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Key Questions on Energy Options
Posted by Robert Rapier on January 24, 2007 - 12:00pm
In my opinion, they are:
1. Is the energy source sustainable?
2. What are the potential negative externalities of producing/using this energy source?
3. What is the EROEI?
4. Is it affordable?
5. Are there better alternatives?
6. Are there other special considerations?
7. In summary, are the advantages of the source large enough to justify any negative consequences?
For the purposes of this essay, I want to focus on energy sources for transportation. Let’s look at some options, and get a better handle on why we have opted for the energy sources we presently use. I will not cover all of the options. In fact, nuclear, which is likely to play a bigger part in the future, is not discussed simply because I don't know enough about it.
A few comments here, as some of the questions warrant additional comment. With respect to sustainability, just because a fuel is not sustainable does not immediately disqualify it from consideration. It just means that there must eventually be something else to take its place. This could even be another unsustainable option, but these unsustainable options are unsustainable for a reason. It would be preferable to move to something sustainable.
Likewise on the negative externalities. There are negative externalities that we can tolerate, and some we can’t, but most fall in between. Is increased pollution a tolerable negative externality? It obviously depends on the level and type of pollution. If the pollution level for a relatively benign substance goes from undetectable to barely detectable, that is probably an externality that we can live with. Others aren’t so clear cut, but all need to be weighed against the perceived benefits.
The question of affordability is a really loaded question, as this will mean different things to different people. Does affordability mean that I can commute in a Hummer 40 miles one way to work with minimal economic impact? Or does it mean that I can continue to drive my subcompact a few miles per week while still being able to afford food? These are issues that we can discuss.
Liquid Fossil Fuels
1. Clearly not sustainable.
2. The potential negative externalities are many. Among them are Global Warming, increased pollution, using our military to keep supply options open, and potentially enabling the earth to be populated beyond its carrying capacity.
3. The energy return on fossil fuels is quite high. Despite publications that have suggested that the energy return on fossil fuels is less than 1.0, the actual energy return (from oil in the ground to fuel in the tank) is in the range of 6.0 – 7.0. That is, for 1 BTU of energy expended, at least 6 BTUs of fossil fuel can be extracted from the ground and processed into liquid fuels for a net of 5 BTUs.
4. Yes, this is our most “affordable” energy option with respect to the price we pay at the pump.
5. It depends on the definition of “better.” If better means a cheap option that supplies the U.S. with the current level of energy consumption, then “No.” But I would define better such that the source is sustainable and negative externalities are minimized. In that case, there are better alternatives, which will be covered.
6. One special consideration here is the relying on fossil fuels puts our energy security squarely in the hands of the Middle East, an intolerable situation in my opinion.
7. No.
I did not break out GTL and CTL via Fischer-Tropsch separately, although perhaps I should have. I have voiced my concerns about those in a previous essay - XTL: Promise and Peril.
Grain Ethanol
1. Not sustainable.
2. Again, many potential negative externalities. Among them are loss of topsoil, increased pollution from pesticide and herbicide runoff, aquifer depletion, and an increase in food prices due to increased grain demand (a positive externality to those who farm).
3. The energy return on grain ethanol is very low. Published studies put this number at around 1.3, but the return for fossil fuels in and ethanol out averages less than 1.1. Animal feed byproduct that is given a BTU value pushes the EROEI up to 1.3. Therefore, for 1 BTU of energy expended, less than 1.1 BTUs of ethanol can be produced, along with an additional 0.2 BTUs of animal feed. The net is then 0.3 BTUs with the byproduct credit, or about 1/17th of the fossil fuel net.
4. It is affordable, due to direct subsidies. But based on the current spot price of ethanol, it is slightly over twice the cost of regular unleaded gasoline on a BTU equivalent basis.
5. Yes. Even staying within the ethanol category, there are better choices.
6. The business of grain ethanol has revitalized many rural communities, and has made farming much more profitable. However, it also encourages farmers to preferentially plant corn instead of less environmentally harmful crops. The fossil fuel inputs into ethanol production are also largely non-liquid (natural gas and coal). In the case of natural gas, this makes a fine transportation fuel. But some ethanol supporters correctly point out that we have lots of coal, and we could use that as our primary energy source for ethanol production. Just don't tell me it's renewable in that case!
7. No.
Grain ethanol is not sustainable for primarily 2 reasons. First, it involves a loss of topsoil, and in many areas a depletion of fossil aquifers. The amount of topsoil loss has been subject to much debate, but it will vary based on many factors. Some areas are certainly more sustainable than others. The other concern is the high degree of embedded (and unsustainable) fossil fuels required for grain ethanol production. This means that in addition to the direct negative externalities, you can add secondary negative externalities caused by the usage of the fossil fuels.
The pollution issue, in my opinion, is quite serious but is typically ignored by ethanol boosters. This issue was discussed last year in an article in CorpWatch. After discussing the “carbon monoxide, methanol, toluene, and volatile organic compounds” emitted by ethanol plants, the article addressed the issue of pollution caused by corn farming:
Modern corn hybrids require more nitrogen fertilizer, herbicides, and insecticides than any other crop, while causing the most extensive erosion of top soil. Pesticide and fertilizer runoff from the vast expanses of corn in the U.S. prairies bleed into groundwater and rivers as far as the Gulf of Mexico.In my opinion, these are negative externalities just as serious as those posed by fossil fuel usage. Yet this is the alternative that we are scaling up just as fast as we possibly can. The real problem is that the negative externalities don't directly and immediately impact most people's lives, so they pay no heed to them. Sure, increased ethanol production might cause atrazine levels in drinking wells to increase, but it's in someone else's water. "It's not my problem if it's not in my water" is the attitude of most people. But I doubt anyone personally affected by this is going to consider it an acceptable externality.The nitrogen runoff flowing into the Mississippi River has fostered a vast bloom of dead algae in the Gulf that starves fish and other aquatic life of oxygen.
To understand the hidden costs of corn-based ethanol requires factoring in "the huge, monstrous costs of cleaning up polluted water in the Mississippi River drainage basin and also trying to remedy the negative effects of poisoning the Gulf of Mexico," says Tad Patzek of the University of California's Civil and Environmental Engineering department.
"These are not abstract environmental effects," Patzek asserts, "these are effects that impact the drinking water all over the Corn Belt, that impact also the poison that people ingest when they eat their food, from the various pesticides and herbicides." Corn farming substantially tops all crops in total application of pesticides, according to the US Department of Agriculture, and is the crop most likely to leach pesticides into drinking water.
While banned by the European Union, atrazine is the most heavily used herbicide in the United States - primarily applied to cornfields - and the EPA rates it as the second most common pesticide in drinking wells. The EPA has set maximum safe levels of atrazine in drinking water at 3 parts per billion, but scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have found up to 224 parts per billion in Midwestern streams and 2,300 parts per billion in Corn Belt irrigation reservoirs.
Sugarcane Ethanol
1. Sustainable, for reasons I outlined in this article.
2. Few potential negative externalities to my knowledge. I have heard mention that expanded sugarcane production will be at the expense of rain forest, but the sugarcane plantations in Brazil are not near the rain forests. I do not know if rainforests in other tropical countries may be put in danger by expanded sugarcane production.
3. The energy return on sugarcane ethanol appears to be in the 8/1 range, which would make it better than gasoline. More on that below.
4. It is affordable, but in the U.S. we punish Brazilian ethanol with a $0.54/gallon tariff to protect our unsustainable corn ethanol production.
5. For a liquid fuel that will fit in the current transportation infrastructure, I don’t think sugarcane ethanol can be beaten with existing technology. But it can't provide our current level of energy usage.
6. The industry can provide an economic boost to tropical countries, where it is sorely needed.
7. In my opinion, the advantages of sugarcane ethanol justify the costs, provided habitat is not being destroyed to grow more sugarcane.
I find it shameful that the U.S. subsidizes an unsustainable and polluting industry like grain ethanol, and punishes a sustainable industry like sugarcane ethanol. Yet even with those tariffs in place, Brazil can still ship their ethanol to the U.S. and compete with homegrown corn ethanol prices.
The energy return on sugarcane ethanol as it has been calculated does appear to be in the 8/1 range, which would make it better than gasoline. On the face of it, this seems absurd. Nature has already done the major processing for fossil fuels, and turned ancient plant material into long-chain, energy dense compounds. In the case of sugarcane ethanol, a lot of energy inputs are required, especially for purifying the ethanol, but those inputs are being satisfied by burning the sugarcane ethanol residues to produce process heat. Therefore, they are not being counted against the energy output.
However, gasoline accounting is not done in this manner. When oil is refined to liquid fuels, a lot of fuel gas is produced. That fuel gas tends to be burned in the refinery to produce process heat, but I have still charged that against the energy balance I calculated above. If I had done the energy accounting as is done with sugarcane ethanol, one could state that the energy return of gasoline is actually only the initial energy required to get the oil out of the ground, which averages about 17/1 worldwide. The refining step would get a free pass, since the energy in the oil is ultimately used to refine the oil. So no, the energy balance of sugarcane ethanol is not in fact better than that for gasoline.
Despite that, I believe sugarcane ethanol is a good option for mitigating a portion of our fossil fuel usage because it is renewable, and it lacks the negative externalities of fossil fuels. However, our present usage is much too great to be offset with sugarcane ethanol alone.
Cellulosic Ethanol
1. Sustainable.
2. Few potential negative externalities depending on the biomass source.
3. Unknown.
4. Presently, despite frequently optimistic claims, it costs significantly more to produce cellulosic ethanol than to produce corn ethanol.
5. Yes.
6. There are numerous sources of biomass that could be used to produce cellulosic ethanol.
7. Time will tell, but cellulosic ethanol did not just come onto the scene. Researchers have been trying to commercialize it for many years without much success. It will require several breakthroughs, none of which are certain to occur, before cellulosic ethanol contributes to our energy requirements.
Due to the lack of commercial cellulosic ethanol plants, the energy return is largely unknown. On the one hand, fossil fuel inputs for growing the biomass will likely be much lower than for corn. However, the ethanol concentration yielded from a cellulosic ethanol process tends to be significantly lower than the concentration obtained in a conventional ethanol production. A presentation at last year's St. Louis Renewable Energy Conference from Keith Collins, Chief Economist at the USDA, showed that corn ethanol yields 14-20% ethanol, while cellulosic is a paltry 4%. That means a lot more energy for purification.
In addition, more processing steps are required. I have seen EROEI estimates for cellulosic ethanol that range from less than 1 to greater than 8. Based on the factors mentioned here, the true estimate is likely to be closer to 1. But the truth is we just won't know until some commercial facilities are up and running.
I don't discount that technical improvements will occur with cellulosic ethanol. But many people who don't understand the nature of the challenges (or who have a vested interest not to) have presumed technical breakthroughs of a practically magical nature. If I announced that we would be making regular trips to Mars within 1o years, most people would reject this because they have some understanding of both the technical difficulty involved, and they understand that the costs would be enormous. Yet those same people may have no problem believing that we are going to transition our fossil fuel infrastructure to a cellulosic ethanol infrastructure. Yet the technical challenges involved are of the magnitude of ferrying us all back and forth to Mars.
Biodiesel
1. It depends on the source.
2. Biodiesel in general suffers from far fewer negative externalities than most biofuels, but palm oil gets mixed reviews. On the one hand, it is a tropical crop like sugarcane ethanol, and the EROEI appears to be very good. On the other, rainforest is being destroyed to grow new palm oil plantations.
3. By most accounts, the EROEI is greater than 3, which is respectable for a biofuel.
4. It is more expensive than conventional diesel. Current subsidies make it affordable.
5. Biodiesel can be a sustainable contributor toward energy security.
6. Diesel engines are much more efficient than gasoline engines, which reduces the overall fuel requirement.
7. Again, it depends on the source. If we are going to chop down rainforest to plant palm oil plantations, then no. If we are going to use waste oils and existing high oil-yielding crops (grown sustainably), then yes.
I think the U.S. made a mistake by not favoring the diesel engine over the gasoline engine as has been done in many other countries. Diesels are much more efficient than gasoline engines, so a diesel fleet would stretch the fuel supply.
Biodiesel can be produced sustainably, but caution is warranted. We first need to make sure that absolutely all of the waste vegetable oil in the country gets collected and turned into biodiesel. But even growing crops for biodiesel may be done sustainably. Biodiesel derived from soybeans, while expensive to produce, comes at a much lower environmental price and a much better EROEI than corn ethanol. Then there is the added benefit of 1). A higher BTU value per gallon; and 2). The higher efficiency of the diesel engine. These factors combined mean that we would need less than half the biodiesel to drive the same amount of miles we could if using ethanol.
At this stage, I would put algal biodiesel in the same category as cellulosic ethanol: Technically feasible, sustainable, but it may not be commercially feasible. Also as in the case of cellulosic ethanol, there is much hype but much of it is without merit at this time. Magical technical breakthroughs are again being presumed as a given by many people. I have even been guilty of this to some extent.
Biomass Gasification
1. Sustainable.
2. Care has to be taken with respect to the source used for gasification. There are also potential air quality issues from a large-scale gasification program.
3. I have not seen an EROEI calculation, but I expect it to be much higher than for cellulosic ethanol. I would estimate an EROEI in the 6-10 range (based on the method I use for calculating a fossil fuel EROEI).
4. Currently capital costs are too high to enable biomass gasification to compete.
5. Biomass gasification has a chance to be a highly sustainable contributor toward our energy demands.
6. Biomass gasification could be used either to produce electricity (e.g., use biomass instead of coal in a power plant application) or as the first step in a liquid-fuels program. More below.
7. Yes.
I have described what I believe are the advantages of biomass gasification over cellulosic ethanol previously in Cellulosic Ethanol vs. Biomass Gasification. Briefly, cellulosic ethanol converts a small portion of the available biomass. Gasification converts all of it into syngas, which can then be used to make a wide variety of chemicals, including methanol, ethanol, or diesel.
The main problem with implementing a large scale biomass gasification is that it is presently just too expensive. The capital costs associated with processing the biomass are very high. Current estimates, which I documented in the afore-mentioned article, put the cost of a biomass gasification plant at about 7 times the per barrel cost of a conventional oil refinery or grain ethanol plant, and double the costs of a coal-to-liquids plant. At some point we may be willing to pay these costs for our fuel, but it won't be until other options are largely exhausted.
Wind and Solar
1. Sustainable.
2. Few potential negative externalities to my knowledge. Wind turbines have been implicated in the deaths of some bats and birds, and there may be some increased pollution as a result of solar panel manufacture.
3. The energy returns have been calculated in a number of different ways, but most sources show an energy balance more favorable than that of most liquid fuels.
4. Wind-generated electricity is affordable, but solar is still out of reach for the average person.
5. For electricity generation, I think these are the best, most sustainable options.
6. There are a number of special considerations for this option. First, wide-spread electric transport – an absolute must in my opinion - is not yet a reality. Battery technology still doesn’t quite have the cost/benefit ratio that many consumers desire. Also, if the U.S. moves toward more electric transportation a lot of infrastructure will need to be upgraded. There are also currently issues with a shortage of silicon for making solar cells, which is keeping prices elevated. Finally, there is the issue of intermittency for both of these sources. Improvements in storage technology (such as compressed air energy storage) are needed.
7. I believe that we need to move toward transportation electrification, which in my opinion would make wind and solar power more attractive options than any of the liquid fuel options (with the possible exceptions of sugarcane ethanol and waste-derived biodiesel).
The potential advantages of a solar and wind-powered transport system are so great that our current infatuation with grain ethanol is a tremendous misallocation of resources. My vision for the future would involve some solar panels on the vast majority of houses around the world providing the electricity to run our small PHEVs. I truly believe this is the model that we will eventually implement.
Conservation
This essay wouldn't be complete without a discussion on conservation. Consider that we could save more fuel, while stretching our budgets, by choosing to embrace conservation. If we chose more fuel-efficient cars, slowed down, took fewer trips, and walked or rode a bike instead of driving, just think about the fuel we could save. We would immediately reduce our dependence on the Middle East, because we just wouldn't need as much oil. We would increase the chance that some combination of alternatives could supply a level of energy that would allow us to maintain a decent standard of living.
Yet in this rush to alternatives, conservation is typically given just a bit of lip service. Our politicians will say "Ethanol, ethanol, ethanol, and yeah, we should conserve." But money is not being thrown at conservation. Imagine if instead of spending over $2 billion a year in direct ethanol subsidies, we directed that money into conservation measures. We could offer everyone in the country direct tax breaks for purchasing fuel efficient vehicles. To me, such a policy would make a much greater contribution toward our energy independence than the policies we currently have in place. I believe we have to demand that our political leaders put more emphasis on conservation as a piece of our energy puzzle.
And don't give me Jevon's Paradox. If as a result of increased conservation in the U.S., China happens to consume the energy we saved, that's ultimately too bad for China. We will have still reduced our energy dependence and taken a step toward sustainability. When the full force of Peak Oil hits, those who have thrown out Jevon's Paradox as a reason not to conserve will finally understand the foolishness of such reasoning. What is going to matter is that we have a small energy footprint and are as sustainable as we can possibly be. Throwing out Jevon's Paradox as an argument that conservation is ultimately futile will never allow us to prepare for the effects of oil depletion on society.
When we are serious about attacking our energy dependence, we will go after the demand side. I believe that a revenue neutral gas tax would seriously cut into our demand over time. This is, of course, the main reason for Europe's success in maintaining a much lower level of energy usage. Such an approach works, and Europeans enjoy a nice standard of living. Perhaps we will decide to take this proven approach for reducing consumption before declining oil production forces higher prices on us before we have time to prepare.
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Thanks Robert!
This is a great summary that is very much needed!
In case of grain ethanol, you may also consider the potential economic consequences of the increase of the use of corn ethanol as the grain production per capita is peaking at the world level:
Also, global warming may increase the occurrence of severe weather that may impact corn production in the future (e.g. severe droughts).
And there are the social ramifications of the increase in corn prices. Energy Bulletin had a great summary recently on the effects in Mexico:
http://www.energybulletin.net/24986.html
Couple of snippets:
"High corn prices are wreaking havoc on Mexico's inflation rate and forcing shoppers to pay more for eggs, milk and tortillas. But they're a godsend to farmers such as Victor Manuel Amador Luna."
"Facing public outrage over the soaring price of tortillas, President Felipe Calderón abandoned his free-trade principles on Thursday and forced producers to sign an agreement fixing prices for corn products."
A simple law of ecology is that it is impossible to do only one thing. What are the feedback loops between the inability to politically tell people that curtailment of demand is necessary, the short-sighted investments in an ethanol production system with no future, rising commodity prices and food insecurity in Mexico, political and economic stability in our neighboring country, further immigration pressures, the US' inability to maintain, let alone expand its own decaying public infrastructure, the high expectations of a generally clueless and delusional populace, and the continued failure of institutions to meet those expectations?
And true to form, Mexico screwed it up. The corn producers will just send all their corn to the US and make loads of money and abandon the local tortilla market. Now instead of having expensive tortillas, they will have none at all. This situation can be blamed on one entity: the Mexican government. Of course, people will blame everyone else--the US, George Bush, Drivers, capitalism etc.
I expect the corn will go where it fetches the most money. If American drivers are willing to pay more than the average Mexican peasant is willing (or able) to pay, then it will come Norte. No bureaucratic bungling necessary.
Of course, there are things that we can do to mitigate the consequences:
Have I forgotten anything???
Yes, the obvious thing: the Mexicans can grow more corn and be a part of the bonanza. This will lower the price of corn and then Juan and Maria can afford their tortillas again. Bonus points if Juan and Maria invest in corn or ethanol-related companies.
Actually, the Pseudo-Free Market comes to mind as a culprit here.
Is the market not designed to make the rich even more rich, and the poor even poorer?
