thefickler writes "With falling gas prices, and the end of capitalism as we know it (otherwise known as the credit crisis), the
biofuels industry is not looking as viable as it once was. Indeed biofuel production has fallen well short of expectations, with biofuel companies closing down or reducing production capacity. It appears that the industry's only hope is government support."
The biofuels of which you speak have always produced more pollution through their manufacture than they have saved through reduced car emissions, so their future is largely political, not economical.
Oh and holy crap what an inflammatory summary. Yes the banks are temporarily not lending at the lower interest rates, no this does not have any effect on capitalism.
Corn is not the only way to make ethanol. There are far better ways. Just look at how many different sources you can make drinking alcohol from. Ethanol is the same thing, just distilled to 200 proof.
you got whiskey (corn), rum (sugar, and you can grow sugar beets just fine in most of the US), wine (grapes or practically any fruit or berry. France actually is doing this with a lot of their surplus wine.), sake (rice), vodka (grains, potatoes), etc. All of those are potential fuel ethanol sources.
You missed something in your list. That stuff in the back of my fridge. I'm not sure what it started out as, but I'm pretty sure it's got a decent ethanol content now.
And ethanol isn't the only biofuel. Biodiesel generally has better numbers, and methanol (which you rarely hear about anymore) has a lot going for it too.
Good point. I also like diesels in general as they have better characteristics (inherently better efficiency, more torque, and the engines last practically forever due to the heavier construction) for most people. Sure, they can be problematic to start in the cold, but that's why Andrew Freeman invented the block heater.
I'm not a fan of methanol though, as it's fantastically toxic (blindness, death, etc.), and can be absorbed via the skin, whereas ethanol is much less so. Also, methanol burns almost invisible.
Ethanol in the US has nothing to do with alternative fuels, or replacing gasoline. It is primarily a subsidy to American corn farmers. Corn can never be a worthwhile source of ethanol.
Fact is, gasoline is cheap. Arguing about nebulous unknown "costs" in the future doesn't change it's price today. In fact, gasoline isn't just cheap, it's rock bottom dirt fucking cheap. The economics are simple, as long as gasoline is cheaper than any sort of biofuel, people will continue to use it.
This isn't the fault of the oil companies, who have been for years reshaping themselves into "energy" companies. The minute biofuel becomes competitive with gasoline, the oil companies will begin sinking their billions into controlling it. They already have the infrastructure, so it's logical for them to take it over.
Until some new process is created which can demonstrate large volume production of biofuel at prices better than gasoline, we're stuck with gasoline. The moment such a process is created, auto makers, consumers, and the oil companies will all switch on their own.
The biofuels of which you speak have always produced more pollution through their manufacture than they have saved through reduced car emissions, so their future is largely political, not economical.
Typical AC, you are absolutely wrong.
There are many companies existing right now that can turn landfill waste into bio-deisel. The process is completely self generating meaning they use energy from the process to run the system. Many designs are completely sealed systems meaning they do not vent anything into the environment. Google: "biodiesel from landfill" and see for yourself. Another: http://www.cleanenergyprojects.com/ [cleanenergyprojects.com]
The future of biofuel and food production is algae. It's the most primitive plant form there is and is therefore the most efficient at converting solar energy into an energy store (oil) or edible substances. A lot of work is going to have to be done to develop methods of growing and harvesting algae, but that's just engineering. Better get used to the idea of algae steaks as an alternative to soy burgers... Yum!
Actually, why aren't we considering this... making gasoline from dead human bodies? If I could squeeze a gallon of high-octane out of granny and grandpa, why not?
Although, it might be a bit creepy, tanking up with your grandparents.
Of course, this would kill the zombie film industry: "There ain't no dead bodies in the graveyard, I done burned them up in my nitro-burning funny car!"
Were they realistically feasible in the first place?
Absolutely not. The quantity of land that would need to be re-purposed if a significant percentage of US oil usage was to be bio-fuels would be enormous.
You are correct if you assume that you're talking about food crops like corn, or even switchgrass as the biofuel source. They require traditional farming resources such as fertile land, good weather, water and fertilizer. But with algae, grown in carefully controlled environments like the Vertigro system, which is happier in the desert and consumes CO2 and inorganic materials, and is at least one or two orders of magnitude more efficient at producing oil and/or edible food stuffs, and the prospects change a great deal.
the Algae farmers did not comprise a big enough voting bloc for the US Congress to consider their viability in saving the current environment, of course by environment I mean keeping one's seat.
Corn Ethanol/Switchgrass etc was more about who was who than what was what
Biofuels from macrocrops are generally infeasible, especially corn.
