expense of backyard innovators. After all, Microsoft started out in Bill Gate's garage.
A bit more of that innovation is exactly what's required, and, I think, despite the lop sided efforts of governments, and some companies, these innovations will eventually come though. And like cellphones, when they do, the growth wil be exponential and in no need of government subsidies.
Which brings me back to RR's original post. The biodiesel folks have had five years of 33% subsidy, and if they haven't been able to innovate to find a way to make it without that subsidy, then they should go by the wayside.
I do find it ironic that America officially supports biofuels, but them levies an import tax on ethanol, and the EU officially supports biofuels, and now levies an import tax on biodiesel, yet neither has any sort of import tax on oil, coal, etc! I doubt we'll ever see any country or corporation accused of "dumping" cheap oil on the US or European market!
Those heating oil numbers for UK and Sweden were interesting. Thanks.
paul wrote: places like Africa, India and China, with billions of people, all want western lifestyles,… I am of the opinion that if they are going to be as good global citizens as they would like us to be, then they should limit their populations to western population densities.
Population densities of countries in people per square mile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
925 India
657 UK
594 Germany
517 Italy
360 China
That means China can increase its population by 80% or another billion people and still have a population density less than the UK, so they have room to grow still, by your standards?
I thought else where you said dense cities were good.
That means China can increase its population by 80% or another billion people and still have a population density less than the UK, so they have room to grow still, by your standards?
I thought else where you said dense cities were good.
They may have the space, but they are lacking the water. I heard on the news today, water will soon be more expensive than oil. I believe they are right.
Can you imagine if we did go into another ice age and even more fresh water is locked away in ice? That might make peak oil look like a walk in the park.
OD
Clee,
We are getting off topic (biofuels) a little here, but those population density numbers are interesting. What I meant was the pop density for US and EU, which, from that list, are 83 and 112 respectively. We can cherry pick countries or States (like the UK or New York) that have high population densities, but both these examples are supported by other countries/states for their basic needs (i.e. food).
I consider dense cities to be a good thing, but they do still need to be supported (fed) by farmland somewhere. And as the diet "westernises" (i.e. more red meat) then the farmland needed per person goes up.
The anonymous poster is not quite right that water will be more valuable than oil, it will always cost less than oil. But he is correct that for some countries, like India, water supply, or lack thereof, will be more important than oil. Singapore can buy all the oil it can afford on the world market, but for water it has to buy it from Malaysia, and has no other option. I expect they spend more money on oil, but worry more about water.
As these countries "westernise" both their water, and oil consumption will increase by an order of magnitude, and some, particularly in Africa and India, will run into real problems.
They will then face the decision California (and Australia) are facing now – how to divvy up limited water between agriculture, cities and the environment (rivers). I can guess which will rank last on the list of African countries.
And in that context, (edible) biofuels are a questionable use the of their limited resources – but that isn't stopping oil palms being planted these countries. They can do what they want, but that doesn't mean we should then give them endless aid, of food or fuel, to bail them out.
Water is becoming a bigger problem by the day in Arab countries. The Arab population is expected to go from 250 million to 600 million in the next 20 years. Not so hard to do with 3 or 4 wives producing 7 kids each. Arab countries have only .4 per cent of the worlds recoverable water. Saudi Arabia will go from food exporter to importing all its food in the next 6 years. They depleted their ancient aquifers.
So, do we turn our food into fuel or trade it for oil? Importing 350 million Arabs is out of the question. We couldn't possibly replace the airplanes fast enough.
Paul wrote: "As these countries "westernise" both their water, and oil consumption will increase by an order of magnitude, and some, particularly in Africa and India, will run into real problems."
Remember, Paul, that Matter is Conserved. There is no shortage of water on this planet, and there never will be. (At least, not until the Sun blows). However, there are shortages of clean drinkable water already.
How do we deal with shortages of clean drinkable water? With energy, of course!
By expending energy, London is able to recycle sewage into drinking water. The Soviet Union built a nuclear-powered desalination plant on the Caspian Sea to supply fresh water to parched Western Kazakhstan.
Instead of focusing on the political act of dividing up a scarce resource, we should be focusing on the humanitarian act of increasing the supply of cheap power & heat, so that we can supply eveyone's needs.
@Kinu – From the Wiki –
A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association."[6]
@Paul – What amazes me is that much of the 3rd world that wants to improve their lifestyle seems to think that the developed world should do it for them – free of charge!
The 3rd world problems come from corruption and stupidity far more than from the developed world or globalization.
No small part of their problems come from the green horror of GMO food & products.
The Arab population is expected to go from 250 million to 600 million in the next 20 years. Not so hard to do with 3 or 4 wives producing 7 kids each.
Maybe yes, maybe no. Wives aren't going to be breeding and producing seven kids each if there is no water. Despite what you say, it would be hard to do without adequate potable water.
There is a limit to everything and a time when growth will hit a wall. I don't know where that limit is, but it is ahead of us somewhere.
This is interesting.
Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 3.1 million
barrels last week and are below the lower limit of the average range.
From the EIA report.
People are a lot like crazy ants Wendell. Homeowners around houston treat their yards with termidor,which kills termites and ants alike. The crazy ants keep coming at the house,and die by the millions. Eventually though,they're able to traverse the dead ants,which might be two inches thick. When there are no more resources to consume,people can always fill the spare time with more sex. There will always be westerners to feed and water the offspring.
My dad went through 100 gallons of propane over the holidays Rufus. There's a NG pipeline running through his town,but nobody's hooked to it. Everyone apparently uses propane or electric heaters. Nuts.
The refiners might have to produce more gasoline, and distillates than they want for a couple of months in order to have enough propane?
Another complication, eh?
Can they "Import" propane?
RR-
I know you are a DME fan.
Here u go:
New Bifunctional Catalysts Offers Improved Performance and Stability for Direct Synthesis of Dimethyl Ether from Syngas
6 January 2010
Researchers at the Petroleum Displacement Technology Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), have developed new bi-functional catalysts, promoted with Zr (Zirconium) or Ga (Gallium), that offer higher catalytic performance and stability for the direct synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) from syngas. A paper on their work was published 5 January in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels.
Wendell: The USAF may be able to justify the cost of CTL kerosene, but I doubt Delta can. A world of $4.60/gallon fuel is one in which there is very little aviation.
Maury: how can you get record snowfalls, without record amounts of water vapor in the air… which requires relatively warm air? What evaporated the water to make that snow? Heat did. Western Turkey is having a heat wave at the moment, so it appears that we just have a strange distribution of winter. Strange weather events are one of the predictions of AGW theory.
Optimist: "seems like CTL/BTL offers much more choice in terms of feedstock (energy source) with the added convenience of using existing infrastructure."
No, really it doesn't. The "alternatives" are about as lossy (and far worse at the technological limit), losing 50% or more between the feedstock and product. There are a number of energy sources which are more or less impossible to turn into liquid fuel at an affordable price (e.g. nuclear & wind), and these are far more abundant than coal and biomass. Then they feed into the same lossy vehicles.
The electric grid is also existing infrastructure, and just about any energy source you can name can be converted to electricity (perhaps at higher efficiency than converting to liquid fuel). The downstream efficiency is much higher, and conversion is incremental: one vehicle at a time. We get more out of any resource you care to name through electrification than xTL.
Governments are addicted to revenue; England has assigned police officers to chase people using WVO in their diesel cars for non-payment of road tax. Or maybe it's just the intersection of the oil interests (which make money from selling fuel) and governmental schizophrenia (the left hand, in charge of roads and revenues, doesn't know what the energy-independence right hand is doing).
The comparison of electricity to petroleum is interesting. Figure the USA at $2.50/gallon and 10¢/kWh, while Denmark is 92.2 UK¢/l (.922 GPB is $1.47 today, so that's $5.56/gallon) and 42¢/kWh.
Figuring 115000 BTU/gal and 25% ICE efficiency, the ratio of useful energy per dollar from gasoline and electricity vs. nation is:
USA: 0.297:1
Denmark: 0.636:1
Denmark is not as favorable to electric transport as the USA, but electricity is cheaper than gasoline in both.
E-P,
I guess losses is the price you have to pay for a fuel that can be easily stored. Unlike your hero, electricity.
There are a number of energy sources which are more or less impossible to turn into liquid fuel at an affordable price (e.g. nuclear & wind), and these are far more abundant than coal and biomass.
Wind is intermittent, relying on other fuels to make up the difference. Nuclear has the small matter of nuclear waste and weaponry ("we have peaceful intentions") to deal with. You can hardly get more abundant, from an American perspective, than coal. Biomass will eventually get scaled up when we get to the point that we need more Primary Production to sustain us, and to take all that evil CO2 out of the air.
The electric grid is also existing infrastructure, and just about any energy source you can name can be converted to electricity (perhaps at higher efficiency than converting to liquid fuel).
The US electric grid is also in a terrible state of repair. You trust the prostitutians to fix it some time soon?
And speaking of losses: how much eletricity do you lose thanks to transportation? Liquid fuels don't have much of a problem there, do they?
one vehicle at a time.
That's very dreamy eyed of you. Wake me up when they start selling EVs to soccer moms, or any other constituent that isn't rich guys-with-more-money-than-they-know-what-to-do-with.
Denmark is not as favorable to electric transport as the USA, but electricity is cheaper than gasoline in both.
Electricity is cheap in the US because it comes from King Coal. Not that different from CTL then. CTL gives many benefits, including easy storage, use in existing infrastructure, etc.
They may have the space, but they are lacking the water. I heard on the news today, water will soon be more expensive than oil. I believe they are right.
Heard it on the news, eh? Must be true then!
No doubt the Chinese polluted their water, secure in the belief that pollution is only a problem in capitalist societies. But, as the US found out after passing the Clean Water Act, that pollution can be undone in relatively short order. Nature is amazing.
As for the concern that we'll run out of water soon: Notice that, unlike oil, using water does not involve making it disappear into thin air. Dirty effluent can be cleaned up. And Reused. Infinitely? Probably not. But close enough.
Google Groundwater Replenishment and Orange County, CA. If treated sewage is clean enough to serve as drinking water for the rich folks in Orange County, it is clean enough for everybody. If the city of Windhoek, Namibia can do this for 40 years without probelms, pretty much anybody outside Somalia can do it.
Yuck factor? Go ahead, be my guest. Pay for bottled water. If you're dumb enough to think that's any better…
Russ quoted: "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day"
Exactly, Russ. Water desalination is known technology. Could be improved of course, but what can't?
The point is that it takes a source of power to desalinate water. If we have a plentiful supply of cheap power, then we can have all the clean drinking water we want.
The challenge is finding that very large-scale, low-cost supply of power. Nuclear fission is known technology, scalable, and with plentiful resources. Unfortunately, the granolas have demagoged nuclear fission with distortions & lies, such that it is no longer part of polite discussion in the west.
Not a problem for the human race; China, India, Brazil will move forward. Big problem for western granolas, who will lead their countries to become the whining supplicants of the future.
Engineer-Poet claimed: "Strange weather events are one of the predictions of AGW theory."
Got a source for that, Engineer-Poet? An actual scientific source, with a clearly-explained mechanism?