Surely the market is contrived and it is contrived often to benefit some people at the expense of others.
Economist John Gray's work comes to mind as a good balance to the "Free Market" agit prop we are spoon fed so often.
Just a thought.
Graphs like this can be very misleading. Why would the world hold LARGE stocks of grain? You can argue food security, but no one is willing to pay for that security. Over the last 10 years, grain prices in the US and therefore the world have been quite low. So there has been a STRONG incentive to not produce grain, or do something with the grain produced. See the rapid rise in the livestock industry... If we looked at a graph of "calories available" I think it would look quite different.
If you notice the last time world stocks were below 60 days (early 1970's), we saw a dramatic rise in prices (from $1 bushel/corn to $3 bushel) that lasted until the ag economy collapse in the mid 80's. What did this price rise do -- dramatically increased grain production.
The last 10 years of low (sub $2) prices have caused a fall in grain production -- where did it go? see the increase in oilseed production for example.. What will $4 corn do -- increase production no doubt. Simple economics.
Grain for food vs. Grain for energy is worthy of an entirely different post...
BINGO!
Having a very large grain, etc to liquid fuel industry is essentially the same as having a large spare production for food use. In case of emergency drive less and food is available.
Not really. That grains curve is all grains, not just corn. includes wheat, rice, barley, etc. You can draw separate curves for the individual consumption characteristics of the various grains.
Second, not all corn grown for ethanol (or just plain grown) is for human consumption. A very significant portion of the corn produced is for corn meal for animal production.
Can humans consume it? Maybe. Maybe not.
"Can humans consume it? Maybe.Maybe not."
I think you are very misinformed or just plain don't understand.
What grain is specifically grown then for ethanol?
You never heard of yellow corn meal?
Do you think they intentionally seperate the various types of corn at the dump station? White ..yes. Non-GMO vs GMO yes but not so that some doesn't get mixed in with the others.
Can humans consume it? Consume what? #3 yellow dent corn? #3 yellow dent corn?
We just dump the harvest in the bins and pits. They classify it and sell you sell it either spot or contract. Some may go one way if a buyer purchases and specifies #3 yellow dent or flint or what ever.
As you are dumping your load you may also be dumping on top of part of the other guys load in front of you.
I think we have little idea of what we are or are not consuming.
I grind up #2 yellow dent for my own cornmeal. I grind up my white if I want white. All is edible. Hybrid is hybrid. Non hybrid doesn't get classified as far as I know. I have never been asked that question by the pit crew.
You might want to call some companies who have grain operations and ask but I believe they will not tell you or obfuscate. ADM is one. CGB is another. There are more.
If you wish to make statements that can stand then you must state that its your experience or give a source. Otherwise you lead others astray.
I don't all the answers but I can find most out but what I stated is my opinion and based on harvesting and hauling to market and general knowledge.
airdale
The state of NC Department of Agriculture certainly makes this distinction, if I understood what my ex told me several years ago at the NC State Fair.
I was unaware, until about 4 years ago, that the NCDA made such a distinction and yet at one of the NCDA displays was this segregation according to whether the corn was designated for animal consumption versus human consumption.
Maybe NCDA is unique amongst states. I can ask next week when I have lunch with my ex.
Any feed that pigs can grow on commercially is good enough for keeping humans from starving. Tasty and legal are stricter requirements. Sometimes pigs get the better feed. A pig food additive made from treated oats to replace antibiotics as a stomache stabilizer is now sold as health food with a HUGE markup.
I would really like to see the work of the site www.eroei.com expanded. I also would like to know who is behind the site?
For just one product, like biodiesel, there's the EROEI for algae, canola oil and palm oil inputs, among other factors. So not only do we need to consider each fuel type, but how it is produced. It is extremely complex and who can we trust to do the analyses?
Right now, it seems like people are following fads related to PR industry work.
Hey, just a couple of years ago wasn't the hydrogen economy the solution to our addiction to oil?
We also need better breakdowns of the %'s of each input type when looking at EROEI for these alternative sources, otherwise it will be much harder to make objective decisions regarding which ones are feasible and sustainable long-term. We also need to know if the input sources can be substituted with ease when price/or accessibility issues come into play.
The overall EROEI, while important, is severely mis-understood by many debating peak oil. The important feature from a purely consumption perspective is that a non-usable form of energy can be converted into a form that is usable. Even forms of energy that are energy negative make sense in some cases. Luckily the folks arguing EROEI aren't running the country, otherwise we would have given up on making electricity a long time ago.
"Luckily the folks arguing EROEI aren't running the country, otherwise we would have given up on making electricity a long time ago."
Hmm, curious comment. Some of my thoughts.
Many folks who talk about EROEI also talk about energy quality. Electricity is a very high quality energy product. It is clean at the source of use, permitting the possible concentration of pollution controlling devices at sites of generation. It can be transmitted over long distances.
Though energy quality is often given as distinct from EROEI, it doesn't have to be. In a detailed EROEI analysis could incorporate some of these quality issues by looking at the costs (energy and material) of pollution control and distribution components of an energy system, for example. As environmental externalities are incorporated, perhaps electricity looks good?
I don't know the answer, and it likely depends upon application and local conditions, but my review of EROEI gives me the impression that it can take these factors into account. Perhaps those more experienced with the method could set me straight if I am wrong about this.
I think you touched on some good points.
How clean electricity is however, is dependent upon where you live. In Texas we have some wind and hydro which is clean, but most is generated from natural gas and coal. Pollution controlling devices that you mention might be feasible, although expensive, but if I remember correctly TXU is scrambling to build a host of coal burning plants before polution mandates can be handed down. I find it very unlikely when they are mandated, that the plants already in service won't be grandfathered out of inclusion.
When it comes down to it, we will continue to transform coal and natural gas into electricity and liquid fuel because that is what the consumer demands. This is why I'm arguing that the input side of EROEI is more important than the overall EROEI.
TXU is ramming the carbon tax down the throat of their customers like other utilities did with the promise of "cheap nuclear" which ended up costing billions. If any utility thinks there will be no carbon taxed down the road for them, they must be out of their minds. Either that or we are seeing just another episode of "short term stock return before long term planning". There is nothing new here.
"When it comes down to it, we will continue to transform coal and natural gas into electricity and liquid fuel because that is what the consumer demands."
That is hardly "what the customer demands". The customer simple demands energy. They don't care about how you make it. But the customer, through different channels, also demands that all production has to be ecologically reasonably clean. This is why we have the EPA and any number of laws against the release of toxic by-products. Now, what is called a toxic by-product is a matter of time and public insight. In the 19th century mercury was, despite being just as toxic as today, handled without care. People died. The law changed. Mercury is gone. Some products have become more expensive because of that. The same is happening today with carbon. Carbon and its toxic by-product CO2 will be put on the same list mercury is on shortly. And by shortly I mean it will happen on an industrial timescale short compared to a 40 or 50 year power plant amortization cycle. Some utilities have already made that determination. Others, especially those managed by morons, are a bit short of that insight. Their customers will have to pay for that.
"When it comes down to it, we will continue to transform coal and natural gas into electricity and liquid fuel because that is what the consumer demands."
That is hardly "what the customer demands". The customer simple demands energy.
Where do you live? Come to Austin and try to sell bags of coal to people filling their SUV's up at the gas station and see if it matters. Our massive infrastructure to deliver energy for transport on both the consumer and producer side is set up for liquid fuels and you if you think this is going to change anytime in the near future you live in a fantasy land.
"Our massive infrastructure to deliver energy for transport on both the consumer and producer side is set up for liquid fuels and you if you think this is going to change anytime in the near future you live in a fantasy land."
I happen to have a little bit of an insight into how industries change. Your answer is very similar to the prognosis that by the year 2000 the streets of London would be covered to a thickness of ten feet in horse manure because of the increase of horses carriages at the end of the 19th century. Of course, nothing like that happened. One technology, the horse, got simply replaced by another technology, the horse power, in 20 year's time.
A very similar thing is going on today: we are at the brink of replacing liquid transportation fuels, one way or another. The Prius is an early bird that catches the worm, the plug-in hybrids of the next decade will be the next step towards using less liquids and in parallel, the liquid fueled cars will use less and less of that stuff until we will either phase them out completely or our liquid fuel sources will change over (to something a little better than corn ethanol). In either case, the customers do not really care. Not many people still reminesce for the horse carriage in London. They prefer to take the tube or ride the bus.
As for the term "near future". To me 30, 40 and 50 years are "near future" (how long did electrification take?) and the initial events are already happening. Ten years down the road "conservation" and "carbon tax" will be as common a word as "gas tax" and "demand", even in the US.
Looking at the Austin utilities web pages it looks like they would like you guys to conserve energy, after all, they even give a $550 bonus and low-interest loans for home improvements and solar energy! And they operate a wind farm and a landfil methane plant. How funny... I thought Texas was different from California. But maybe it is... it has even better solar resources.
:-)
Austin is a little more progressive than most cities.
From your original comment, it sounded like you were talking about the present, and or the near future. If you're referring to the near future as in 30+ years a way, I can buy into that.... and actually happen to agree with that for the most part. Once the trend of substitutions begin, it will most likely accelerate as more expensive fossil fuels make substitutions not only economically viable, but competively advantaged. Although I've seen this trend begin to appear for GTL, CTL, ethanol, etc - I've yet to see this with electric. The plug-in technology you mentioned sounds promissing, but until the price of these vehicles comes down, or liquid fuel increases in price where they make sense economically - I would wait until calling this inevitable.
I think the nearterm future is getting somewhat into focus right now. The key events will be a change of public opinnion in the US and the Chinese deciding to get a grip on their pollution problem. Both will (hopefully!) lead to longer term policy decisions in both countries to curb CO2 emissions and carbon use. If one of these things does not happen, the world as a whole and the country that fails to act will be in deep trouble. I am hopefully for both, though.
I think that in the US we will have a sea change in public awareness about climate issues over the next few years and a call to treat it for the serious problem it is. So that's just yet another set of neocon policies going up in flames.
We will also see a change in consumer behaviour brought on by higher energy prices. The sadening part is that we shouldn't have to wait for PO and PNG to do that for us but learn to act according to our best knowledge. It doesn't look like we will, though.
On the utility side there seem to be a lot of good things initiatives on, certainly where I live. PG&E has very similar programs to the Austin utility. Nation wide there seems to be two types of utilities: those with management that gets it and those with management that doesn't. Or maybe it goes deeper than that: some utilities define themselves as public service organizations while others are more interested in near term share holder value. Needless to say that both types have made great blunders in the past and both need to be regulated and suoervised more strictly to avoid future fiscal catastrophies.
Probably the best attempt to show foresight is the West Governors climate change initiative, which at the same time doubles (certainly for California) as an energy independence effort. And I would even look at the state level in Texas and recognize that there is recognition of the vast potential for renewables.
What stands between the potential and the implementation of renewables is time, though. Last year the wind and solar industry together had a market size of roughly $30 billion. To put that in perspective: Seagate, the largest maker of hard drives, had a revenue of $10.6 billion last year and the storage industry as a whole is a $30 billion industry. In other words: we are roughly spending as much on storing information right now as we are spending on renewable energy. (And please don't forget to compare that to Ford's net loss of $12.7 billion. Ford could have avoided that loss and done an incredible serive to the country by offering a more balanced line of vehicles! Not to mention the thousands of workers they would not have had to lay off if they had better management...)
The average worldwide spending on wind/solar energy is a mere $5/person/year. It should be obvious that even the poorest of the poor are spending a lot more than that on energy, yet, we only invest relatively little in replacing our energy infrastructure.
The realistic growth rate of idustries which depend on large scale hardware investments is 20-50%. We have seen 30% growth over the past few years, thanks to mostly European and Japanese inititives, some of which in my view are probably getting closer to the limits of their potential funding capacity. New investments will therefor have to come from the US or we will see a drop in the growth of these industries.
If we assume that a realistic average growth of renewables is 20% for the next ten years and certainly less after that, the total renewables market will be roughly $200 billion by 2017. If we allocate that proportionally to total energy consumption, the US would carry roughly 25% of that and spend $50 billion annually on renwables. That's a spending of $170 per capita and closer to $500 a year per household.
In addition, since every household has to spend a couple thousand dollars a year in replacement cost for their car and some money of home improvement, we can assume that the total annual spending that will go towards increased energy efficiency and indpendence will amount to a few hundred billion dollars and will roughly stay there or only grow more slowly after the initial growth period.
Now... this is my guess as to where we are headed in terms of infrastructure change. I might be wrong by a factor of a few, but certainly not by an order of magnitude (nobody can afford to spend all of their income on conservation and renewables). I am certainly not a cornucopian on any respect and don't expect any miracles in terms of energy sources or demand or in the rate of change we are capable of.
But if you project that to how much fossil energy we can save and replace with that money, the numbers are dominated in the short term (10-15 year) by conservation efforts which will hopefully get us 30-50% reductions (per capita) in transportation fuels and electricity and very similar savings in heating. The period after that will see more effective programs to replace all conventional energy sources with renewables (solar and wind can probably start to replace old power plants somewhere around the year 2020). That part of the effort will take a long time, certainly on the order of half a century. I certainly do not expect to be around when they will shut down the majority of coal burning plants. I also do not expect to see energy prices fall significantly in my lifetime.
The expansion of the "renewable fuels standard" to the "alternative fuels standard" looks to be a nod to CTL. We shall find out when the initiative is rolled out.
The text of the proposal at the White House site http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/energy/ seems to be laying the groundwork for many of the ideas and policy recommendations advanced by "The American Energy Security Study" Done by the American Energy Sucurity Initiative(with funding from peabody, rentech, DOD, railroad and mining groups, among others)
http://www.americanenergysecurity.org/studyrelease.html
A cursory reading of the executive summary shows many similarities, including, quite coincidentally, a 20% reduction in gasoline usage by 2017.
When it comes down to it, we will continue to transform coal and natural gas into electricity and liquid fuel because that is what the consumer demands. (austex)
That is hardly "what the customer demands". The customer simple demands energy. They don't care about how you make it. (InfinitePossibilities.)
In Switzerland, as is known, electricity is made from hydro electric dams and nuclear power, in about 60-40 proportion (+4% thermal) respectively. Pioneers, they were - in the past.
Switz. used to be a swing producer, helping out the neighboring countries. Since last year (or 2005, the precise date is not important), it imports more electricity than it exports. The imports come mostly (but not only) from France, with its impressive nuclear production.
As use of electricity rises year by year, inexorably, by between 2.5 and 4 % , more is needed. And more and more....
Switz. is a rich country, it can afford to buy, pay, etc. The proposition is to build 4 gas-to-electricity plants, and pay the requisite carbon pollution penalties (Kyoto, etc)
Every political party has objections. The left: good to move away from nuclear, but the pollution is simply too horrible. The right: good to get more energy, but it is not acceptable that these plants won’t earn money in the free market - at least they figured that out - buying the gas and paying the carbon tax etc makes it non profitable so it will be subsidized by the tax payer...argh. Not good business! And various other parties out of the mainstream object as well, with more arguments.
A new concept was thus quickly forged to reconcile these different actors: it is called transition. For the left, it is transition to ‘renewables’ (wind, etc.) for the right, the desperate wait until new nuclear stations can/will be built, or until the oil situation eases up, as it must do, according to them.
The gas plants will be built. Certainly. To keep the economy booming, to keep growth chugging along (economy, population, GDP) even if it is only 1% plus by year, Switz. will now start to buy natural gas from wherever it can get it.
Why, beyond all the posturing? Because energy... has a multiplier effect, it is still cheap at the price. Got the clout the pocket to buy it you can get a bigger return..Sustainable? affordable? renewable? ecological? Nobody cares, or rather they do care, but simply cannot reconcile themselves to thinking that what they want, what is needed, what is normal (free lunch) is nefarious, how can that be, it ain't natural.
I was wondering about the natural gas plants. I was aware of a proposal for 500 MW a few years ago, but I thought the Swiss saw Italy et al with their gas problems and thought different.
I am well aware of the French-Swiss electricity trade. The Swiss buy CHEAP French nuke late at night and save water. Then they generate peak power and export that at a premium to France, Italy, Germany, etc.
I thought Swiss generation was still about 50:50 hydro & nuke (remember SBB has it's own hydropower plants to run the railroads, generating at 16.67 Hz instead of 50 Hz, and this power is not "commercial" power).
I have noted that the Swiss are repowering many dams and other power plants and adding small hydroplants, so hydro is growing, if slowly. And Grand Dixence (2,000 MW from memory) is about to come back on-line. That is two nukes !
Any new news on the Trans-Alp project ?
Any Swiss wind turbines ?
Best Hopes,
Alan
Grandfathered coal plants are not covered under the 'New Source Review' laws and therefore don't face the restrictions, particular on mercury emission.
(geoff Goodell's book 'Big Coal' is very good on this
http://www.powells.com/biblio/0618319409?&PID=25450 )
I think what TXU is aiming at is that eventually there will be CO2 restrictions, but existing producers will have 'grandfathered' allocations of permits (this is what has happened in Europe with the ETS).
So if they are a big producer of CO2, they will get more permits, which will be more valuable.
Call it a 'land grab' strategy.
Otherwise they will manage to stave off CO2 restrictions for as long as possible.
Nuclear is hedging their bets. My own view is the consequences of more coal plants are so bad, that we should encourage as much nuclear as we can *not* because it will be cheap, but because it will be expensive (and encourage more conservation as a result) and because it does not emit CO2.
I agree Jason. I tend to be skeptical to the point of being totally dismissive of EROEI figures, especially if they are quoted by someone who has an obvious energy axe to grind. As Tom Robertson on energyresources keeps saying, there is no standardized and widely accepted methodology for measuring EROEI. So one ends up getting lots of apples vs oranges comparisons. At this point, I think it's possible that quoting EROEI figures does more harm than good. Possibly it is only useful to weed out obvious losers (like hydrogen and possibly ethanol).
As Tom Robertson on energyresources keeps saying, there is no standardized and widely accepted methodology for measuring EROEI.
Yes. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done. The reasons why it isn’t done even roughly, badly, yet leading to an accepted standard, is that such a measure is not conceptually accepted, people don’t want to know; they prefer to talk of costs in dollars (etc), to use a medium of exchange that disregards exploiting the earth/environment.
what is the energy loss for high voltage electrical lines? i hear them buzzing away overhead so they are not loss free. you have a figure ?
These comments about the EROI of electricity almost invariably conflate "conversion efficiency" with "energy return on investment". The two are not the same (though Argonne used this same conflation to try to assert that the EROI of gasoline was less than 1). To me, the appropriate calculation for electricity would be to start with the EROI of the primary energy form used in generation, such as coal, and multiply that by the conversion efficiency of power generation. So, with US coal with an EROI of, say, 30, and conversion efficiency of 33%, you'd still end up with an electricity EROI of 10. And a very high quality 10 at that.
That would be a correct accounting of the EROI of electricity. You are correct that conversion efficiency often gets conflated with EROI.
"Luckily the folks arguing EROEI aren't running the country, otherwise we would have given up on making electricity a long time ago"
That is wrong. We get a lot more energy out in the form of electricity than we utilize mining the coal and drilling for the natural gas. Saying that the EROEI of electrical generation is less than one is the same invalid arguement as saying the EROEI of gasoline production is less than one since the gas has less energy than the original crude oil.
Spot on. You cannot compare EROEI for extractive processes (i.e. coal mining, crude oil "production") with that for transformative processes (i.e. electricity generation). They are fundamentally different concepts. The EROEI for extractive processes is usually* greater than one. The EROEI for transformative processes is necessarily less than one because some energy is always lost in the transformation.
Electricity generation is a transformative process and as such its EROEI is less than one. In fact, all electrical appliances as well as all heat engines have EROEIs of less than one. For such processes, in my experience this metric is usually referred to as efficiency rather than EROEI, so we say that the efficiency of all transformative processes is less than 100%. It is incorrect to compare these efficiencies with EROEIs of extractive processes.