Biofuels from algae are energy-positive, consume much smaller areas, and are currently our best hope of weaning ourselves from foreign oil. If we had invested in bioprocessing techniques for algae the way we invested in securing our oil supply halfway around the world, we would be an oil-producing country by now.
>Biofuels from macrocrops are generally infeasible, especially corn.
Right. That's what people generally refer to when they say biofuel because we actually produce biofuel in practice. If the government allocates money for biofuel... it is going to corn based biofuel.
>Biofuels from algae are energy-positive... > nd are currently our best hope of weaning ourselves from foreign oil.
Phht, the grass always looks greener on the other side of the hill.
You can say it would save the day only because it has not been tried at scale, so we don't yet know what underlying challenges and costs it would present.
This is a persistent problem with how people evaluate energy solutions. Originally, nuclear fission was supposed to solve all of our energy needs. It was supposed to be safe, and cheap enough that we wouldn't have to meter it. Then we tried it out, and there were problems. Now, everyone knows about those problems so there is little political will to pursue the nuclear power further. However at this point in time, nuclear power has actually become more practical and safer than when we originally were enthusiastic about it.
I'm not arguing for nuclear power here. I'm pointing out the flaw in the underlying reasoning, which is that *any* new technology that hasn't been put into widespread production is going to always look sexier than a practical solution that exists today.
. Any technology to replace fossil fuels is going to be incredibly costly to develop and make safe because of the scale we are talking about. We don't need to switch gears again for the Nth time and start from scratch on "magic energy technology X" that will solve all of our problems while costing us nothing.
We need the fortitude to take one of the technologies, such as nuclear, which has been maturing for decades, and *scale it up* and *solve* the hard problems it presents. It won't be easy, but what people refuse to understand is there *is no easy way out* of the problem we are suffering.
Remember, the whole reason we are in this mess is because we acted like short shighted morons. Doing the same thing over again and calling it "green" won't solve the problem.
Though I am enjoying relief from $4.00/gallon gasoline as much as the next guy, I would hold off on prognostications until summer arrives. I doubt oil will remain cheap for long. The current low is likely due to more factors than just demand destruction. Matt Simmons (author of Twilight in the Desert [no, not playing at a theater near you]) suggests the current lows have more to do with settling derivatives trades between oil companies more than anything else.
It depends on what nations you are talking about. In the USA, bio-fuels might be a non starter but in poorer [tropical] nations, bio fuels are a "Godsend."
These nations put in very little in bio fuel plants like the Jatropha, then get its seeds that can yield up to 40% oil by weight.
The plant is also resistant to drought and needs very little maintenance. The trouble with the USA is that folks look to corn whenever the bio-fuels subject comes up and in many cases, this is not economic at all.
Biofuels aren't necessarily a godsend. It may be more profitable for the poor farmer to grow stuff to feed a rich american or western european's car than to feed the poor in his country.
Compare how much a car driver is can pay per litre, and how much a poor person in Africa/India etc can afford to pay for the equivalent calories in food.
Some areas don't support edible crops and so there won't be competition there. But in many cases land for food crops can be used for fuel crops.
Actually, folks did not look to corn. The republicans did to buy some votes. The farmers that I know switched to corn because of the money from W, but told me that this was a harebrain idea. They pointed out that 3 RR tankers of ethanol were sitting on the train track in Limon for 3 months. Apparently, the company had no buyer of the fuel. They also pointed out that the distillers were not finding buyers. IOW, folks knew, just not politicians.
Many biofules are said to take more energy to produce them than they provide, so with dropping oil prices they are actually more feasible than they were when oil prices were high. Now if they can only pass laws mandating the use of these fuels then they will become extremely feasible.
It's perfectly reasonable. Since these fuels require more energy to produce than they actually provide, with the cost of fuel going down it is now going to become cheap enough to practically waste energy on this sort of "alternative-fuel" nonsense. If they would only pass a law requiring the use of these fuel sources, there would be no limit to the money and energy we could waste!
Back during the 1970's there was a fuel shortage and the bio-fuels industry picked up. Then we saw $30 a barrel and lower oil that drove all the producers out of business. Some say it was a calculated move on the part of OPEC to make sure that no competition arises. I'm not sure I'd go that far as OPEC nearly destroyed itself due to cheating in that period...
It's not much of a surprise that it's happened again. (Gee what happened to that $200 a barrel mark the media was predicting by the end of the year). Bio-fuels were another way for the agriculture lobby to get more money for corn. So with cheap oil, everyone will go back to worrying about other things and in 10 -15 years when there is another disrupution and the prices sky rocket, people will once again start up bio fuel projects.