Nothing from Al Gore, Hansen, or the rest of the crowd discredited by Climategate, please!
OT–but so interesting: Stuart Staniford, onetime doomster, justed posted a chart on The Oil Drum positing that Iraq may go to 12 mbd in next 10 years—so no Peak oil for now.
Oh.
Gee, one nation changes regimes, and Peak Oil is shot down?
What happens when Venezuela gets rid of Chavez?
“Electricity is cheap in the US because it comes from King Coal.”
The cost of making electricity with coal, hydro, NG, or nukes is about the same any place in the world. About $20-40 MWh. It varies somewhat but not compared to how it is taxed.
If electricity is not a cheap commodity (especially relative to the benefit) where you live it is either because of high taxes or because of foolish policies. You do see some of the taxes in your bill but most of them are hidden. Each one is reasonable but add them all up and it still is not too bad.
If it costs be $20/month to heat my house it would be too cheap to meter. However, it costs me $100/month with all the taxes and that is why we need a meter, to collect taxes I have low electric rates. Using E-P's example it might cost $400/month.
During the last election, small increases in electric rates was an issue. The problem I have is that when I moved to this state my state income tax went up $4000.
"Strange weather events are one of the predictions of AGW theory."
They predicted bigger storms,more flooding and the like EP. None of our esteemed scientists predicted colder weather…..or more snow. It's pretty obvious our glorious leaders solved the global warming problem at the Copenhagen conference. Now we can relax and enjoy this big white blanket.
Didn't you see The Day After Tomorrow? Global warming dumps cold water from Greenland into the ocean, disrupting the circulation of the oceans. Result: Much colder weather in parts of the world.
A couple of years ago,NASA was notified about a "discontinuity" in its temperature data. NASA had assumed the data had been properly "adjusted" by NOAA. After correcting for the mistake,NASA acknowledged that 1934 was the hottest year on record,not 1998.
The good news is,NOAA has now properly massaged the data,and 1998 is once again the hottest year on record.
http://tinyurl.com/3dc54m
http://tinyurl.com/yjx65yq
"Didn't you see The Day After Tomorrow?"
Ummm – did you know that was a movie? Sort of like "Avatar", only without the realism.
A couple of years ago,NASA was notified about a "discontinuity" in its temperature data. NASA had assumed the data had been properly "adjusted" by NOAA. After correcting for the mistake,NASA acknowledged that 1934 was the hottest year on record,not 1998.
This is just ridiculous. When did NASA start being run by politicians, aka liars, and not scientists? Do they really think they can just change the data and no one will notice? Guess so.
OD
Heard it on the news, eh? Must be true then!
Are you saying the tv lied to me? That's unpossible.
OD
Kinu/Russ,
Desal is an option for drinking water, but only if people are prepared to pay the cost of it. The capital and operating costs are high, but that's better than running out of water. The city of Perth, Western Australia built a large desal plant and then a wind farm to power it. Overall an expensive option, but it was their only one. Compared to the (electrical) energy used by a city, using electricity for desal would increase it by about 5%, not a an outrageous amount.
Problem is, it is not a viable option for agricultural water. To use desal water (at about $1000/acre-foot) for growing corn, you spend $2k on water to grow your crop, of five tons/acre at $150/ton. Turn that corn into ethanol and you probably have the world's most expensive fuel.
So, in an extreme case, desal allows you to supply water to a large city, but doesn't help to grow the food for said city. Given that African countries are perpetually in famine (though not always because of water shortages), more water in the city doesn't really help them.
The arab countries, at least the ones with oil, have been doing distillation desal for decades, but as Maury pointed out, they have depleted their aquifers and now have no water for food production. They have concluded (correctly) it's better to sell the oil/gas and buy food than use the oil to desal water to grow food. Doesn't do much for national security, but they make that our problem, not theirs.
Sewage effluent makes great irrigation water, but there is just not enough of it to feed the people that created it. At an average of 50gal/person/day, that could irrigate 0.05 acres of corn each year, producing about 250kg of corn, or 25kg of beef.
Contrary to what Optimist said, when you use water for plant growing, it does go into thin air, that's how plants work. And the sunnier and drier the climate (as in California's central valley) the more water you need. It takes about 2500 tons of water to irrigate one acre of corn, for a five ton yield. So manufacturing water, to manufacture food, is a losing game, unless you are starving and awash in energy. And that would be Saudi Arabia…
Current capital costs for desal plants are about $10/gal/day capacity, and then it costs about
Desal costs from answers.com – 'Unit production costs per cubic meter range from $0.50 for large plants to over $1.50 for small plants'
Flood irrigation for corn/wheat is not so great using desal water but drip irrigation for other crops is practical.
"Do they really think they can just change the data and no one will notice?"
I counted 6 different tweaks they do with temperature readings OD. This is my biggest problem with this so-called science. We're only talking fractions of a degree. Any result you wish can be obtained with the right tweaking.
You gotta love this quote from Hansen in his white paper from 1981. It's on page 5 for anyone interested. I'm convinced he's the origon of the global warming hysteria sweeping the world today.
"A remarkable conclusion from Fig. 3 is that the global temperature is almost as high today as it was in 1940."
Oh my God. Global temperatures were almost as high in 1981 as they were 40 years before. No wonder we've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off.
http://tinyurl.com/ygvasgk
Quoth Maury: "They predicted bigger storms,more flooding and the like EP. None of our esteemed scientists predicted colder weather…..or more snow."
The predictions were for more extreme weather events: fewer storms with less rainfall total, but with more precip in each one. Sound familiar?
We can mince words all day EP. But,they didn't predict global cooling. And that's what's been happening the last few years. Hansen cited three factors for global climate change in his '81 paper. Volcanos,CO2 and solar variance. The solar variance was the big unknown. We've learned a few things since then.
"In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.
The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said."
http://tinyurl.com/8lce6
The 20th century gave us the modern solar maxima. The 21st century is ushering in a solar minima. The much vaunted 1 degree of temperature change is about to go poof EP. Keep your jacket handy.
It's Dead, Jim.
"Excess" Winter Deaths in the United States – 108,500
Cold Kills.
The 'Excess Winter Deaths' proves more people die in the winter than the summer.
No big surprise there! More illness in the winter – always.
Grand Opening set for Tenn. Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
Engineer-Poet claimed: "Strange weather events are one of the predictions of AGW theory."
Kinuachdrach asked, in good faith:
"Got a source for that, Engineer-Poet?"
No response from Engineer-Poet. None. Zip. Nada.
Draw your own conclusions.
Contrary to what Optimist said, when you use water for plant growing, it does go into thin air, that's how plants work. And the sunnier and drier the climate (as in California's central valley) the more water you need. It takes about 2500 tons of water to irrigate one acre of corn, for a five ton yield. So manufacturing water, to manufacture food, is a losing game, unless you are starving and awash in energy.
OK, so all agreed, we don't have to worry about potable water for cities: between desalination and reuse we have all the water we need.
On to agriculture then. Agriculture is indeed a significant user (some might say waster) of water, as Paul points out. However, it is possible to engineer salt-tolerant crop plants. How salt-tolerant a plant has been developed? A salt concentration of 200 mM is equivalent to 40% of the salt concentration of seawater and will inhibit the growth of almost all crop plants. And: Notably, transgenic plants grown at 200 mM NaCl produced seed numbers similar to those of wild-type plants grown at low salinity Moreover, qualitative and quantitative analyses of oil content showed no significant differences between seeds from wild-type plants grown at low salinity and transgenic plants grown at high salinity. (emphasis added)
I suspect that given a few years, these researchers would develop crop plants that can grow in seawater, with no effect on fruit quality or quantity. That means 75% of the planet becomes potential farm "land". And we can stop diverting the bulk of our precious potable sources to irrigation.
Grand Opening set for Tenn. Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
Note that should be: Grand Opening set for Tenn. Cellulosic Ethanol Demonstration Plant.
As RR keeps reminding us, that's a long way from industrial scale production, at a profit, etc. etc.
OT–but so interesting: Stuart Staniford, onetime doomster, justed posted a chart on The Oil Drum positing that Iraq may go to 12 mbd in next 10 years—so no Peak oil for now.
The comments to that post are interesting. It seems to have scared some of the doomers that their mad max fantasy may not come true. Theoildrum would be far more credible if they turned the comments off or only allowed actual contributors to reply.
OD
But,they didn't predict global cooling.
Quite right. All we have been told is we must limit warming to X degrees. If the possible outcome was cooling, why on earth would we care about limiting the warming?
Global warming is supposed to greatly extend my state's growing season, so honestly it would be better for me personally if it was real.
OD
Obama promised change at the EPA but how much change?
“The agency is proposing to set the “primary” standard, which protects public health, at a level between 0.060 and 0.070 parts per million (ppm) measured over eight hours.”
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/d70b9c433c46faa3852576a40058b1d4!OpenDocument
How much? Listening to NPR on the way home, it sounded very significant.
“In September 2009 Administrator Jackson announced that EPA would reconsider the existing ozone standards, set at 0.075 ppm in March 2008.”
Wow, 0.005 ppm. Recently a poster here linked LA basin 0zone history. Anyone think 5 ppb is significant? So what are the health ramifications? From the EPA,
“Using three studies that synthesize data across a large number of individual studies, we estimate between 1,100 and 1,400 avoided premature deaths annually in 2020 from reducing ozone to 0.070 ppm, leading to total monetized ozone-related benefits of between $7.4 and $9.1 billion/yr. Alternatively, if there is no causal relationship between ozone and mortality, avoided premature deaths associated with reduced ozone exposure would be zero and total monetized ozone-related morbidity benefits would be $190 million/yr.”
Woo hoo. Extraction rates might be 30-35%,but we've only extracted 32% of reserves. That obviously calls for an article titled Endless Oil. This would be less depressing if it was written by a doomer.
http://tinyurl.com/yg4dnq7
The most accurate depiction of global warming can be seen here in this docu-drama entitled Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow
of course, according to theory, AGW causes all things bad, including; heat waves, cold snaps, floods, drought, hurricanes, too much wind for windmills, invasive species, extinction of species, kidney stones and hundreds of thousands of deaths per year (to which I ask, what are their names?)
Dennis Moore said: AGW causes all things bad, including; heat waves, cold snaps, floods, drought, hurricanes, too much wind for windmills, invasive species, extinction of species, kidney stones and hundreds of thousands of deaths per year (to which I ask, what are their names?)
Dennis,
Wouldn't natural global warming cause exactly the same things?
The fact is it has been warmer (because of natural reasons) in the past than it is now, and I don't know that any of those bad things happened.
While driving today, I heard someone on the radio say that global warming would cause irreversible damage to the planet. How can that be? It has been warmer in the past and that wasn't irreversible.
No matter what happens to the planet in the 21st century, I suspect our dear old Earth is completely capable of making a natural recovery over the next two or three billion years.
Grand Opening set for Tenn. Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
Rufus~
That's only a demonstration plant. An important step? Certainly, but still only a baby step.
Tell me the news when the first full-scale, commercially profitable plant is up and running ~ w/o subsidies, tax credits, or mandates.
