Alternative Feedstocks For Ethanol Production

[steven johnson]

Grassoline which is discussed in the current edition of Scientific American, is now a hot topic for alternative energy. Theoretically it could take care of half of the US energy requirements for gasoline if it could be ramped up to industrial scale. The devil is in the technological details.

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2009) — Scientists say they are forging ahead in developing replacements for petrochemical fuels that will be cost-competitive and renewable while having a minimal impact on the environment, reports Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN). A consensus is emerging that no one technology will reign supreme and that a range of current and novel methodologies will contribute to meeting biofuel needs, according to the June 15 issue of GEN.

"It's been estimated that fossil fuels constitute more than eighty percent of the world's main energy supply," says John Sterling, Editor in Chief of GEN. "Both economics and the concern over global warming require that technologies be used to significantly lower this number."

Edenspace Systems is working on Energy Corn™, a feedstock designed to cut the cost of producing cellulosic biofuels from corn stover. The company's technology platform, based on identifying promising cellulose genes, transforming crop plants with candidate genes, and evaluating the effects on growth, yield, and cellulose hydrolysis, would be applicable to a variety of energy crops including switchgrass, sorghum, and sugar cane.

Officials at Coskata say the company relies on a hybrid approach based on its Flex Ethanol™ technology, which combines gasification and fermentation in a thermo-biological pathway to produce fuel-grade ethanol that it contends can be cost-competitive with gasoline. The process reportedly is able to yield more than 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of dry biomass.

Alternative Feedstocks For Ethanol Production

[Stellabella]

1. Has anyone ever tried using kudzu or Eurasian milfoil?

Those plants cannot be stopped. Wouldn't they be a good source of biofuel?

[kristopher]

2. Actually the devil is in the basic concept

Ethanol, both corn and cellulosic, are a solution pushed much more by the agribusiness lobby than the scientific community - note the sources in the Science Daily article you posted are *all* involved in making money from the specific technologies they are pushing. The abstract quoted below is a well accepted evaluation of the various technologies available to address our climate change and energy goals.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Fotoware58]

3. Beneficial externalities?

I "wood" be curious to see a study done that would include the beneficial aspects of using the excess live and dead fuels within our choked and crowded forests. I tend to think that factoring in the fact that using those excess fuels instead of letting them burn in catastrophic wildfires would change their ranking. Whether it is burning those fuels to make electricity or to turn them into liquid fuels, these are far better uses for this valuable resources than to just let them be consumed in wildfires, releasing centuries of CO2 all at one time. Make no mistake that these fuels would come from sustainable and silviculturally-beneficial logging practices (ie, no clearcutting!).

[kristopher]

4. But how much of that sort of fuel is there?

It is my sense that there are a group of technologies that produce biofuels which we will have great success in developing. However, due to the quantity of energy we need to find alternatives for, they should be viewed as answers to problems that do not have other practical solutions. To me, they are best viewed as ways to meet our heavy transport needs such as aircraft and ocean shipping, and as a replacement for the backup provided natural gas in a future grid based on distributed generation. Short term our dependence on natural gas will rise as the penetration of renewable generation for the grid increases, but long term it should decline significantly as storage media proliferate.

If it is done properly, harnessing the existing waste streams such as forest byproducts, animal/human wastes, and garbage for their energy potential just makes good sense.

[Fotoware58]

5. Wood supply

While there ARE ample supplies (as long as "preservationists" don't intervene), there ARE limits and we cannot hope to continue to supply our voracious appetite for liquid fuels. This would merely be a short-term bridge to some of the other technologies listed above. Using wood to power cars just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. It makes better sense to burn it to make electricity, where we can capture GHG's and more efficiently use their energy. Cellulosic ethanol sounds good on the surface but will surely be very expensive to produce. I am more in favor of cleaner ways of transportation.

A network of biomass boilers could be stationed strategically in our forests, connected to the grid to produce cheaper electricity without the big transportation costs of sending the material farther distances to biofuels plants. In many western forests, this would work the best for making our forests more resistant to climate change AND improving ecosystem conditions, including wildlife. As forests are cleaned up, we can find a level of extraction that is scientifically-sustainable on an ecosystem and landscape scale. However, major hurdles are in place, education on forest ecosystems being the biggest, to allow forests to be managed. Groups like the Sierra Club still cling to a strict no-cut policy in our National Forests.

[kristopher]

11. I'm not well versed in forestry management.

However, there is support for your approach when looked at from the perspective of energy. As I wrote earlier, it is important to move towards these technologies with full information on the tradeoffs:

Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol
J. E. Campbell,1,2* D. B. Lobell,3 C. B. Field4

Abstract: The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without affecting food prices or
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land conversion is limited. Therefore, bioenergy should
maximize land-use efficiency when addressing transportation and climate change goals. Biomass
could power either internal combustion or electric vehicles, but the relative land-use efficiency of
these two energy pathways is not well quantified. Here, we show that bioelectricity outperforms
ethanol across a range of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes. Bioelectricity
produces an average of 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per
unit area of cropland than does cellulosic ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy
pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve
transportation and climate goals.


...Two leading technology developments, cellulosic ethanol and electric vehicle batteries, provide alternative pathways for bioenergy based transportation. Biomass can be converted into ethanol to power internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) or converted into electricity to power battery electric vehicles (BEVs). It is uncertain which pathway could reach technical and economic maturity first. The cellulosic ethanol pathway benefits from commercially available flex-fuel vehicles but requires substantial investments in infrastructure as well as technology advancements to reduce costs for energy conversion (6). The bioelectricity pathway shows promise in existing distribution infrastructure and emerging commercial offerings of BEVs that meet technology challenges of range, cost, and charging time. Electricity produced from biomass is a near-term renewable energy source that can be implemented with biomass boilers, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants, or co-combustion with coal (7, 8).

Although both of these bioenergy pathways have real potential to meet transportation goals, their relative performance with respect to land use efficiency is not well quantified. Given the limited area of land that is available to grow biofuels crops without causing direct or indirect land-use impacts (9–12), bioenergy applications should maximize the efficiency with which a given land area is used to meet transportation and climate change goals. In one study, the use of willow biomass for electricity was shown to have greater transportation fuel displacement and GHG offsets than corn ethanol (13). A quantification of the transportation output and GHG offset per unit area of cropland, across a range of feedstocks, energy conversion technologies, and vehicle types, is needed to assess the land-use efficiency of these alternative energy pathways.

Here, we present a life-cycle assessment comparing the performance of bioelectricity and ethanol with respect to transportation kilometers and GHG offsets achieved per unit area of biofuels cropland. The Energy and Resources Group Biofuel Analysis Meta-Model (EBAMM) is used to consider scenarios that cover...


From journal SCIENCE VOL 324 22 MAY 2009 pg 1055-1057

Full article
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5930/1055

Supporting Online Material
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1168885/DC1

[JohnWxy]

6. The scientific communtiy has clearly estabished the efficacy of ethanol whether from starch based

feedstocks or cellulosic (cellulosic has a way to go to be cost effective, though Coskota and another company say they are close to making ethanol from cellulosic sources for $1.00 per pound).

Michael Wang, Argonne National Laboratory (http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2005/news050823.html) is recognized in busnes, academia and government as an expert in the field of evaluating fuels and their GHG impacts. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Materials/03_28_05ArgonneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf">He started things off by showing that ethanol from corn was energy efficient with his research in the 1990's.

see: http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/04/22/argonne-national-laboratory-says-ethanol-reduced-gges-by-10-million-tons-in-2007/

Hossein Shoppouri, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has done legitimate researach showing the efficacy of ethanol from starch sources. http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm

Here's a response to the Jacobsen "study" http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/Jacobson_response_REAProject.pdf from the Renewable Energy Project.


Bruce Dale, Prpofessor of Chemical Engineeering, MIchigan State University, (Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, Room 2527, Engineering Building, Michigan State University,) has done research demonstrating ethanol's practicality.

here's a good report by Dale and Kim: http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/MSU_Ethanol_Energy_Balance.pdf


The science is solid on ethanol that's why the Obama administration is committed to supporting the ethanol industry till we can get appreciable gasoline consumption reductions from hybrids in about 20 years(say 20% - 25%). If we wait until hybrids reduce GHGs we will be too late to slow down global warming. We have to start reducing GHG emissions from autos MUCH sooner than that. and that is where ethanol comes in. YOU CAN REPLACE THE FUEL MUCH FASTER THAN YOU CAN REPLACE THE CARS THAT BURN THE FUEL.