You'd think we'd learn, but to quote Mark Twain: History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
Let's hope not. Biofuels based on corn and other food crops are bad for obvious reasons, but even non-food biofuels have their risks [blogspot.com] - among them degradation of the American/Canadian Great Plains, ecological degradation in the Third World, and the risk of invasive species (most of these non-food biofuels are fast-spreading grasses).
The most ecological energy policy is to stop the government from subsidizing oil (by building suburbia with land use restricitons [blogspot.com]), subsidizing coal, and subsidizing water. There is no magic fuel out there that will allow us to consume infinite amounts of cheap energy - nature made extracting energy expensive for a reason, and the government needs to get out of the business of trying to make it easier.
I think makers of internal combustion engines and their fuel suppliers, need to look at this as a temporary reprieve from the Governor while their case is reviewed.
Research into alternate energy sources for transportation must continue.
To give up this research just because petroleum prices are low, would be a grave mistake.
Heck, bump prices up a little and use the surplus to fund research instead of paying CEO salaries and shareholder dividends.
Research into biofuels is still going full speed. I'm involved in a project using switchgrass to produce diesel (and other products) directly through pyrolysis and the Fisher Tropsch [wikipedia.org] process. Other projects [okbioenergycenter.org] are looking at using switchgrass as a feedstock for conversion to ethanol, or as a "lignocellulosic material" that can be co-fired with coal, reducing costs and pollutants.
You may have noticed that there is growing interest in vertical farms - i.e. using the sides of tall buildings as farmland, based around hydroponics. Because vertical farms are enclosed, water management is easier. One obvious use is for growing transport-intensive crops like fruit, cutting the delivered cost by producing very close to point of consumption. But another would be to produce oil from algae. In either case, sun-receiving surfaces which currently have little function are being utilised effectively.
A lot of people posting so far seem to confuse corn subsidy biofuel with biofuels in general. But there are other biofuels already which are not energy-negative such as alcohol made from sugar cane waste in Brazil, where the nonconvertible cellulose is burned to provide the heat input to the process. Here in the UK we have limited production of alcohol and charcoal from coppiced shrubs and timber processing waste; there are several other initiatives. Given that the price of oil is controlled more by speculation than demand, and given financial instability, we can expect it to change wildly over the next few years. Industries needing long term investment should be protected to some degree from the fluctuations. A working biofuel industry would help to stabilise the oil price, because it would introduce an element of competition into the fuels market. Speculators do not like competitive industries because it is harder to manipulate them.
There are fundamental fallacies to our existing economy. They assume a workable environment in which to do business, and that the environment is infinite and free. If you look at the economic cost of global warming over the next hundred years, the global price rises to hundreds of trillions of dollars. A few of the costs include;
A) Land lost by sea level rise
B) Damage caused by increase flood and drought
C) Loss of critical biostocks (crash in fish populations, ocean acidification, key land ocean and air species)
D) Storm damage
E) Increased spread of tropical diseases
F) Wars caused by loss of water, food, and habitable land
G) Loss of land for agriculture
H) Failure of environmental systems supporting a minimum quality of life
Algae based oil is an excellent fuel alternative. Another is bioengineering new fungii discovered to produce diesel fuel directly from cellulose. Both of these technologies are utterly plug and play in our current petroleum base infrastructure. Both sequester carbon from the atmosphere, so their burning adds no new carbon and using them for other purposes like petrochemical feed-stocks actually removes carbon from the atmosphere. Both create tremendous new economic opportunities, and if supported by the government and the current petroleum business point us to a workable gap stop solution until helium cooled pebble bed fission and fusion are perfected.
If we had kept even moderately higher oil price levels after the scare of 73' then we would have a way less dependence on all the middle eastern oil. When the price went down after that it just killed the efficiency and alternate fuels industry that had sprung up, all the ideas(patents) to be bought out by oil companies. Now it could happen again, and in 20 years well wonder why we didn't ever do anything about our dependence on foreign oil.
We blame this crisis fully on the mograge market but some blame is
You don't even have to invoke the spectre of global warming for this (of which/. has many doubters anyway); to avoid being raped by ludicrous oil prices ever again, it's in our best interest to get personal transport with great MPG numbers (so even if it rises, you'll still be laughing - and what's now spent on hauling 1 pair of buttocks from A to B is simply gross inefficiency) and independence of oil since there's so many ways to generate electricity - but none to generate oil.