Wendell,
I didn't bother looking for an old newspaper headline about this, it was built long before ethanol was considered newsworthy, but here it is, you just have to think outside America to find it:
http://www.manildra.com.au/about_manildra/folder/company_history/
Built in 1991 using waste starch from wheat milling as feedstock. Expanded in 1999, to 100,000 gal/day, long before mandates, subsides and the like. They were selling 10% ethanol blended fuel at local gas stations from the early 90's – I filled up at a few of them before I converted my car to propane.
The corn ethanol lobby always points to coproducts to produce a net positive EROEI. For this plant, the ethanol itself is the co-product and they not only get a positive EROEI, but also get a positive $RO$I, no subsidies or mandates needed! An ethanol equivalent of RR's example of biodiesel from animal byproducts.
So there are two ways to produce ethanol profitably – the smart way and the subsidised way. Now, Australia has introduced ethanol mandates, which is spawning new plants, but this one was well established before then.
And since America has both subsidies AND mandates, there is no need for the ethanol industry to do anything as smart as this, it's much easier to lobby than innovate. That said, I'm sure there were some industrial ethanol plants in the US long before ethanol was a biofuel. There is a Fleischmann's yeast plant in Calgary, Alberta that had an ethanol flare running continuously for years, a beautiful blue flame at night. A few years ago they realised they were burning $$ and started collecting and selling the ethanol.
Optimist, your point about desal water for drip irrigated crops is valid – but at that price you would need to be doing intensive greenhouse type crops (which are actually very water efficient, but expensive in other ways). If the strawberry farms around LA had to pay those rates for water (which equate to $600 to $1800/ac.ft), you would see them disappear and be replaced by condos fairly quickly.
For horticulture type irrigation (close to a city) In that situation, you could find recycled water cheaper than desal. In fact, it's cheaper to desal sewage effluent than seawater, and this is already done on a large scale in LA's West Basin. They use some of the water for aquifer recharge, but their major customer is the nearby Chevron oil refinery which uses the desal effluent for their boiler feed water. The hydrogen form this water ends up in LA drivers fuel tanks!
BUT, there is one place where your saltwater plants would be ideal – the Salton Sea basin. There is a project being studied to bring seawater in from Mexico (the Sea of Cortez) to rehabilitate the Salton Sea (which has been steadily dropping and is already saltier than seawater). Because of the intensive farming in the area, the water reaching it is nutrient rich and suffers frequent algae blooms.
For reasons I don't fully understand, I am yet to hear any algae oil advocate propose a project there, where the conditions are about as ideal as you could get for a commercial scale project. The fact that they haven't is, in my opinion, just more evidence that algae oil just is not economical, or even practical.
Even if we don't want to eat more kelp, using salty or brackish water would be good for biofuel growing – if it grows, you can burn it.
Anonymous wrote: The biodiesel industry will limp on without any tax credit given the biodiesel mandate in RFS 2
And yet I'm noticing that although the RFS 2 mandate was for 500 million gallons of biodiesel in 2009, (and more than that was actually produced in 2008), they estimate that the mandate was not met in 2009. A toothless mandate.
My estimation of corn ethanol's profitability has gone up a bit. Biodiesel couldn't meet its mandate in 2009 when there was still a $1/gal tax credit, but ethanol could meet its toothless mandate with a $0.45/gal tax credit.
I'll probably lose the rest of my fruit trees tonite. The apricot and fuyu persimmon are done for. Navel oranges,satsumas and meyer lemons won't make it sub-25 for long. Banana trees always come back,at least. Japanese plums are iffy. Kumquats seem indestructible. Have some great blackberry and strawberry plants the USDA helped develop. Big,juicy blackberries with no thorns. Covered 'em,but that ain't gonna help a whole lot. We've always been able to grow anything here. A freeze in 1989 killed most of the orange and lemon groves. I was hoping global warming had put these deep freezes behind us.
I should have explained: The reason I linked the Vonore, Tn Cellulosic Demonstration Plant was the way it was conceived, and implemented.
Basically, it's been the Governor, and the Univ of Tn that has been "ramrodding"/promoting the plant.
It's kind of a "longshot," but two years ago it was a "Super-longshot." It's, basically, just a bunch of amateurs feeling their way along. I'm not including Dupont-Danisco in the "Amateur" category, but they haven't, I believe, been the "Driving Force" behind the project.
If they can make it work (profitably) it might be an important template for future projects.
Maury said: "I'll probably lose the rest of my fruit trees tonite."
We had minus 18 Centigrade here last night. That's a record by a mile. May not sound low to people in a continental climate, but nowhere on this little island is more than 50 miles from a relatively warm ocean. Consequently we are right on the verge of running out of grit and salt and it looks like even the major roads will get shut down next week. What a mess!
Good thing the Gulf Stream circulates on timescales longer than a few days or weeks. Otherwise I'd take Maury's frozen fruit as a sign that our Big Heater in the Gulf of Mexico has deserted us.
Robert,
Good post, and I agree with most of it, except your call to re-instate the subsidies and then schedule to phase them out.
On this matter, I agree with Russ Finley. Let's recall what he said:
RR said: "That would be a blow to producers who invested on good faith that government support would be continued."
Russ Finley said: "Didn't they know exactly when the credit was slated to end? Were they not gambling as entrepreneurs that it would be continued?"
Public-finance economists have advocated sunset clauses for subsidies and tax-credit programs for a long time. The more that policy makers simply keep renewing these sunsetted programs, the more it makes a mockery of the budgetary process, and the more it creates expectations that policy makers don't mean what they say — thereby affecting expectations in totally unrelated programs.
In the case of biodiesel made from soy oil, I agree with Robert (and have also argued) that the technology — which is mature –bears no relation to FT-diesel. It may be the process used to produce middle distillates from algal oil, if and when that ever happens. But those plants will presumably be located closer to where the algae are grown, not in the heartlands. In short, keeping existing biodiesel plants going provides no "bridge" to 2nd- or 3rd-generation biodiesel.
But even if the $1/gallon federal blenders' credit disappears, there are still plenty of state-level incentives (e.g., $1/gallon in Kentucky) and blending mandates (e.g., Minnesota, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington state) that will ensure that some biodiesel plants stay in business for awhile.
Congress would be fully justified in walking away from this one: biodiesel (and bio-jet) made from vegetable oils has no future. It does not scale (unless you want to cut down rainforests to expand palm-oil production), and it does not save consumers of those fuels any money.
Only in the highly unlikely case that biomass-based substitutes for petroleum grew to be in greater supply than the petroleum products themselves would those substitutes draw down the price of fuel.
Meanwhile (to those who feel warm fuzzies for EU biodiesel policies), no matter what the reduction in fuel taxes applied to liquid alternatives to diesel, the SALES price of those alternatives will always gravitate towards the retail (i.e., after-tax) price of petroleum diesel.
There is more I would like to say to correct some of the misconceptions about biofuel policies in Australia and Europe expressed in some of these comments, but I don't have the time.
— Ron S.
There are 150 Million Acres lying Fallow in the Cerrado. I guess you could produce 90 Billion Gallons of Palm Oil, there, without cutting down a single tree.
Some more potential Brazilian Solutions
Rufus said: "I guess you could produce 90 Billion Gallons of Palm Oil, there, without cutting down a single tree"
That's a falacy, Rufus. Here is a nice, succinct quote from Wikipedia:
The "cerrado" landscape is characterized by extensive savanna formations crossed by gallery forests and stream valleys. Cerrado includes various types of vegetation. Humid fields and "buriti" palm paths are found where the water table is near the surface. Alpine pastures occur at higher altitudes and mesophytic forests on more fertile soils.
It is not simply all barren, lifeless grass. Replacing its current vegetation with oil palms would completely transform the ecosystem, and probably transpire a lot more water than is currently being transpired. That kind of monocrop expanse would also attract all manner of pests specific to oil palms.
Give it up the dream, Rfus. It ain't going to happen.
— Ron S.
Paul said: "Europe also makes much greater use of woody biofuels, with the almost complete replacement of heating oil by wood pellets… Now granted, there are only a couple of cars running on wood, but they have used wood to replace heating oil so that same oil can be used in their diesel cars… When I lived in Central London, only one person I knew even bothered owning a car, you didn't need it in the city and you rent one if you are doing a country road trip (or plan your trip around the trains – they are just so cheap… Oddly enough, electricity is a cheaper retail energy than natural gas, so you don't see a lot of NG furnaces for home heating."
Paul, I'm wondering if you have stats for all of that? My information is totally anecdotal, and my experience limited to a few European countries, but I would say: wood pellets have been a fad for a while, but a tiny fraction of domestic heating compared to oil and gas. I would be truly astonished if wood had "almost completely" replaced oil and gas because that would mean every single person I know is an outlier. Central London is quite a special case when it comes to transport … but no more special (in fact less so) than Manhattan. Trains in London and the rest of the UK are definitely not cheap — maybe you lived there before deregulation/privatisation. Intercity trains are often two or three times more expensive than flying! NG boilers for domestic heating are commonplace most places I've been in Europe, certainly anywhere that has natural gas resources or is near a pipeline. That would include the British Isles, the Benelux Countries, France, Germany, Italy and more. Electric heating is most definitely not the cheapest, the common heat sources in order of increasing price are: natural gas, kerosene, bulk propane, electricity. Electric ground-coupled heat pumps are becoming more popular in rural places without natural gas, but still rare due to high installation cost. Use of off-peak electricity is not as widespread as you might think — there are often extra installation costs and fixed charges, and a requirement to use a certain minimum number of units.
This is all just off the top of my head — I would not claim it is any more than anecdotal. But it leaves me wondering where your numbers are coming from.
From the Rednek Dikshunary: Savannah – Scrub land
Naw, you wouldn't monocrop the entire Cerrado. Of course, there's a lot more to Brazil than the Cerrado. Then there's Colombia. And on, and on.
I'm not a big biodiesel guy, mainly because of our lack of a great oil crop. It's hard for me to get real het up on the idea of trading our "Riyadh" addiction for a "Rio" addiction.
Just thought I'd throw it out there. I guess it was alluding to that perception that to have biodiesel one has to cut down a bunch of trees. Weird how stuff like that gets started.
It's hard for me to get real het up on the idea of trading our "Riyadh" addiction for a "Rio" addiction.
Rufus~
But at least Brazilians are fellow Americans. South Americans to be sure, but still Americans.
BTW, the Cerrado is about 462 Million Acres. That's about 22% of the area of Brazil. Brazil is roughly the same size as the U.S.
So, 10% of the Cerrado (approx. 2.2% of Brazil's land area) would yield about 2 million Barrels of Oil/Day. About 1/2 of our Diesel usage.
Jes sayin
Have you been to Denmark Pete? I'd like to know if the Danes Oprah had on yesterday are typical. One couple had three kids in a small bedroom. The parent's bed was out in the open,with no doors or walls. The bathroom was next to the dining area,and had a clear sliding glass door with a tub directly behind it. The house was damned sharp looking. Spartan,but shiny. There was a noticeable lack of things. You know…stuff. And there was certainly no room for modesty. Do Danes really live like that?
Oh,and they were bragging about their 50% tax rate. They seem to love the perks. Paid to go to college. Free health care etc.
"Give up the dream, Rufus. It ain't going to happen."