The EPA peublished a study showing that by using Combined Heat and Power, gas fired ethanol plants actually achieve a NEGATIVE CARBON BALANCE. - So while cellulosic ethanol is much anticipated, we do not have to wait for it to become commercially vialble to get much greater gains in GHG reductions (over the 51% reductions over gasoline - shown in recent peer reviewed research by the University of Nebraska)


NOw, there are other feedstocks than corn. sugar cane, sugar beets and sweet sorghum are a few . They each have their advantages but The one thing about corn is when you make ethanol they recover all the protein from the corn and it makes DDGS (Dried distillers Grains and solubles) which is a high nutrient value feed for cattle and pigs.

Just about any plant matter can be used to make cellulosic based ethanol but many are working at getting cellulosic ethanol economically viable.

[JohnWxy]

7. The study you are looking for was done by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory - not part of the evil

empire of corn farmers. The conclusion was that:

"The U.S. could produce enough biomass annually to replace more than one-third of its current oil consumption, while continuing to meet demands for food, feed, and export, a major study found. Analysts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2005 concluded: “About 368 million dry tons of sustainably removable biomass could be produced on forestlands, and about 998 million dry tons could come from agricultural lands,” including energy crops grown on 55 million acres."

http://www.energyfuturecoalition.org/biofuels/benefits_ag_rural.htm

Link to the complete findings of the study:

http://feedstockreview.ornl.gov/pdf/billion_ton_vision.pdf">Robert D. Perlack et al., “Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply,” Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL/TM-2005/66, Apr. 2005

"an annual biomass supply of more than 1.3 million dry tons can be accomplished with relatively modest changes in land use and agricultural and forestry practices."


There are feedstocks which have advantages to corn. The one thing corn has going for it is it is here NOW. We can't reduce gasoline consumption now, with feedstocks which promise to be better - in the future. We certainly want to be working towards improving the situation anyway we can.

But we also want to do what we can now.

[kristopher]

8. That sounds about right.

Approximately 1/3 of current oil consumption is directed at the heavy lifting - over the road trucking, shipping, construction equipment, and aircraft are the largest consumers of that third.

As you say we want to make the most impact possible right now, and it is a more effective use of resources to spend our limited renewable energy stimulus money on deploying PHEVs and EVs than to service the same segment by building the infrastructure for a technology (corn and cellulosic ethanol) that produces a product that isn't where we need the biomass sector to end up. Many of the emerging, waste steam related, biofuel technologies have a positive energy balance 10-12 times that achieved by current ethanol technologies. Harnessing these various waste streams to produce methane and biodiesel is a very different proposition than redirecting the public funds, energy and resources that would otherwise go to food production or be conserved.

While we concentrate on refining and commercializing these near horizon technologies it appears we will be spending the bulk of our funds on PHEVs and smart grid technologies. Using the money there not only stands to economically displace more fossil fuels than ethanol in the light transport sector, but the proliferation of PHEVs, the smart grid, and vehicle 2 grid technology serve the much larger role of providing the cornerstone on energy storage in a renewable distributed energy grid.

When one selects very narrow criteria by which to judge, it is possible to successfully argue for continuation of support for the existing ethanol industry. However when the *entire problem* of moving our energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels as a response to climate change and energy security, it is impossible to credibly maintain the argument that such support from the government is desirable.

[JohnWxy]

12. projected savings from hybrids - plugins or whatever will come too late - 20 yrs - too help UNLESS

we take advantage of renewables and efficiency improvements which will deliver payoffs much quicker. Because of the acceleration of global warming we only have about 6 to 10 years to make appreciable reductions to GHG emissions. The 20 years and many Trillions of dollars it will take for electric cars to get about 20% reduction won't be good enough.

If we use renewables (and efficiency improvements) to get some reductions much more quickly then we may have a future where electrics can then get even bigger reductions. But without the renewables and efficiency improvements the savings brought by electrics will be too late. That's why Steven CHu and Obama are pushing renewable development (along with more R&D in electrics). They know you can replace the fuel much faster than you can replace the cars that burn the fuel.


We cannot let "religius fixation" on one technology blind us to the harsh reality we face and the practical benefits of less "sexy" technologies which are present here and now. If we wait for electric cars to save us the earth will burn.


I read the article in SCI Am. and without saying so, they referred to the Oak Ridge National Lab report that projects we can meet about one third of future demand for gasoline using biomass. Now, if 5% of that 33% is used for ethanol enabled direct injection engines (that Ford is making now) that will replace 30% of the gasoline demand (the Ethanol enabled direct injection engine gets 30% better mileage than a similar power standard ICE). That leaves the other 28% (33% less the 5%) to replace gasoline by direct substitution. the total result is 30% plus 28% or: 58% reduction. The direct injection engine can be used in anything from small cars to large trucks.

The Ethanol enabled Direct Injection engine can be made for $600 to $1,000 more than a standard ICE which means adoption by drivers will be much faster than a car costing $3,000 to $4,000 extra for a standard hybrid and $10,000 extra for a plug-in.

What is needed is a technology that can be adopted quickly as we do not have 20 years to start getting results.

[kristopher]

13. That analysis only holds if you ignore important facts

"Because of the acceleration of global warming we only have about 6 to 10 years to make appreciable reductions to GHG emissions. The 20 years and many Trillions of dollars it will take for electric cars to get about 20% reduction won't be good enough.
If we use renewables (and efficiency improvements) to get some reductions much more quickly then we may have a future where electrics can then get even bigger reductions. But without the renewables and efficiency improvements the savings brought by electrics will be too late. That's why Steven CHu and Obama are pushing renewable development (along with more R&D in electrics). They know you can replace the fuel much faster than you can replace the cars that burn the fuel.
We cannot let "religius fixation" on one technology blind us to the harsh reality we face and the practical benefits of less "sexy" technologies which are present here and now. If we wait for electric cars to save us the earth will burn. "

First, your broad arbitrary deadline (6-10 years) is an irrelevant claim as a criteria for evaluating these technologies. I don't accept your claims of short term gains (more on that later) from ethanol, but for the sake of argument let us say they are correct. Essentially your claim boils down to the suggestion that we invest heavily in a technology that will provide moderate near term GHG reduction instead of investing that same money in technologies that will take somewhat longer to achieve much, much greater reductions in GHG. That is an appeal to impatience, nothing more. It says absolutely nothing about how the overall GHG reductions achieved by X amount of dollars invested in ethanol compares to the overall GHG reductions achieved by investing that same amount in an electric personal transportation sector that is integrated with a smart grid powered by renewables - all areas needing investment funding.

The other problem with these sentences are that the claims made about EVs - 20 years, trillions of $$ and 20% reduction - are valueless (and probably fraudulent) as a tool for comparison. 20% reduction in what? Trillions of dollars for what paid by who?
Over 20 years consumers will undoubtedly spend trillions to replace their vehicles no matter what technology is under the hood. The question is, what are those trillions of dollars going to buy in improved technology to meet GHG reduction goals? Your screed doesn't answer that.

It isn't a religious fixation that is causing virtually every analyst in the carbon management field to reject the internal combustion engine (including those powered by ethanol) in favor of electric drive, it is instead the simple fact that an internal combustion engine is an incredibly inefficient source of propulsion for an auto, wasting over 80% of its imput energy as heat. With battery electrics able to deliver 90% efficiencies supporting the internal combustion engine has become untenable.

The claim that "the earth will burn" unless we continue to pour money down the black hole of building more ethanol facilities is nothing but sensationalistic hyperbolic nonsense. So now let's take a closer look at those short term gains you claim.

"we can meet about one third of future demand for gasoline using biomass. Now, if 5% of that 33% is used for ethanol enabled direct injection engines (that Ford is making now) that will replace 30% of the gasoline demand (the Ethanol enabled direct injection engine gets 30% better mileage than a similar power standard ICE). That leaves the other 28% (33% less the 5%) to replace gasoline by direct substitution. the total result is 30% plus 28% or: 58% reduction. The direct injection engine can be used in anything from small cars to large trucks."

The bulk of the nation's vehicle fleet turns over on the order of 12 or so years with a nearly complete turnover within 20 years. Whether the selection is battery electric or new internal combustion engines, the technology under the hood has to be replaced. On the one hand you claim that it is easier to change the fuel than the engine, but in the next breath you assert that the efficiency gains you expect depend not only on a new fuel mixture, but also on deployment of new technologies under the hood that will maximize the potential of that new fuel. You can't have it both ways.