The difference is that most of those industries have actually been profitable at some point in the past and have some potential for making a profit in the future. I don't foresee a future in which biofuels could possibly be economically viable unless you are talking about at a very small, local level where you can use waste material from restaurants to run a half dozen cars or where farmers grow corn for human or animal consumption and use some of the leftover biomass to make fuel for their tractors. As soon as you cross the line from recycled biomass to newly grown biomass specifically for fuel, you find an entire industry based on a fundamentally flawed economic model. Basically, it's the dot-com boom all over again---a company loses money on every sale but tries to make it up in volume.
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable. (Source: Cornell/UC Berkeley study circa 2005 [physorg.com]. And then, there's the fact that the U.S. seems myopically focused on using corn as a source, which is quite possibly the worst thing you could possibly plant for fuel purposes by almost any useful metric---output relative to soil damage, output per acre, etc. It's a joke.
About the only thing slightly promising in that area is the whole algae thing. but I'm not holding my breath. Even if it eventually proves financially viable, you're still dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. And I suspect that when you factor in all the hidden maintenance costs, etc, it will end up being unprofitable just like the rest of them.
The GP poster may have said it in a flamebait-like way, but that doesn't mean the post was wrong. On the contrary. it was dead on accurate, at least if you limit biofuel to current farming technology and current sources of biomass. Realistically speaking, dumping more and more money into biofuel research is not the answer. We already have much better sources of energy---solar, wind, geothermal, tidal---that don't pollute our atmosphere significantly, don't contribute to global warming significantly, and at least in the case of solar and wind, don't require nearly the overhead in terms of maintenance, repairs, infrastructure, etc. because they can be set up at the local level (or, in the case of solar, even the household level). Power storage. That's where we should be spending research dollars. That's a problem that will still be needed even if biofuels did become commercially viable, but with better power storage, biofuels would have no real purpose for existing.
Sugar-cane is a fast-growing weed where most of the mass of the plant can be used for creation of fuel. America's problem is that ethanol production out of corn is tied up in the farm bill, which not only pays farmers not to grow sufficient amounts of anything to keep the price high, but causes a diversion of product away from food, forcing the price high.
The increase in production of corn-based ethanol in the US caused the price of tortillas to jump in Mexico a couple of years ago, leading to increased numbers of illegals being captured at the border (and of course, the number that get through are far, far greater than the number that get caught).
I **WISH** we could use sugar instead of corn here... the corn industry has us on lockdown and is fucking everything up. They're in collusion with our domestic sugar growers to keep sugar tariffs as well. We're practically the only developed country that has a sugar tariff, and that's why we have "high fructose corn syrup" in everything, and why American Coca-Cola tastes like filthy, disgusting shit, compared even to the Coke in Canada.
While I'm not a fan of corn based ethanol, I am a fan of having a heavily subsidized and regulated agricultural industry in the US combined with import tarrifs and controls in imported food stuffs.
The combination of those factors ensures that farming in the US remains profitable to most farmers and guarantees that even in a global economic melt down, getting food to the plates of Americans will not be an impossible problem.
It does screw with the global economy something fierce though and pisses on all of th
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable
As it applies to Corn based ethanol, true. But there are a lot of different options for biofuels. Ethanol is an unrealistic option for many reason, the limitations of corn is only one of the thorns in its side.
Soy-Diesel is a net gain, but at ~50 gallons per acre there is no way to get the volume needed to make a dent. There are other slightly more exotic that can push bio-diesel up to 200 gallons per acre, but they require a growing climate that is only available in a small section of the US.
Algae farms on the other hand, can pump out thousands of gallons of bio-Diesel per acre, can be designed to run in low pop/non-farmland south west US, and can be used to clean exhaust from existing coal fired power plants. Of all the bio fuel options, these are really looking like the hot ticket right now.
I'm interested in the concept of "seasteading," the idea of colonizing the ocean surface. It's been proposed that a sea-farm can produce a profitable crop by using the huge "land" area available to grow algae and/or seaweed/kelp. Seaweed has many industrial uses as well as being edible, while simpler algae might be used for biofuels. Does this concept seem plausible to you -- doing it at sea? On one hand there's free "land" with solar energy, and less regulation and taxation, but on the other there're proba
While I don't agree with some of your reasons, I do appreciate that someone asked the question "were they ever"?
I'm not aware that biofuels had ever graduated from the direct subsidy phase. In fact, pretty much every issue that I receive of Biodiesel magazine and the ethanol & fuel reports talk about where the government money is now, where it's headed, and how to get it.
I suppose this will start a whole rant by someone(s) regarding the invisible subsidies for oil (including the intangible subsidies of
Why does everyone assume that corn (and why is it always corn...) used for ethanol comes directly out of the human food stream allotment?