* It is not physically necessary for extractive processes to have EROEIs greater than one. In fact, it is conceivable that an extractive process have an EROEI less than one but also be economically viable. For example, using a lot of cheap energy to extract a smaller amount of more valuable energy. Why would you want to do this? Well, say the cheap energy is in an inconvenient form factor (e.g. uranium), while smaller amount of extracted energy is an energy-dense liquid fuel highly suitable for transportation applications.
It looks like you guys understand the point I was attempting to make - EROEI is severly misused in the peak oil community.
CTLs, GTLs, and even Ethanol are essentially conversion processes - we are transforming an energy source that not easily usable in it's current form into another form - as is done with electricity.
It's a valid point, of course, but I think conversion is taken into account with EROEI (or it should be in any case). Conversion means that you lose energy (thermodynamics and all), so that simply means that conversion needs to be as efficient as possible, and preferably avoided altogether.
There are of course things you can't do without a certain type of energy - try running a dentist's drill or a laptop on coal. On the other hand, heating with electricity inserts two inefficient conversions into the EROEI (heat to electricity to heat), so that should be avoided whenever possible.
In the end, it just means that not only the type of production matters to the EROEI, but also the type of consumption.
Hey, just a couple of years ago wasn't the hydrogen economy the solution to our addiction to oil?
You touched on something that I almost delved into in my SOTU reaction. The hydrogen economy was pushed in the SOTU a few years ago. In the interim, reality intruded and demonstrated that this is a long ways off, and may never make sense on a large scale.
This is why I didn't get too wound up over last night's speech. It is one thing to call for a massive increase in biofuels. If reality intrudes, I think we will conclude that this may not be the best solution to the problem.
However, if legislation is introduced for a mandated increase, that is the time to get wound up. In 2007 we are mandated to produce 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol. If you want to jump that up to something like 35 billion gallons in 10 years, this would require a huge increase over the current mandate. It is clear that the current mandate is causing some unintended (but foreseeable) consequences. So, greatly increasing it, while maybe OK as a goal, could be a disaster as a mandate.
Speaking of mandates, and considering your analysis, isn't it sad that we are all fired up to force people to use ethanol with mandates while we are not talking about mandates for solar and wind. If we are going to mandate ethanol, we should certainly mandate solar and wind. And why not? Especially with the main alternative seems to be coal. Here's a mandate. Mandate no more coal fired power plants.
Wind and solar industries are both growing at around 30% a year with pricing probably being driven by market demand and supply following suit at the highest possible rate supported by industrial investment. So if we mandated solar and wind energy and gave subsidies on the order of the ethanol industry, what would happen? I have a stong feeling that prices would go up, industry profits would soar and they would probably grow at a 35% rate... in effect, we would price the European customers out of the market but globally there would be little gain in energy production capacity! This would put the US in a better position relative to other solar/wind adopters but at the cost of rising foreign trade deficits (we don't make much of PV these days, the Japanese do).
So what happend? Why are we still so "low" with solar and wind generation capacity? Because we did not support the markets as much as we should have 5-10 years ago. At least silicon technology could have been implemented much faster and large wind turbines could have been manufactured five years earlier while the next generation technologies would become available right about now. What does it mean in effect? We have a 5-10 year delay relative to what could have been if government had done its job right. At 30% growth that is a factor of 3.7 over what we have today. In other words, wind and solar would be global $100 billion markets and solar pricing would probably be 30%-35% lower than what it is today (at 18% lower cost for every doubling in market size). As a result the world now would be able to replace a couple of 1GW power plants a years in terms of solar energy and maybe five plants/year with wind turbines.
To throw money at either field today is not very helpful without giving a real economic incentive to people to switch. That incentive, and this becomes repetitive, comes in form of an energy tax on fossil carbon. We need to make energy from fossil carbon more expensive to make energy from renewables a no-brainer, so people don't have to agonize which one to prefer. It was pointed out that the tax can be made revenue neutral. And it should be. The revenue from a carbon tax should be invested in conservation, because that is, by far, the most cost effective way of getting from where we are, energy dependence and global warming, to where we want to be... energy independence and a climate that will keep earth fresh for our children.
The 2005 energy act extended the wind subsidy (1.7 c/ kwhr) but only to 2007. It granted an equivalent subsidy to new nuclear projects.
The problem with the wind subsidy has been the stop-start nature of it. If you look at US wind orders, they soar (causing supply shortages of turbines etc.) and then drop to almost zero, depending on the whim of Congress to extend the programme.
A carbon tax would, more efficiently, have the same consequences for nuclear and wind as a subsidy, with the added advantage of not costing the public purse anything (assuming any carbon tax would be fully rebated via payroll taxes, as Al Gore has proposed).
I would really like to see the work of the site www.eroei.com expanded.
I agree. EROEI information out there is all over the map. People pushing different agendas will use a different EROEI (I always use the USDA number instead of Pimentel's number; so the proponents can't complain about that).
One of the biggest problems with calculating EROEI is you really need a large scale commercial facility that has been running for a while to get good inputs and outputs. These simply don't exist for cellulosic ethanol or algal biodiesel, or any number of potential options. So, we live with the system we have where calculations definitely have to be taken with a grain of salt.
The whole concept of EROEI is almost entirely unimportant for this debate except for theoretical extrapolation into the end of the universe. Assume converting shale oil is below 1, it still may indeed make sense because you can use nuclear process to deliver a high value fuel. Soon it may very well be economical to do nuclear powered thermochemical hydrogen production, which is definately below energy payback, but does deliver a useful chemical for fuel synthesis while being derived from an energy source which is definately energy positive.
In addition, EROEI is of marginal importance after its positive. Then you become far more concerned about labor and capital costs than some theoretical energy return number. An EROEI of 20 isn't much different from an operational perspective than an EROEI of 100.
What makes more sense is to talk about scalability, sustainability, and economic payback. EROEI just muddies the whole debate.
One thing fer darn sure, EROEI is extremely important when we are considering *all* energy inputs into a society.
A society with EROEI of 1.2 is a very very different beast than one with EROEI of 10.
Societies go to great lengths to perform smoothly. ie. to not have to adjust painfully to shocks supplied by nature, breakdowns etc. Low EROEI makes that impossible. There is no buffer.
Unless a new energy source is very energy positive, it will never have more than a niche role.
I would like to question this statement.
If we look at plants we find a very low EROEI but nature appears to be very capable of responding to shocks and natural variability. Nature appears to achieve this by accomodating a range of variation while society human society has a higher degree of specialization and dependence.
I agree with your comment that a high EROEI society would run more smoothly or derive considerable benefit from the high EROEI. I am trying to conceptualize the elements that make nature succesful that may be replicated in social forms.
new account:
This piece might interest you:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss3/art4/main.html
Do you have a reference for EROI of a type of plant?
They are very inefficient at energy capture but I'm not sure their EROI is low in general.
A plant uses energy for many things: flowers,seeds, growing bigger, defensive structures ie. thorns, etc. And, of course, energy capture.
EROI is not about how much solar energy is being wasted in photosynthesis. It's about how much energy the plant captures for all its purposes as opposed to how much it is burning in it's cells to produce and maintain cells directly involved in energy capture processes.
Given the fact that so much of the plant serves more than one purpose, this could quickly become a tricky calculation.
Plants all by themselves do not have an EROEI. In order to have that, they would have had to be created to produce energy, like a power generation facility. Two things logically wrong with that: plants weren't created for any purpose and they don't need to collect any net energy beyond what they need to produce enough seeds to survive.
What plants do have (and it is positive for all surviving species of plant that produce seeds) is SEED return on SEED investment or SROSI. That number is usually very large, though.
I don't see why we have to sort out teleological issues before applying EROEI to plants.
I would argue EROEI can be applied to any organism.
Wrong here. Plants are involved in all kinds of complex things. And all use energy.
Some plants, of course, produce no seeds.
In addition, there is no need to discuss the purpose of a power plant before doing EROEI analysis. All we need to know is that it does capture energy.
Theoretically, even some human energy capture activities could be less than purposeful. We could be doing it without a clear idea what we are up to. Or it could be a byproduct of doing other things.
I think you're using EROEI wrongly here. As far as biomass is concerned, the term refers to the net energy we get by using them as an energy source. Plants have other priorities. eg, the 2% we get out of plants compares poorly to 35% out of some experimental solar cells, but plants are independent, self-repairing, self-propagating adaptable units that have to deal with issues solar cells don't, and providing energy for people is not high on that list. You can turn it around and ask the question from a plant perspective. Here's how solar cells might answer:
Energy storage medium? umm, what do those words even mean?
Growth and reproduction? we have bipedal slaves to deal with that. Don't know and don't care where they get their energy.
Maintenance and repair? we have bipedal slaves to deal with that. Don't know and don't care where they get their energy.
Adaptation to changing conditions? We have bipedal slaves to deal with that. Don't know and don't care where they get their energy.
I think New Account is referring to wild plants.
Yes, I was thinking of wild plants.
I was also making an error in that I was confusing effciency of energy conversion (with plants being very low on this metric) with EROI.
However the Jan 26 posting on Net Energy Analysis also seems to suggest that evolution is associated with life forms seeking to adapt toward high levels of energy usage. I believe this to be an incorrect understanding/application of what is known about evolution.
On further reflection, it does seem that one might apply EROI to "industrial plants" i.e. a lifeform that was cultivated because of its effciency in converting biomass to hydrogen or to methane or other useful form.
Cheers!
It makes enormous difference. What matters to me, you, and the rest of the economy is the net energy available to do work. That is what we depend on to run a truck, operate a factory, and keep our health system going. As EROI declines, a greater proportion of a country's energy use (and thus economic activity) is diverted to the production of more energy, so even if we kept total social energy use level, declining EROI would mean less and less net energy available to the economy, and thus economic contraction. Conversely, if we want to keep net energy supply stable or growing, as EROI decline, total social consumption of energy rises even more quickly. It's perverse. Just to replace the 9.5 mmbd of gasoline we consume (requiring 10.5 mmbd of total social energy use) with ethanol at 1.2 EROI, we'd double total social energy consumption to provide the SAME level of transport services from the net energy output (since the .2 of the 1.2 is actually a credit from DDGS, which to my knowledge, has not been demonstrated to provide transport services yet).
Then there's the opportunity cost. Yes, we could build nukes hand over fist to bake shale kerogen into oil. But then that electricity doesn't light homes, run motors, or do anything else useful in the economy. It becomes deadweight.
Sure, all else equal, energy return is important. All else is not equal.
Nuclear power has enormous energy return, but has significant capital and labor costs compared to natural gas or coal.
Not wrong, but it sort of isn't directly relevant. There are opportunity costs in every investment activity, and its pretty clear to me at least that rebuilding all our infrastructure to run entirely on electricity is a bit higher of a cost than spending the resources on synthetic fuel production plants.
Hi Dezakin,
I don't know if anyone goes back to read like I do (being perpetually a day late.) In any case,
"...rebuilding all our infrastructure to run entirely on electricity is a bit higher of a cost than spending the resources on synthetic fuel production plants."
Synfuel from coal you mean? Isn't the only option as we near the flattening out of oil URR an electricity-run infrastructure? (I mean, apart from human and/or animal powered infrastructure, of course.)
No, although it probably is most cost effective in many cases.
You can make gasoline and diesel fuel from any hydrogen and carbon source. CO2 and H over cobalt catalysts makes diesel fuel, and you can make as much CO2 as you want from limestone.
I believe that a revenue neutral gas tax would seriously cut into our demand over time
Like I said the first time you posted this, of course a tax would cut into our demand. That is the point of having a price on something...to control demand. It is the only reason for having a price on something. Price is demand control. Trying to use something else to control demand is a fools errand. Robert you are not a fool... nor are you the norm in this country.
Why do people avoid coming to the simple conclusion that we have to raise the price? Why do they think that demand for oil is different from every other product on the market? They want it to be. Like children.
Anyhow, it's good to see that somebody else out there is using their head. Kudos to you Mr. Rapier!
I am not sure it always works this way: Price Is Demand Control.
Let's say I were living in Zimbabwe. Inflation was rampant. I lost my job. I have a wife and 4 kids. They are all hungry. The price of food is beyond my ability to pay.
Has my demand for food been controlled?
Yes. Your family starves to death. Demand controlled.
The power of taxation is that is a pro-active means of controlling demand. This way you may anticipate future difficulties and invest in alternatives that will ameliorate the situation. In the case of gasoline, that would be subsidizing mass transit, or subsidizing downtown housing, or telecommuting. (There is a good reason to not invest in fuel efficiency.... it gives us less ability to cushion any oil shock)
There is a difference between waste from doing unnecessary things, and waste from doing necessary things inefficiently. You can cut back on the first, but you can't cut back on the second.
That means that a man who can't afford his SUV anymore is not really in trouble if he also has a bicycle and works within reasonable distance. If not, he is.
The short (and proper) answer is: you made an idiotic argument unrelated to the problem at hand.
A man has to eat. No man has to drive an SUV.
His Wife has to eat. She does not have to wear Prada.
His children have to eat. They do not have to watch a 300W big screen tv all day long.
The difference is simple: you don't eat, you die. You don't do any of the other things, you live.
Keep driving your SUV and you will find out just how much oil prices will control your demand for gasoline. And you might just find out how much corn ethanol will increase the price of your lunch.
I think my answer was funnier, IP.
More illuminating as well. If the guy doesn't have the money to buy the food, he can't buy it whether his family needs it or not. So the food he would have bought that day is available for someone else with more money to buy.
Harsh, yes. Supply and demand often is.
So I watch my brother and his family die so that some Yanqui can roam around in a mobile living room. Since I wish to avoid the same fate for my family, I decide to act.
I take up my AK-47 and target the problem.
When the soft Yanqui then complains about "terrorism," I remind him that supply and demand is a harsh environment.
Why are you not laughing now?
Grab a freakin' plow and start growing corn.
Did you know that the US policy of subsidizing cheap commodity corn and pushing exports of this to Mexico has undermined the ability of Mexican farmers to stay in business?
Now that costs are going up corn farmers in Mexico may have a reversal of fortunes.
Too bad GMO corn is getting into their fields though, and corporations are breathing down their necks to buy their products, putting them into a debt-based farming trap.
GMO corn is getting into their fields?! Good for them. The way you phrase it, it sounds like it plants itself--ahh the miracles of genetic engineering!
Seriously, I hate farm subsidies too, but Mexican corn growers are making tons of money with corn at $4/bushel. If they want to plant the GMO corn because of its superior qualities, that is their choice ultimately. If they want to be luddites, they can market their corn as non-GMO and sell to people like you.
This problem itself was a result of the subsidized corn prices in the US. Cheap corn, with some small number of GM seeds inadvertently mixed it, eventually made its way to farmers who, as they often do, planted some of it. Cross pollination occurs, and GM traits make their way around. They can no longer sell it as non-GMO corn. Perhaps the GM seed manufacturer will come knocking for a royalty.
Mexican farmers might not be raking it in if the government indeed caps prices so that peasants can afford to buy tortillas. Even if they do, however, the story doesn't end there.
Mexican farmers are angry that GMO corn is getting into their seed.
I once taught ecology courses for Monsanto employees, went to graduate school at Washington University in the "Monsanto Building," worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden in the "Monsanto Building," and would read primary literature on GMO techniques with colleaques in the biology department.
Please don't lecture to me about the "miracles of genetic engineering." You obviously swallowed the corporate PR about this technology, don't know any farmers who are regretfully indebted now to this system, or understand how it is ecologically and socially destructive to those places and people who grant you the ability to breath.
Ahhh, someone gets my point!
Thank you.
But for those adhering to a narrow economic theory, calculate the cost of this social 'disruption.'
Well now you are on to a different issue. Would shortages resort in violence? Probably so. And I never was laughing, or making light of the starvation of the theoretical Zimbabwan. I was just pointing out that the logic of price driving down demand would still hold in the scenario given.
I guess the sticking point in the original question of demand decrease is the definition of "demand". If demand is the amount of food the Zimbabwan wants to be able to buy in the example, than higher prices don't reduce demand (short of the guy and his family dying).
But I think the term "demand" in this context was meant as the amount of oil/food/whatever that is actually purchased. In that context, as price goes up, less is purchased, even if there are still more potential consumers out there that wish they could afford to buy some.
Actually, a poor Zimbabwan might feel much less pain from peak oil than the typical American. I would guess his survival depends very little on oil. He struggles now with cheap oil, and he'd struggle with expensive oil too.
I might add that the violence would result in lower demand as well. It's just that the guy with money would be the dead one. Nobody said that demand would be reduced lawfully.
I very much liked your post EarthwormJim
Hi Earthworm Jim,
Thanks for bringing up different interpretations of the word "demand".
Re: "Actually, a poor Zimbabwan might feel much less pain from peak oil than the typical American. I would guess his survival depends very little on oil. He struggles now with cheap oil, and he'd struggle with expensive oil too."
I don't think this is necessarily the case. http://www.energybulletin.net/20996.html. It seems like it may be that "his survival" is actually more dependent, in the sense that crucial supply chains may be cut off completely. Or, for example, if medical care is limited and available for say, only extreme conditions, and that access is compromised...
The United States has been subsidizing agricultural production for some years now. The resulting surplus has then been shipped to countries such as Egypt. Since the American exports are cheaper than local production the result has been to displace local producers from the market and increase dependence on the US imports.
The increased level of subsidy available to ethanol producers suggests that American farmers will seek to avail themselves of the higher incomes and a likely consequence will be a reduction in the exported surplus. This is a topic worthy of a more detailed post; the new American policy has significant real world implications. I mentioned Egypt as it is a repressive US client state with a disadvantaged young muslim population.
Another line of query has to do with the inflationary impacts of the policy. As corn is diverted to meeting transport energy demand the stocks available for food consumption will decline and the price will rise. All food products dependent on corn inputs (beef, chicken and more) will also increase in price as the higher costs are passed along to the consumer. Up until recently the cheap calories available from corn and corn syrup have been a major factor in moderating food price increases. So Americans pay a high hidden subsidy in return for low gas pump prices and are also forced to accept much higher costs for foodstuffs and potentially triggerunrest in docile client states.
What was it that PT Barnum once said?
Do you think Bush is being funded by Al Queda?
Hi New Account,
Thanks for these points.
So, US exports put "3rd world" farmers out of business; then US lowers food exports...assuming a return of... local farming? And then...US purchasers see higher food prices and then...
"...This is a topic worthy of a more detailed post; the new American policy has significant real world implications."
I hope you or someone else writes such a post.
Aniya - may concern is that the US is undertaking policy initiatives without making any assumptions at all. The US, or more precisely the Bush adminstration, is simply reacting and doing so with little concern for the possible repercussions.
I am not sure I have the expertise to explore the topic in depth. We'll see.
Cheers!
Of course raising taxes and applying the additional government income to incentives for fuel efficient cars makes sense in so many ways.
That being said, I don't think we have a chance in hell, at the moment anyways, of this happening. The politicians don't want to put their nads on the line and ask the masses to sacrifice anything. Hey, it may cost them votes....This is why I've said again and again on this board why ethanol will continue to be pushed, and pushed harder - whether you or I agree with it or not. It's a win win for them, and the average person does not have to make a direct or an immediate sacrifice, and obviously isn't aware of many of the longer term issues associated with it.
Longer term I see the global warming debate turning into a carbon, and subsequently a gas tax for the masses, but until then arguing for a gas tax on the basis of 'peak oil' is just going to get some puzzled looks coming your way.
Even if and when the carbon tax comes along, it's likely to be so small in the beginning that it has a rather negligable effect on demand
Why do people avoid coming to the simple conclusion that we have to raise the price?