Referring to your quote, I think you've mischaracterized the role of biomass. It isn't a third of gasoline demand, it is a third of our transportation needs. There is a huge conceptual difference lurking there. You want large investments in biomass to meet the needs of the personal transportation sector, when in fact that sector (your false claims notwithstanding) is best served by using government policy and incentives to direct investment into renewable generation/smart grind/EV infrastructure.
We've seen that the efficiency gains you claim for ethanol are subject to the same constraints related to adoption of new technologies as electric vehicles. That leaves the price issue as your only remaining argument; an argument that is as weak as the others you've used. The problem is that your cost projections (which I admit are similar to *some* projections within the government a few years ago) are in line with projections based on a business as usual approach to technology deployment. Instead, what we have is a situation where the world saw a massive price spike in the cost of petroleum. The fundamentals of resource management at the heart of the price spike tell us unequivocally that the decline that accompanied the financial meltdown is temporary. Everyone now expects a repeat of high fuel prices when the economy regains traction.
Adding to that was the meltdown of the auto industry and the way restructuring is focusing on electric vehicle technology. Between these two influence there is an unprecedented amount of money flowing into EV manufacturing infrastructure like battery factories. All the makers are investing heavily in retooling in order to be in a position to take advantage of the large gains in efficiency that series hybrids offer. That actual, unfolding scenario totally undermines your projections on both costs of EV/PHEV technology and the rate of adoption of the technology by consumers.

Finally, did I mention the symbiotic relationship between the use of PHEVs with V2G and the needs of a renewable energy grid? There are vast overall reductions in our nation's GHG footprint using PHEVs as a means of storage for enabling grid stability in a grid powered by renewables like wind and solar. The role of V2G is so vital it cannot be divorced from the discussion on transportation. The situation is essentially that for renewables to work as a complete replacement for coal we need will to build a great deal of storage capacity into the future grid. Much of that will be met by various large scale technologies, but the costs of transition can be drastically reduced using the excess capacity in batteries that consumers will already be buying to meet their transportation needs. Instead of having separate distinct energy systems, this integrative approach dramatically increases the overall efficiency of our energy usage in all sectors; and that reduces the cost of transition dramatically.

Investing in ethanol serves a narrow group of special interests. Investing that same money in EVs, a smart grid and renewable, distributed generation serves the interest of the nation and world as a whole. That's why ethanol can only get funding by buying politicians that will hold real action on climate change hostage.

[JohnWxy]

15. 10 years is NOT my estimate, it's James Hansen's and others. From CNBC in Sept 2006:

You said: "... your broad arbitrary deadline (6-10 years) is an irrelevant claim as a criteria for evaluating these technologies."

It's not my claim and it's not arbitrary and it is extremely relevant (not that I expect you will understand this):

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," James Hansen, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. __ Sept 2006 -- he said that going on 3 years ago. So I expanded the range out to 2019 where Hansen said "perhaps" till 2016, and I said 6 years to be extra cautious(Hansen said "perhaps 10 years" almost 3 yrs ago which would be 7 years now). Other scientists have made similar statements. Maybe I should have stuck strictly to Hansen's estimate and said we have 7 years ...till 2016.. I put a bit of a range on it.. in part because Hansen said "perhaps 10 yrs" and drawing a line (2016) would be a "deadline" and that seemed to me to be a bit arbitrary so I put a range on Hansen's ten yr estimate(made in 2006). I used the band because nobody can select an exact year and month and identify that as a deadline. Nobody has knowledge that exact and it depends on how much we do with biofuels (and with other approaches, eg improved efficiency in power generation and appliances and buildings) in the next few years. But certainly it is a good deal less than 20 years till electric cars will may have a significant impact on GHG emissions!

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14834318/


So it wasn't my estimate and I feel confident that Hansen and other scientists didn't come up with that time period arbitrarily.


Now, regarding the ethanol direct injection engine, I was not as clear as I should have been but then I have written about this before (thus I think people are somewhat familiar with this idea of how the EDI engine increases the impact of ethanol.

As to the introduction of the Ethanol direct injection engine - Perhaps I was not clear in my brief comment. NO,the ethanol direct injection engine cannot replace the entire fleet in 10 years. I brought up the direct injection engine to show that ethanol can have a significantly bigger impact because only 5% of the 33% would be needed to gain a 30% reduction in gasoline use. So with the Ethanol enabled, Direct Injection engine, for every gallon of ethanol consumed, you get work produced (moving a car) equivalent to that produced by 1.3 gallons of gasoline. That really was my point and the fact that the EDI engine is so much cheaper than Plug-in technology. The EDI engine would be adopted quicker than a technology that costs 3 to 7 times more.




... that you think the estimate of , let's say 10 years , max, that we have to get some appreciable reductions of GHG emissions is "not releveant":

regarding relavance of time factor (10 years vs 20 years):

I've said this before but once again: as global warming IS accelerating, a reduction of GHG emissions in 6 to 10 has MUCH more impact than the 20% or so, reduction (in GHG emissions) that Hybrids (incl Plug-ins) MAY achieve IN 20 YEARS. It all depends on how quickly they are adopted and how much we can afford to support their purchase with tax dollars. Recent research is yielding numbers for necessary GHG reductions to avert catastrophic global warming that vary but it's obvious that neither Hybrids nor renewable fuels alone will be able to achieve the GHG reductions we need. We need both technologies. But the important thing about renewable fuel is that it can produce reductions more quickly (if we increase their production and use) than hybrids. I think by increasing biofuels (from all available feedstocks) and doing everything else we can (e.g. incentivizing mass transit, efficient power generation, building construction and retrofits, increasing wind power) we can considerably decrease GHG emissions. But, that may not be enough. Any amount of reductions achieved later with hybrids (incl plug-ins) will help. The big question is how much will hybrids contribute to this effort, considering the high cost of up front investment (before comparable savings are realized) is a considerable drag on the rapid deployment of this technology.

I have indicated in other posts what I think we should do regarding boosting ethanol production from all available feedstocks. I also stated elsewhere that we need to support mass transit and energy efficiencies (in power generation and industry and in commercial and residential construction). In other words, we can't just count on biofuels. We must use everything we can to reduce GHG emissions. I have also said that I have decided we will not do what it will take and we are heading for a very very bad time in three to four decades (I think we may hit the temp increase formerly set for the end of the century by 2060).


.. I just skimmed over your response (don't want to take too much of my time reading your stuff). ..However,..

as for the thesis that plug-in Hybrids will provide massive amounts of storage for the grid - this is one of the most naive ideas put forth yet. To be effective, storage it must be available on demand, and when the utilities need it.

When is the demand highest for power? From 6-7 AM to about 6 PM. When will the Plugins be in use. MOrning drive time to work 6 AM till 8 AM and for the drive home - 4 PM to 6 PM. And what will the drivers be looking for in between? They will be looking to charge up after their drive to work. So the vehicles will be in use or be demanding power for charge up during the heavy power demand time periods - just when the utilities would be looking for an extra source of power to draw upon. Plug-ins will be demanding power or not be available to provide extra power as they are in use just when the utilities would likely be looking for an extra power source. (yes, if you use higher voltage charge up you will have part of the afternoon when some of the plug-ins could be available for power draw - but the owners want a full charge for the drive home - so then, they ARE NOT then available as an extra source of stored power to the utilities!).

Actually, looking ahead to the future (say 20 year out) when (hopefully) significant numbers of plug-ins may be in use, the utilities know they have to plan on EXTRA demand because of plug-ins. That's why electric utilities are promoting the idea of plug-in hybrids - because it means extra demand for their product.



You refer to a "huge investment" in biomass (all the investment in ethanol production has come from PRIVATE CAPITAL). Actually, because you are replacing gasoline immediately with ethanol from biomass the investment (in terms of the Federal Excise Tax Credit, $.46/ gallon of ethanol blended.) will pay for itself in reduced gasoline prices. For example, in 2008 the Fed Excise Tax credit for ethanol cost about $4.5 Billion .. a lot of money, but since the Ethanol supply reduced the price of gasoline about 15% (Francisco Blanch, Chief Commodities Strategist, Merrill Lynch) it saved us about $70 BILLION in gasoline costs in 2008. All the investment in plant and equipment to produce this ethanol is private investment. So the immediate payoff from bio-fuels is potent. And because of ethanol we imported about 177 miillion fewer barrels of oil in 2008. That improved the negative balance of payments about

Compare this to Plug-ins, which as much we want to develop this technology for the future, we have to recognize the upfront costs are considerable. For plug-ins you are spending perhaps $10,000 a copy extra, and you save perhaps 280 gallons per yr (assuming 100 mpg) worth at $2.50/gal about $700 per year(note you have to compare the mileage to a similar weight and payload ICE car). NOn plug-in hybrids are running $3,000 to $4,000 extra but don't get 100 mpg. So figure about $300 savings per year. NOw we can expect the cost of gas to go up in the future which will increase the savings. But again, these are savings that will occur sometime in the future and when people buy a car they are putting out money now and savings sometime in the future doesn't mean that much to them.