Human consumption and ethanol production combined pale in comparison to the amount of corn used for animal feed. Also, more corn is grown each year. So the percentages may shift around giving a slightly larger slice to ethanol production but the human use slice, while slightly less percentage wise is out of a bigger pie. And frankly, the less corn shoved into animals the b
UPS is already investing in electrics. Lots of their transports are short-range (from the local depot to your door, though city traffic) with relatively small loads, which fits perfectly with small electrics.
They never were (Score:2, Interesting)
The biofuels of which you speak have always produced more pollution through their manufacture than they have saved through reduced car emissions, so their future is largely political, not economical.
Oh and holy crap what an inflammatory summary. Yes the banks are temporarily not lending at the lower interest rates, no this does not have any effect on capitalism.
Re:They never were (Score:5, Informative)
Corn is not the only way to make ethanol. There are far better ways. Just look at how many different sources you can make drinking alcohol from. Ethanol is the same thing, just distilled to 200 proof.
you got whiskey (corn), rum (sugar, and you can grow sugar beets just fine in most of the US), wine (grapes or practically any fruit or berry. France actually is doing this with a lot of their surplus wine.), sake (rice), vodka (grains, potatoes), etc. All of those are potential fuel ethanol sources.
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Re:They never were (Score:5, Funny)
You missed something in your list. That stuff in the back of my fridge. I'm not sure what it started out as, but I'm pretty sure it's got a decent ethanol content now.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And ethanol isn't the only biofuel. Biodiesel generally has better numbers, and methanol (which you rarely hear about anymore) has a lot going for it too.
Re:They never were (Score:4, Informative)
Good point. I also like diesels in general as they have better characteristics (inherently better efficiency, more torque, and the engines last practically forever due to the heavier construction) for most people. Sure, they can be problematic to start in the cold, but that's why Andrew Freeman invented the block heater.
I'm not a fan of methanol though, as it's fantastically toxic (blindness, death, etc.), and can be absorbed via the skin, whereas ethanol is much less so. Also, methanol burns almost invisible.
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This is why ethanol in the US won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethanol in the US has nothing to do with alternative fuels, or replacing gasoline. It is primarily a subsidy to American corn farmers. Corn can never be a worthwhile source of ethanol.
Fact is, gasoline is cheap. Arguing about nebulous unknown "costs" in the future doesn't change it's price today. In fact, gasoline isn't just cheap, it's rock bottom dirt fucking cheap. The economics are simple, as long as gasoline is cheaper than any sort of biofuel, people will continue to use it.
This isn't the fault of the oil companies, who have been for years reshaping themselves into "energy" companies. The minute biofuel becomes competitive with gasoline, the oil companies will begin sinking their billions into controlling it. They already have the infrastructure, so it's logical for them to take it over.
Until some new process is created which can demonstrate large volume production of biofuel at prices better than gasoline, we're stuck with gasoline. The moment such a process is created, auto makers, consumers, and the oil companies will all switch on their own.
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Re:They never were (Score:5, Informative)
Typical AC, you are absolutely wrong.
There are many companies existing right now that can turn landfill waste into bio-deisel. The process is completely self generating meaning they use energy from the process to run the system. Many designs are completely sealed systems meaning they do not vent anything into the environment.
Google: "biodiesel from landfill" and see for yourself. Another: http://www.cleanenergyprojects.com/ [cleanenergyprojects.com]
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Algae is the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, why aren't we considering this ... making gasoline from dead human bodies? If I could squeeze a gallon of high-octane out of granny and grandpa, why not?
Although, it might be a bit creepy, tanking up with your grandparents.
Of course, this would kill the zombie film industry: "There ain't no dead bodies in the graveyard, I done burned them up in my nitro-burning funny car!"
Short Answer No, But They Never Were (Score:4, Insightful)
No
Were they realistically feasible in the first place?
Absolutely not. The quantity of land that would need to be re-purposed if a significant percentage of US oil usage was to be bio-fuels would be enormous.
Re:Short Answer No, But They Never Were (Score:5, Interesting)
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Last time I checked (Score:2)
the Algae farmers did not comprise a big enough voting bloc for the US Congress to consider their viability in saving the current environment, of course by environment I mean keeping one's seat.
Corn Ethanol/Switchgrass etc was more about who was who than what was what
Re:Short Answer No, But They Never Were (Score:5, Interesting)
Biofuels from macrocrops are generally infeasible, especially corn.