What exactly don't you think will happen Ron S.? We'll certainly move to biofuels,whether it's food or cellulosic. Oil isn't getting any cheaper or more abundant. We either make the fuel or walk. Or swim. Electric will help,but it won't get groceries to the store. Or people across the oceans.
Maury said: "Give up the dream, Rufus. It ain't going to happen." What exactly don't you think will happen Ron S.?
Biodiesel made from vegetable oils on such a massive scale. With higher prices, people will continue to find ways to conserve on fuel use. There will certainly be further electrification of railroads, and probably some of private (as well as, of course, public) transport. Airlines can't fly on electricity (yet), but will they move to bio-jet, or CTL (with or without CCS), in a big way? Who knows, but of all the transport modes, they are currently the most constrained in terms of substitution possibilities. Turning edible oils into fuel for inefficient trucks is just plain stupid.
— Ron S.
Turning edible oils into fuel for inefficient trucks is just plain stupid.
What could it possibly matter whether they're "edible," or not. We have all the edible oils anyone can afford to buy, now. If we plant some more trees to get oils to use for something else, how is their edibility, or lack, thereof, of any importance? That's just Bonkers.
We have all the edible oils anyone can afford to buy, now.
By definition: supply and demand balance one way or another. But with current subsidies and mandates, we are giving preference to the use of these oils for transport. If that drives up the price, and poor people consume less as a consequence, are you saying that is morally acceptable?
If we plant some more trees to get oils to use for something else, how is their edibility, or lack, thereof, of any importance?
Strictly speaking speaking, in that case it does not matter whether the oils are edible or not. But from the standpoint of climate-change mitigation, and protection of our dwindling natural areas, the cost is still likely to be higher at the margin than avoiding the need for so much fuel in the first place — i.e., spending money to make transport more efficient.
— Ron S.
PeteS,
I already stand corrected on that statement about heating oil displacement – found some real data which is in an earlier post I made in this thread. Sweden is closest to eliminating heating oil use, but that of course, does not mean all of Europe is.
From a report from Interpellet conference 2007; "There are around 80,000 pellet heating systems installed in Sweden, only ten percent of private households are still heated with oil. At a rate of 25 percent, Sweden's annual growth of new (pellet) installations is consistently high. One of the reasons for this is the high taxation of 52 percent for CO2 on all fossil fuels. "
The data for heating oil and pellet consumption, for the EU as a whole show a definitive decrease in heating oil use and a rapid increase in pellet use (4.6 million tons on 2006, on track for 9 million in 2009), though more in some countries than others
When I was in London (1998) I though the tube was cheap – for just over the price of a beer you could ride all day. I found the intercity trains (operated by Virgin) were much cheaper than domestic air, especially if you booked ahead. I couldn't imagine flying London to Manchester these days- by the time you got through airport security etc the train would be more than halfway there.
My experience on the costs of electricity and gas came from the country pub I was managing at the time – we had two elec meters, peak and off peak as did the houses around there (as do many houses in Australia and NZ). A survey of today's prices may reveal a different story. Maybe the reduction of coal fired electricity has been ramping up prices there.
I won't argue the proliferation of NG heating, after all, Britain invented the use of mainline (coal) gas in the 1800's, and town gas was still being used in the 70's.
Subsidies won't always be needed Ron. Brazil phased theirs out for ethanol. The US ethanol industry could do without one imo. Some of the Asian countries are going gangbusters with palm oil. I don't think they're subsidized. They just sell to the highest bidder. With oil at $82 a barrel and getting scarcer by the day,we can use all the palm oil that can be grown. These trees are great for sequestering carbon btw. I think switchgrass has a great future in most of the world. Also great at carbon capture,and doesn't use a lot of fertilizer or water. Helps with erosion as well. We're talking millions of jobs worldwide in the next twenty years or so. A lot more jobs than the oil industry ever provided. And the air can be cleaner as well.
http://www.seawaterfoundation.org/
Haven't heard anything new about them lately but they seem to have some interesting work in salt resistant vegtables.
Maury,
I would agree with you on eliminating the ethanol subsidy – especially since they have a fuel mandate that guarantees a market for fuel ethanol.
One thing that has happened from all of this is the establishment of a firm market linkage between these food products (corn, soy/canola) and the fuel market. So from here on, there will always be a floor price based on the fuel value. In years past price swings brought grain prices well below this level. Amazing to think that the US government used to pay farmers to set aside land to stabilise crop production and prices – we won't be seeing that again.
What irks me most about the biodiesel subsidy, is that the fuel was being exported to Europe, so there was no reduction of oil imports. There should have been an equivalent export tax on it, to ensure
it is used domestically. Better yet, of course, the government should have just stayed out of it altogether, but they can't help themselves.
I like the simplicity of Sweden's approach – a substantial carbon (or oil) tax to create the playing field, and just let the various fuels compete with oil and each other.
Ron S. wrote: "But from the standpoint of climate-change mitigation, …"
Aw! Ron! You were doing so well up to that point.
Perhaps one of you biofuel enthusiasts can inform us all about the implications of Net Primary Productivity for bio-derived fuels.
The little I have seen about this topic is that human beings have already appropriated a high share of all the photosynthetic activity that takes place on Planet Earth, for food, fiber, & fuel.
Forget about mandates & subsidies for a moment. Those are just unsustainable political porn. The basic question is – Is there enough NPP to create the fuel to power the entire human race, while also providing for food & fiber? If not, what is the biofuel Plan B to cover all those humans who get left out in the cold?
Thanks for the info Paul. Agree with you about the inconvenience of air travel. Just out of interest:
London – Glasgow, 2nd class rail, any day next week: min £105 – max £180.
Ryanair, London Stansted to Glasgow Prestwick, same dates: £29.99 each way + taxes/fees, total £99.25.
Kinuach,you should know plan B already. If we run out of sunshine,we can all live under one gigantic nuclear reactor with a giant garden on top.
K,
6 Billion Tons of biomass every year to produce 40 Million Barrels of biofuels/day.
Let's use the number 180 Billion Tons of Biomass for a year for planet earth.
But, only about a third of that 6 Billion Tons is actually converted to fuel. The rest is returned to the soil, or to the atmosphere (the CO2.)
So, 2/180 = 0.011
We've used 1.1% of available biomass to replace roughly half of our petroleum budget.
BTW, satellites tell us the earth's biomass has increased by approx. 6% in the last IIRC 15 yrs.
I doubt we'll ever come close to 40 Million Barrels/Day, but if we wanted to it seems to me to be imminently doable.
BTW, keep in mind that VAST tracts of the globe's land grows very little due to acidic, or aluminum toxic soil.
We have NO shortage of limestone on earth, and we're developing plants, such as sorghum, that can grow in aluminum-toxic soil.
You could open up Billions of Acres in Africa, alone, with just a little lime, and GM seeds.
paul wrote: Maury,
I would agree with you on eliminating the ethanol subsidy – especially since they have a fuel mandate that guarantees a market for fuel ethanol.
How does this mandate guarantee a market for fuel ethanol when it was unable to guarantee a market for biodiesel? In 2008 the biodiesel people proved they could produce 700 million gallons, much more biodiesel than was mandated, and yet in 2009 they were unable to sell more than 350 million gallons despite a 500 million gallon mandate. They are complaining there is no market. The fuel mandate didn't guarantee a market for biodiesel. I don't see how it guarantees a market for fuel ethanol.
Rufus wrote: "We've used 1.1% of available biomass to replace roughly half of our petroleum budget."
Rufus, this is where we get into some very confusing areas. There seem to be some distinctly different definitions of planetary Net Primary Production out there. Everything is obviously an estimate rather than a measurement. Some of those estimates don't seem to be consistent with your calculation above.
One estimate that is frequently quoted comes from Cramer et al., from the Potsdam NPP Model Intercomparison in 1999. That gives Global NPP equivalent to about 68 TeraWatt — only a tiny percentage of the solar energy reaching Earth, due to the very low efficiency of photosynthetic conversion.
Estimates of existing Human Appropriated Net Primary Production (for food, fiber, fuel) seem to range from 20% to 70% of that NPP, with a lot of the difference apparently residing in the definitions.
For comparison with the Global NPP of 68 TW, total human commercial energy use is currently about 15 TW (mostly from fossil fuels) — and that huge use still leaves maybe 2/3 of the human race under-served.
If we start off with 68 TW of photosynthetic NPP, guess (conservatively) 20 TW for food & fiber, and aim to supply everyone with an adequate amount of energy (say, 45 TW), there would be nothing left from the planet's NPP for the whales & the polar bears. And that is before allowing for the undoubtedly-substantial energy losses in converting NPP biomass into useful power for human beings.
Full disclosure — I used to have very high hopes for algal-derived fuels, until Mr. Rapier put a wooden stake through that unbeating heart. Now I am left wondering if bio-fuels can ever be more than a niche product — great where it can work without subsidies, but not a major part of humanity's post-fossil future.
I am fumbling in the dark here. How does your estimate of 180 Billion tons of biomass annually compare to Cramer's 68 TW?
Optimist, your point about desal water for drip irrigated crops is valid – but at that price you would need to be doing intensive greenhouse type crops (which are actually very water efficient, but expensive in other ways).
Paul, I never said anything of the kind. I propose drinking reuse (desalted only if required) and using transgenic plants that can grow on saline (hopefully soon undiluted seawater) water for food.
BUT, there is one place where your saltwater plants would be ideal – the Salton Sea basin.
But why bother with the relatively small volume of exceptionally bad water quality? It stinks on top of that!
I agree, recovering those algal blooms should be low hanging fruit. But forget algal biodiesel. I'm thinking gasification, so that you get to use ALL the carbon in the feedstock.
I'm not a big biodiesel guy, mainly because of our lack of a great oil crop. It's hard for me to get real het up on the idea of trading our "Riyadh" addiction for a "Rio" addiction.
Correction, Rufus!
When you diversify you are minimizing the chances that either Riyadh or Rio get too much control. Diversification is quite different from trading one for the other.
Of course, in the real world Rio is too small to bother Riyadh.
Perhaps one of you biofuel enthusiasts can inform us all about the implications of Net Primary Productivity for bio-derived fuels.
You are treating NPP as if it is cast in stone. If you fertilize the oceans you can increase NPP quite a bit.
Of course, the environmental impacts would be huge, as this would affect the entire food chain, but hey, we need more seafood, don't we?
K, I have no idea. I've seen figures for Biomass at anywhere from 150 Billion Tons to 200 + Billion Tons.
How to translate the resulting fuels to Watts is beyond my pay grade. To me, the question is much simpler. How many available acres do we have; and how many gallons of fuel can we get?
We need 40 mbd? multiply by 365/15 = 973 million acres (approx number of acres depending on crop.)
Then subtract out the amount from MSW, ag waste, forestry waste, dual purpose crops such as Corn (DDGS for cattle feed, starch for ethanol, etc.)
An ex. DOE estimated 1 billion Tons of Forestry, Ag waste in the U.S. That could be somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 to 100 Billion Gallons of ethanol.
We produce in the range of 250 Million Tons of Municipal Solid Waste. That could be somewhere around 25 Billion Gallons of Ethanol. Then you have 15 Billion gallons from corn, and we still haven't planted any "energy" crops, yet.