[kristopher]

17. I'm not going to wade through all that gabage again...

Suffice to say that it is obvious where the objective experts are placing their bets on the best way to address climate change in the transportation sector. Every plan out there is focused like a laser on the development of battery electric vehicles for the personal transport sector - every single one. None are incorporating the use of ethanol as a viable means of reducing GHG emissions.

Your claims are attempts to string together pure made up bullshit about EVs with out of context snips from of other chains of logic to create that final argument regarding the superiority of ethanol over electric drive - which is totally false. Hell, you are so far off base it would be laughable if it weren't so serious. For example, to accept your claims we have to believe that all the objective experts are liars because they have some sort of grudge against ethanol. Yet we are supposed to accpet the made up bullshit you've cobbled together from out-of-date predictions on hybrids.

It isn't a surprise you have to keep trying to direct peoples' attention to irrelevant statements like that of Hanson while ignoring the arguments already laid out against your misuse of such claims. To be more clear, Hanson ISN'T saying that ethanol is a better course to follow than EVs. YOU are do-opting his railing against non action and trying to use it to support another false claim that short term GHG savings from ethanol are preferable to much much larger GHG reductions from Evs.

There is a virtually unlimited supply of articles from *independent* researchers such as the two below:

Ethanol as Fuel: Energy,Carbon Dioxide Balances, and Ecological Footprint
July 2005 I Vol. 55 No. 7 ' BioScience 593


Conclusions
The use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline proved to be neither a sustainable nor an environmentally friendly option, considering ecological footprint values, and both net energy and CO^ offset considerations seemed relatively unimportant compared to the ecological footprint. As revealed by the ecological footprint approach, the direct and indirect environmental impacts of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass to ethanol far exceed any value in developing this alternative energy resource on a large scale.

In the Brazilian case, for carbon sequestration, it seems to be more effective to reduce the rate of deforestation than to plant sugarcane. According to Fearnside and colleagues(2001), the amount of CO^ released to the atmosphere because of forest burning in the Amazon is about 187 Mg perha. The current Brazilian energy scenario contrasts with that of the 1970s. Currently, Brazil produces 90% of the oil it consumes, and so the national security argument for substituting ethanol no longer applies. Furthermore, the argument for electricity cogeneration is meaningless, since the energy surplus is minimal.

In the US case, the use of ethanol would require enormous areas of corn agriculture, and the accompanying environmental impacts outweigh its benefits. Ethanol cannot alleviate the United States' dependence on petroleum.

However, the ethanol option probably should not be wholly disregarded. The use of a fuel that emits lower levels of pollutants when burned can be important in regions or cities with critical pollution problems. Also, in agricultural situations where biomass residues would otherwise be burned to prepare for the next planting cycle, there would be some advantage in using the residues for alcohol production. However, further research should be done to improve the conversion process. Considering that, eventually, petroleum may no longer be available in the amounts currently consumed, one must conclude that substitution of alternatives to fossil fuel cannot be done using one option alone. It will prove more prudent to have numerous options (e.g., ethanol, fuel cells, solar energy),each participating with fractional contributions to the overall national and global need for energy.

And it is proven better in both efficiency and GHG emissions to burn the biomass for electricity than to convert it to ethanol.

Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol

J. E. Campbell,1,2* D. B. Lobell,3 C. B. Field4
The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without affecting food prices or
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land conversion is limited. Therefore, bioenergy should
maximize land-use efficiency when addressing transportation and climate change goals. Biomass
could power either internal combustion or electric vehicles, but the relative land-use efficiency of
these two energy pathways is not well quantified. Here, we show that bioelectricity outperforms
ethanol across a range of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes. Bioelectricity
produces an average of 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per
unit area of cropland than does cellulosic ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy
pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve
transportation and climate goals.


SCIENCE VOL 324 22 MAY 2009 pg 1055

[JohnWxy]

19. I am not going to waste my time leading by the hand a twit who can't understand quantified data.

I post here (and on other sites) to point out facts and research for those who can be reached by rationale argument.

(regarding the title of your comment, I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery(Reference my comment in a previous response above, that I couldn't be bothered with reading your entire mental meanderings:"don't want to take too much of my time reading your stuff".), but NOT when it comes from an intellectual midget (no offense, verticlly challenged, please).


.. I really cannot waste my time reading paragraph after paragraph, ad infinitum, of generalized claims and bullshit - irrational chants from an idiot who, when numbers are presented (e.g. in spreadsheets) or referred to by legitimate researchers which he can't understand, declares the numbers as suspicious, not to be trusted, illigitimate or intended to decieve. Just because you can't understand them doesn't mean they are fraudulent. If I present findings and data from researchers in organizations which recognize the benefits of renewable fuels (not as the only answer but as part of the solution) you categorically declare such data as, by definition, suspect and illigitimate. Always attacking the source or the data or knowledge is the resort of a phony or a childish mind(something akin to a two year old having a tantrum because he is frustrated because he isn't getting his way). I can't waste time on someone who is commmitted to endlessly repeating his religious chants and ignoring science and logic. REligion (denial of scince, logic andf reality) is not a realistic approach to problem solving.

While I can't waste my time leading a twit by the hand through this issue, yet I cannot let said twit misrepresent my positions and the rationale for biofuels.

You're becoming increasingly irrational and desperate. I have never claimed biofuels are superior to electric cars. (I think my statement was clear that we need BOTH to deal with this problem) I am a big supporter of hybrids and electric car development. I merely point out the obvious, as Hansen, and others have said, Global Warming is moving ahead. We have very limited time to start getting some appreciable reductions to GHG emissions. Also, it is obvious that Global Warming is accelerating. Therefor, we must do something that will have effects much sooner than the time required to field, say 125,000,000 hybrids and pure electric cars (using data from Google's proposal for hybrid-electric cars) to achieve a 26% reduction (of gasoline consumption and GHG emissions).

Yes, people are researching electric automotive technology. I of course, am all for that. We need to increase the range of batteries and reduce weight and cost.

I know you are into denying realities that make you uncomfortable but there is also research being done with re to biofuels. But more important, biofuels are reducing GHG emissions now and saving us money (over $60 billion in 2008 as stated above (about $70 Billiion saved in reduced gasoline costs less the $4.5 Billion Excise tax rebates). This will help us to afford all that research and purchase of hybrids, supported by the Federal Government (tax rebates on purchase of hybrids to make them more affordable and sellable). And this is a good and necessary thing because as I said biofuels probably can't do it alone. (I say 'probably' because we never know for sure what research can discover.)


But we are supporting expansion of http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/ACE_praises_Presidents_biofuels_directive_5_5_09.pdf">biofuels too:

President Obama’s directive explains that he is creating a Biofuels Interagency Working Group, to be chaired by the Secretaries of
the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy, and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Among
other things, the Working Group is tasked with:

• Developing a comprehensive national biofuel market development program, which is to include policies to increase flexible
fuel vehicle production and assist retail marketing efforts.

• Identifying new policy options to help ensure biofuels remain sustainable, including updated and science-driven lifecycle
assessments of greenhouse gas emissions for fuels

• USDA Secretary Vilsack is to immediately identify how existing USDA programs can assist corn ethanol producers, and,
within 30 days, issue rules for how Farm Bill programs can help provide loan guarantees and other forms of financial support
to ethanol facilities for reducing energy use and producing advanced biofuels.





I THINK, TO PUT IT IN THE VERNACULAR, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP. NO MORE GENERALIZED, LOOOOOOONNG WINDED BULLSHIT. I WANT TO SEE NUMBERS. ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:

1. what is the rate of global warming (or increase in GHGs) occurring now?

2. a. How much reduction in global warming (or reductions of GHGs) can hybrids and plug-ins achieve?

b. When will these reductions be achieved?

3. What will the rate of global warming be when hybrids/electrics make their reductions in GHG emissions?

4. What is the cost of fielding the number of hybrids/electrics to achieve a given level of GHG emissions reductions. Since you think electric hybrid technology comes for free you should research how much this technology will cost and report this back to me. (actually, this is an easy one. I've already given you help on this one above).