I think for the same reason the savings rate is so low in this country. Too many people are unwilling to sacrifice now for future benefits.
Even here at TOD, when the discussion comes up about gas taxes - even when proposals are floated to make them revenue neutral - some people come out vehemently against the idea. The posters here, of all people, should recognize the folly of not reigning in our demand before it is reigned in for us. But given the responses of some here, imagine telling the general public that you want to raise gas taxes by $1 a gallon. People would reject it, but if we don't act now the price will soar on us later anyway. But then it will be uncontrolled, and have worse consequences.
I am grateful that somebody else sees the truth in my view. Otherwise, it has been a lonely journey. Thank you for bringing this topic up.
Low prices also mean volatile prices. When oil hit $75 last summer, gas was up 200% in the US (as compared to 5 years ago), but only about 40% in most of Europe. People in the US were less prepared for expensive gas, and so had a larger shock to their pocketbook than Europeans did.
On average, a vehicle in the US gets about 20mpg, as compared to about 40mpg for the European fleet. At $1/gal vs. $5/gal gas, the American is laughing - he's paying $0.05 per mile, vs. $0.125 for the European. When gas went up by $2/gal to $3/gal vs. $7/gal, it wasn't as funny - the American is paying $0.15 per mile, while the European is only up to $0.175 per mile -- hardly any higher.
Past $4/gal, driving a mile becomes cheaper in Europe than in the US. That's when anyone in the EU can start laughing. :)
There are other, not that visible benefits too.
In Europe driving a cars is treated a luxury and accordingly taxed. But those taxes, in most cases are not wasted - they are usually dedicated to infrastructure projects, most notably mass transit. Such infrastructure projects allow compact city designs and thus in Europe you don't need to drive that much - if at all, and your transportation costs drop accordingly. People may grumble at higher gas prices but in the end of the day they are paying much less for transportation, long term.
For example in Sofia, Bulgaria I was spending ~10% of my income on transportation and was still able to get wherever I wanted. Owning a car would have probably moved this to 15-20%. In US, with 10x higher earnings I am still spending ~10% of them on transportation. It's true that I get more convenience driving a car, but I would think that for 10x increase in costs you need to be able to get much more.
The problem with cars always reemerges.
It's not the cost of driving in the UK (or Atlanta) that controls the amount of driving, it is the *congestion*.
Both are famous for their traffic congestion.
More money doesn't buy you more transport, because everyone else wants to use the roads at the same time you do.
Here is a link to a fairly accurate analysis in the WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR200701...
Samuelson does a good job until he writes the following:
Although our dependence can't be eliminated, it can be reduced. The most obvious way is to improve the efficiency of vehicles by 30 to 50 percent over the next few decades.
No. Improving efficiency will not 'obviously' reduce consuption. We tried this with electricity. Despite rising efficiency, demand has risen as well.
To control demand, you raise the price. That is the only obvious way to reduce demand. Didn't anybody listen during high school economics? The contagion of idiocy is understandable, but nonetheless remakable.
Samuelson's chain of logic may be a little sloppy, but it is a fairly safe assumption that prices will rise dramatically whether or not the gas tax is increased. Then we will or should react to this increase by substituting more efficient vehicles for less efficient. The best thing the president could have said but didn't would have been to let the public know that gas prices will rise dramatically, as sure as death and taxes, and appeal to the public to buy the most fuel efficient car that meets their needs.
I understand..but I took Samuelson from the point of view of a typical ignorant reader.... not a more enlightened person reading the subtext of the president's message.
See my above comment on the benefits of taxation.
It will when it comes to gas mileage.
Why?
Because few people seem interested in upping their driving by the 30-50% necessary to keep gas consumption the same with more efficient vehicles. For most Americans, I would wager, the daily amount of driving is limited by time, rather than by fuel.
Take a look at what happened when gas went from $1/gal to $2/gal: nothing. When gas is sufficiently cheap, fuel efficiency just isn't a major concern of American car buyers (something like 20th priority, typically). So if gas suddenly because 40% cheaper (effectively) because of a large improvement in efficiency, why would fuel efficiency suddenly become a major factor in Americans' car buying habits?
Jevon's Paradox can only occur when there's substantial pent-up demand that is only held in check by a high price, and that just doesn't seem to be the case for Americans and automotive fuel -- gas is already so cheap that the automotive demand for it in the US is almost fully satisfied. The vast majority of efficiency gains made to cars in the US would translate into lowered gas consumption.
You misunderstand. A driver doesn't have a demand for "gasoline"; he has a demand for miles.
If you reduce the fuel-price of a mile by 30%, he'll move up the demand curve to his new price point; he'll drive more miles, but probably not all that many more, since the other costs associated with driving a mile (time, wear on the car, etc.) tend to dominate at current fuel prices. Say he drives 5% more. If you lowered the fuel-price 30% by lowering the price of gas 30%, he'll use 5% more gas. If you lowered the fuel-price 30% by raising his car's efficiency 50%, he'll use 105%*70% = 73.5% of the gas he used before = 26.5% less gas.
Why?
'cuz he doesn't care whether the fuel-price dropped due to cheaper gas or due to more efficient cars; all he cares about is the reduction in the fuel-price component of his price-per-mile.
"Because few people seem interested in upping their driving by the 30-50% necessary to keep gas consumption the same with more efficient vehicles. For most Americans, I would wager, the daily amount of driving is limited by time, rather than by fuel."
and
"You misunderstand. A driver doesn't have a demand for "gasoline"; he has a demand for miles."
Are both a bit off. If those were true then everyone would be driving small, low horsepower hatchbacks from the mid-80s on fairly short commutes. Many people have demonstrated an interest in increasing their driving 30-50%, and many more would also like to move out to the outer suburbs. The things holding them up are more highway capacity and congestion than anything else. Even given the same commute distance, Americans have demonstrated a fondness for constantly increasing horsepower that can easily swamp improved fuel efficiency. As a former engineer at EPA puts it, we've had a 30% improvement in efficiency since the mid-80s, and all of it (and then some) went into increased horsepower and heavier vehicles.
So motorists have demand for miles, cheaper housing, more rural housing, speed, status, protection, and the feel of power - both physical (acceleration) and psychological. If you ignore all of those, you'll have a really hard time explaining vehicle choices, commute patterns, VMT, and consumption from the early 80s to now.
Yes, you're quite right - I was being overly simplistic to make a point. You make the same point, though, that the price of gas is only one (relatively small) component in how far people drive -- a point that is empirically borne out.
The link shows that -- for California, at least -- the number of miles driven varies by at most a few percent in the face of 30+% changes in the cost of gas, suggesting that 90+% of an efficiency improvement would be carried over into reduced fuel consumption...at least in theory.
This reduction in consumption would likely occur if requirements for fuel efficiency kept pace with improvements in it. Right now, gas is so cheap relative to the total cost of a trip (time, wear, etc.) that it's a non-issue for most people, and mileage stats are only as high as they are due to federal requirements. As you point out, those requirements distort the "market" for mpg, keeping it artificially high, which can be seen in how any slack over the requirements -- that 30% efficiency improvement -- is used for other purposes.
So a 50% improvement in efficiency -- coupled with a 50% increased in CAFE standards -- would lead to about a 5% increase in miles driven, and so a 30% decrease in gas consumed. Without the increase in CAFE standards, though, it'd probably lead to about a 25% increase in the size of cars, a 5% increase in miles driven, and a 10% decrease in gas consumed...and even that only because monstrous SUVs are going out of style right now.
Seems like you are looking at a short time horizon in figuring the increase in usage because of cheaper prices. Assuming we lower fuel price by 30% over the short term might just increase driving miles by 5% as you say, but in the long term, we come up with more and more ways to use the cheap gasoline. Industry starts cranking out all kinds of useless geegaws that use fossil fuel in whatever form, just because they can make money on it. Every suburban kid gets a go-cart, and I think SUV's are starting to go out of style precisely because of the ratcheting up of gas prices. I believe that, over the long run, Jevon's paradox holds up.
Then you misunderstand Jevon's Paradox.
There's no "holding up" for it to do -- it's not Jevon's Law or anything like that. It's just an observation that increased efficiency CAN lead to increased use, not that it will do so.
Unfortunately, that appears to be a very common misunderstanding among Peak Oil die-hards.
Did they all get go-carts when gas was $1/gallon?
No?
Then why would they get them when gas is -- effectively -- $1.35/gallon? ($2/gal / 150% efficiency = $1.35/gal)
If you mistakenly believe Jevon's Paradox is some kind of natural law, you will make erroneous assumptions. The above appears to be one of them.
Pitt, 'splain the consumption of electricity to me. How is it that the efficiency of electrical appliances has gone up tremendously, yet total consumption has also risen?
We used to burn oil for electricity.If oil were cheaper than natural gas..because we are all driving hybrids, then I suspect that oil would be used for electricity again.
To think that the US appetitite for energy is saturated, is not supported by any evidence I have ever seen.
If you really mean to reduce the demand, why not do the one easy thing you know will get the job done, rather than try many difficult things that are questionable at best? Of course, you would do the one easy thing! Which would indicate your concern is not genuine.
Why are you throwing all kinds of irrelevant questions into a discussion about car efficiency and gasoline consumption?
The current topic of this particular discussion is not electricity, or total energy, or natural gas, or any of the other things you've just suddenly thrown in. The current topic of discussion is whether increased efficiency in US automobiles would lead to lower, the same, or higher consumption of gasoline.
For the reasons I've stated (i.e., the price of gas is a tiny part of the price of a mile, recent price swings have had minimal impact on miles driven per capita, etc. etc.), the evidence strongly suggests that a large increase in vehicle efficiency would -- assuming cars stayed the same size -- lead to a large decrease in gasoline consumption.
Which has what to do with anything? I haven't seen anyone suggest that -- much less myself -- so I suspect you may have misunderstood the discussion into which you've interjected yourself.
What on earth are you talking about? I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
No, I don't think I misunderstand it at all. I am completely aware that it is not a 'law' but an observation. Maybe I should have said "The observation holds up." But anyway, you can't deny that in the US there is extremely profligate energy consumption, and I believe this is based on the fact that energy is relatively cheap and then it follows simply that more expensive energy is likely to lead to lower energy use. Whether or not the lowering of energy use is equitably distributed is another quesion (I believe it won't be).
A rough analogy might be our sugar consumption. Food scientists have gone to great lengths to increase the perception of sweetness in food without adding more sugar, thus increasing the 'efficiency' of the sweetness to sugar invested ratio. In spite of this, the absolute consumption of sugar and its analogues continues to rise.
A big part of this is population increase, obviously. Pollution controls on cars brought about an initial drop in overall auto emissions in the 70's. Gradually that has turned around simply because of the overwhelming number of cars on the road, each putting out far fewer emissions than a comparable 1970 model, but in aggregate, the air pollution indexes are rising. Another variation on Jevon's paradox.
That would have been much more reasonable, yes.
I don't entirely agree, but that would at least be a reasonable statement. At this point, of course, it's hard to make a blanket statement about "energy" or "oil" or "electricity" with respect to efficiency and use, since (a) it's hard to define proper terms for comparison (e.g., mpg fuel efficiency has gone down in the last 20 years but gas use has gone up; does that disprove JP? yet engine efficiency for the same size of car has gone up - does that prove JP?), and (b) it's entirely possible that energy use and efficiency are correlated but not causative (i.e., both are increasing due to technology increasing, but one is not causing the other).
I would argue that, when restricted to a particular usage (e.g., cars or refridgerators) and per-capita, Jevon's Paradox has not been shown to hold up. Once demand for the usage is near to saturation -- i.e., once people have about as many refridgerators or cars as they want -- increased efficiency will translate quite well into decreased consumption.
Accordingly, simply invoking Jevon's Paradox is by no means a compelling argument against the ability of efficiency improvements to reduce our oil consumption. Jevon's Paradox, by itself, says nothing, and is simply shorthand for supply/demand relations that were not understood in Jevon's time, but are well understood now. If one contends that better gas efficiency will lead to increased gas usage, then one must (to be taken seriously) make a sensible argument for that claim based on the habits and economics of the consuming population.
Invoking Saint Jevon is not an argument, it's a statement of faith, and too many people mistake one for the other.
The mechanism behind Jevon's paradox is simply the market: if greater efficiency lowers the consumption of a product, it will lower the demand and consequently the price of it. A lower price stimulates demand, and encourages people to use more of it. That's all. Jevon's paradox doesn't work for very specific products like fridges or chainsaws or can openers, but it will keep occurring - in a market economy.
If that were truly all -- and it is -- then there'd be no basis for the contention that Jevon's Paradox will invariably cancel out efficiency gains. If people were truly arguing based on assessments of market forces -- supply and demand -- then it would be necessary to provide evidence that a 30% decrease in the cost of gas would lead to a greater than 30% increase in the consumption of gas.
People don't, though. People just say "Jevon's Paradox! Hah!!" As if it were some kind of inviolate natural law.
As you point out, it is nothing remotely close; it's merely one particular shape of price/demand curve, and a shape that gas/energy's curves may or may not currently have. When making claims about the relationship between price and demand, one needs to provide a well-supported argument to be taken seriously. Since invoking Jevon's Paradox is nothing more than asserting a particular kind of shape to the price/demand curve, it must be backed up with a solid argument.
It's good to see you understand that; unfortunately, few who invoke it do.
When they came out with light beer in Canada, most of us drank three times more beer 'cuz it had less calories. Is that what u mean?!!
Ew. The tastebuds boggle...
One thing to think about, too, is that even the sustainable fuels require quite a lot of fossil fuel input.
For example, we are likely to need tractors and factories in the production of the sustainable fuels. The infrastructure of roads and the electric grid will need to be maintained. If we expect to have a constant level of electricity from the wind, we need to have some easy-to-regulate alternate source. If hydro is not available, this generally seems to natural gas.
Thus, if we expect these to work, we will still need some supporting level of fossil fuels. It would be interesting to see what percentage of supporting fossil fuel would be required for each sustainable source.
"One thing to think about, too, is that even the sustainable fuels require quite a lot of fossil fuel input."
Now that would be a contradiction per se. Fossil fuels are not sustainable. If "sustainable" fuels would depend on fossil fuels, they would obviously be unsustainable. Which means that if a fuel you call sustainable depends on fossil fuels, it is really unsustainable and was simply mislabeled.
But it is much more simple than that:
Wind, solar, tidal energy and probably a very limited amount of biofuels (which are really just another way of getting at solar energy) are sustainable. Wind is the absolute favorite in the short term and solar is the only one among these which can satisfy ALL of the future energy demand of mankind (that is possible within the limits of physics) and is not marginal in some respect. This is just physics. You can argue with physics all day long, if you wish, but that has the quality of the man who was punishing the sea. Physics will always win, no matter what logical curiosity you want to throw at it. And your sustainability argument is not even curios. It's just plain wrong. Either there are sustainable biofuels or there are not. There is nothing inbetween.
Perhaps I should have said "what are listed as sustainable fuels above" require fossil fuel support.
Now that makes sense.
Hi Gail and IP,
Well, either way it is expressed, perhaps the point Gail makes is:
If so-called "sustainable" power sources (e.g, wind, solar) require fossil fuel support (for manufacture, installation, upkeep?)(some of the previous?), then to what degree and in what sense are they "sustainable"? What else is required to put in place an infrastructure that relies on FF not at all?
You are correct. We need to have a certain level of fossil fuels - maybe 10% or 20% of current levels, maybe more - to produce what we are consider here to be sustainable fuels.
Ideally, one would like to model exactly what inputs are needed to maintain society at a given level. If we are considering producing any combination of "sustainable" fuels, we would want to know how much infrastucture (roads, electric grid, factories, transportation for workers, etc.) would be required, and how much fossil fuels would be required to support the whole system.
The answer is that renewables like wind, solar, wave etc don't need fossil fuel inputs.
They may need transportation, and heat and electricity, but those don't *require* fossil fuels. Transportation and process heat can be powered by electricity (and perhaps a small % of biofuels for very long distance runs, like long distance air & water transportation).
A moderate amount of storage, say from pumped water storage, may be necessary for daily cycles. A modest amount of biomass may be useful for the very unusual sustained period of low wind & sun. Biomass is very inefficient for liquid fuels, but very efficient for electrical production.
Thanks, Nick,
Point well taken. (I assume you mean that the entire mining and manufacturing process can, in theory, be done sans FF.) So, then the issue becomes...either re-phrasing the question to make it a more practical one, as in, (tell me if this works): "Given today's world, what would it take to get to zero FF use in the production, installation, and upkeep of renewables (eg. wind, solar, wave)...?"
Or, we might ask: "Is conversion to renewables possible in theory? If so, to what level of energy use? (the cubic mile of oil comes to mind). http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2186, and in what arrangements? etc. How long would such a conversion process take? How much FF use might be needed for the conversion?"
And then there's the issue of how an economy thus powered might work, which I find personally hard to even formulate a good question about.
"what would it take to get to zero FF "
Mostly 2 things: Electrification of transportation (Electric rail, Chevy Volt, plug-in Prius,etc), and expansion of renewable electrical generation.
""Is conversion to renewables possible in theory? "
Sure. There's no practical limit to renewables. IMO wind is already the cheapest energy source if you take all the costs into account, and solar is only 10 years behind wind.
I thought a bit more about your question, and I think you're trying to think through a basic question: how much energy is needed to manufacture, install and operate renewables.
The answer is: not a lot. Both wind & solar have very high E-ROI, which basically means they don't need a lot of energy to get started or to operate.
A lot of peak oil discussions exaggerate how much energy is used for manufacturing, or well, everything. Sure, if fossil fuels disappeared everything would stop cold, but that doesn't mean that everything we do is coated with oil, it just means that energy is needed. It doesn't say how much, or that FF's are needed.
Not being FF dependant does not necessarily equate to being sustainable.
What materials are required in the manufacture of solar panels? What quantity is required?
Silicon panels (90% of the market) mostly require, well, silicon. Si is extraordinarily abundant - think sand.
CIGS & CIS thin film (10% of the market, but growing faster and showing more promise for cost reductions) require copper, indium, gallium and selenium. Of these, there is some question about indium availability. Not much is needed per panel (it is thin, after all), but there have been some problems increasing supply for LCD's, I believe.
There a literally dozens of alternative chemistries being researched for PV, so a bottleneck for one of those is not likely to be a major problem.
HI Nick,
Thanks and I have the feeling this has been covered before...I wonder how others would answer.
Re: The question: "...how much energy is needed to manufacture, install and operate renewables."
And, at what point does that manufacture, installation and operation become completely dependent on those same already-installed renewables?
Using our present, real-world FF infrastructure, how much needs to be done how soon for what outcome? And then, do we say we're completely stopping growth - ? once we have this new all-electric system (electricity from wind and solar, and every machine using electricity not FF?) in place?
My impression is that the scale of "transition" is what turns out not to really work; hence we talk "BBs" not "Silver bullet". See response to my Q above on replying to the "solar flux kid".
"Sure, if fossil fuels disappeared everything would stop cold..."
1) If the flow of FF stopped tomorrow;
2) There would be world economic collapse; (w. possible rare exception);
3) So, the question becomes, how much of a decline in FF availability can the global economy tolerate
--with how much warning (lead time)
--for what ends
--with what exact mitigation paths?
Aniya,
This would ideally require a very long answer, but I'll do my best.
The simplest transition would be to install renewables for new demand (including PHEV/EV's and home heat-pump based heating) and to replace obsolete generation plants. That would be easy and cost-effective. We're on our way to doing this: wind is 47% of new generation in 2007, and could easily provide all of new generation in 3 or 4 years. To replace all generation that way would take a while, of course.
We currently have more than enough grid capacity (generating & transmission capacity) to power EV's and heating off-peak. Ideally additional fuel for additional demand would be powered by renewables (and this is certainly practical), but that's a GW question, not a PO question.