Brazil has more arable acres than we do, and Colombia, and the other S. American Countries almost as many again.
Russia has over 100 Million Acres of very good "black" land lying fallow, and of course, Africa swallows us all up.
Don't know much about Terawatts, but the ACRES are there.
Of course, you can't think "forestry" waste without thinking about a country that extends across 11 time zones. Lord only knows what Russia would be good for.
I'll come at the NPP from a yield per acre viewpoint, using trees, my favourite biofuel feedstock.
Natural forests produce about 2-4 ton (dry matter)/acre/year. managed forest can get 5, and irrigated/high rainfall (Brazil, etc) can get 10t/ac/yr. Some places can get much higher, but they are not representative.
One ton of wood is 20GJ, and can be converted to 100gal of MeOh, for 6.8GJ (a 2/3 loss), equal to 1.1barrels of oil. Using the managed forest yield of 5t/ac/yr, you get 5.5 barrels per ac/yr.
To replace 80 million barrels/day (29 billion barrels/year) you need 5.3 billion acres of land, and sufficient rainfall to grow it.
According to the UN, there is 4 billion hectares, or 10 billion acres of forest in the world. So, assuming we can (sustainably) harvest it, we need to use 53% of the worlds forest to provide our current level of liquid fuel.
So it can be done, but it would need a lot of work – would give all those underemployed people something to do.
if we are not obsessed with liquid fuel, and use the wood as solid fuel, the picture is much better. We get the the equivalent of 232 million bpd of oil, which is just under the total world fossil fuel consumption of 243 mbpd.
Keep in mind this is not clearcutting the forest, but merely improving their productivity and removing biomass at the same rate it grows.
I am not suggesting we could actually achieve this level, but even if we just use 20% of the world forest area, we displace 40% of fossil fuel consumption. And this without even using one acre of existing farmland.
Rufus said we need 1 billion acres for 40 mbpd, which would imply a yield of 19 barrel/ac/yr, or 800gal/ac/yr, or 116 GJ/ac/yr. This is close to my figure for gross biomass energy production, before you convert to oil. Oil palms are the only crop I can think of that could achieve this, and they can only be grown in tropical regions.
But woody biomass grows almost everywhere, in wet, dry hot or cold conditions, without needing to raze forests first – that is why it is my biofuel of choice.
There are some other factors, of course. Some of the worlds forests are already harvested for lumber, so we lose that portion, and then we add in Rufus' other factors of waste lumber, crop residue, MSW, etc and we may come out even.
Now, all this makes no mention of the economics of doing this, which is a whole different question. As Kinu said, biofuels are great where they can work without subsidy, etc. I think as oil continues to rise, and as RR and others develop their biofuels technology, I think we'll see more and more places where it can work, unsubsidised.
Looking at US/Canada, there is 1.75 billion ac of existing forest, which could produce 26 billion barrels of liquid oil equivalent per year. More realistically, if we just want to offset the 12 mbpd the US imports from other than Canada, we would need to utilise 46% of that forest area, or 800m ac. use the wood as solid fuel and we would use one third of that area for the same energy.
Either way, it would create a hell of a lot of jobs, and keep a lot of money in the country, and out of others.
Perhaps most interesting is that the world distribution of forest area is much more evenly spread than oil reserves. Europe has 25% of the world's forest, S. America 21%, N. America 18%, Asia 15% and the middle east, well, they can just keep using their oil…
PeteS – When I did my travel in 98 those numbers were reversed!
Clee – my point about the mandate, is that it (supposedly) guarantees a minimum volume, at 5 or 10% or whatever the level is. If biodiesel did not reach the mandate, yet was being exported, then clearly the mandate was not being enforced. In which case, you are right, there is no guaranteed market, and the mandate itself is pointless.
Optimist – Agreed your water system can work, but a city would need to be in an extreme state before needing to do that. Like a large population, in a desert, by the sea – that would be LA!
Paul,
That all reads as something that is too good to be true. Something is surely missing from the equation??
OD
paul wrote: Europe also makes much greater use of woody biofuels, with the almost complete replacement of heating oil by wood pellets
paul amended:I should have bit my tongue on that one, or checked the data more carefully. This is close to true in the UK and Sweden, but not everywhere else.
I poked around some more. It seems not to be true in Great Britain. It's a bit difficult to get at the information. From
http://bis.ecgroup.net/Publications/EnergyClimateChangeDECC/EnergyStatistics.aspx
click on
"Energy consumption in the UK: domestic data tables. 2009 update. (PDF)"
which despite the title is not a pdf, but an .xls download.
Click on the tab for "Table 3.14" Ownership of central heating by type in Great Britain 1970 to 2007.
You will see that while the number of oil-fired units roughly doubled from 473K in 1970 to 939K in 2007, the number of gas units increased ten-fold from 1,907K to 19,858K and solid fuel units, which include wood, other biofuel and coal, decreased from 1,695K to 265K.
Or looking at Tab "Table 3.8" Domestic energy consumption by end use and fuel, in primary energy equivalents 1990 to 2007. Petroleum use in space heating dropped from 2.6 in 1990 to 2.3 in 2007. Natural gas increased from 19.6 to 24.0. Solid fuels dropped from 5.3 to 2.8. Electricity dropped from 0.8 to 0.6.
My conclusion from this is that for heating, they've replaced some oil and coal with mostly natural gas. I see this also comparing the UK energy flow charts for
1974 http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file47684.pdf
vs 2007 http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file46984.pdf
paul wrote: Sweden is closest to eliminating heating oil use, but that of course, does not mean all of Europe is.
From a report from Interpellet conference 2007; "There are around 80,000 pellet heating systems installed in Sweden, only ten percent of private households are still heated with oil
There are 4.5 million households in Sweden according to
http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____146284.aspx
so 10% would be 450,000 households heated with oil which is more than 5 times the number of households with pellet heating systems. No, I don't think there's an "almost complete replacement of heating oil by wood pellets" in Sweden either.
Clee,
It's funny how a bite of data can lean to a dubious extrapolation – I didn't follow RR's rule of "lets start with the data".
So that's what I'll do now.
Firstly, Sweden, the goivernment's stated policy is
"- the use of fossil fuels for heating to be phased out by 2020", so how are they doing on this?
From the Swedish energy agency's 2008 report:
"In 2007, total use of oil fuels in the (residential) sector amounted to 13 TWh, a reduction of almost
90 % since 1970. About half of this oil was used for heating. An important reason for the
decline has been the rise in oil prices, leading to a change to electricity, district heating
or biofuels. Biofuels in particular are used for heating in detached houses. The commo-
nest such fuel is logs, although pellets and wood chips are also used."
So I would call a 90% reduction an "almost complete replacement". However, it has not been exclusively with pellets, they do use other forms of biomass too (wood, black liquor etc) Much of this is in district CHP plants, then then heat apartment complexes. Total biofuel use in district heating, at 33TWh/yr, exceeds the peak oil use in 1980 of 30Twh, so that is almost complete replacement with biofuel, though not always pellets.
see fig 31, p96 of this report for a good graphic.
The 10% of houses with oil, is 10% of detached houses, which comprises 1.7million of their 4.5 million residences. Also, many houses use a combination of heating sources, with oil being the last resort (and highest taxed). So while many houses still have oil heating equipment, their actual oil consumption is very low.
Sweden has made a large effort to get many houses and most apartments onto district heating systems, most of which are powered by biomass.
A lot of places have gone to electric heat pumps, and biofuel has been replacing coal for electricity production, so these could be called indirect biofuel heating.
As I did concede earlier, just because Sweden did it, doesn't mean the rest of Europe has, although many countries are moving in the same direction.
ships, trains moderate and cars hardest, with planes being impossible to replace oil.
So, I had a basis for my original statement about oil being replaced, but it is not entirely with pellets and it certainly is not all over Europe. So, Clee, you have called me on my data, and I will take my lumps and stand corrected.
I should have said:
"Sweden has achieved 90% replacement of heating oil with biofuel. In the rest of Europe the overall trend is for decreasing use of heating oil, of which biomass and wood pellets in particular, is a fast growing replacement. "
And that is enough said, on this one.
And back to trees..
OD, I have run these numbers upside down, inside out, back to front, starting out with BC beetle kill wood, but going on from there.
A ton of wood is three barrels energy equivalent, but will yield only one barrel equivalent of actual liquid fuel (rounding off from 1.1).
Lowest productivity boreal forest in northern(cold) Canada is 2t/ac/yr, it gets higher the warmer you get, and the more management you do. 5t/ac/yr seems to be a good number for managed, non irrigated forest. So that is five barrel equivalent of liquid fuel per year. Canada has one billion acres of forest, and the world has 10 billion, so that is 50 billion barrels per year, or 137 mbpd. Today's 80mbpd of oil is 58% of that 137, (or if I used the correct 1.1 barrel/ton, 53%).
It's that simple.
What is not simple, of course, is actually getting out and utilising 53%, or even 20% of the world's forest area, each year.
It is the analogous to total oil in the ground and the recovery factor, you can't get all of it no matter how hard you try, so just get the easiest/best stuff first.
Not only that, whatever we do take, has to be done sustainably – the lumber industry has a poor track record here, doing large clear cuts. We just want to thin the forest each year, maintaining it in a productive state. What we don't want is rampant deforestation as has happened in Haiti, Malaysia, etc.
US and Canada have more than enough forest area to completely displace all off continent oil imports.
The real hard part is;
a) getting people to agree to the concept of using (not destroying) the forests, and
b) converting systems to use solid fuel instead of oil. Heating oil is the easiest, ships and trains, industry next, cars hardest and planes are impossible.
Still, even a steam train(or car) on solid fuel at 15% efficiency beats a 25% gasoline engine on wood derived methanol. Once you factor in the 66% conversion loss, the IC engine is at 8% overall.
BUt, the US is always up for a challenge, and I think this one -displacing all off continent oil – is well worth taking on. Wood fuel is not the only answer – there is NG, etc, but it can sure be part of it. After all diversity is security, and when the diversity is all home grown, then it is doubly secure.
Paul – would I be right in thinking that your quoted energy numbers for wood apply if the wood arrives at the door of your furnace/gasification/methanol plant for no harvesting/transportation cost? What about the practicalities of harvesting and transporting the wood, and distributing the end product? In other words, what would be the "forest-to-wheels" (or other end use) efficiency?
Clee wrote,
“My conclusion from this is that for heating, they've replaced some oil and coal with mostly natural gas.”
Paul, you have to understand that Clee lives in California. This is the place in the US with the most energy and air quality issues. In California, they replace electricity produced with nuclear power for home heating with natural gas.
Clee does a good job of extrapolating data when he is looking at his own back yard.
But Paul, I do not think is true,
“and biofuel has been replacing coal for electricity production…”
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf42.html
“Production from Barsebäck was to be replaced by power from wood-fuelled, combined heat and power plants, some wind power and extensive conservation measures such as replacing electric heating with gas. It was accepted that increased natural gas consumption and some net electricity imports (e.g. from Danish and German coal-fired and nuclear power stations) would also be needed. In fact, removal of 8.5 TWh/y from the county's nuclear output is being replaced by imports from Germany and Denmark, much of it coal-fired, and by nuclear generation from Finland and Russia, in the latter case from ageing RBMK reactors (similar to the Chernobyl design).”