Until you answer these questions, keep your mouth shut ..at least don't bother me with your irrational, childish, nonsensical rants. I'm not your baby sitter and I'm not responsible for the reality that hybrids and electrics will not provide GHg emissions reductions in time enough to save us. I'm not responsible for the reality that we need to use biofuels (along with increased efficiencies I mentioned in previous comments, above, and on this forum) to continue the reductions to GHG emissions they are already achieving and to get more reductions (We can get much more reductions out of biofuels, and right now, i.e. not requiring any more research to achieve. To be the subject of future posts.) until hybrids and electrics can add to these reductions.


NOw remember, shut up until you can answer the questions I gave you.. at least shut up on my posts.. don't bother me with your childish rants against a reality you don't like and with attacks of biofuels which are astoundingly uninformed. (because, as a 'true believer' you don't want to get truly informed - as faith in your cause is NOT to be challenged). (I don't care if you want to keep posting your speeches on this forum. Go ahead, enjoy yourself.)

Good Luck.

[kristopher]

20. The same appeal to impatience...

That is what your references to Hanson amount to, an appeal to impatience. It apparently is beyond your ability to grasp the idea that limited investment funds should be spent where the have the greatest impact.

Instead of ranting, whining and pouting why don't you respond to the arguments in posts 8, 13, and 17. Try to focus on the logic of the arguments instead of just nitpicking irrelevancies. If you want discussion, I'd welcome it, unfortunately it is impossible to get past your dishonesty on this topic. For example, citing the inclusion of the ethanol provisions in the bill as proof of the validity of the technology is about as wrongheaded an argument as one could make. The provisions are included because the Agribusiness lobby's bought and paid for congressional representatives held the welfare of the nation hostage to their own selfish interests. Far from being evidence of good, this episode is strong proof that the technology is a FAILURE. Or perhaps you have a better way to explain why electric vehicle development was the focus of funding from the start but agribusiness had to use extortion?

Pelosi, Peterson Remarks at Press Availability on Energy Legislation

WASHINGTON, June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson held a press availability this afternoon following their meeting with House Republican Members in the Speaker's office to discuss the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Below are their remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to be visiting with you this afternoon with the very distinguished Chair of the House Agriculture Committee -- a person who has been very successful in my view in negotiating provisions in the energy bill that we're working on now.

As you know, we have a bill that unifies our country and our industries that says: "We are going down a path of change and transformation and we're doing it together."

Representing the industries in our country that are energy intensive and what they use is for us an economic issue to create clean energy jobs in America, to keep us number one in advancing green technologies. It is a national security issue -- to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it's a health issue -- to reduce pollution in the air, and it's a moral issue for us to pass on God's beautiful creation to the next generation in a responsible way.

To that end, we have had a wonderful collaboration to build consensus and a critical part of that has been the leadership of Collin Peterson. We just stepped out of the meeting which is still going on because we knew you were here waiting, and I have to go to the unveiling of my Republican colleague Jerry Lewis' portrait. So I wanted to come out to present to you Mr. Peterson and for him to give you his appraisal of how things are going.

Thank you for your leadership, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Peterson. Thank you Madam Speaker. We in agriculture believe we will have a significant role in getting to energy independence in this country. We've been working on that with the Farm Bill and the historic inclusion for the first time of the energy title. And what we've been working on with Mr. Waxman has been to massage the part of the bill that affects agriculture in terms of whether we can develop the next generation of bio-fuels, and we can have an offset program that we believe works for agriculture because we are a little bit of a different animal than some other businesses in this country.

So we had long discussions and a lot of work has been done, especially over the weekend, but we have now resolved all of the issues including the bio-mass issue, which was still hanging us up this afternoon. So I think we have resolved everything, and from my perspective, we have an offset program which is going to work. It's going to provide carbon reduction and it's going to provide credits to industries that need it and that is what we were after. We were after getting a program that was workable, that made sense, that farmers would be responsive to and we got that worked out.

We also had this problem lingering from the 2007 energy bill regarding this international land use, which I had talked to the Speaker about, which I think she will remember before we voted on that bill. We've been trying to work on that the last year and a half, and that has been resolved as international indirect land use is out of the bill and that is a big issue for those of us in agriculture that have a lot of ethanol and a lot of biodiesel like I do in my state. We were a leader on this and we were the first state to have a mandate on ethanol, the first to have a mandate on biodiesel. When I was in the legislature, I set up the first loan guarantee program to get ethanol going in Minnesota...

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-24-2009/0005050082&EDATE=

[JohnWxy]

21. You're an idiot savant - minus the savant part. You didn't answer my questions so not reading any

religious chanting.

YOU haven't Answered the questions I assigned to you:

" I THINK, TO PUT IT IN THE VERNACULAR, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP. NO MORE GENERALIZED, LONG WINDED BULLSHIT.
I WANT TO SEE NUMBERS. ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS!:

1. what is the rate of global warming (or increase in GHGs) occurring now?

2. a. How much reduction in global warming (or reductions of GHGs) can hybrids and plug-ins achieve?

b. When will these reductions be achieved?

3. What will the rate of global warming be when hybrids/electrics make their reductions in GHG emissions?

4. What is the cost of fielding the number of hybrids/electrics to achieve a given level of GHG emissions reductions. Since you think electric hybrid technology comes for free you should research how much this technology will cost and report this back to me. (actually, this is an easy one. I've already given you help on this one above)."

AND MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, HOW MUCH REDUCTION IN GHGS WILL HYBRIDS ACHIEVE FROM NOW UNTIL 2016 (ten years span from the time of Hansen's statement)?

Of course you must think James Hansen is part of the evil empire of corn farmers and that he dreamed up his claim that we must address global warming in the next 10 years (starting in 2006) just to make corn farmers rich and kill off hybrid research.


Now, for the benefit of any rational people who may be looking at this responsse - I will address myself to the article from which you provided an excerpt:

1. ..... With regard to Carbon Credits to farmers here is a good post on the importance of Carbon Sequestration on agricultural land: see

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x200345

"Carbon capture and sequestration technologies, which remain unproven and will not be ready for implementation for a decade at best, promise only to sequester greenhouse gases that have yet to be released into the atmosphere. Agricultural and other land use management practices, in contrast, are the only innovations available today to sequester greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere-pulling in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to grow and sustain more plants.

Mobilizing agricultural carbon sequestration is therefore an essential tool in the effort to reduce the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases .."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



2.. the excerpt mentions Indirect Land use changes. Thankfully, it looks as if science may prevail in the setting of EPA standards for GHG emissions with regard to all fuels. Resarchers and scientists have gone on the record stating that ILUC investigation is in a nascent stage and not enough is known re this complex issue to start setting standards in statute based on unsupported hypothoses of ILUC. President Obama has said that in setting any standards and in evaluating fuels with regard to GHG emissions, peer reviewed science will be used as a basis for making such determinations.


NOte the signatories of the letter at link (of course you believe these scientists and researchers are all part of the evil cabal of corn farmers trying to kill off hybrid technology)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x194946|Letter to Gov of Calif, criticizing use of ILUC hypotheses, signed by over 100 researchers!]

No doubt you are certain that the many researchers working on developing ethanol and other biofuels at The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory and Sandia National laboratory to name a few, are also part of the EVIL CORN FARMERS CABAL INTENT ON MAKING CORN FARMERS RICH AND KILLING OFF HYBRID TECHNOLOGY too.

Here is a link to an article summarizing research conducted by the Sandia National Laboratory. (They were considering cellulosic ethanol as well as starch based - you'll have to work on a theory of how corn farmers can profit from cellulosic ethanol - but I'm sure you'll come up with something.):

Biofuels can provide viable, sustainable solution to reducing petroleum dependence, say Sandia researchers

Researchers assessed the feasibility, implications, limitations, and enablers of annually producing 90 billion gallons of ethanol — sufficient to replace more than 60 billion of the estimated 180 billion gallons of gasoline expected to be used annually by 2030. Ninety billion gallons a year exceeds the U.S. Department of Energy’s goal for ethanol production established in 2006.