Light vehicle transportation in the US consumes 60% of oil. Because electricity is so much more efficient than heat engine transportation, you only need maybe 1/6 as much electricity to replace oil.
To replace all light vehicles with EV's would require an increase in electrical generation of less than 20% - which could be easily done with wind.
The real question is converting to EV's quickly enough. GM's Volt, as well as a lot of other plug-in hybrids, is likely to be here in about 3 years. Maybe 5 years after that to ramp up to replace most of new vehicle sales, and 5 years after that to replace the 40% of vehicles which drive 60% of the miles. So, we're talking 13 years to replace 60% of 60%, or 36%. I think 36% reduction in 13 years will handle most depletion scenarios.
Additional reductions could be made by an aggressive effort to make most new home HVAC (heating, ventilation & air conditioning) systems and existing home heating replacements use heat pumps (ground & air based). Fortunately, these systems have a lower total cost of ownership, and therefore would save money despite their higher upfront costs.
The time to reduce oil and other FF consumption to zero depends entirely on what additional costs we're willing to pay to replace generation, vehicle and heating infrastructure before the end of their normal life. That said, I think 50 years is a perfectly reasonable mid-range estimate. Of course, with a WWII kind of effort we could make it 25.
Thanks for an interesting response.
It strikes me that what is really being discussed is "Bridge Capacity" between FF dependent mfg and fully renewable dependent MFG.
Once enough renewable capacity has been installed then some portion of that capacity can then be devoted to the extraction of resources, transport, creation of wind turbines, installation etc.
Cheers!
Absolutely!
Thanks Robert.
Excellent Summary.
Great summary!
I think the main point to take home is that America is still willing to slaughter reason and public welfare on the altar of private interests.
At this point it seems inevitable that the country needs a very serious shock to wake up. Coming home from Iraq with our balls squarely tucked away between our thighs will be the first lesson in humility. Having to park that Hummer in the garage and get in a colleagues Prius will be the second. The next hurricane season might just as well be the third.
I am glad I'm living in interesting times.
Excellent essay! However, it seems to me that "growth" will eventually trump all of the options. What I would like to see is far more effort trying to establish a steady-state society and, then, consider what sort of energy mix is needed. I certainly understand something has to be done vis-a-vis energy now but I think this is ultimately futile.
One of the fallacies of "classic economy" seems to be to equate numeric growth with prosperity. That, however, does not sqare up with the reality of modern technology. That we have "better" computers, TVs, cars etc. is not the result of mining a million times more sand to make silicon or a thousand times more iron to make engines. It is the result of using roughly the same amount of material (or sometimes less!), in smarter ways.
In case of the commodity "oil", the hoped for return on quality of life with growing investment is actually negative and very obviously so. Burning more oil in more cars does not equate to shorter commute times but to longer ones because of congestion and insane parking solutions. It results in more air pollution, not less. It has made our cities less livable and less friendly and actually driven large parts of the population to suburbia, which any sane person with half a sense for design can only call "hell on earth". Models for "car-free" cities like Singapore are a perfect proof that this phenomenon can be reversed. One would hope that those lessons will be learned by urban planners in the US as well as they have been in Europe and Asia.
It stands to reason that in terms of energy and materials use per capita, the US has exceeded the limits of "more is better". It has done so by probably a factor of two and is suffering from over-indulgance. That has to stop if we actually want to increase our quality of life in the future.
I agree, but current politicians are usually judged on their ability to deliver increases in GDP (i.e. grow material consumption), not improve quality of life. Perhaps the first step for the US to become more sustainable is to ban the publication of GDP figures!
Hi Todd,
Yes, Two trumps: (Or, two versions of Trump)
1) Growth in population
2) Jeavons Paradox, or increased consumption overwhelming efficiency.
Yes?
So, in terms of "...far more effort trying to establish a steady-state society", what are some of your ideas?
Jevons Paradox is...that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource ***MAY*** increase, rather than decrease. (emphasis added)
You misunderstand Jevon's Paradox; it is not the dire harbinger of doom you take it for.
Hi Pitt the Elder,
Thanks. Not only did I spell it wrong...I perhaps misuse the word "trump", too.
Here's a sentence from the link:
"Also, this principle is often referenced in conjunction with Peak oil, to show why conservation of oil will not slow the arrival or the effects of peak oil."
So, I guess the issue then becomes:
1) What are the factors that *"may"* cause the less-than-desireable result? And how do we take them into account?
2) What's your take on the sentence above? They do make it sound rather certain, don't they?
Yes, they sound certain that it is used, not that it is used correctly. I could say:
"Also, the score of last year's Superbowl is often referenced in conjunction with Peak oil, to show why conservation of oil will not slow the arrival or the effects of peak oil."
That doesn't mean last year's Superbowl would be a sensible or compelling argument against the efficacy of oil conservation to mitigate the effects of peak oil; it just means that anyone can reference anything they feel like and claim it means things it may not.
Standard factors of economics and behaviour. As the reference says:
"It is historically called the Jevons Paradox since it ran counter to Jevons's intuition, but it is well understood by modern economic theory..."
From a modern standpoint, "Jevon's Paradox" is nothing but history. If we want to understand the relation between price and consumption, we use modern economic theory (as well as information about culture, behaviour, politics, etc.). Jevon's Paradox itself is not even an argument; it's just an observation by a guy about a particular situation. If we want to examine similar situations, there are much, much better tools available to us than the musings of a man bewildered by a situation that knowledge in his day was insufficient to answer.
Trying to use Jevon's tools to analyze energy consumption behaviour in the modern era is pointlessly archaic. It's like trying to perform surgery with tools from before the US civil war - it wastes the advances of the last 150 years. What Jevon found paradoxical, we now have the tools to understand and explain. So why don't people just use those tools instead of clinging to one man's ancient confusion?
Hi Pitt the Elder,
Thanks for responding. What I was trying to do, being vastly under-educated on just about everything, was to use a term I'd heard others use to cover the concept of the factors that might come into play to overrule the role of efficiency *and/or* conservation gains. In other words, personally (to tell you the truth), I lump it in with population, and put them both under "things that need to be dealt with or any 'solution' is partial". If this makes sense.
I'd enjoy hearing more about what you consider "standard factors of economics and behavior" to be.
Also, what "tools" you would suggest in looking at the area of "things that can trump" a particular new energy source?
In other words, I was not using the word, as many apparently do, to say something won't work. Only to say that any specific thing, it seems to me, needs to be linked to a context of an overall policy, for example. To me, drilling offshore USA, without a speed limit, gas tax, or something that addresses conservation is extremely irresponsible. As an example.
Flexibility of demand with price.
An example of that is the argument I made here where I talked about the overall cost for a mile driven (fuel, time, wear, etc.), how an effectively-lower price of gas makes only a very small difference to that cost, and how real data bears out this weak relationship between the price of gas and miles driven.
Of course, that's assuming all else is equal, which it usually isn't. As I mentioned, the "market" for cars is distorted by government efficiency regulations (CAFE), which skew the market towards more fuel-efficient vehicles than the price of gas would normally support (witness how small, efficient cars are often sold at a loss in order to allow big, profitable cars to be sold without breaching the fleet efficiency limits). That kind of market bias is also important to take into consideration.
As an aside, evidence appears to suggest that the current level of vehicle efficiency is about right for $2/gal gas, since we started to see shifts in buying habits at the $2.50-$3/gal range. 40mpg is about supported by $6/gal (based on what we see in Europe), suggesting that a 100% improvement in efficiency would see substantial leakage into making cars bigger at a gas price below that level.
I wouldn't, since I wouldn't suggest going in with a predetermined conclusion that the source will be "trumped".
When trying to examine what might happen with an energy source, though, the behaviour of those who consume the resource is, of course, the most important factor, so anything that affects that -- price/demand relationship, government regulations, environmental zeitgeist, etc. -- would be important to consider. I'm not intimately familiar with modern economics, however, so I would recommend reading up on that, since that's what's used to analyze this sort of situation.
A potential exception is physical constraints, such as the difficulty we're seeing with ramping up tar sands production. While those are amenable to economic analysis (demand/price of labour, etc.), doing so is likely to be pretty complex, since it greatly broadens the scope of what's affected.
That's one of the problems with using shorthand - it can be very difficult to communicate clearly with strangers.
RR,
Why did you not include biobutanol and sugar beets in this essay?
Wouldn't the US be better off trying to convert the corn ethanol industry into an industry of sugar beets/ biobutanol production rather than importing sugar cane ethanol from other countries?
Why did you not include biobutanol and sugar beets in this essay?
There are many, many variations I could have covered. I tried to hit the majors. As I told someone on my blog, I think bio-butanol, while definitely promising, is in the too early to tell stage. Sugar beets seem like a pretty logical ethanol feedstock, but sugar subsidies in the U.S., which discourage us from using sugarcane to make ethanol, do the same for sugar beets.
Thanks Robert, but can I refine my second question to you?
Sugar beets seem to have a lot of advantages over corn, and unlike sugar cane, it can be grown in much of N. America. So I'm wondering why our gov't only supports corn ethanol? Why not subsidize ethanol regardless of input source? The farmer would have to trade in a corn combine for a beet harvester but beyond that why wouldn't the farming lobby (and farmer) be just as happy letting their farmers have a choice between corn and sugar beets? And why wouldn't our gov't like to see a little competition between cane, corn and beets to see which crop is most advantageous in the US? Maybe there's a farmer out there who can shed some light on this.
Sugar beets seem to have a lot of advantages over corn, and unlike sugar cane, it can be grown in much of N. America. So I'm wondering why our gov't only supports corn ethanol? Why not subsidize ethanol regardless of input source?
It is subsidized regardless of source (as long as it is agricultural). But, the government dishes out generous sugar subsidies, so if you take the beets and turn them into ethanol instead of sugar, you lost out on those generous sugar subsidies. So we encourage the production of sugar. Unless this system changes we are unlikely to ever develop a major sugarcane ethanol industry in the southern U.S. or Hawaii.
If sugar beets really appear to work for producing ethanol substantially better than corn and other alternatives that can be grown in this country, I think we need to figure this out and start bringing this to the attention of the powers that be. I don't think we should give up, just because of current laws / subsidies.
This website from the USDA claims that Ethanol from sugar beets or cane costs about twice as much as from corn.
http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/sep06/ethanol.htm
This USDA website claims that beets/ cane will fetch $0.18 per pound whereas ethanol fetches around $0.10 per pound so the sugar producers will do better selling their product as sugar. This might explain why a farmer would rather sell as sugar than convert to ethanol, but this does not for me explain the paradox of why ethanol from beets/ cane is 2x the cost from corn if the beets/ cane produce much more sugar with much lower inputs.
100% correct.
"And why wouldn't our gov't like to see a little competition between cane, corn and beets"
Political pressure. Growing of sugar beets would benefit a different group of people.
Subsidizing etoh from sugar beets was introduced last summer from different representatives and senators from Minnesota and Dakota I believe, among the nations largest growers. I don't think it went anywhere. USDA estimates a cost of production for etoh from sugar beets at about 2.35, vs 1.05 for corn. So they are skeptical at this time for sugar beets.
http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/sep06/ethanol.htm
The link also quotes a sugar industry representative saying it's a no brainer, sugar gives .18 per lb, vs .10 for etoh.
With the subsidy angle, its tough. Per capita consumption of sugar has been falling for about a long while, creating all sorts of industry problems. Sugar is subized worldwide, esp Europe, and including Brazil. Even with both of the above, USDA payments for sugar have been declining. I'm not sure why, I would guess disaster payments/rising market prices figure in. With sugar beets and the US, the picture is also complicated by cane growers of FL,LA, and HI distrustful of northern beet growers. Both groups see a market for etoh, but don't want to lose their base processing, and the refining industry is leary of all shoufles. They've had to shut a number of refineries as per capita consumption has dropped.
"Freedom to Farm" was to eliminate all ag subsidies over 6 years, commencing in 1996. The bill was extended by Bush in 2002 for another 6 years. I would imagine it is continued in 2008.
In comparing the enviromental effects of beets vs corn, I don't see that much improvement of beets over corn at this point, but could be easily persuaded otherwise. Beets require their own high inputs of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, along with increased tillage over corn, though yields in lbs per ac are much higher than corn. VERY roughly at 3+ ton corn vs 15 or higher ton beet.
And sugar consumption is declining bc/ subsidized high fructose corn syrup is cheaper? Surely Americans aren't eating fewer sweets!
Surely Americans aren't eating fewer sweets!
You are right, we're not eating/drinking less high fructose corn, but both cane and beet production is predominately for refined sugar. I guess we're making less jams and jellies at home, drinking beverages straight.
>Sugar beets seem to have a lot of advantages over corn, and unlike sugar cane, it can be grown in much of N. America. So I'm wondering why our gov't only supports corn ethanol?
Simple, Corn based Enthanol has zero to do with energy and everything to do with politics and money. The purpose of this program to send more subsidies to the corn belt so that politicans supporting corn based ethanol get more votes. Whether corn is turned in to fuel, food or just rots is irrevelant. Farmers are happy because they have more money in their pockets, policians are happy because they get more votes, and the consumers are happy because they believe its helps the evironment. Real results are immaterial.
does anyone have data on yield/BTU per acre of corn vs sugar beets? I hadnt thought about it but perhaps the only reason we dont hear more about this is the corn lobby/subsidies. This must have been looked at as half of the Dakotas have beet crops - unless like gail suggests there needs to be infrastructure change first to be able to go beet==>ethanol. Anyone?
This wiki article on ethanol lists yield per acre in a table most the way down the page. Interestingly, sweet potatoes rank even higher than sugar cane or sugar beets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
cant really grow sweet potatoes this far north (wisconsin, etc). At least, not yet...;)
The nice thing about sugar beets around here (CA) is that you can grow them during the cool/wet season, whereas corn requires planting in the hot/dry season and therefore irrigation for high yields.
The sugar beet industry has been in decline around the world because of the cheap importation of tropical sugar cane, not only because of high fructose corn syrup.
Back to your Chinese Finger Trap article.
A small bit of trivia. The Domino Sugar refinery a few yards downriver of New Orleans (Lower 9th Ward) sold all of their in process and finished goods inventory to an ethanol producer. The ethanol producer could apparently easily adapt to raw, semi-refined and refined sugar instead of corn.
Alan
Since we are probably going to wind up with CTL fuels as a major part of our future petroleum production I thought I'd take a stab at it.
1. Is the energy source sustainable?
No. However, Coal Production in the U.S, the Saudi Arabia of coal, is going to last us a pretty long time. I've heard 2050 before peak. This is not a good option in countries that have low coal reserves.
2. What are the potential negative externalities of producing/using this energy source?
Global warming. Lots of CO2 per gallon of gas. A positive externality is that CTL plants can also be made to produce fertilizer to grow all that biofuel during the liquefaction process. Various CO2 mitigation techniques have been proposed though they aren't in full production yet.
3. What is the EROEI?
Unsure, but positive. Most large coal excavation equipment is electrically powered. If you have CTL powered mining equipment, and coal powered trains and coal powered Fischer-Tropsche, you can get away with quite a lot here.
4. Is it affordable?
Plants cost about as much as building a major refinery but they have been built. I think the break even is somewhere around $40/barrel. The process was done on a large scale in South Africa and Sasol, the company that built the plants, is quite profitable.
5. Are there better alternatives?
Not any that I can think of that produce long term, highly scalable alternatives that produce petrochemical feedstock (for fertilizer, plastics, and other petrochemicals). Biodiesel is wrought with near-term diminishing marginal returns.
6. Are there other special considerations?
Does not compete with food production, supplements it instead.
7. In summary, are the advantages of the source large enough to justify any negative consequences?
Yes, IMHO. I figure that we're either going to lose half the world population in 50 years or we're going to come up with some kind of miraculous technological innovation and save ourselves like the British did inventing the steam engine so they could mine coal effectively after they deforested Britain for heating fuel in the mid 19th century. CTL will keep the game going for a while and it won't be business as usual, it will be just enough to sustain our technology development apparatus, and then only in the United States and Russia (the two countries with significant coal reserves). Bio-fuels is a classic sharply diminishing marginal returns situation where more work needs to be done for less and less benefit, especially in non sugar growing regions, which, given time, is a guarantee of civilizational collapse.
First, I just want to thank Robert for great article and even better, the outline of a useful methodology / decision matrix that helps determine if we are being flim-flammed by government, or business.
I read abelardlindseys contribution and wanted to create something similar for methane production from biodecomposition. There are already large amounts of "waste" methane being emitted by garbage landfills. Methane is a more powerful GHG then CO2 so the collection and utilization of this gas would be a positive benefit.
Collected methane could be used to fuel a NG diesel (these already exist). This energy source could either be used in transportation ( California waste haulers already use NG) or be used to generate power that is injected back into the grid.
I do not have any information on attempts to commercialize methane production so thought I would post this in the event some other TOD reader has a better source of information.
I've seen some Methane CoGeneration plants, running pipes through the landfills and directly (after filtering/compressing) into electric generation. I don't recall the terms exactly. ('CoGen' correct?) The plant I saw was in a Mass. landfill some 10 years ago. The operator said when they want to boost the output, they 'water the piles'.. increasing decomposition. Pretty Cool.. pretty smelly!
There's this story about a small farm scaled version as well. I'd love to hear how it went for Mssr Pain another 10 yrs later.. http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_pain.html
If I had a few acres and a good wood-chipper, I'd be doing it today!
Bob
Bob:
Thanks very much for the URL. I found another one based on yours -->
http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/Jean_Pain.html
<--
Have not yet completed a review but at first glance this looks very promising. Food, transport fuel, home heating, hot water all derived from a low-tech pile of brushwood.
I suspect the fact that this is low-tech may be one of the reasons that we do not hear more of it. To give an example I was at one time involved with implementing Quality Management. TQM and its variant offshoots were understood to be the means for Japan's penetration of US domestic markets and US producers were keen to match the Japanese in this area.
In Japan, TQM is the responsibility of the front line workforce. The workers review their own production activity and identify improvements. Supervisors and upper management have little direct involvement in this front line "blue collar" activity. The primary resources are pencils and paper sheets tacked up on walls to chart and analyse production.
When this schema was "imported" to the US by US management consultancies, it was clear you could not "sell" senio US management on a process that gave autonomy to the blue collar workforce. Nor could a consultant charge a decent fee for advice on providing the workforce with pencils, paper and some very basic training. So the entire process was surrounded in gobbledy gook and moved upstairs to the executive suite where management committed to multi million dollar programs that bore no relation to the low cost initiativs mounted by the Japenese.
I suspect that the Jean Pain initiative is too simple to be given consideration by a technophilic society.
Cheers!
Blcokquote>Pain calculates the economics of a theoretical 1000 hectare unit managed according to his methods and estimates that process energy required is 12% of energy yield, while counting in all inputs, ores, metallurgy, wood, implements, and so on, 26%; that equipment can be paid for in five years and the financing, including interest, retired within 10. All the while 16 people will be employed at good wages.
Bob - just located this quote at the URL provided above. My rading of this is that under the worst case analysis his EROEI is 4:1 and that that the process is economically viable. Raises even more questions about why it is that it has not had wider application.
Don't forget to factor in mountain-top removals under the negative externalities.
"5. Are there better alternatives?"
Conservation. Petrochemical feedstocks are a tiny sidenote on the background of transportation and residential heating.
"I figure that we're either going to lose half the world population in 50 years or we're going to come up with some kind of miraculous technological innovation"
This would be a typical expression of binary thinking. Either-Or, Black-and-White. There are no shades of grey or even color inbetween? Like forgetting to mention that current use of oil is simply equivalent of wasting 70% of it? That this could be easily fixed in the short term? That the necessary "miracle technologies" are available in every car dealership in Europe? And that the solution for the redisential heating problem for the next two decades is something as low tech as mineral wool? And that the solution beyond that is solar heating and PV?