One thing: You will get a lot more "tonnage" if you're utilizing forests (with All their wastes) for energy than you will if you're only taking out the "Lumber."
“Something is surely missing from the equation?”
Yes, the ratio of engineers to attorneys. On one hand you have the technical requirements to convert complex biomass to energy; this requires lots of well trained workers. On the other hand, there is a cadre of suits who slow down the process.
Another way to say this, is how well does the process scale up compared to how long the project produces energy. Clearly there is a technical need for small distributed power plants but there are not enough human resources to replace oil and coal as energy sources yet. Each successful project helps the next project, each failed project makes the next one harder.
I suspect China will demonstrate the limits of biomass resources based on my assumption that regulations are more lack there.
Love those numbers Paul. Throw in some switchgrass and corn cobs,and we've got fuel to spare. Infrastructure doesn't come easy though. We're able to do 750k bpd of corn ethanol because the infrastructure was largely in place already. There're coal plants wanting to burn switchgrass alongside coal,but there's no market for the stuff yet. Farmers won't grow it until there's a buyer in place. It seems Jatropha has the same issues in Africa.
"Yes, the ratio of engineers to attorneys."
Funny,but true Kit. Robert's company is obviously onto something though. If you get paid to maintain the forest,fuel from the waste stream is lagniappe. Provided you can convert it profitably,of course. Even if you can't,there's always wood pellets. That's a market primed for growth imo.
If you construction photos of nuke plants.
http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ap1000_nui_ic.html
Paul wrote: "So, assuming we can (sustainably) harvest it" [using zero energy to do so – K], "we need to use 53% of the worlds forest to provide our current level of liquid fuel."
Paul — thanks. It looks like that is very broadly comparable to the estimate based on Cramer's 68 TW NPP. The big difference is that the 53% is to replace only current global oil use.
If we want to:
(a) replace ALL current global fossil fuel — which we will need to do someday, since coal & gas are finite just like oil — and,
(b) expand power supplies to raise the standard of living of the world's poor — which we need to do for obvious humanitarian reasons,
then we would need something like 300% of the world's forested area. Not possible.
We would have to throw in switchgrass, crop residues, seaweed, whatever, to reach the level of bio-fuel production to deliver the required TeraWatts of power. Like Cramer's estimate implies.
And that still has not addressed the additional energy inputs required to collect & process all that global biomass.
Bottom line — biofuels are like hydro-power. Great where it works, but not a large-scale solution to humanity's global energy needs in a post-fossil world.
What is Plan B? And since we know already that biofuels can't carry the global load, shouldn't Plan B become Plan A?
No. Today we have an energy "mix." Coal, Nat Gas, Petroleum, Nuclear, Biomass, Solar, Wind, Geothermal, etc.
Nobody in his right mind would say, "Well, Coal is finite, and it can't do the whole job, anyway, so let's do away with it. We use the "Mix."
We will Always use the "Mix." We don't run out of oil, "Tomorrow." (in fact, we don't "run out" of oil a hundred years from now.) Oil, however, might be "getting short" tomorrow. Let's work with what we have now, for the problems of "Tomorrow," not 100 years from now.
There is, absolutely, no way of visualizing the solutions that might be available to us "100 Years from now."
We have One "Proven" way of mitigating against a shortage of oil next – ethanol/biofuels – and one pretty good technology developing — Batteries.
It would be crazy to relegate those to "B" just because they might not be able to meet "ALL" of our fuel needs 50, or a 100, years from now.
Oh, and it's PC to "overlook" Nuclear, but it's, almost certainly, going to be a Major, Major Contributor for the next hundred years, or more (maybe, much more.)
"We have One "Proven" way of mitigating against a shortage of oil next – ethanol/biofuels – and one pretty good technology developing — Batteries."
You got it Rufus. With $200 oil,we'll see a lot of PHEV's running on E85. Big rigs running on CNG. And wood pellets heating homes. Somewhere down the road,cars can be powered with witricity,and we can do away with the expensive batteries as well.
Even when we get witricity going for cars,I suspect we'll have biofuel aboard for back-up. HEV's could be here sooner,rather than later.
Nissan's plug-free electric car
http://tinyurl.com/n957yc
"set to go on sale in the US and Japan next year"
Of course it is!
"witricity" — Ugh! Worse than an acronym, and ugly to boot. Even worse, it is unsustainable without subsidies that the world will not be able to afford long term.
Point taken about the "mix" of energy we use today, Rufus. But let's start with the facts — 90% of today's mix is fossil, and all of that will need to be replaced.
Does it make sense to put a whole lot of investment into a "bridge" fuel like ethanol? We will always live in a world of finite resources, and the resources poured into non-scalable biofuels are not going into something that truly is scalable & sustainable.
By all means, let's use all the UNSUBSIDIZED UNMANDATED ethanol or other biofuels that can compete in the marketplace. But let's focus our limited resources on starting down the road to true large-scale sustainability.
With the technology we have today, that means nuclear fission, and "mining" liquid hydrocarbon transportation fuels from various carbon sources.
And let's continue with real research into real alternative energy sources — not today's uneconomic Politically Correct nonsense forced by greedy politicians and ignorant bureaucrats. Because today's nuclear technology will keep the entire human race going for only a millenium or two. We are going to need something else in the long run.
I'd be interested to see some input from RR at this point, since he does biofuels for a living.
Kit P, believe it or not, China has a strict "no cutting" policy for their forests. They let Russia, and S.E Asian countries denude their own slopes, and then ship the logs to China for cheap processing in coal-electric powered mills! The no cutting rule is one of the few that is widely enforced.
Japan adopted such a policy several centuries ago, and long ago mastered the art of letting other countries rape their resources, and claim the value added manufacturing part for themselves.
California even does this. I live right next to the largest open pit gravel mine in N. America, and much of its production goes to California, as you would never be allowed to do a new gravel mine (something about the lawyer-engineer ratio). The new Bay bridge is built on Sechelt (my town) gravel.
As for the "wood to wheels" efficiency, that is the question.. If you are using it as solid fuel, and running your equipment on such, then it is quite good More importantly, because it is widely distributed, you do not need as much cross continent transport of the fuel. Just as sawmills were widely distributed, so would be torrefaction facilities. If it's cost effective to pellet wood and ship from BC to Europe, for a market price of $10/GJ then it's certainly profitable if we are displacing oil at $20/GJ.
Challenge is to create the pathway to actually displace oil as the transport fuel.
Go the wood to liquids route, and then you need pulp mill sized facilities, and you lose lots on the conversion, etc and your wood to wheels is terrible.
Rufus'"mix" model is what we have today, and I'd love to see the trees get into the transport fuel "mix". As has been said, we won't run out of oil, it will just start to price itself out of the mix. First the trains will switch to elec or NG, ships and trucks will start going LNG and then the cars will be left competing with aircraft for what's left.
The cars can either reduce or switch, and we are clearly seeing a preference for reduce (hybrids etc), and it seems elec is the only switch consumers are willing to embrace.
It took 50 years for oil to completely displace coal as a transport fuel, and whatever (substantially) replaces oil is clearly going to take some time to do the same.
Even if the 300 mile, $30k electric car was available tomorrow, it would take at least a decade to switch the world's vehicle fleet, and build the power stations, transmission lines, etc.
So the change will happen, but it might be like watching trees grow…
And on the engineer/lawyer ratio (I am one of the former), that's a great metric. I couldn't find any hard data on this, but it's probably a good bet that Japan has a higher ratio than the US. And in China, they have had engineers since they built the Great Wall, but what's the point of being a lawyer in China?
A really interesting comparison would be the L/E ratio in Chinese government compared to the US. They have a history of high ranking engineers, while the US, and most democratic countries, seem to end up with lawyers and "career politicians" . We get what we elect…
Kinu
Your argument is flawed. You are against something because you say it is subsidized. Then you proceed to support other things like nuclear that many say is subsidized.
The only free market power plants that would get built would be natural gas, not because it is the lowest cost but because it is lowest risk to investors. Some state PUC are requiring new baseload be nuke because it is in the best interest long term of the public.
Furthermore, I have no problem showing ethanol, biomass, wind projects having public benefit.
Kit — I have no problem showing that "wind" projects do not have public benefit. But that is another discussion.
The real heart of the matter is that any large-scale long-term replacement for fossil fuels is going to have to be economically self-supporting. In fact, it is going to have to be a substantial net tax payer — to replace the 'lost' taxes from fossil fuels.
Given that we start in an ungodly mess of rent-seeking regulations, mandates, & subsidies imposed by bought politicians and activist bureaucrats, how do we get to the point of being able to recognize (let alone encourage) those large-scale economically-competitive power sources we need to replace finite fossil fuels?
This is how the Political Class operates. They create a mess. And then anyone who wants to operate despite the mess ends up having to buy off some politicians. Which is why very few US Senators are not millionaires by the time they leave — and why UK Members of Parliament charge the taxpayer for the costs of dredging their moats.
Technologically, I am an optimist. But first we need to deal with the Political Class.
A sound legal system is key to society. Things like honoring a contracts is necessary for building power plants. I do not have a problem with regulations either. Nor do I have a problem with legitimate environmental activists participating in the process.
However, I do object to problem with those who subvert the system. They making a living running up court costs. The current pack of lawyers running the EPA come to mind.
As Winston Churchill famously said:
"Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried"
The political class, as frustrating as they are (and my sister in law is a Senator) is something we just have to live with. The "innovations" that have been tried in politics, from Brutus to Cromwell to Napoleon to Lenin to Castro, have all borne out Churchill's statement.
As for China, where the engineers run things, but there is little accountability to the people they govern, well, the jury is still out on that. If they get enough US T bills to buy the US, then we'll know who won.
So it means the innovation has to be that much better to get over this additional hurdle. I wish it was purely Darwinian, and the strongest will win, but I think it's a case of we have to hope that the weak (subsidised) will eventually be exposed and/or wither and die as true innovation comes along.
No amount of subsidising land line phones could halt the march of cellphones, and so it will (eventually) be with alternative energy sources/transport systems.
Probably this medium (the internet) is the best thing for ensuring the survival and dispersal of good innovations. Unfortunately it also allows the hyping of bad ideas as "innovations" too, so we have to sort the wheat from the chaff, but at least the wheat can't be locked away now.
“then we'll know who won”
It is not about winning it is about being world class. My electric utility is world class. If China ran coal fired plants like my utility, the air in China would be cleaner. If the Chinese people have clean air and an adequate supply of electricity, nothing has happened to reduce my standard of living.
In the US, we have demonstrated world class leadership in making electricity with coal, NG, nukes, hydro, geothermal, and biomass. We provide needed energy and protect the public, workers, and the environment. All in a reasonable economic range that is affordable.
Being world class changes, there was a time when nukes were not world class. Lots of innovation changed that. The 104 operating nukes in the US are very profitable and pay lots of taxes. Is using some of those tax dollars to encourage new construction a subsidy?
In the US, wind farms are being built at our industrial capacity to build them. Without incentives this would end. Will the 16 GWe of wind capacity built in the last 2 years be a world class part of the US mix in 20 years? What will the total amount be?