Biofuels from algae are energy-positive, consume much smaller areas, and are currently our best hope of weaning ourselves from foreign oil. If we had invested in bioprocessing techniques for algae the way we invested in securing our oil supply halfway around the world, we would be an oil-producing country by now.
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Re:Short Answer No, But They Never Were (Score:5, Insightful)
>Biofuels from macrocrops are generally infeasible, especially corn.
Right. That's what people generally refer to when they say biofuel because we actually produce biofuel in practice. If the government allocates money for biofuel... it is going to corn based biofuel.
>Biofuels from algae are energy-positive...
> nd are currently our best hope of weaning ourselves from foreign oil.
Phht, the grass always looks greener on the other side of the hill.
You can say it would save the day only because it has not been tried at scale, so we don't yet know what underlying challenges and costs it would present.
This is a persistent problem with how people evaluate energy solutions. Originally, nuclear fission was supposed to solve all of our energy needs. It was supposed to be safe, and cheap enough that we wouldn't have to meter it. Then we tried it out, and there were problems. Now, everyone knows about those problems so there is little political will to pursue the nuclear power further. However at this point in time, nuclear power has actually become more practical and safer than when we originally were enthusiastic about it.
I'm not arguing for nuclear power here. I'm pointing out the flaw in the underlying reasoning, which is that *any* new technology that hasn't been put into widespread production is going to always look sexier than a practical solution that exists today.
. Any technology to replace fossil fuels is going to be incredibly costly to develop and make safe because of the scale we are talking about. We don't need to switch gears again for the Nth time and start from scratch on "magic energy technology X" that will solve all of our problems while costing us nothing.
We need the fortitude to take one of the technologies, such as nuclear, which has been maturing for decades, and *scale it up* and *solve* the hard problems it presents. It won't be easy, but what people refuse to understand is there *is no easy way out* of the problem we are suffering.
Remember, the whole reason we are in this mess is because we acted like short shighted morons. Doing the same thing over again and calling it "green" won't solve the problem.
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At the very least.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait until summer (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on what nations you are talking about. In the USA, bio-fuels might be a non starter but in poorer [tropical] nations, bio fuels are a "Godsend."
These nations put in very little in bio fuel plants like the Jatropha, then get its seeds that can yield up to 40% oil by weight.
The plant is also resistant to drought and needs very little maintenance. The trouble with the USA is that folks look to corn whenever the bio-fuels subject comes up and in many cases, this is not economic at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be more profitable for the poor farmer to grow stuff to feed a rich american or western european's car than to feed the poor in his country.
Compare how much a car driver is can pay per litre, and how much a poor person in Africa/India etc can afford to pay for the equivalent calories in food.
Some areas don't support edible crops and so there won't be competition there. But in many cases land for food crops can be used for fuel crops.
In theory in the long term the
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Yes, Duh! (Score:2, Insightful)
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It's perfectly reasonable. Since these fuels require more energy to produce than they actually provide, with the cost of fuel going down it is now going to become cheap enough to practically waste energy on this sort of "alternative-fuel" nonsense. If they would only pass a law requiring the use of these fuel sources, there would be no limit to the money and energy we could waste!
Hey, this happened once before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back during the 1970's there was a fuel shortage and the bio-fuels industry picked up. Then we saw $30 a barrel and lower oil that drove all the producers out of business. Some say it was a calculated move on the part of OPEC to make sure that no competition arises. I'm not sure I'd go that far as OPEC nearly destroyed itself due to cheating in that period...
It's not much of a surprise that it's happened again. (Gee what happened to that $200 a barrel mark the media was predicting by the end of the year). Bio-fuels were another way for the agriculture lobby to get more money for corn. So with cheap oil, everyone will go back to worrying about other things and in 10 -15 years when there is another disrupution and the prices sky rocket, people will once again start up bio fuel projects.
You'd think we'd learn, but to quote Mark Twain: History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
Let's hope they're not (Score:5, Insightful)
The most ecological energy policy is to stop the government from subsidizing oil (by building suburbia with land use restricitons [blogspot.com]), subsidizing coal, and subsidizing water. There is no magic fuel out there that will allow us to consume infinite amounts of cheap energy - nature made extracting energy expensive for a reason, and the government needs to get out of the business of trying to make it easier.
Hopefully, alternate fuel research will go on. (Score:2)
I think makers of internal combustion engines and their fuel suppliers, need to look at this as a temporary reprieve from the Governor while their case is reviewed.
Research into alternate energy sources for transportation must continue.
To give up this research just because petroleum prices are low, would be a grave mistake.
Heck, bump prices up a little and use the surplus to fund research instead of paying CEO salaries and shareholder dividends.