Tststs... somebody needs their doom shot really bad today...
At 3% per year depletion, which is optimistic, the entire world will be using 70% less oil in about 40 years. Nobody knows what that's going to be like, the only model we have for a country operating without oil is North Korea (Contrary to popular belief, Cuba uses a lot of oil and nat gas, go check the CIA world fact book). Better to build the CTL capacity now then to wait until things start totally falling apart. The whole thing will take at least 20 years to scale up to a significant contribution to domestic demand anyway. If someone invents nuclear fusion and we wind up in eco-paradise along the way we don't have to operate at full capacity but at some point we will unless you believe in abiotic oil.
"Nobody knows what that's going to be like, the only model we have for a country operating without oil is North Korea "
Huh? And I thought North Korea is where they are because they had 50 years of dictatorship by crazies like Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung? But thanks for updating my knowledge about it ALL being related to them using less oil. Or wait... was it that they could not afford to buy oil because they ruined their economy with keeping this enormous militay to threaten a new Korean war? Must have been something like that...
OK. Now that we have the NK nonsense out of the way, let's turn to something more realistic, like Europe. Europeans are using 50% less oil per capita than Americans. Europeans live quite comfortably, in well lit cities with heated dwellings, great public transportation systems and... can you believe it... CARS! They have smaller cars than we do, but still, those cars are running just fine, on the German Autobahn you can see them at speeds of 160km/h...
"Better to build the CTL capacity now then to wait until things start totally falling apart."
By the time you build CTL without carbon capture (the only thing that has a theoretical chance of actually working), the Europeans will slap you so hard with a carbon import tax on American products that the wheels will come off the US economy. Go ahead and try. See where that gets you.
"The whole thing will take at least 20 years to scale up to a significant contribution to domestic demand anyway."
By which time solar and wind will be so cheap that any CTL plant will be scrapped or has to be supported by taxpayer money. Great plan.
"If someone invents nuclear fusion"
Nuclear fusion has already been invented. It comes in probably five times more expensive than CTL. Sounds like another great plan.
Eco-paradise means conservation and better quality of life with plenty of jobs in the wind and solar industries to go around. It means reliance on proven and cost effective techniques of industrial mass production put to a better use than before. There is no magic here, just the usual scaling laws for technologies.
"Europeans are using 50% less oil per capita than Americans. Europeans live quite comfortably, in well lit cities with heated dwellings, great public transportation systems and... can you believe it... CARS!"
Europe should start thinking even more heavily about CTL because they are far more vulnerable to the even steeper decline in net exports that is approaching and they are already pretty energy efficient as it is.
That you think solar power is going to do anything at all to impact the peak oil situation shows you really haven't calculated out the pitifully tiny numbers on solar energy production.
Besides it's not conservation only or biofuel only or CTL only it's everything that's not negative EROEI all at the same time, full speed ahead! The conservation part is the easy part. We'll have 50% less oil production in 22 years anyway at a 3% decline rate.
"That you think solar power is going to do anything at all to impact the peak oil situation shows you really haven't calculated out the pitifully tiny numbers on solar energy production."
Well, he referred to both wind & solar. Wind in the US contributes about .9% of electricity, and is growing just as quickly as wind turbine manufacturing can be ramped up. Wind contributed about 19% of new electrical generation in 2006, and is the single largest contributor of new generation for 2007, at 47% of kwhr production. Wind could easily contribute 20% of electrical production in 15 years, and probably could provide 50% in 30 if we chose to start retiring coal plants before the end of their productive life.
Solar is about 10 years behind wind. The world wide solar industry is installing about 2GW per year and it's doubling every 2 years. In about 10 years it's likely to be about the size of wind now.
"Europe should start thinking even more heavily about CTL because they are far more vulnerable to the even steeper decline in net exports that is approaching and they are already pretty energy efficient as it is."
Europe does indeed use much less oil than the US, but we still have a LOT of potential to become even more efficient! For example: the UK car fleet does an average 31.05 mpg. My car (a three year old station wagon) does an average 60 mpg, and there are many cars available that do this or even more mpg. There is huge potential for greater use of buses (outside of London most run less than half full), ride-share for journeys to work, bicycles for short journeys, more home deliveries of groceries, improved home insulation for those with oil heating, better traffic management, video-conferencing, holidays closer to home, etc. etc. etc. So it will be a long time before we need to consider CTL. And even then it probably won't get taken up on any significant scale, if at all, because of CO2 considerations.
To make CTL work, we'd have to have carbon sequestration.
The UK is ideally situated for that *if* we keep the offshore infrastructure intact. The very place we got the oil and gas, we can reinject the CO2.
*however* there is so much we can do with, for example, plug in electric hybrids, that burning all that energy to create vehicle fuel seems counterproductive.
If you can sequester the carbon, and the coal is imported in any case, why not turn it into (clean) electricity and power your vehicle transport that way? That is inevitably going to be far more efficient.
There are limits to that process (aviation fuel, ship fuel, even hybrids need diesel fuel) but there is much that can be done (as you point out).
My own view is the biggest opportunities in the UK are 1). bicycles for local journeys (we have a mild climate) and 2). buses and motor coaches (see George Monbiot) which we have completely marginalised for long distance transport.
Further east in Europe (Germany, Poland) there is cheap lignite and other coal (Poland, Slovakia), so CTL may be more feasible (can CTL work on lignite?) although very messy from a CO2 point of view.
Any way you cut it, I'm also sure Europe winds up with more nuclear. Because who wants to rely on Russian gas? And if we can solve the electric power availability/ cleanliness problem, as you say, then the petroleum problem is that much smaller.
I will agree with you that North America is in a FAR superior position in terms of renewables. The Europeans know that. But there are also polls among the Germans for instance which show that 96% of the population think that solar energy is very important for the future and 70% who think the government needs to invest a lot more in solar energy. 96%... what a dream number, isn't it? The best the Americans have right now is 70% being against the new Bush policy in Iraq to send more troops...
Solar energy has an enormous potential. It is the ONLY renewable that has an enormous potential. Its downside is that it is also requires an enormous investment. The result is that it will be the final part of the solution and not the initial defense against PO.
"The conservation part is the easy part."
Technically? Yes. Financially? No. At least not if you try to run into that concrete wall at full speed in an SUV with an almost empty tank.
"It is the ONLY renewable that has an enormous potential. "
Depends on the country. Wind has 72 terawatts of potential in the US. Many other countries are in a similar position, like the UK. Germany is a little unusual: they were unlucky when god handed out the wind potential, and yet they want to maximize it along with solar.
One thing about wind, you have to locate it in a certain place that may not be close to any major population centers. For instance, Argentina probably has more wind potential than any other country in the world. Winds in Patagonia are the best in the world, they blow fast all day and all night all year long. Probably won't get developed though because Patagonia is very sparsely populated and does not have a lot of water. Transmission infrastructure, service infrastructure and transmission costs also make it infeasible. All you wind fans should go take a trip to Commodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. It's ringed by lots of high hills with huge wind farms on them and generates a large percentage of the city's electricity.
I very much doubt the US has 75TW of practical wind potential. This would require 15 million 5MW turbines. The US has 9 million square kilometers of land area. 15 million towers will require 1.7 towers per square kilometer or 4.2 per square mile.
Do you see that happening? I don't. I don't see us plastering the landscape with solar cells, either. I do see us putting solar panels on most of the suitable roofs and over parking lots and other wasted areas, though. Which will be plenty.
Germany does not have very many choices. They need renewable energy just as bad as the US (worse, actually, because they don't have much oil), so they do whatever it takes. And they will be succesful. Which means, so will the US. For even less.
I just posted this on yesterday's Drumbeat in response to LevinK's contention that wind cannot exceed 5% of grid power after I stated that New Zealand had done a study thatb they could absorb at least 35% without major changes to their grid and that I am working on a non-GHG grid for North America that was 54% wind and 23% nuclear power.
I think it is relevant enough to repost.
The NZ % is extremely credible, in large part due to the high % of hydroelectric power.
Thank you for your "question", in looking for the original paper I found two new ones.
A relevant quote from page 27 (of 31) in a study by the University of Auckland (note #3 which talks of 30% to 40% wind grid penetration)
Another study was a draft report on modeling 2,000 MW-6,915 MWh/year of wind generation by 2016 on specific sites (modeling both a 90/10 split between North & South Islands and a 70/30 split with selected sites under investigation).
New Zealand has limited geographical diversity (unlike North America) and the two main islands are linked by a HV DC line of limited capacity.
Best Hopes,
Alan
I found the links to the studies at
http://www.windenergy.org.nz/news/news-articles/2005/051223-elcomwindsce...
BTW, West Denmark is electrically isolated from Copenhagen et al with links to Germany & Norway. They average (from memory) 60% of their load from wind and wind is often more than 100% of load. They have been able to keep a stable grid.
75 TWh/year seems a quite reasonable #; not 75 TW installed capacity. I wonder if technically niave people dropped the small "h" ?
Alan
Alan, as I noted below I made a mistake - this is for the world, not the US.
The Stanford researchers, for NASA, found 72 terawatts of average electrical production potential, which can be compared to total world electrical production currently of about 1.7 TW. Total world energy consumption equals the equivalent of about 4 TW.
see http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/may25/wind-052505.html
Oops. You're right, the 72TW estimate is for the world, not the US. Still, that's versus current average equivalent demand of about 4TW.
And of course, I agree that solar neatly & discreetly integrated into buildings and other structures will be more than enough - sunshine provides about 100,000TW on average, continuously for the world.
Wind is cheaper for the moment, so it has a head start. Solar is about 10 years behind. Ultimately I'd guess they'll each have about 35% of the market.
Wrong !
One of my favorite models is Switzerland during WW II. They had a six year, 100% oil embargo. In 1945, the average Swiss used less oil that year than the average American uses in a day.
Electrified transportation, shoe leather, bicycles and some equine Horsepower maintained a Western democratic industrial society at a decent quality of life.
By 1948, oil use was up by x30, but if the US used as much oil/capita as the Swiss did in 1948, we could apply to OPEC for membership :-)
The massive investment in rail (Swiss voters approved in 1998 a twenty year program that was the equilavent to the US approving $1 trillion) can be seen in this historic context. A key goal is to replace heavy trucks with rail shipments (running on hydroelectricity) by 2020.
Best Hopes,
Alan
It seems likely that coal in some form will be used if it is available. James Lovelock says that it is already too late from a climate point of view. If he is correct, it would seem that the most we lose from using coal is that we move up the date when the most of the world becomes uninhabitable by a few years. Of course, most of us would not like to adopt this discouraging view.
"James Lovelock says"
Who is James Lovelock and why would his personal opinnion give anyone a free pass to destroy earth even more than we already have? Because it is a convenient solution on the level of thinking that three year olds are capable of who reason "My toy has a scratch, so if I destroy it completely, Mom and Dad will buy me a new one"? Please...
Raises a philosophical point.
Lovelock is a smart guy, and an iconoclast, with a reputation for 'thinking big' ie the Gaia thesis.
*but*
- he says we are doomed
- he says we need nuclear power, so that a couple of hundred million of us can live by the shores of the new Mediterranean, the Arctic Ocean
- he says that wind power is a bad idea because it will make the countryside where he lives (Devon in the West of England) less attractive, and anyways its a bad idea
Doomed or not, I think we should as a society, and as individuals, do the utmost to prevent collapse/ stave off destruction.
If I'm going to die it's with my boots on and my shovel in my hand.
It is clear to me that ethanol and biodiesel are the future of automobile fuel. President Bush's initiative is exactly what is needed. These are great days indeed.
Grain for food vs. Grain for fuel
I think we need to inject a little reality into this debate. There will never be a "fight" for Grain usage. Without question, we will all choose to eat rather than drive, and our capitalistic economy allows that!
The Mexican tortilla price rise story is a prime example of the mainstream media mis-reporting. For all of you in the oil industry that see this all the time, don't you suppose we see it in agriculture as well?
Bottom line, our government has supsidized low corn prices for many, many years. To the extent that we have basically forced countries like Mexico to quit growing corn b/c they can import it cheaper.
Now that we are subsidizing an end-use of our corn, prices are going to be "too high". But there is much economic analysis to suggest that poorer countries like Mexico, which are very agriculture oriented, will be MUCH better off over the long term with high food prices than low, as they will be able to produce their own food instead of buying subsidized commodities from the US and EU.
I really don'w know how much land area can be devoted to energy production and still provide enough food, but at $4-$5 corn you will barely notice any change at the grocery store, and with $50 a barrel oil ethanol production become marginal at best -- and almost certianly negative returns at $5 corn. Energy (subsidized or not) if it is going to remain at fairly high levels, will provide a support price under agriculture commodities, but will never compete with "eating"
Yes, but.. some countries are net importers of food because they just cannot grow enough to feed their populations. Further, a number of these countries are poor. There will be a conflict between the wants of relatively wealthy SUV drivers in the US and the needs of the some of the world's poorest living in marginal areas. The purchasing power is tipped in favor of the SUV drivers, so we can make an educated guess as to who will be the loser in the drive towards ethanol nirvana.
Robert, probably the most comprehensive comparison of a slew of options I've seen.
But you throw around the term sustainable as if that's easy to do. And that is not the case. Since you do it almost everywhere, it would take a post as long as yours to cast the legit doubt on all of them.
Susutainable is a vulnerable term. We both know how easily people apply it even to things you say are not sustainable.
One aside: sugarcane may not grow in the (former) rainforest, but that is to an extent because it takes the land used for soybeans, which will then move to that same rainforest.
Like I said, a lot of those terms are loaded and will mean different things to different people. Perhaps on the ones I labeled "sustainable", I should have written "potentially sustainable." After all, there isn't an option on that list (except for conservation) that doesn't have embodied fossil fuel inputs. But the question is, in theory could you produce the source without relying on a depleting resource? That was my criteria for sustainability.
Thanks, and yes I do understand how you use the term, but it still implies a lot, and is therefore easily misunderstood. And used left right and center by politicians and businesses, who either don't know what it means, or hope their audiences don't. It has become impossible to count the number of goevrnments, local or otherwise, that have a department of sustainable growth, or something similar. It's a word that is routinely used to mislead people.
Herman Daly wrote an almost brilliant essay in which he argues that sustainable growth is an oxymoron. Al Bartlett says: "sustainable" has to mean "for an unspecified long period of time."
The problem is that few truly understand that. There's a large discussion on the sustainability of agriculture itself.
Still, when you get down to the nitty, you will find that your claims of sustainability for biodiesel, gasification etc are at least disputable. And since you yourself emphasize sticking to the facts, and rightly so, I would urge you to focus on what sustainable really means, and limit its use to that.
Somewher down the line you run the risk of saying things that are simply not true, and in my humble view that would be a shame for you, and the quality of your work.
i know you're not a linguist, but Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" comes to mind, the redefining of language and words.
In the case of biofuels then you'll need to consider depletion of water and soil nutrients. Mono-cultures of any sort are probably unsustainable since they work against the natural principle of multi-use and diversity.
Another aspect of sustainability is locality. What may be sustainable in one location is unsustainable somewhere else due to differences in natural conditions. Transportation is used to overcome this problem in today's global market. It's a good bet that the further something is transported the less sustainable it's likely to be, due to transportation costs. Local sustainability can also be compromised by overproduction to meet non-local market needs.
Thanks for stimulating this discussion with your excellent post!
Great job Robert.
I particularly noticed (and liked)
1) your comment on sugar cane EROI -the fact that it is misleading that they dont count the energy lost in the bagasse when comparisons are made with EROI of oil. i.e. the 8:1 is likely overstated - by how much I need to puzzle out.
2) your conclusion about a gas tax. We HAVE to do this - and we have to start now so it can be gradual and businesses can adjust rather than $2,$2,$2 $5! which would freak the economy out. Using Europe as a model, our policymakers should see the writing on the wall and enact demand destruction. But unless the general population sees the cliff (hence reason for writing on theoildrum) politicians who suggest gas tax (gasp!) will not be popular.
1) your comment on sugar cane EROI -the fact that it is misleading that they dont count the energy lost in the bagasse when comparisons are made with EROI of oil. i.e. the 8:1 is likely overstated - by how much I need to puzzle out.
Just so you know, it was comments that you had made in response to my previous essay on sugarcane ethanol that got me to thinking about this. The more I thought about, the less sense it made that any kind of ethanol, unless you just found some large reservoir of water-free ethanol someplace waiting to be extracted and processed, could have a higher EROEI than gasoline. Then it finally struck me that the accounting was being done differently for the two.
well thats how this forum should work. 1+1=3!
We have a paper on this topic - how to correctly define EROI when using 'chaining' that was just rejected by Science (even though the reviewers recommended it be published). So now we are resubmitting to a less mainstream journal. The gist is that for most technologies EROI=Energy Out/Energy In is a fine formula, but for those that 'chain', we should pay attention to 'energy lost' as opposed to 'energy input'. In other words, sugarcane is an excellent harvester of solar energy - but we then refine the hell out of it (using its own bagasse) to boil off all the water to create a liquid fuel. This upgrade takes a large amount of the energy embodied in the cane, energy that could have used for things other than creating liquid fuel.
So in the end, its a new variant of the quality argument - each time we 'upgrade' energy, there is a heat loss. Society tells us how much they are willing to pay for this upgrade. So society in some senses dictates higher or lower EROI processes. (e.g. we could have many more BTUs by using ligning for heat rather than continuing to upgrade it so we can use it to drive our cars)
I am very surprised that there is little discussion about using solar energy to support the concentration/distillation processes. I am getting a feeling that the EROEI of corn ethanol could be greatly increased if we cut out the coal/natural gas etc. for the required process heat. The solar energy input has already been discounted for because nobody seems to get upset about the 15 percent of solar energy that is being wasted when we compare a 16% efficient solar panel with a less than 1% efficient corn plant.
"In other words, sugarcane is an excellent harvester of solar energy..."
That, unfortunately is not correct. Single junction silicon cells are about 20 times better, concentrator triple junction cells and solar thermal plants are at least 40 times better. In the northern hemisphere this is even more pronounced because we do not have close to 100% growth cycles. Add to that the conversion losses and the fact that solar technology produces thermodynamically 100% useful electricity while biofuels produce thermodynamically 40% efficient chemicals and you get close to two orders of magnitude of energy waste. This is where the real problem lies. Put the ethanol subsidy to good use and let farmers buy PV to put on their barns or wind turbines to install above their fields and you actually get some return for your money.
"So in the end, its a new variant of the quality argument - each time we 'upgrade' energy, there is a heat loss."
The problem is... you did not even upgrade the quality of the energy. You went from one burning hydrocarbon compound to much less of another burning hydrocarbon compound in what amounts to a real world taxpayer funded Rube Goldberg machine. Corn cobs can be burnt in a 40% efficient steam turbine power plant at no losses when compared to the ethanol process. The resulting electricity can be used to power an electric vehicle and even with the lousy batteries we have today the overall efficiency of that combination would probably beat the crap out of corn ethanol.
"Society tells us how much they are willing to pay for this upgrade."
And I thought it was the congress men and senators from the corn producing states who told us that... my, am I wrong. It was society which made the call... and the congress men and senators had nothing to do with it.
society elects those officials. im not sure which is the chicken or the egg, but im pretty sure its the baby steps of what we become accustomed to that creates demand.
And you know what I meant about sugarcane being a great solar harvester - I meant naturally (as compared to corn, or lettuce, or such), not solar panels or something manmade. Are you suggesting replacing all the land in Brazil that is growing sugar cane with solar panels will have an all-in multicriteria EROI higher than just growing sugar cane and processing it? (remember - wide boundaries)
"And you know what I meant about sugarcane being a great solar harvester - I meant naturally (as compared to corn, or lettuce, or such), not solar panels or something manmade."