Hype about wind replacing fossil fuel is a bad idea but seeing how much it will replace is a good idea.
Transportation fuel for POV is a different matter. Oil fueled ICE is the only world class standard for the US. CNG, BEV, HFCEV, ethanol, and biodiesel are examples of possible alternatives. Ethanol and biodiesel could be a world class part of the mix in the next 5 years.
"World class" is a marketing buzzword, about as useful as "best in class" or "best of breed". I challenge anyone to provide a less-than-completely-nebulous definition of it.
This has been one of the most educational blogs in response to RR's "Wheels have come off the Biodiesel Wagon begun a week ago,
now with 178 replies in the dialog sector. I've learned a whole lot from reading all of the comments posted above just this morning.
What I still don't quite understand though is why we would choose to plant, fertilize, water, weed and annually harvest ANY sort of agri-crop to accumulate renewable carbon as new fuel building blocks? (Switchgrass, palm, corn, algae…)
There exists so much waste carbon available in the form of beetle-killed pine trees, municipal sludge & MSW, coal fines, mountains of petroleum pet-coke and tires, plus CO2 greenhouse gas which can be recycled back as as basic carbon building blocks.
The missing paradigm shift here of course is clean, front-end gasification to convert these solid wastes into clean CO & H2 synthesis gas. Or move directly into converting those oceans of stranded methane and sequestered CO2 via steam reformation.
AND THEN, what sort of re-arrangement of the basic carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms contained within synthesis gas would become the most useful and profitable with seamless integration characteristics while still being biodegradable?
We could toss the oxygen atom and create more float-on-water Fischer-Tropsch synthetic oils like syndiesel, synjet kerosene or syngasoline fuels OR we can incorporate the rather key oxygen atom and produce longer chains of stronger BTU, biodegradable fuel alcohols which are seamless when integrated back into ground coal for power plant combustion efficiency gains or into all flavors of refined petroleum.
Thanks for the educational session herein from across the world perspective today!!!
In closing, I still think that global warming is real and it is happening with all sorts of weather disruptions such as the excessive cold chills being presently experienced north of the equator. Personally, I've experienced lots of -25 deg. F nights in the past three weeks too. Stay warm! Eat well & do good as Ted T. says. 🙂
–Cliff
This has been one of the most educational blogs in response to RR's "Wheels have come off the Biodiesel Wagon begun a week ago
And I have to apologize for not participating more. It's been a combination of being very busy, and not having much new to write about over the past week. I am also behind on my e-mails. I think I owe you a response to one, Cliff.
I am scanning the headlines this morning, but so far see nothing worth writing about. Except of course "How 'bout them Cowboys!"
RR
I overlooked this story the first time (they bought a plant from xethanol, and I was afraid they were, somehow, connected – they're not) and I shouldn't have.
This guy is a real guy, with a solid history of success in recycling, and they appear to have a technology that works.
The business plan is excellent (it just happens to be one I've been promoting for two years) 🙂 and he probably has the "bucks" to make it work.
Fiberight
I believe our cold weather is to do with the Arctic Oscillation which varies more or less randomly, but more often in its positive phase since the 1970s. It has flipped back to a strong negative cycle which means that the normally milder winter storms in mid-latitudes are kept far to the south and frigid high-pressure arctic air extends much further than normal into mid-latitudes. For those who might naturally take the cold weather as a sign of the global warming hoax, bear in mind that the negative phase of the AO means HIGHER-than-normal temperatures for the Arctic, Greenland and Newfoundland.
Yeah, due to the strengthening El Nino the Global Temp is, actually, very hot.
Good summary RR,
I like the high quality of your blogs !
we try to run our algafarm on power generated on anaerobic digester so less indirect dependence on fossil fuel.
I wonder how you consider a recent publication about isobutanol production by cyanobacteria. Since the gmo cyanobacteria produce isobutyraldehyde that can be stripped from solution some of the disadvantages of algaeculturing and biomass post processing might be relieved…
As I read your propensity towards hydrocracking and gasification of biomass i wonder how you judge this new
development in the biofuel refinery field
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n12/full/nbt.1586.html
"There exists so much waste carbon available in the form of beetle-killed pine trees, municipal sludge & MSW, coal fines, mountains of petroleum pet-coke and tires, plus CO2 greenhouse gas which can be recycled back as as basic carbon building blocks."
Cliff – with respect, go back & read this thread again. Sounds like you missed some things.
Granola law-suits are a real obstacle to getting beetle-killed pines out of the forests. Granolas would apparently rather see major forest fires which destroy habitat & kill animals than see human beings extract useful energy from dead trees.
This thread established that the total amount of photosynthetic activity taking place on the planet would not support the human race's needs for energy. Biofuels can be useful, but they are a small part of the power supplies humanity needs.
Yes, we can add to photosynthesis by extracting life-giving CO2 from the atmosphere to make fuels. But that takes energy. Where will that energy come from?
Read the thread again, Cliff. It would be a useful investment of your time.
"For those who might naturally take the cold weather as a sign of the global warming hoax …"
Pete, try not to sound like one of those religious cultists on the morning after their predicted Armagedon failed to arrive!
Of course, if unusually cold weather from John O'Groats to Bejing has no evidentiary value on Alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming, then unusually hot weather anywhere would equally have no evidentiary value.
Maybe we will all just have to accept that the climate of Planet Earth has been naturally variable — from Ice Ages to desertification — for uncounted millions of years.
“I challenge anyone…”
Actually Pete S, defining world class is easy for the energy industry. It is producing energy to a standard establish by those who demonstrate excellence based on performance indicators (PI).
The essence of the difference between a buzzword and a standard might be the PI for sending 100% of workers home safe every night. If the World Wide Wrestling Federation puts on a better show (based on customer satisfaction) and all has an excellent safety, the could claim to be world class. I do not watch professional wrestling but to meet my criteria it would need to be fake.
The first time I saw PIs I was skeptical. I was at a nuke plant with very arrogant management. They were nowhere close. The NRC slapped the plant down very hard. There were no commercial nuke plants that were world class 30 years ago. Outside of the US Navy operational excellence was not important. Failure to achieve operational excellence for a commanding officer of a nuke ship would win the captain command of a desk. If you live on a ship with a nuke operational excellence does not need to be explained. The less obvious reason for very high standards is keeping civilian regulators off the ship.
As it turns out, operational excellence is very profitable for the commercial energy industry. Someone calculate the replacement cost of electricity for a 1000 MWe nuke running at a 50% CF instead of a 95% CF. World class nuke plants have a 95% CF.
"I believe our cold weather is to do with the Arctic Oscillation which varies more or less randomly, but more often in its positive phase since the 1970s."
Is it a coincidence that the AO went so negative just as a solar grand minima got underway Pete? I'm beginning to think the sun's polarity may be reversing. Our magnetic pole has been moving south for decades,but it's moving 4X as quickly this year. If a magnetic excursion is underway,some of us will survive the ice age. If it's a full fledged magnetic reversal,kiss it all good-bye. We can just hope it's neither.
"How 'bout them Cowboys!"
Cowboys are looking tough. Arizona too. But,the Saints will be healthy for the first time since about game 10. This might just be our year.
Kinu – you are clever enough to know that a cold snap can't mean a variation in insolation. And that if there is a radiative forcing due to GHGs, then things are warming up on the average whatever the weather is doing. As to the ultimate effect on the weather, I am as skeptical as you are (except I don't assume there WON'T be an effect, anymore than I assume there WILL).
Kit P – yeah, that sounded non-nebulous alright.
Maury – yes, it IS a coincidence that the AO went into reverse alongside whatever solar phase you are alleging. Look at the AO Time Series linked from its Wikipedia page. Btw, the sun's magnetic field reverses every eleven years. I presume you mean the EARTH'S field might be reversing. So how come Kinu doesn't come down on YOU for being an Armageddonist? 🙂
AND …. like I said before, it's a solar miniMUM not a solar miniMA !!!
"So how come Kinu doesn't come down on YOU for being an Armageddonist? :-)"
Hey, Pete! I was just funnin' y'all. No hard feelings, please!
I was pretty sure a magnetic reversal on earth took several hundred, if not thousands, of years??
OD
geomagnetism
OD
"Hey, Pete! I was just funnin' y'all. No hard feelings, please!"
Of course not. That's what the smiley was for! 🙂
"I was pretty sure a magnetic reversal on earth took several hundred, if not thousands, of years??"
Yeah, but it's been meandering for years and is now due next Tuesday week, according to Henny Penny… er, Maury.
🙂
Kinuachdrach said…
Granola law-suits are a real obstacle to getting beetle-killed pines out of the forests.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
OF THIS, I am well aware. I view mountainsides of dead and dying pine trees and instead see 'above ground 'renewable coal' here in the form of nearly-free BTU's of decomposing beetle-killed wood.
Same decomposing wood will be ignited by lightning and will be burning as new forest fires within a few years. Too bad the Granolas can't see this natural next-phase episode happening.
This source of decaying natural carbon atoms applicable as feedstock for alternative new fuels is just ONE more available supply to obviate growing any annual agri-crop of anything simply for it's renewable carbon atoms.
This thread established that the total amount of photosynthetic activity taking place on the planet would not support the human race's needs for energy. Biofuels can be useful, but they are a small part of the power supplies humanity needs.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••
Kinu: I am NOT focusing on photosynthesis to produce ANY source of nearly free (except hauling costs) solid carbon atoms contained within divergent waste products. Please re-read my own comments. I'm not talking about utilizing photosynthetic reactions at all. Instead, I favor converting waste materials cleanly via gasification instead of utilizing any new agri-crop planted and harvested to produce ANY type of new biofuel typically via batch processing.
And simply FYI, the volumes of biofuels today are not what they may become in the next decade.
Once again, I'm not conjecturing about batch fermenting anything. Back to the paradigm shift of thermal front-ends vs: utilization of acid enzymes, yeasts or tranestrification techniques used to convert corn starch into sugars for yeasts to eat OR to extract animal or plant-based oils to be utilized as biodiesel which doesn't biodegrade very well.
Yes, we can add to photosynthesis by extracting life-giving CO2 from the atmosphere to make fuels. But that takes energy. Where will that energy come from?
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I'm not going to debate you about 'life giving CO2 energy contained within the atmosphere." There are millions of people who feel this is one of the driving forces behind global warming and climate change which we seem to be experiencing.
Instead, via an equilibrium reaction, sequestered sources of CO2 (not atmospheric CO2) obtained from industrial smokestacks is utilized at slightly less volume than CH4 methane as a combined, gaseous, new biofuel feedstock.
When combined, these two gasses function at very low cost and then several benefits immediately occur.
Could write a book here but will wait and let you read more about this phenomenon in process patents when they become available for public review.
You and others are obviously not aware of everything going on today in this evolving world described as 'biofuels.'
I pose the folowing question. What biofuels or new alternative fuels are even remotely biodegradable?
Hint: If it floats on water (plant oil, animal oil, synthetic oil), it isn't gonna (easily) biodegrade and feed acquatic organisms with a free lunch.
–Cliff
"AND …. like I said before, it's a solar miniMUM not a solar miniMA !!!"