The 90 Billion Gallon Study assumes 75 billion gallons would be ethanol made from nonfood cellulosic feedstocks and 15 billion gallons from corn-based ethanol.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I cannot waste my time on your continued statements that politics is the ONLY reason we are supporting production of ethanol as well as your continued ravings and distortions of my position and statements. (The 'support' of ethanol has actually saved us considerable money. As I said in previous comment ethanol more than pays for itself delivering far more in gasoline cost reductions, through market forces, than it "costs" in Excise Tax Credits (in 2008: $70 billion saved in lower gas expenditures for consumers versus $4.5 billion in excise tax credits). OF course, this has resulted in reduced profit margins for the oil companies and their considerable political clout has been felt for decades in Washington and the oil industry has fought the use of ethanol for years. They actually do represent a real political presence - and one that is opposed to ethanol.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_40/b4052052.htm?chan=search"> Big Oil's Big Stall On Ethanol - BusinessWeek

and...Big Oil's War on Ethanol - Consumer Federation of America

"major oil companies have now declared war on a key policy that can help alleviate the shortage – the expanded production of alternative transportation fuels, particularly biofuels, like ethanol."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and then there is the The Grocery Manufacturer's Association, publicity and lobbying campaign:
The Grocery Manufacturer's Association (GMA) launched its aggressive multi-million dollar, 6-month campaign against ethanol on behalf of its members to turn public opinion against the American-grown renewable fuel.



The researchers at the institutions mentioned above are not researching ethanol to provide some extra demand for corn. They realize it's a viable cost effective way to replace gasoline & reduce GHG emissions in the transportatiion sector.


As I stated before, you must provide answers to the questions stated above to have any chance of being taken seriously. You cannot ignore the fact that we must start reducing GHG emnissions right now (as ethanol is doing - right now) we cannot do nothing until much needed hybrids start making appreciable reductions (TO GHGs!) in a couple decades. Global warming will be out of control if we don't do something sooner than that. You may prefer to ignore that, but those of us who would like to see Global warming brought under control have to consider that ... inconvenient truth.

That does not, of course, mean anybody is against hybrids. I am very much for the continued R&D in hybrid technology to enhance the range and reduce the cost of batteries to help speed the adoption of this technology that is necessary if we are ever to get control of global warming.

Now I have wasted FAR too much time on an idiot like you. So, until you can answer the questions I assigned you I will just let you rant and scream of conspiracies and plots against hybrids to your hearts content. But I can't be bothered with being your therapist. You really should seek professional help, ... seriously. Your grasp on reality seems extremely tenuous.

[kristopher]

22. Taking lessons on debate from your mentor Sean Hannity?

Eighteen months ago you were telling everyone how wonderful and necessary ethanol was because it had finally achieved an energy surplus instead of using more energy than it produced. Even if the only way the energy balance could be viewed as positive was to count the energy value of waste products used as cattle feed, you couldn't restrain yourself from insisting that this was all the evidence we needed to make the decision about what our future energy path should be. Forget the fact that the carbon balance of this process is atrocious since the amount of fossil fuel displaced by ethanol is virtually equal to the fossil fuel inputs, and forget the fact that internal combustion engines are the largest single impediment to efficiency advances in automobiles, you routinely ignore the drawbacks as if they don't exist and declared at every turn that ethanol was the way to meet our energy needs.

Your unaltering strategy has been to make false claims over, and over and over and over. After all this time, you'll have to excuse me for no longer jumping to prove those claims false yet once again. I've posted links to data from the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Electric Power Research Institute showing projected PHEV/EV market penetration under three different scenarios. This data totally contradicted your "spreadsheet" yet you never once acknowledged that it had even been posted, replying only that if someone didn't like your "assumptions" they were free to change them. Since few people will actually take the trouble to do so, even if they have the expertise, this is something that you obviously continue to count on to pass off this disinformation as legitimate.

You seem to be from the school of thought that if you string together a few links you can make any outrageous claim you find convenient as long as the links vaguely sound like they support your statement - even when it is clear they do no such thing. You ignore logic in favor of name calling, personal attacks and imperious demands that others respond to your selected points - a strategy that is a clear attempt to shift the discussion away from the gaping holes in your claims.

You routinely make appeals to authority which you support with cherry picked hogwash that is intended (like the net energy balance example above) to create the appearance that you are arguing facts when in reality you are engaging in a campaign of misinformation and disinformation that anathema to reasoned academic debate.


Just as the climate change deniers use things like a short stretch of anomalous data in an attempt to create an impression that is counter to the conclusion that is arrived at after careful study of the totality of the data, so too do you focus on out of context snips as support for a conclusion that is not in accord with a careful reading of the totality of the evidence.

A cursory review of this thread shows the difference in our styles of argumentation. You've made a series of very specific assertions that are supposed to support the broader claim that because Hanson considers the CO2 situation urgent and wants "action" within 10 years, then the "action" that is most beneficial is to use a large percentage of our energy transition budget supporting ethanol. Hanson was/is referring to broad governmental action at the national and global level. His statements are NOT relevant to evaluating the best course to use of our money for deploying alternative technologies.

On the other hand, I have persisted in pointing out the glaring contradictions in your claims. To that end I've posted sections from three different peer reviewed articles that all conclude burning ethanol in ICEs is not a desirable option. Par for the course you've ignored these articles; acting as if they don't exist. Well, they do exist and many more like them besides.

Here is the land use chart from Jacobson (article linked upthread) comparing corn and cellulosic ethanol to the alternatives. What's wrong with this picture?


And here is a graph from an EPRI presentation that shows the medium prediction on market penetration for PHEV/EV. As I said up-thread (which you ignored) the basis for these predictions was an extrapolation from a political and economic 'business as usual' model that has fallen by the wayside. In talking about health care today Pres. Obama pointed out that the Office of Management and Budget has not been able to assess the savings from several of the core proposals that are included in the health care package. How to quantify the effects of policies designed to increase access to preventive medicine for example? Again repeating what was said earlier, this same type of situation exists with PHEVs. Since this projection was made, the price of oil shot to $4.50 a gallon and the people got a taste of competition for oil from China and India. The public mood that prevails now is much more conducive to a change in technology than it was in 2006. Add to that the forced restructuring of our domestic auto industry with its emphasis on EVs and the degree of political will and capital with the Democrats in Washington and you have this graph slipping to more of a worst case prediction than a middle of the road forecast.



You can persist in your personal attacks and name calling all you want, but the fact is that those reports are representative of the "science" you blithely assert you want our national policy to follow.

Spending money on supporting the current ethanol programs and mandates is NOTHING but a political boondoggle that is diverting much needed funds from much more productive areas of investment.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[JohnWxy]

23. OTHER THAN POSTING TO THIS WEBSITE DO YOU HAVE A LIFE? .....Answer the questions I put to you at #16

You have to answer the questions I posted already above before I will waste my time shooting down long dead points you keep trying to recycle.:

Here's the link to the questions if you can stand to look at them:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=199455&mesg_id=200264


Oh come on now, I never claimed biofuels could meet all our transportation needs (boy that's an old one) .. (nor does anybody at Argonnne National lab, Sandia Labs, Oak Ridge Lab etc). That of course, doesn't mean biofuels cannot be a valuable tool for reducing GHg emissions. What are we supposed to do while we wait for hybrids and electrics to start reducing GHG emissions?


DON'T YOU HAVE ANY LIFE OUTSIDE POSTING TO THIS SITE????? Actually, the answer to that is pretty obvious.


You keep trying to impress me even though I keep treating you with such utter contempt. Kinda sad, kinda sickening.

[kristopher]

24. Still taking lessons on debate from your mentor Sean Hannity?

Come on now, I'm sure you remember trying to misuse Wang's paper to create the false impression that manufacturing ethanol gave us as much energy surplus as petroleum does, right? Eighteen months ago you were telling everyone how wonderful and necessary ethanol was because it had finally achieved an energy surplus instead of using more energy than it produced. Even if the only way the energy balance could be viewed as positive was to count the energy value of waste products used as cattle feed, you couldn't restrain yourself from insisting that this was all the evidence we needed to make the decision about what our future energy path should be. Forget the fact that the carbon balance of this process is atrocious since the amount of fossil fuel displaced by ethanol is virtually equal to the fossil fuel inputs, and forget the fact that internal combustion engines are the largest single impediment to efficiency advances in automobiles, you routinely ignore the drawbacks as if they don't exist and declared at every turn that ethanol was the way to meet our energy needs.

Your unaltering strategy has been to make false claims over, and over and over and over. After all this time, you'll have to excuse me for no longer jumping to prove those claims false yet once again. I've posted links to data from the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Electric Power Research Institute showing projected PHEV/EV market penetration under three different scenarios. This data totally contradicted your "spreadsheet" yet you never once acknowledged that it had even been posted, replying only that if someone didn't like your "assumptions" they were free to change them. Since few people will actually take the trouble to do so, even if they have the expertise, this is something that you obviously continue to count on to pass off this disinformation as legitimate.

You seem to be from the school of thought that if you string together a few links you can make any outrageous claim you find convenient as long as the links vaguely sound like they support your statement - even when it is clear they do no such thing. You ignore logic in favor of name calling, personal attacks and imperious demands that others respond to your selected points - a strategy that is a clear attempt to shift the discussion away from the gaping holes in your claims.