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"bump prices up a little and use the surplus to fund research instead of paying CEO salaries and shareholder dividends"
Hahahahahahahahaha! Good luck persuading the decisionmakers, ie CEOs and shareholders.
Better to fund my start-up which reduces consumer demand while producing fuel from local sources. Send your cheques to The Soylent Diesel Company.
Research still ongoing (Score:5, Interesting)
No WAY (Score:2)
It's a recession, and businesses are closing down or scaling back? Unheard of!
Vertical farms (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people posting so far seem to confuse corn subsidy biofuel with biofuels in general. But there are other biofuels already which are not energy-negative such as alcohol made from sugar cane waste in Brazil, where the nonconvertible cellulose is burned to provide the heat input to the process. Here in the UK we have limited production of alcohol and charcoal from coppiced shrubs and timber processing waste; there are several other initiatives. Given that the price of oil is controlled more by speculation than demand, and given financial instability, we can expect it to change wildly over the next few years. Industries needing long term investment should be protected to some degree from the fluctuations. A working biofuel industry would help to stabilise the oil price, because it would introduce an element of competition into the fuels market. Speculators do not like competitive industries because it is harder to manipulate them.
The future is bio-hydrocarbons... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are fundamental fallacies to our existing economy. They assume a workable environment in which to do business, and that the environment is infinite and free. If you look at the economic cost of global warming over the next hundred years, the global price rises to hundreds of trillions of dollars. A few of the costs include;
A) Land lost by sea level rise
B) Damage caused by increase flood and drought
C) Loss of critical biostocks (crash in fish populations, ocean acidification, key land ocean and air species)
D) Storm damage
E) Increased spread of tropical diseases
F) Wars caused by loss of water, food, and habitable land
G) Loss of land for agriculture
H) Failure of environmental systems supporting a minimum quality of life
Algae based oil is an excellent fuel alternative. Another is bioengineering new fungii discovered to produce diesel fuel directly from cellulose. Both of these technologies are utterly plug and play in our current petroleum base infrastructure. Both sequester carbon from the atmosphere, so their burning adds no new carbon and using them for other purposes like petrochemical feed-stocks actually removes carbon from the atmosphere. Both create tremendous new economic opportunities, and if supported by the government and the current petroleum business point us to a workable gap stop solution until helium cooled pebble bed fission and fusion are perfected.
Petro Sun Inc and Algal Biofuels full-steam ahead (Score:2)
They just signed a long-term contract with China.
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081212/0460039.html [yahoo.com]
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081211/0459633.html [yahoo.com]
How the middle east works (Score:2, Insightful)
If we had kept even moderately higher oil price levels after the scare of 73' then we would have a way less dependence on all the middle eastern oil. When the price went down after that it just killed the efficiency and alternate fuels industry that had sprung up, all the ideas(patents) to be bought out by oil companies. Now it could happen again, and in 20 years well wonder why we didn't ever do anything about our dependence on foreign oil.
We blame this crisis fully on the mograge market but some blame is
Re:Are the alternatives economically viable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gasoline might look cheap, but it's not. ...
You forgot to include the enormous government subsidy in the form of (military) security.
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The whole industry needs to be scrapped and would die an immediate brutal death except for subsidies which keep it alive.
One could say the same about many American industries which are getting bailouts.
Re:Are the alternatives economically viable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that most of those industries have actually been profitable at some point in the past and have some potential for making a profit in the future. I don't foresee a future in which biofuels could possibly be economically viable unless you are talking about at a very small, local level where you can use waste material from restaurants to run a half dozen cars or where farmers grow corn for human or animal consumption and use some of the leftover biomass to make fuel for their tractors. As soon as you cross the line from recycled biomass to newly grown biomass specifically for fuel, you find an entire industry based on a fundamentally flawed economic model. Basically, it's the dot-com boom all over again---a company loses money on every sale but tries to make it up in volume.
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable. (Source: Cornell/UC Berkeley study circa 2005 [physorg.com]. And then, there's the fact that the U.S. seems myopically focused on using corn as a source, which is quite possibly the worst thing you could possibly plant for fuel purposes by almost any useful metric---output relative to soil damage, output per acre, etc. It's a joke.
About the only thing slightly promising in that area is the whole algae thing. but I'm not holding my breath. Even if it eventually proves financially viable, you're still dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. And I suspect that when you factor in all the hidden maintenance costs, etc, it will end up being unprofitable just like the rest of them.