Pete,a Grand Minima is two or more decades with a sunspot number less than 15,while a minimum happens pretty much every 11 years. And yeah,I meant the earth's polarity.
"I was pretty sure a magnetic reversal on earth took several hundred, if not thousands, of years??"
And how do we know when that time is up OD? Our magnetic pole moved 50 kilometers from 1831 to 1904. Less than a kilometer per year. Then,it sped up to 10 km. per year in the 20th century. 5 years ago it was moving 40km. per year. Now,it's zipping north at 64km. a yr. Just a few decades ago,scientists thought we had another thousand years at least before a reversal. If this rate of change continues it could be anytime though. Or,maybe it's a magnetic excursion and the field will correct itself. That would just mean the overdue ice age has arrived. Woohoo.
Paul, it is refreshing to see someone here willing to change their opinion in the face of facts they previously were not aware of. I know that I don't always state it here even when I've changed my opinion. That's very interesting about Sweden and the switch to district heat. That information is new to me.
As you noted, the Swedish energy agency 2008 report said "In 2007, total use of oil fuels in the (residential) sector amounted to 13 TWh, a reduction of almost 90 % since 1970." That's pretty impressive. Thanks for pointing me to fig 31, p96. Impressive that in 1970 district heat came almost entirely from oil, and now it's mostly biofuel, peat, refuse, etc.
The report also says, "Today, district heating supplies about half of the total heating requirement of residential and commercial premises in Sweden.
I'm curious what the fuel mix is for the other half, the non-district heat. I haven't had the chance to look through the entire 156 page report to see if they answer that. I haven't gotten around to reading any comments after the last one you addressed to me either, but I wanted to get this comment out to thank you before the 200 comment mark is reached. Thanks.
Clee,
I'd have to say our exchange on Sweden was pretty educational for me too, next time I'll research my facts before extrapolating facts.
Sweden is a great example of a government setting a clear, and simple target "to eliminate all use of oil for heating by 2020" and then pursuing it.
Many of the district heating systems are small CHP systems, a great conjunctive use, in a country that needs lots heat. In this country (Canada) which needs equally as much heat there are a handful of "demonstration" systems, while in New York, there are massive steam distribution systems, that are a century old – so it's not a new idea.
But I'd say Sweden is probably the best example of a country determined to minimise their oil usage, and actually doing it.
Heating oil is public enemy No.1, in my opinion, and US and Canada could easily phase it out, earlier than 2020. At the equivalent of 450,000 bpd, or 5% of US oil use (2005 data), that's the lowest hanging oil fruit there is.
Compare this with the peak 2008 biodiesel production at the start of RR's post at 12,000 bpd (of which most was exported anyway) and it really makes you wonder why the government bothered with the subsidy in the first place.
The same money could have replaced a lot of oil furnaces – what a great candidate for a "stimulus project" that would have been…
Cliff – those plant and animal oils do actually biodegrade fairly easily – many things (including us) eat plant and animal oils because they are a great source of energy. I'd also include wood biofuel (which floats) as biodegradable, forests have been doing that since there were.. forests. Ethanol, butanol and even methanol (all lighter than water) are highly biodegradable (though some manufactured derivatives, like MTBE, are not).
In fact, I don't think it's even a stretch to say that most biofuels are biodegradable, unless they are converted to a synthetic oil – even that can be biodegraded, under the right conditions.
"Granola law-suits are a real obstacle to getting beetle-killed pines out of the forests." Kinu this is not quite true, at least in BC, where the billion tons of dead trees are. It's actually the one thing most people here agree on is that some must be done with these trees, before Nature does it for us. Of course, no-one can agree on what is the best way to use them, or rehabilitate the ground afterwards.
A report in yesterdays paper (globeandmail.com) shows that as the trees are now starting to rot (biodegrading!), there is a very large carbon emission happening, which exceeds that of oilsands production!
But I will grant you that all the agreement and goodwill amounts to just hot air unless something PRODUCTIVE (i.e. without subsides, etc) actually gets done. That could probably sum up most current government alternative energy policies..
“The same money could have replaced a lot of oil furnaces – what a great candidate for a "stimulus project" that would have been”
Paul, stimulus money is already going to replace a lot of oil furnaces.
Just for the record, nuclear generated electricity is the best way replace oil.
Kit,
I am glad to hear the furnaces are being taken out. Though nuclear electricity is one way to replace them (presumably with electric heat pumps), I'm not sure you could call it (or any one source) the best way. For one thing, you couldn't build a new plant, from scratch (permitting etc) nearly as fast as you can replace furnaces. I'm even OK with coal electricity to replace oil furnaces – if the plants (be they coal, nuclear, hydro, biomass or even wind) are state of the art, then they can all compete with each other in the electricity market.
The key point is, on which I'm sure we all agree, is that anything is better than burning (imported) fuel oil for heat. I think the government can and should be more aggressive on this front.
After all, that amount of heating oil is equal to half the total Saudi imports, or almost all of the Iraq imports…
And how do we know when that time is up OD? Our magnetic pole moved 50 kilometers from 1831 to 1904. Less than a kilometer per year. Then,it sped up to 10 km. per year in the 20th century. 5 years ago it was moving 40km. per year. Now,it's zipping north at 64km. a yr. Just a few decades ago,scientists thought we had another thousand years at least before a reversal. If this rate of change continues it could be anytime though. Or,maybe it's a magnetic excursion and the field will correct itself. That would just mean the overdue ice age has arrived. Woohoo.
And how fast was it moving before 1831? Has it moved faster in the past? I'm going to guess we don't have records going back that far? I just can't get worked up about things like this on a 4 million year old planet *shrug*. We also don't know exactly what will happen when they do reverse. No reason to feel doomed about it, jmo.
OD
The key point is, on which I'm sure we all agree, is that anything is better than burning (imported) fuel oil for heat. I think the government can and should be more aggressive on this front.
I totally agree.
OD
Paul, I agree too, when I said nukes were the best I was thinking historically when nuke replaced oil for making electricity in the US.
Oh, c'mon OD, we know exactly what will happen when the poles are about to reverse.
There will be widespread talk about "magnetic bug", that all computers were designed for north being north, and that when the poles reverse, they won't work, the lights will go out, GPS will fail, planes will fall from the sky, etc.
Then, when the computer companies have forced the entire world to re-equip, nothing, at all, will happen, other than compass needles swinging the other way. And they will proudly tell us how "they" averted a calamity.
Now unlike Y2K, there is one, small, group that have a legitimate case for re-equipping, which is the magnetic compass makers, if GPS hasn't put them put of business by then.
And, more seriously, I think you meant 4 billion years old, not that it really makes much difference.
Geez, you get busy for a few days and need time to catch up, and people call you names.
Here is the projection that AGW will cause heavier precip events… from 2003. Why K. thinks that I haven't held up my end when I point to something that is already 7 years old (that he could have found trivially, and should have known about if he actually studied the subject even casually), I don't know.
Yes, Paul, you can make competitive subsidy-free ethanol if you have something like starch as a waste product. The economics fall apart the instant your production expands beyond the size of the waste stream.
E-P,
"The economics fall apart the instant your production expands beyond the size of the waste stream."
Precisely – as soon as you are start to use corn explicitly to make ethanol, you start to lose money.
Nobody has ever seriously (to my knowledge) proposed raising animals purely to harvest their fat for biodiesel, but as RR pointed out, they have used the waste from animal processing for such.
So we have two examples of successful, subdsidy free, liquid biofuel operations that both use the same model – find your feedstock as a waste, or low value byproduct, then make your fuel from it.
Yes, it's a niche, and it will never displace US oil imports, but as everyone knows, corn ethanol will never do that anyway.
Why the US government would then specifically exclude the only successful model, and massively subsidise the worst one is beyond me. Meanwhile, the corn farmers make more money farming the taxpayers than they ever do farming their fields – real farmers would be ashamed.
There is certainly a future for biofuels, but (corn) ethanol ain't it. We should strike that one out and direct our collective resources at the next items on the oil independence list – which is the message I got from RR's original post.
paul wrote find your feedstock as a waste, or low value byproduct, then make your fuel from it. … Why the US government would then specifically exclude the only successful model, and massively subsidise the worst one is beyond me.
Uh… they don't exclude the feedstock-as-waste model, not even for ethanol. POET is using waste corncobs as feedstock for their cellulosic ethanol. While corn ethanol currently gets a $0.45/gallon credit, cellulosic ethanol, (including those made from waste corn cobs) gets up to $1.01/gallon.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/progs/view_ind_fed.php/afdc/413/0
Sorry… the URL got cut off. the end of it is
/view_ind_fed.php/afdc/413/0
Clee,
Yes and no. Obviously the government hasn't excluded the POET process (I was actually referring the the Conoco project that RR was involved in).
But since they are using waste corncobs etc as their feedstock, rather than corn itself, they are outside my rant about corn ethanol.
I am actually fine with their getting government money (within limitations) as they are, effectively, still in R&D, and not large scale production.
Now, if their process matures, and ends up to be just as uneconomic as corn ethanol, then it too, should receive no further subsidy, and if it is economic, it doesn't need it.
I have no problem with (some) government money getting more and different horses into the race, such as POET. But the horses then have to run their own race, and if they don't/can't win, you don't keep backing them, yet that is what we have with corn ethanol (and 1st gen biodiesel).
In one of my earlier comments, I noted that Biodiesel couldn't meet its mandate in 2009 when there was still a $1/gal tax credit, but ethanol could meet its toothless mandate with a $0.45/gal tax credit.
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2010/01/wheels-come-off-biodiesel-wagon.html#4209511656841667709
I have since found something to revise my opinion on the toothlessness of the mandates. Why could biodiesel meet its mandate in 2008 but not in 2009? What changed? According to
http://mobile.wallacesfarmer.com/index.aspx?ascxid=cmsNewsStory&cmsSid=35327
Under rules EPA proposed last spring, neither soy-based biodiesel nor corn ethanol met the carbon emission limits set by Congress.
….
The 2007 federal energy law set annual requirements for biofuel usage, but it required the fuels to meet targets for reducing carbon emissions below those of conventional gasoline and diesel. The biggest impact of the rules was on biodiesel, because existing ethanol plants and facilities under construction were exempted from having to meet the carbon targets. Biodiesel plants were not.
I translate that to mean that in the Spring of 2009, blenders suddenly found that blending in soy biodiesel would not help them meet their mandate, so they stopped blending soy-biodiesel and the biodiesel numbers plummeted from the 2008 levels. But since existing and under-construction ethanol plants were grandfathered in, blenders kept buying corn ethanol to meet the mandate. So I retract my earlier statement that The fuel mandate didn't guarantee a market for biodiesel. I don't see how it guarantees a market for fuel ethanol.
But the EPA has revised their numbers and now says that corn ethanol and soy biodiesel meet targets for reducing carbon emissions.
http://www.epa.gov/oms/renewablefuels/420f10007.htm
It will be interesting to see if biodiesel meets its 2010 mandate with no blenders tax credit. Though the credit could be reinstated mid-year, so I may not see the results of that experiment.
However, I'm still wondering, just what are the penalties for blenders who do not meet the mandates?