Of course, I do. But I also know that if someone is desperate to find the answer to a question, like "What is the EROEi of corn ethanol?", they often forget to ask themselves if the question that stood at the beginning actually makes sense. That is just human nature. I doubt that the question makes sense the way people go at it. We destroy valuable food that could help people in order to poorly power a few of our cars. In comparison we could power way more cars if we went the PV or thermal solar way. That is a fact.
I think we both understand that corn ethanol was not invented to make the US energy independent. It was invented to give subsidies to farmers and industry interests. The result is a marginal technology that looks ever worse the closer you look at it. The problem that had to be solved with corn ethanol was not how to produce energy but how to distribute wealth. And that problem has been solved remarkably well... it is important to keep pointing that out.
"Are you suggesting replacing all the land in Brazil that is growing sugar cane with solar panels will have an all-in multicriteria EROI higher than just growing sugar cane and processing it? (remember - wide boundaries)"
I am suggesting to put solar panels where solar panels belong: on rooftops and barntops and to grow food where food belongs: on the fields. But let's do the math, shall we?
Brazil seems to be going for potentially 90 million hectars of sugar cane plantations. 90 million hectars happen to be 900,000km^2.
One hectar of Brazilian land has a theoretical PV capacity of roughly 200kW (that is an average 20W/m^2 * 10000m^2/hectar with current technology). Multiply that with 90 million and you get 18,000GW. That's right, that is 18TW. Now, total energy demand of the world is 13.5TW, one third less! That's electricity, coal, oil, natural gas, hydro... everything plus the kitchen sink. Global photosynthesis capacity is a mere 75TW, barely 4 times more.
So we could produce a third more than the world's energy demand in Brazil using a square of land no larger than 1000km (600 miles) on each side. But let's compare that with the country's total area of 8,456,510km^2: it's 10.6%. In other words, just 7 percent of Brazil's land area could produce all of the world's energy using PV technology you can order on the internet today.
What can I say: the Brazilians will not enjoy their sugar cane ethanol industry for very long. Semiconductors and concentrator mirrors will beat the crap out of them within a generation.
HI Nate,
Thanks.
"society elects those officials. im not sure which is the chicken or the egg, but im pretty sure its the baby steps of what we become accustomed to that creates demand."
This is one of the crucial points, isn't it?
"We"... become accustomed...to a range of choices... in small steps...and that range (of choices) becomes, then, gradually predetermined...so that for any particular choice, we act without information and without a greater context for what appear (in the moment) to be relatively unimportant decisions.
I suggest your trying to find a copy of the journal Energy For Sustainable Development, vol. X, issue 2, special issue on biofuels for transportation (subscription only at http://www.ieiglobal.org/vol10_issue2_open.html). The article by Coelho et al provides detailed energy balances in average and advanced sugarcane ethanol plants, and this appears to be the source of the 1:8 and 1:10 figures that are bandied around unqualified. As you mentioned, the electricity input row is zero because it is derived from bagasse, and the process is further credited with the electricity sold to the grid. Because many of these studies are focused on the carbon impact and not the energy impact, they omit any "carbon neutral" biomass sources used as inputs, yet the conclusions are quite misleading from an energy only standpoint. To be more precise, it's better to say that sugarcane ethanol has a "fossil energy EROI" of 8, since burning bagasse, after all, is using energy, whether they omit it or not in the energy balances. And burning bagasse does have consequences: the nutrients bound up in the biomass are lost to the soil where they would otherwise return in a truly sustainable process.
I focus primarily on the EROI of the liquid fuel produced these processes (this is more critical in the grain case since the Farrell study in Science last year made it quite evident that the .2 of their 1.2 finding [crowed in the press as "the final word" and "yes, ethanol produces net energy!"] is nothing more than the DDGS credit back to the process. Crediting, like EROI calculations themselves, is not standardized, and there are 4 basic ways to do it. The proponents do an energy credit; Patzak and Pimentel do no crediting. I wouldn't either. So far, Detroit has not made a car that can drive on DDGS. Both approaches are justified depending on what you are trying to show.) For sugarcane, the upper bound is set by the thermal requirements of distillation and dehydration and could not be expected to drop below 25,000 BTU/gallon (assuming molecular sieve dehydration), or an "EROI" of 3-3.1 as the upper limit to any type of ethanol production.
Also, you may have missed the U Minn study last year (Hill et al, "Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels" in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) which calculated the EROI of soy-based biodiesel at 1.93 (and corn-based ethanol at 1.25.) Biodiesel needs to be distinguished by major feedstock type.
The PNAS study is very good. This is why I read TOD. Lots of little nuggets of information.
Gas taxes are not popular with Europeans, either. But since those gas taxes are not revenue neutral (at least not in case of Germany), they can not simply be cut without expenditure of political capital. Gas taxes are planned into the budgets for decades and removing them would simply mean that some other tax would have to be raised. Politicians are not likely to meddle with one unpopular measure that has become part of daily life to introduce another one that will be much more upsetting to their voters because it is new.
Seconded.
8:1 is the most useful figure from a fuel-production standpoint, since it tells us a fair amount regarding how easy it will be for this fuel to replace a large part of our fossil fuel usage. It's also the most sensible definition of "Energy Return On Energy Invested": you invested 1 unit, and -- regardless of what happened in the middle -- had 8 units returned to you.
The 6:1 figure that is often used for oil is not so much energy return as energy residual; i.e., when dealing with 6 units of already-existing oil, you'll have to spend 1 unit to make it available, leaving only 5 units to actually use. In this case, the ratio is a measure of how much of the resource you've wasted.
So I'd suggest using "EROEI" to refer to the input/output energy ratio (e.g., 8:1 for cane ethanol, 17:1 for oil), and something like EWR (Energy Waste Ratio) to refer to the output/(total-output) ratio (6:1 for oil).
The latter is still going to be used for oil and the former for biofuels, though, which makes sense: how much of the resource you're wasting is a much bigger concern for a finite resource (oil) than for a renewable one. If you can make 100 units of ethanol at 10:1 EWR or 300 units at 6:1 EWR, the latter probably makes more sense; for oil, though, not so appealing.
On biomass gasification, if I apply some common sense, what this would mean most likely is a pressurized chamber in which you burn wood, switchgrass, waste, etc?
If it is too impractical to be done on a large scale, are we supposed to believe people will buy a "home version" biomass gasification chamber? I suppose this is Kergy's business plan?
Imagine how large that thing would be, all that steel, metal. You could knock out the apartment market -- it would be only for large suburbian homes -- and who would want it in their house or close by to their house? You are far better off probably just buying solar panels.
If we applied common sense, we wouldn't be doing corn ethanol, either. The difference between a working business model/political scam and reality is often enough nothing more than the mass psychosis of a certain part of the population. If someone manages to sell biogas reactors for single family homes, they are in very much the same business as people selling nuclear fallout shelters. And given your description of what such a device might look like, I am pretty sure there is a resemblance between these "products".
By the way... biogas production on the farm is a whole different animal and urgently needed!
I rechecked Kergy's website and it appears they want to do this on a large scale -- as they will produce ethanol through biomass gasification. Doing this on a large scale clashes with the comment in the article that it is cost-prohibative -- although that's why I suppose their technology is such a breakthrough, perhaps. They don't give a lot of info on their website: http://www.kergy.com/
Therefore they so far probably aren't looking into the home market -- home ethanol production -- hopefully not.
One can imagine: a giant pressure chamber with a conveyer belt with switchgrass/corn stalks leading to it, onloaded by trucks, and on the other end a pump for the ethanol into tanker trucks. Actually that's not too different to oil sands production currently. Maybe there's something there -- don't know -- not enough information.
Oh... it's a Khosla ventures thing. Good luck to them. I am sure Mr. Koshla has a scheme figured out how he can skim off the cream. He will get a little bit richer, I am sure. Not very many others will be helped by this company, though. I am sure about that, too.
There is not much to say in favor of ethanol, no matter how you make it. It will make you drunk when ingested as it always has. Looks like now it has even found a way of making some people drunk just by talking about it.
Ahh the NOOB strikes again. Proving for us once more that you sir, are the least qualified person in this forum to judge the merits of ethanol and the production thereof.
Then again, you also think that if everyone just put some solar panels on their roofs, our energy woes would simply... disappear.
Ahh... the NOOB argument strikes again! Just why am I totally unimpressed with that? Maybe because I have left Kindergarten behind me some thirty-odd years ago.
Syntec, learn to reason with numbers like any scientist and engineer and I will take you seriously. Until then...
;-)
No Buckler it's not home ethanol production - that would be a still =]
The Kergy business model is essentially a thermo-chemical, syngas->ethanol production path that uses gasified biomass as their source feedstock. The gasification process is engineered to operate in a low-pressure, air driven system and although pilot projects have been completed, there has yet to be a full scale model developed.
The strength of this production path really bears fruit when coupled with existing 1st gen ethanol production paths i.e. fermentation or 2nd gen ethanol production paths i.e. bio-conversion or cellulosic, as the syngas process is exothermic in nature and therefore very complimentary.
Such facilities are what we are calling 'integrated biorefineries' and the first such IB in the US is being built by Broin (not gasification mind you) however if you want to 'imagine' what it would look like... simply picture for yourself an ethanol fermentation plant with an integrated gasification->syngas unit something similar in design to what you will see in this video: http://nexterra.ca/media/cfjc-tv-news.html
Now imagine your trucks of BOTH corn and ag waste pulling up to the IB and unloading everything at a single destination with a pump at the other end for ethanol delivery unto tanker cars of an ethanol 'unit train' keeping in mind that 75% of all ethanol is shipped by rail.
Great thanks for that link. In the video they state that the plant was built for under $10M (probably $C) so it's looking pretty doable. They don't state the pay off period though.
I have elsewhere proposed a simple litmus test for the effective EROEI of all types of ethanol: in a given plant, is a plant's own ethanol product used to generate the heat necessary to create the ethanol? This yes/no metric is a great oversimplification, and has many of its own problems, but I think that it has value for its simplicity. To my knowledge, most domestic ethanol plants use natural gas, heating oil, or coal for the brewing and distillation process. I don't know what is used in Brazil for sugarcane ethanol. Can anyone provide some insight into ethanol plant heat sources, or point out an ethanol plant that uses its own ethanol to power its brewing and distillation processes? Thanks...
Be careful with such an over simplification. While ethanol energy balance is a critical topic and worth investigating, when have we used gasoline to generate heat in an industrial process outside the automobile?
I think this is part of the discussion above, we find some energy products useful b/c of their form or other characteristics, irregardless of their energy balance. That is not saying trying to find a beter energy balance, esp. in a world of declining energy supplies, is not a very good goal.
Another way to look at it, almost everyone agrees that most bio-diesel production is energy positive, problem is a very, very small amount of feedstock. However, no bio-diesel plant is burning it's own fuel either, natural gas is much cheaper and more appropriate in such an application.
I do wonder what happens to all the current renewable plants as natural gas supply tightens? Probably 95% of ethanol/biodiesel production plants are natural gas powered.
"I do wonder what happens to all the current renewable plants as natural gas supply tightens? Probably 95% of ethanol/biodiesel production plants are natural gas powered."
The cost of the ethanol will go up and up until the operation of these plants will becomes unprofitable. There will be a political bailout. The cycle will repeat and then there will be another political bailout. The third time around supporting the industry will be politically too costly and there will be no more bailouts, after which they will shut the plants down, book the investment cost as a loss (thus getting tax money a final time) and the people who built them will figure out a new scheme to get money from Washington.
:-)
thermochemical fuels vs corn ethanol
I think carbon constraints, climate change and 'second generation' thermochemical methods could see a convergence of approaches. We're told that post peak most jetfuel will have to come from coal. This could stay within a carbon cap if coal fired electricity is substantially reduced. It might also make make coal reserves last longer. If biofuels go the thermochemical route (eg Fischer Tropsch) then biotrash could be blended with small amounts of coal as a feedstock. This not only saves starch and fat for use as food but doubles up as insurance against crop failure. When drought or bugs wipe out the corn crop there will still be plenty of poplars, mesquite, sawdust and so on to make liquid fuels. Weeds and trees are more adapted to flood and drought than annual crops. They also survive because microbes can't easily generate the required conditions for chemical breakdown which humans can.
With renewables and dare-I-say nuclear taking over more electrical generation it could work out. This approach should be getting the tax breaks, not corn ethanol.
I've been wondering about the efficiency of ethanol distillation as it's done currently. Is it anywhere near the thermodynamic minimum energy for separating water and ethanol? If not, how much more efficiency might be possible with workable (if expensive) technology?
The key here is that ethanol production is primarily a distillation process. The theoretical energy minimum is quite easy to calculate because distillation is basically a process of heating water to a vapor. A BTU is the energy it takes to raise 1 lb of water 1 degree F. So raise 1 ton of water to vapor point is a straight forward calculation. You also have to add in boiler loss.
Page 2 of this publication (http://ethanol.org/documents/Ethanol101.6.pdf) has a graphic showing you lbs of steam require per gallon of ethanol depending on the starting concentration of the mash. A generation ago, distillation alone was 30,000 BTU per gallon (or nearly half the LHV energy content of ethanol itself), but it's come down to about 15,000 BTU per gallon, or close to the practical minimum. This alone sets a floor on ethanol EROI of ANY source, grain or cellulosic.
Can't the heat of distillation be recycled during cooling? That is, transferred using a heat exchanger to the next batch to be distilled?
Ethanol production is currently a distillation process; must it always be one?
Honest question. I'm tangentially familiar with various technologies for purifying water such as reverse osmosis and the like, but I don't know whether chemical or mechanical processes for, essentially, removing the contaminants from ethanol exist, can exist, or are practical.
Reverse osmosis, for example, is apparently used in a similar manner when making maple syrup as a pre-treatment step that removes 80% of the water for less energy than boiling it off. An alternative might be to exploit the different vapour pressures of water and ethanol at different temperature/pressure regimes to do a rough separation pass at low energy.
Especially for something like cellulosic ethanol (which tend to be lower ethanol-by-volume), something to yank out a bunch of water at the beginning seems like it'd substantially improve the efficiency of the process.
You are right, there are many alternative methods to separate ethanol from water. As early as 1981, a series of experiments were done to test ethanol extraction with CO2, solvent extraction, vacuum distillation, vapor recompression, molecular sieve absorption, and reverse osmosis. That none of these options were commercialized over the following 25 years indicates a series of challenges that each poses, not just on energy consumption. The process would be more efficient if we didn't have the final stage of dehydration involved (ethanol and water become an inseparable azeotrope at about 95% concentration)--in the past, engines existed that did run on hydrous ethanol, but that is incompatible with our gasoline-based system today. Ethanol is highly hydrophilic, whereas I suspect maple sap is not--that may be one reason the process is not commercial for ethanol production.
As to heat exchangers, they are critical to the process today and are key to the halving of energy consumption over the last 15 years. I don't know how much further those gains can be extended.
Why has nobody been able to build a perpetual motion machine? Because thermodynamics won't allow it.
Why are none of the other processes much better than simple distillation? Because thermodynamics won't allow it.
Now... if one used solar energy to generate the heat for the distillation process, it would greatly increase EROEI. And there is nothing wrong with that... after all, the plants grow because of the sun and they are less than 1% efficient. A thermal solar collector next to the plant would be 60+% efficient. Therefor, putting up a thousand acres of solar collectors next to the ethanol plant is equivalent to planting 60,000 acres of corn extra.
Evidence?
Other techniques are more energy-efficienct than simple distillation for some applications (e.g., reverse osmosis vs. distillation for maple syrup), so it is not true that "thermodynamics" somehow insists that distillation is always the most efficient way to remove water from a mixture.
Unless you have scientific evidence to back up your claim, all you're doing is stating an article of nihilistic faith.
Robert, you wrote several essays last year arguing that ethanol could not possibly cover a significant part of our transportation needs. For example here:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/5/23/23846/0807
So if the entire corn crop can only make 27.9 billion gallons of ethanol, how can the President call for producing 35 billion gallons and you not object? Surely we're not going to turn the entire corn crop into ethanol under his program.
Your arguments would seem to suggest that the Bush goal is completely impractical. How much ethanol do you see us realistically producing in ten years?
So if the entire corn crop can only make 27.9 billion gallons of ethanol, how can the President call for producing 35 billion gallons and you not object? Surely we're not going to turn the entire corn crop into ethanol under his program.
Clearly they are counting on cellulosic to deliver. When you will hear me objecting pretty loudly is if they try to turn these goals into mandates. That is a recipe for disaster.
Your arguments would seem to suggest that the Bush goal is completely impractical. How much ethanol do you see us realistically producing in ten years?
I think the goal is impractical. I think you could make that much ethanol in 10 years, by throwing a lot of money toward ethanol producers and subsidizing cellulosic at a much higher level. But the actual costs of production would be very high.
I think in 10 years our ethanol production will be less than 10 billion gallons per year, and it will essentially all be from corn. It could be significantly less if people start getting fed up with higher food prices.
Robert - I cannot see why there is so much opposition in the USA to a fuel tax. In Australia we have had one for many years and it has lead to smaller cars and less fuel use. It is simple and it works. The revenue can be funneled back in welfare payments to poorer people, like our family tax benefit and family income supplement, to compensate for higher petrol prices.
It works. You seem to be jumping through hoops of ethanol and all the rest to avoid this pretty simple thing that works. I see that you mentioned it at the end and I agree with you however I cannot understand the opposition to it.
because, Ender, it makes too much g.d. sense. That's why.
the political will is absent. it will continue to be so no matter which party is in power, until there is an exogenous "something" that makes it pop.
God loves Americans. He hates taxes! Gasoline taxes are anathema and the smallest hint of advocating one will destroy any politician wicked enough to tax Our Gas.
We Americans are not a bunch of European peasants to put up with having our vital fluid--our very gasoline itself--heavily taxed. What do Europeans know, anyway?
No taxation without representation! Gasoline taxes are an abomination to every God-fearing red-blooded American.
[sarcasm off]
Hi Ender,
Thanks for bringing up "what we can do next", so to speak.
...interesting on fuel tax. Do people here - (PG?)- think the opposition is insurmountable? And, also, wondering...what about if coupled with a 55 mph speed limit...? (It's been done...right?)
Simmons said recently he was opposed to a gasoline tax because it would create "...a generation resentful". His ideas included production data transparency, energy R and D, going to an energy "war footing"...Aside: I'd be curious and interested if it might be possible for TOD to compile a list of questions for Simmons. I know I have several.
Aniya - could you not call it a Victory Tax or something? How about the Freedom Tax - however that might be construed as a tax on Freedom. Or Independence tax?
There must be some way a clever sneaky polititian could pass it without too much outcry. God knows there are enough of them about - one of them surely must be able to come up with something
Ender,
I can imagine only one way to put what is in effect a tax on U.S. gasoline into effect, and that is to impose a stiff "National Security" tariff on imported oil and gasoline. The tariff would raise gasoline prices, but the stated purpose of the tariff would be to encourage "energy independence."
Cheap gasoline is part of "The American Way of Life," and short of a World War Two type of mobilization Americans will not support any change that clearly increases price of gasoline at the pump. Politics is the art of the possible, and there is no possibility whatsoever for U.S. citizens to support legislators who would increase gasoline taxes.
Economists advise. Politics rules.
"...Americans will not support any change that clearly increases price of gasoline at the pump."
oh please, don, cross border shoppers, business travelers and american tourists have experienced this action by canada and the provinces for five decades. nobody cares. Your fear of a mass outcry is baseless in the present environment.
I think automotive taxes *can* be raised, if there is a clear tie to local benefits.
Hence the 18 cent/gallon Federal gasoline tax, which is spent on Federal Road programmes.
I don't think gasoline taxes are particularly effective at curbing gasoline consumption. Gasoline consumption is too price inelastic: a 10% rise has a short term effect of a 1% drop in consumption.