The GP poster may have said it in a flamebait-like way, but that doesn't mean the post was wrong. On the contrary. it was dead on accurate, at least if you limit biofuel to current farming technology and current sources of biomass. Realistically speaking, dumping more and more money into biofuel research is not the answer. We already have much better sources of energy---solar, wind, geothermal, tidal---that don't pollute our atmosphere significantly, don't contribute to global warming significantly, and at least in the case of solar and wind, don't require nearly the overhead in terms of maintenance, repairs, infrastructure, etc. because they can be set up at the local level (or, in the case of solar, even the household level). Power storage. That's where we should be spending research dollars. That's a problem that will still be needed even if biofuels did become commercially viable, but with better power storage, biofuels would have no real purpose for existing.
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Okay, I just reread the GGP post. The bit about global warming does strike me as a troll.... I missed that before. My bad. :-)
Re:Are the alternatives economically viable? (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to watch the story of Brazil's petroleum independence and almost total conversion to ethanol:
http://current.com/items/89112645/the_world_s_sugar_daddy.htm [current.com]
Parent
Re:Are the alternatives economically viable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sugar-cane is a fast-growing weed where most of the mass of the plant can be used for creation of fuel. America's problem is that ethanol production out of corn is tied up in the farm bill, which not only pays farmers not to grow sufficient amounts of anything to keep the price high, but causes a diversion of product away from food, forcing the price high.
The increase in production of corn-based ethanol in the US caused the price of tortillas to jump in Mexico a couple of years ago, leading to increased numbers of illegals being captured at the border (and of course, the number that get through are far, far greater than the number that get caught).
I **WISH** we could use sugar instead of corn here... the corn industry has us on lockdown and is fucking everything up. They're in collusion with our domestic sugar growers to keep sugar tariffs as well. We're practically the only developed country that has a sugar tariff, and that's why we have "high fructose corn syrup" in everything, and why American Coca-Cola tastes like filthy, disgusting shit, compared even to the Coke in Canada.
Its a bloody agricultural mafia.
Parent
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While I'm not a fan of corn based ethanol, I am a fan of having a heavily subsidized and regulated agricultural industry in the US combined with import tarrifs and controls in imported food stuffs.
The combination of those factors ensures that farming in the US remains profitable to most farmers and guarantees that even in a global economic melt down, getting food to the plates of Americans will not be an impossible problem.
It does screw with the global economy something fierce though and pisses on all of th
Re:Are the alternatives economically viable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable
As it applies to Corn based ethanol, true. But there are a lot of different options for biofuels. Ethanol is an unrealistic option for many reason, the limitations of corn is only one of the thorns in its side.
Soy-Diesel is a net gain, but at ~50 gallons per acre there is no way to get the volume needed to make a dent. There are other slightly more exotic that can push bio-diesel up to 200 gallons per acre, but they require a growing climate that is only available in a small section of the US.
Algae farms on the other hand, can pump out thousands of gallons of bio-Diesel per acre, can be designed to run in low pop/non-farmland south west US, and can be used to clean exhaust from existing coal fired power plants. Of all the bio fuel options, these are really looking like the hot ticket right now.
-Rick
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Do they take into account the sunlight that went into the plants that went into fossil fuels?
In either case, they shouldn't - the sun would have shined whether or not there was a plant there.
In any case, I don't believe Brazil [wikipedia.org] are secretly consuming oil to hide the fact that biofuels are a net energy loss.
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While I don't agree with some of your reasons, I do appreciate that someone asked the question "were they ever"?
I'm not aware that biofuels had ever graduated from the direct subsidy phase. In fact, pretty much every issue that I receive of Biodiesel magazine and the ethanol & fuel reports talk about where the government money is now, where it's headed, and how to get it.
I suppose this will start a whole rant by someone(s) regarding the invisible subsidies for oil (including the intangible subsidies of
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Why does everyone assume that corn (and why is it always corn...) used for ethanol comes directly out of the human food stream allotment?
Human consumption and ethanol production combined pale in comparison to the amount of corn used for animal feed. Also, more corn is grown each year. So the percentages may shift around giving a slightly larger slice to ethanol production but the human use slice, while slightly less percentage wise is out of a bigger pie. And frankly, the less corn shoved into animals the b
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Which really means that companies like FedEx and Walmart should be buying into gasoline alternatives just to insure stable fuel prices for themselves.
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UPS is already investing in electrics. Lots of their transports are short-range (from the local depot to your door, though city traffic) with relatively small loads, which fits perfectly with small electrics.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4234572.html?page=2 [popularmechanics.com]
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They don't run out, and they aren't located underneath countries that don't like us much.
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That's a mighty big assumption.