You routinely make appeals to authority which you support with cherry picked hogwash that is intended (like the net energy balance example above) to create the appearance that you are arguing facts when in reality you are engaging in a campaign of misinformation and disinformation that anathema to reasoned academic debate.


Just as the climate change deniers use things like a short stretch of anomalous data in an attempt to create an impression that is counter to the conclusion that is arrived at after careful study of the totality of the data, so too do you focus on out of context snips as support for a conclusion that is not in accord with a careful reading of the totality of the evidence.

A cursory review of this thread shows the difference in our styles of argumentation. You've made a series of very specific assertions that are supposed to support the broader claim that because Hanson considers the CO2 situation urgent and wants "action" within 10 years, then the "action" that is most beneficial is to use a large percentage of our energy transition budget supporting ethanol. Hanson was/is referring to broad governmental action at the national and global level. His statements are NOT relevant to evaluating the best course to use of our money for deploying alternative technologies.

On the other hand, I have persisted in pointing out the glaring contradictions in your claims. To that end I've posted sections from three different peer reviewed articles that all conclude burning ethanol in ICEs is not a desirable option. Par for the course you've ignored these articles; acting as if they don't exist. Well, they do exist and many more like them besides.

Here is the land use chart from Jacobson (article linked upthread) comparing corn and cellulosic ethanol to the alternatives. What's wrong with this picture?
Image

And here is a graph from an EPRI presentation that shows the medium prediction on market penetration for PHEV/EV. As I said up-thread (which you ignored) the basis for these predictions was an extrapolation from a political and economic 'business as usual' model that has fallen by the wayside. In talking about health care today Pres. Obama pointed out that the Office of Management and Budget has not been able to assess the savings from several of the core proposals that are included in the health care package. How to quantify the effects of policies designed to increase access to preventive medicine for example? Again repeating what was said earlier, this same type of situation exists with PHEVs. Since this projection was made, the price of oil shot to $4.50 a gallon and the people got a taste of competition for oil from China and India. The public mood that prevails now is much more conducive to a change in technology than it was in 2006. Add to that the forced restructuring of our domestic auto industry with its emphasis on EVs and the degree of political will and capital with the Democrats in Washington and you have this graph slipping to more of a worst case prediction than a middle of the road forecast.
Image


You can persist in your personal attacks and name calling all you want, but the fact is that those reports are representative of the "science" you blithely assert you want our national policy to follow.

Spending money on supporting the current ethanol programs and mandates is NOTHING but a political boondoggle that is diverting much needed funds from much more productive areas of investment.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[JohnWxy]

26. Answer the questions I assigned you. IF you can. won't waste my time on you otherwise.

Didn't read much of your rambling. I told you until you can answer these questions you are not worth the time.


AGAAINN: IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP. NO MORE GENERALIZED, NO MORE ENDLESS GENERALIZED CRITICISM. (YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO LIFE OTHER THAN TO POST HERE.) yOU MUST PROVE HOW YOU KNOW WE CAN WAIT 20 YEARS FOR PLUG-INS TO ACHIEVE SOME APPRECIABLE REDUCTIONS TO GHG EMISSIONS.

I WANT TO SEE NUMBERS. ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:

1. what is the rate of global warming (or increase in GHGs) occurring now?

2. a. How much reduction in global warming (or reductions of GHGs) can hybrids and plug-ins achieve?

b. When will these reductions be achieved?

3. What will the rate of global warming be when hybrids/electrics make their reductions in GHG emissions?

ALSO STATE HOW MUCH GHG REDUCTIOINS PLUG-INS WILL ACHIEVE IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS.

You need to answer these questions to justify your belief we can wait till Plug-ins start reducing GHGs (about 20% to 25% in 20 yrs) and that we need not do anything else (in the transportation sector) in the mean time.



.... The reader (if there are any left) will note the statement "waste products used as cattle feed" - Refers to Dried Distillers Grains and Solubles (DDGS) which are improperly referred to as "waste products" as they have great value as a high protein cattle feed. When ethanol is made from corn only the starch is used. All the protein is captured and becomes Dried Distillers Grains and Solubles (DDGS). Thus, none of the protein in the corn is lost to the food chain. As a product of the process it must absorb it's share of the cost inputs (dollars or energy). This is consistent with logic, scientific analysis and all reality based accounting procedures.

A meta analysis of several studies of ethanol by University of California, Berkeley researchers noted regarding recognizing the coproducts of ethanol production process:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals -Alexander E. Farrell,1* Richard J. Plevin,1 Brian T. Turner,1,2 Andrew D. Jones,1 Michael O'Hare,2 Daniel M. Kammen1,2,3

"To study the potential effects of increased biofuel use, we evaluated six representative analyses of fuel ethanol. Studies that reported negative net energy incorrectly ignored coproducts and used some obsolete data."

1 Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–3050, USA.
2 Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–3050, USA.
3 Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–3050, USA.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The reader will further note that I give them the sources of my information so they can evaluate them and draw their own conclusions re ethanol. (I didn't come up with all this information, it's the result of a lot of very intelligent individuals doing a lot of actual work. I merely report on it.). I have stated all these arguments and provided links to data before, so I am not going to repeat myself (wasting time on 'I_got_no_Life') as these more lengthy presentations can be found in my earlier posts. The reader should know my purpose is to inform, not to proselytize.


..... The reader (if there are any left) will also note that 'I_got_no_Life's argument isn't with me (only) it's with:

(And of course, this is NOT an "appeal to authority" (a rhetorical point which all conservative argumentarians learned in the book on rhetoric and argumentation they ALL seem to have read) it's an appeal to science. I trust I have not offended the readers by pointing out something that is quite obvious.)

__ Michael Wang, the Argonne National Laboratory, creator of the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model for analysis of the GHG impact of various fuels, used in business, academia and Government by professionals and scientists involved in fuel research and development. http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/230197-fLDbPJ/webviewable/230197.pdf">Development and use of the GREET Model - M. Wang

"GREET can simulate more than 100 fuel production pathways and more than 80 vehicle/fuel systems, and has more than 4,000 registered users worldwide."


__ Bruce Dale, Michigan State University

__ Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy

__ University of Nebraska researchers:

(Adam J. Liska 1 , Haishun S. Yang 1 , Virgil R. Bremer 2 , Terry J. Klopfenstein 2 , Daniel T. Walters 1 , Galen E. Erickson 2 , and Kenneth G. Cassman 3
1 Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln in Lincoln, Nebraska 2 Department of Animal Science at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln 3 Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, also at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln) who confirmed that Ethanol reduces GHGs 51% vs gasoline


__ Hossein Shappourri, United States Dept. of Agriculture

__ researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

and Robert D. Perlack; Lynn L. Wright; Anthony F. Turhollow; Robin L. Graham; Bryce J. Stokes; Donald C. Erbach;Biomass as Feedstock for A Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply

"A recent analysis* concluded that the United States could produce about 1.3 billion dry tons of biomass each year in addition to present agricultural and forestry production. Because it is theoretically possible to obtain about 100 gallons of ethanol from a ton of cellulosic biomass (such as corn stover, the stalks remaining after corn has been harvested), the United States could sustainably produce about 130 billion gallons of fuel ethanol from biomass. In addition to a positive effect on the release of greenhouse gases, a biofuels program on this scale would have substantial economic and strategic advantages."


Anyone who says the articles I provide links to don't support the practicality and value of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline and a means of reducing GHGs has created an entirely new form of argument:

"I can't understand these articles, therefore they are not valid."

........ Actually, this line of "reasoning" is not new. In psychiatric circles it's recognized as the constant plaint of the psychotic. The psychotic insists everybody else is nuts while he is the only one who is sane(!). Michael Wang is wrong, Stephen Chu is an idiot, Bruce Dale is out of his mind, Hussein Shappourri is an idiot, Robert Perlack doesn't know what he's doing....... because one twit, 'I_got_no_Life', can't understand their work. They should all come to his door and take time to 'splain it' ..to him. LOL.


I'll put it very simply. Answer these questions:

1. what is the rate of global warming (or increase in GHGs) occurring now?

2. a. How much reduction in global warming (or reductions of GHGs) can hybrids and plug-ins achieve?

b. When will these reductions be achieved?

3. What will the rate of global warming be when hybrids/electrics make their reductions in GHG emissions?

ALSO STATE HOW MUCH GHG REDUCTIONS PLUG-INS WILL ACHIEVE IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS.


That's all you need to do to convince people we can wait around until plug-ins start reducing GHGs appreciably in 20 years and not use bio-fuels over that 20 year time span -- and that this will take care of Global Warming.


Answer these questions to be taken seriously.

Actually, by not answering the questions, ... you ARE answering them.

[kristopher]

27. .

Come on now, I'm sure you remember trying to misuse Wang's paper to create the false impression that manufacturing ethanol gave us as much energy surplus as petroleum does, right? Eighteen months ago you were telling everyone how wonderful and necessary ethanol was because it had finally achieved an energy surplus instead of using more energy than it produced. Even if the only way the energy balance could be viewed as positive was to count the energy value of waste products used as cattle feed, you couldn't restrain yourself from insisting that this was all the evidence we needed to make the decision about what our future energy path should be. Forget the fact that the carbon balance of this process is atrocious since the amount of fossil fuel displaced by ethanol is virtually equal to the fossil fuel inputs, and forget the fact that internal combustion engines are the largest single impediment to efficiency advances in automobiles, you routinely ignore the drawbacks as if they don't exist and declared at every turn that ethanol was the way to meet our energy needs.

Your unaltering strategy has been to make false claims over, and over and over and over. After all this time, you'll have to excuse me for no longer jumping to prove those claims false yet once again. I've posted links to data from the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Electric Power Research Institute showing projected PHEV/EV market penetration under three different scenarios. This data totally contradicted your "spreadsheet" yet you never once acknowledged that it had even been posted, replying only that if someone didn't like your "assumptions" they were free to change them. Since few people will actually take the trouble to do so, even if they have the expertise, this is something that you obviously continue to count on to pass off this disinformation as legitimate.

You seem to be from the school of thought that if you string together a few links you can make any outrageous claim you find convenient as long as the links vaguely sound like they support your statement - even when it is clear they do no such thing. You ignore logic in favor of name calling, personal attacks and imperious demands that others respond to your selected points - a strategy that is a clear attempt to shift the discussion away from the gaping holes in your claims.

You routinely make appeals to authority which you support with cherry picked hogwash that is intended (like the net energy balance example above) to create the appearance that you are arguing facts when in reality you are engaging in a campaign of misinformation and disinformation that anathema to reasoned academic debate.


Just as the climate change deniers use things like a short stretch of anomalous data in an attempt to create an impression that is counter to the conclusion that is arrived at after careful study of the totality of the data, so too do you focus on out of context snips as support for a conclusion that is not in accord with a careful reading of the totality of the evidence.

A cursory review of this thread shows the difference in our styles of argumentation. You've made a series of very specific assertions that are supposed to support the broader claim that because Hanson considers the CO2 situation urgent and wants "action" within 10 years, then the "action" that is most beneficial is to use a large percentage of our energy transition budget supporting ethanol. Hanson was/is referring to broad governmental action at the national and global level. His statements are NOT relevant to evaluating the best course to use of our money for deploying alternative technologies.

On the other hand, I have persisted in pointing out the glaring contradictions in your claims. To that end I've posted sections from three different peer reviewed articles that all conclude burning ethanol in ICEs is not a desirable option. Par for the course you've ignored these articles; acting as if they don't exist. Well, they do exist and many more like them besides.

Here is the land use chart from Jacobson (article linked upthread) comparing corn and cellulosic ethanol to the alternatives. What's wrong with this picture?
Image

And here is a graph from an EPRI presentation that shows the medium prediction on market penetration for PHEV/EV. As I said up-thread (which you ignored) the basis for these predictions was an extrapolation from a political and economic 'business as usual' model that has fallen by the wayside. In talking about health care today Pres. Obama pointed out that the Office of Management and Budget has not been able to assess the savings from several of the core proposals that are included in the health care package. How to quantify the effects of policies designed to increase access to preventive medicine for example? Again repeating what was said earlier, this same type of situation exists with PHEVs. Since this projection was made, the price of oil shot to $4.50 a gallon and the people got a taste of competition for oil from China and India. The public mood that prevails now is much more conducive to a change in technology than it was in 2006. Add to that the forced restructuring of our domestic auto industry with its emphasis on EVs and the degree of political will and capital with the Democrats in Washington and you have this graph slipping to more of a worst case prediction than a middle of the road forecast.
Image


You can persist in your personal attacks and name calling all you want, but the fact is that those reports are representative of the "science" you blithely assert you want our national policy to follow.

Spending money on supporting the current ethanol programs and mandates is NOTHING but a political boondoggle that is diverting much needed funds from much more productive areas of investment.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[kristopher]

14. Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol

Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol

J. E. Campbell,1,2* D. B. Lobell,3 C. B. Field4
The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without affecting food prices or
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land conversion is limited. Therefore, bioenergy should
maximize land-use efficiency when addressing transportation and climate change goals. Biomass
could power either internal combustion or electric vehicles, but the relative land-use efficiency of
these two energy pathways is not well quantified. Here, we show that bioelectricity outperforms
ethanol across a range of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes. Bioelectricity
produces an average of 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per
unit area of cropland than does cellulosic ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy
pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve
transportation and climate goals.


SCIENCE VOL 324 22 MAY 2009 pg 1055

[JohnWxy]

16. Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land in world

That's more than a doubling.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x200060

from the New Scientist article:

Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land , and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America," concludes the report, compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

If further evidence were needed, it comes in a second report, launched jointly by the FAO and the World Bank. It concludes that 400 million hectares, straddling 25 African countries, are suitable for farming.

Models for producing new crop land already exist in Thailand, where land originally deemed agriculturally unpromising, due to irrigation problems and infertile soil, has been transformed into a cornucopia by smallholder farmers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[kristopher]

18. "Could be" is not "should be"

That reply has nothing to do with the FACT from the article that ethanol in an internal combustion engine is a wasteful way to use biomass. That article says "Hell dude, it's better to burn the stuff for electricity than to brew up a batch of high octane moonshine. You'll not only go further, but you'll achieve a greater reduction in GHG emissions!"

[Fotoware58]

9. Today's reality

Well, I did scan over the study and it looks pretty good, however, it needs an update from the 2005 status. Fuel costs for hauling that material has skyrocketed and will do so again. Congress (as well as Al Gore) is also resistant to giving subsidies for the removal of Federal biomass. Congress is also promising to set aside another 26 million acres of untouchable land, in addition to the Roadless Areas. The Forest Service and BLM don't have the manpower or expertise to put up all these extremely labor-intensive projects. There are also not enough logging outfits to deal with the massive scope of what the biomass industry is proposing. Wildfires are consuming that accumulated biomass at a horrendous pace and the Obama Administration is continuing the Bush Era program of letting fires burn on up to 100,000 acre plots of public lands.

The big dealbreakers are the courts, the eco-lawyers and the American public. There already is a problem getting a simple thinning project through the courts. If you add intensive biomass components to those thinning projects, there will be more legal issues and more public outcry. Many eco-lawyers file lawsuits merely to win their court costs. They only have to "win" on the tiniest of issues to reach their payday. Many eco-groups file lawsuits on all projects that cut merchantable trees. Any effort to change Forest Plans to accomodate accelerated forest restoration projects will be met with fierce resistance.

Biomass use HAS to be a huge part of any government forest restoration efforts but, I have little faith that the public is progressive enough to make the changes that will allow true forest restoration. I have resigned myself to the idea that I have fought the good fight but, forests will continue to disappear.

[wuushew]

10. That grassoline article in SA is somewhat interesting

although I wish it had been much longer and focused exclusively on the new ammonia process of breaking down cellulose.

[rasputin1952]

25. I haven't read the entire article...

but if there was no mention of Fluidized Bed Reactors, there is a serious flaw. FBR's can turn anything w/carbon into alcohol. It is one of the best aspects of alcohol production to come down the pike in long time.

Tires have a huge amount of carbon in them, and there are mountains of them all over the country. They have sent tens of millions to Asia to be burned, (not the best way to get energy from them, but w/FBR's, alcohol could be produced and these, (often flaming), mountains of tires could be wiped out.

But I digress. in alcohol, as w/petroleum, the real hero will be the person that figures out how to burn the entire molecule to get all of the stored energy for use. Currently, the most wee get from burning any fuel, is about 15% of what can be gotten. The combustion is so inefficient, about 85% of the potential energy is tossed out into the atmosphere. Carbon emissions would be drastically reduced if more of the molecule would be burned. A quick mpg comparison: 30 mpg at 15% efficiency = 90+ mpg at 50% > combustion efficiency.

It's all a matter of getting people on board, educating people and using technology available today and in the near future.