The world oil markets have levied a tax of $1/gal on US gasoline, this past 2 (3?) years. Yet consumption has not fallen, nor has the propensity to drive, and SUV/light trucks are still half of the US market, I believe.
I am a *big* fan of generalised carbon taxes, because that will incentivise industry, homebuilders etc. to make savings on CO2-- and my gut tells me they are very price elastic consumers of carbon based fuels (eg switching coal to wind).
But on the autmotive question I think the US needs to look much more closely at higher Fuel Economy standards (which is a hidden form of tax).
In some big urban areas public transport may be important. But my sense of most US cities is that most people can only, and will only, drive.
When I read that 40% of Japanese car sales are microcars, and 70% of French car sales are diesels, I see how much might be done to encourage fuel economy.
Hi VAluethinker,
I really appreciate your response. Is there any possibility that you can re-post this and/or expand upon it?
It seems to me that coming up with some rapid measures is crucial. From what I recall here (TOD) everyone supports a gas tax. If I understand it correctly. So, I'd like to hear more about what you think the down side is.
Can you go into more detail, for example, re: world oil markets tax on US gasoline? How does this work? How do you know? etc. (not questioning you, just would like to understand more of what you're talking about.)
And then...
Q: What if peak is now or very soon? Is there enough time for the fuel economy efforts to take place? Do you think there is a place for tax at all? If so, how should it work? Also can you explain more about how you think a carbon tax would work?
Your comphrensive analysis missed one "category", Transformation Investments. A few examples.
The Swiss are spending a massive sum (40 billion Swiss francs from memory, slughtly vague ATM) over twenty years to improve their rail system. The centerpiece of this comphrensive upgrade is a flat, level, straight set of tunnels from Zurich to Milan that can handle freight at up to 160 kph (100 mph) and 250 kph for passengers, all running on hydroelectric power. One major goal of this program is get freight off trucks and onto rail, with an energy trade of roughly 1 electricity joule for 20 joules of diesel.
The tunnels are designed to last 100 years before major maintenance (new rails, signals, etc.) and will last several centuries.
What is the EROEI ? Certainly in the 1000s over the lifetime of the different elements.
Sustainable as long as industrial civilization exists in Switzerland.
Many positive externalities (less pollution, fewer traffic deaths, noise, economic costs) and no negatives AFAIK.
Another example -
Electrifying and Double tracking US freight railroads with improved signaling on main lines. Faster and cheaper rail shipments with capacity limits raised by a factor of 5 to 8 (depending upon signal improvements. The NEC runs passenger trains in both directions on both tracks with many sidings, etc.) Compared to diesel-electric locos, an energy gain of 2.5 to 3 (3 in mountains & congested areas, 2.5 on straight runs in plains). x8 vs. heavy trucks.
EROEI is in the hundreds (perhaps thousands), sustainable, many positive externaltities and no negatives AFAIK (trains are not perfect but much better than trucks).
Third Example -
Building the "Silver Line" in Washington DC to Tyson's Corner and Dulles Airport. Not only will this will increase traffic on the new line, it will also increase density on all 106 miles of the existing system. Increased traffic density will improve economics. Overall, this new line will improve operating economics and reduce any operating subsidy or reduce fares.
This line, as other WMATA lines, will encourage low energy TOD.
EROEI is in the hundreds (perhaps thousands), sustainable, many positive externaltities and no negatives AFAIK.
.......
I disagree that PHEVs should be the primary focus of the future. They will preserve high energy use living patterns. I think that PHEVs should be secondary and Urban Rail should be primary, at least until our grid is 100% renewable + nuke. Urban Rail will improve the urban form and reduce total energy consumption.
Best Hopes,
Alan
I disagree that PHEVs should be the primary focus of the future. They will preserve high energy use living patterns. I think that PHEVs should be secondary and Urban Rail should be primary, at least until our grid is 100% renewable + nuke. Urban Rail will improve the urban form and reduce total energy consumption.
Your point is understood. As far as the US goes however, the PHEV approach seems more realistic. As long as they are able to physically and financially, people will want to be able to drive.
That is the ONLY choice most Americans have, that is the only way of life that they have experienced. A fish that was born into polluted water, grew up in polluted water and has lived only in polluted water would be MOST puzzled if he or she swam by a clear stream emptying into their polluted lake.
Some, perhaps most, Americans will not change life styles even if given a chance, but many (enough to make a significant difference) will. Many will swim right by that stream with the funny water ! But some will explore and come to like clear, clean water.
Let me illustrate with my personal experience. By happenstance, I ended up in New Orleans and moved around a few neighborhoods (all good walkable areas) till I found the (to me) premier neighborhood, the Lower Garden District. Five places to buy (make) groceries within 6 blocks, 2.5 blocks from the streetcar, tailor & insurance agent 4 blocks away, friendly & diverse neighbors that I see all the time walking around in a dense, human scale & beautiful environment.
I can and do walk quite a bit, take the streetcar often and drive my car a couple of times/week. I use perhaps 5 gallons/month and could cut down to 2 or 3 without major sacrifice.
Yes, I drive and it is OCCASIONALLY quite useful (see evacuation). And I am not alone. Pre-Katrina, New Orleans was tied with New York City for fewest miles driven by residents (ignoring, in both cases, suburban commuters coming in).
*I*F* I had not stumbled upon this alternative, I would have continued a typical suburban lifestyle (likely in Austin), knowing nothing better and no better alternative being available. And burning 10 or 15 times was much oil.
Best Hopes for Pleasant, Low Energy Urban Living,
Alan
I applaud this essay for many reasons if not for the simple fact that Robert (like many in the oil sector) is keenly aware of the true crux of the Peak Oil issue - the world is rapidly approaching a liquid transportation fuels crisis thus, what are the alternatives or in the words of Al Pacino from the movie Heat, “Whadda we got?!”
Before we answer that, I submit that most governments will attempt to mitigate the LTF crisis either as part of an international response strategy (preferred), market response strategy (observed) or emergency response strategy (pending) or some future combination thereof. And as far as the emergency response is concerned, this strategy will be largely reliant upon military forces the results of which are likely to fall somewhere between the failures and successes of what transpired in the aftermath of the Katrina and Tsunami disasters. (A prescient statement was made in last night’s SOTU that bears some relevance here but I will refer to it later).
After having identified these 3 relatively straightforward stratagems, one can effectively answer Mr. Pacino by outlining the existing and proposed alternative solutions that governments have at their disposal vis-à-vis the Peak Event timeline and here again, Robert (and the TOD community as a whole) do an excellent job of putting the proverbial ‘cards on the table’ as it were.
So again in the words of Al, “Whadda we got?!”
Well, first and foremost we ‘got’ conservation. There is no greater source of oil left to be found in the world than that which we already have.
We got liquid fossil fuels. A vast supply of liquid fuels that will last for decades to come if stewarded properly and this is where Heinburg’s depletion protocol, the JODI program and similar initiatives come into play.
We got grain ethanol. Which I have argued is a stepping-stone to 2nd and 3rd gen production paths but lets address 1-7 directly as I see it.
1. Grain ethanol is sustainable.
2. There are ways to mitigate the negative externalities mentioned a good example is my call for an organic corn feedstock mandate.
3. The EROEI is low but positive and more importantly, it gets increasingly better by the week – the same cannot be said for gasoline.
4. The BTU equivalency argument goes right out the window when the fuel usage platform is optimized for ethanol combustion (and this is not limited solely to autos). Subsidies meanwhile have been discussed here at great length and we could spend all day arguing as to whether oil production or ethanol production gets the lion’s share.
5. Agreed with one caveat. Corn ethanol plants will form the building blocks of what will be known as the integrated biorefinery and subsequent infrastructure needed to support them.
6. Agreed.
7. Yes.
We got sugarcane ethanol. From 1 through 7 I concur. Florida, Texas, Louisiana, California and Hawaii have the potential to take the lead in this area. Latin America too would very much like to capitalize on this lucrative opportunity, perhaps no more so than Cuba where 'Sin azúcar, no hay país' has more relevance than anywhere in the world. Could Castro’s passing foster closure of an embittered era?
We got cellulosic ethanol. Again I concur with Robert, however, the mission to Mars analogy is a tad melodramatic. In November of last year, Broin Companies http://www.broin.com announced that Iowa will be home to America’s first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant - operational by 2009. Conversely, the last time I checked, the NASA Mars command module was still an artist's rendering.
We got biodiesel. Another good synopsis and from what I’ve been able to ascertain the production paths to watch for are Chroen http://www.choren.de – USSEC http://www.ussec.us – GreenFuel http://www.greenfuelonline.com
We got biomass gasification. I’ve spoken at length about the potential of this production path but that’s not to say there aren’t deployment hurdles by any stretch of the imagination.
Solar and wind I’ll leave for the experts. Conservation see above. Which leaves me with SOTU.
I thought last night’s address was well done (as far as the energy meme was concerned) and although the proposed butanol/methanol segment was cut, most here at TOD should find the qualifying statement of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuel usage by 2017 reassuring to some extent. Increasing the SPR is a good idea, however, as the TOD community has pointed out ad nauseum, conservation would be a much wiser solution for many reasons and as far as E85, FFVs and BPHEVs are concerned, my opinions have been posted prior.
That said, the most interesting part of the speech -insofar as the American citizenry should be concerned and as alluded to above- was the call for a volunteer, Civilian Reserve Corps who will be given the chance to serve in the so-called DEFINING STRUGGLE OF ALL TIME.
“It’s exciting to think of, I just hope we last.”- Al Pacino, when asked about the new millennium.
Like Al Pacino its all fantasy. I would like to believe but I shall wait and see.
Cellulosic Ethanol: Even after the technology is proven it still has economic and EROEI hurdles to overcome. A few more Che Eng and Bio-wizards would be handy right now. Trying to staff a Manhattan project today would be a political and competency nightmare.
There are ways to mitigate the negative externalities mentioned a good example is my call for an organic corn feedstock mandate.
First, I should probably mention that you were the one who posed the question I used to start off this essay. That question really got me to thinking.
Here is where you and I differ. I think we both agree that the current corn farming practices used to support grain ethanol production in the U.S. have some pretty serious negative externalities. But you think that's OK, because you support an organic corn mandate. But you don't understand the situation with the farm/ethanol lobby here in the U.S. They aren't going to get behind anything like this. The status quo will continue as far as the eye can see. So, if you support the system, thinking it will change, I am afraid you are sadly mistaken. You are throwing your support behind a policy that is currently causing some serious side-effects, and that trend is only going to get worse.
The EROEI is low but positive and more importantly, it gets increasingly better by the week – the same cannot be said for gasoline.
Within the margin of error the EROEI appears to be positive, but this isn't universal. That's on average. Lots of ethanol plants operate at a sub-1.0 EROEI. I have seen actual plant energy usage numbers from a plant in the corn belt, and it was better than the average. But what one can't do is extrapolate the average EROEI (taken from the 9 best corn-producing states) and presume you could get that nationwide. A plant operating in Nebraska, buying irrigated corn and shipping the ethanol to California, is operating at a sub-1.0 EROEI. You would be better off just using CNG vehicles in California, as you would ultimately have more useable BTUs.
That's probably all from me today. This is my last day of work in the U.S., and I fly to Scotland tomorrow.
Conversion to an electric transport system is a noble direction, but before starting such a major change we need to truly understand how much Copper is left in the Earth's crust. The term "Peak Copper" has been used for about 2 years now, and much of the world's copper market fundamentals reflect similar terms that you would be familiar with from the oil industry. ( small spare capacity, a cartel trying to manipulating the market, price escalation; and so on )
Fact is the copper price more than doubled in the last year. Nickel is going up at similar rates. Electric transportation on a community wide scale will be limited by the amount of conductor material we can produce. As for Aluminium, it's been called 'solid electricity', it takes so much power to produce. Without cheap coal fired- or excess hydro-electricity I can't imagine how we could make enough aluminium to make a huge difference.
The US made great use of aluminium aeroplanes in the 2nd world war; aluminium that came the spare electricity generated by the Hoover Dam. Hydro-electricty didn't win the war on it's own, not by a long shot, but it sure helped those that did win the war an awful lot.
When the supply of conductor materials peaks, we are in the same situation as we find ourselves in with oil. No longer just peak oil, Mankind is soon facing 'peak everything'.
NPR ran a story on this about a year ago:
Study: Some Key Metals Growing Scarce
It's worth reading (or listening to) if you're interested. A group at Yale looked at several relatively scarce metals important to industry:
Unlike oil, metals are not something we will ever run out of, most of the planet's crust is made of silicates with metal oxides mixed in in varying concentrations. What we are running out of are profitable surface mines for some metals, i.e. geological formations where someone can dig up the ore and make a quick buck at current prices. Other metals like iron and aluminum are abundant to the point where we don't have to worry. And finally... the dissolved metal content of the oceans is an enormous resource. We would have to learn how to tap into it, though. Think genetic engineering of marine life forms...
Metals like copper and zinc can be replaced in most applications (your pipes and electrical wires can both be made from aluminum). The real crisis will be the metals of the platinum group. Until our chemists learn to make high temperature catalysts from something else, we better take good care of those babies!
Aluminum production requires 14kWh/kg of electricity. An acre of solar cells (4046m^2) produces roughly 1900kWh per day, i.e. 138kg of aluminum per day. That's 50 metric tons of aluminum a year. World production accounts to 30 million tons. In other words, we need 30million/50=600,000 acres of solar cells to produce that much metal. That is 2400km^2 or 940 square miles. Built as a single square we get that on a 30mile by 30 mile area. And this is using conservative numbers for insolation, cell efficiency etc..
With wind it gets even easier. We need 11.5GW of electrical power to run world aluminum production. That is equivalent to 35GW of wind capacity or 7000 5MW turbines. Not a small feat but miniscule compared to the rest of our energy problems.
The only people you scare with your argument are those who can't calculate.
By the way... did you know that you could potentially rip out ALL the phone cables in the world and easily replace them with glass fiber or just wireless networks? Why don't we? Because ripping up the infrastructure costs more in manual labor than what you could get for the price of the copper.
There was an exchange the other day between AlanFBE and Austex regarding the inclusion of ethanol in all liquids.
Alan was under the impression it was done purely on a volume basis (1 gallon of ethanol adds 1 gallon to all liquids.
Austex claimed it was done on a btu basis (1 gallon of ethanol is less than 1 gallon of all liquids).
They left the question unresolved.
Perhaps its a little off topic for this thread, but can anyone shed any light on this?
As far as I know the version Alan proposed is correct (by the gallon). Not sure of the argument I was attempting to make as I usually don't revisit threads on this site after a day or so - but apparently it didn't come out right :)
From here:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2203#comment-151197
It was in context of All Liquids being a dubious figure due to double counting of crude inputs and lower energy density of liquids like ethanol.
The conversation was left hanging with Alan asking for a source. I was curious too.
Looks like I was arguing the inputs/outputs on a btu basis, and Alan was simply stating the fact that Ethanol has less energy content on a volume basis. I must have misunderstood the point he was making, although the points both of us made are correct.
As far how they are tracked from an inventory standpoint, I believe it's on a volume basis like Alan stated, not BTU's.
Having said that I will address his argument - one of the two following things need to take place
1) Continue to NOT apply a conversion factor to compensate for less energy content on a volume basis for liquid fuels in storage
2) Apply a conversion factor for ALL liquid fuels in storage.
Right now we are doing #1, but to stay consistent we can't single out Ethanol and still get an accurate picture - we would need to apply this to all types of fuels in storage since they will have different btu's on a volume basis. An example of why I say stay consistent would be the significant amount of diesel in storage, which has a greater energy content than gasoline. Looking at inventory on a volume basis is all we have for now, although I think #2 would give us a more accurate picture
Regards
In terms of conversion factors:
So one barrel of Ethanol equals 0.46 barrel of crude oil and one barrel of NGPL (Natural Gas Plant Liquids) equals 0.64 barrel of crude oil. I wonder how the "All liquids" world production would look like on a BTU basis? Note that the gross energy content of NGPL has been decreasing since 1980 (was 3,900 thousand BTUs/barrel in 1980, now 3,724 thousand BTUs/barrel)
sources:
EIA (Conversion Factors and Gross Heat Contents)
DEO (Biomass Energy Book, Appendix A)
Also, according to Austex, 23% of the BTU's in Ethanol come from crude (with the bulk of the remaining from NG). You'd have to subtract that out as well in order to avoid double counting the crude inputs.
That All Liquids number gets shadier and shadier the more you look into it.
There's getting to be some really silly statements made here on corn/maize due to biofuel interest. Most production in north america is for livestock feed corn, not food.
Many city kids on their first gravel run have stolen and ate field corn cobs that sucked. They were for cows not people. Corn comes in many varieties and hybrids.
I found these stats today:
2005-2006 U.S. Corn Use By Segment (bushels)
Feed/Residual 6.1 billion (54.5%)
Exports 2.1 billion (18.8%)
Ethanol (fuel) 1.6 billion (14.3%)
High Fructose Corn Syrup 530 million (4.7%)
Corn Starch 275 million (2.5%)
Corn Sweeteners 225 million (2.0%)
Cereal/Other 190 million (1.7%)
Beverage Alcohol 135 million (1.2%)
Total 11.2 billion bushels
How is Our Corn Crop Used?
(2005/06 Statistics)
Animal Feed
6.1 billion bushels of corn went to feed animals. Your bacon and egg breakfast, glass of milk at lunch, or hamburger for supper were produced with U.S. corn.
* Livestock in Iowa consumed about 550 million bushels of Iowa’s crop. Of that, about 53% went to hogs, 29% to beef cattle, 12% to poultry and 5% to dairy cattle.
Exports
More than 2.1 billion bushels of corn fed people and animals in other countries.
The 10 biggest customers for U.S. corn are: Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, South Korea, Egypt, Colombia, Algeria, Canada, Israel and the Dominican Republic.
* 750 million bushels from Iowa’s crop left the state. More than 55% went to foreign markets. The rest was used in other parts of the United States.
Corn Sweeteners
755 million bushels were refined into corn sweeteners. Read the labels on beverages and foods to find corn sweeteners in colas, candies, cakes and cookies, lunch meats, jams and jellies, snack foods, salad dressings, and ice cream.
* Processing of all kinds (sweeteners, starches, and ethanol) consumed more of the Iowa crop than any other use – over 870 million bushels.
Ethanol
1.6 billionbushels of corn were fermented into fuel alcohol. Fuel alcohol makes gasoline burn cleaner, reducing air pollution, and it doesn’t pollute the water. Using corn, a renewable resource, to replace gasoline helps reduce our need for petroleum, which can’t be renewed.
* Iowa's growing ethanol industry uses about 450 million bushels alone.
Other Uses
275 million bushels were processed into starch for food and industrial uses: paper, textiles, adhesives, plastics, baked goods, condiments, candies, soups and mixes.
190 million bushels became breakfast cereals, snack chips, tortillas and other corn foods.
135 million bushels of corn were fermented into alcoholic beverages.
Because sweetener, starch and alcohol production doesn't use all of the corn kernel, the 2 billion bushels that went into those products also provided 24.2 million tons of animal feed and 3.3 billion pounds of corn oil.
Source: USDA, industry statistics.
2005-2006 U.S. Corn Use By Segment (bushels)
http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_3.html
and this:
What can you get from one bushel of corn?
1.6 Pounds of Corn Oil
Cooking Oil, Margarine, Mayonnaise, Salad Dressing, Shortening, Soups, Printing Ink, Soap, Leather Tanning
AND
13.5 Pounds of 21% Protein Gluten Feed
Livestock & Poultry Feed, Pet Food
AND
2.6 Pounds of 60% Gluten Meal
Amino Acids, Fur Cleaner, Poultry Feed
AND 32 Pounds of Starch
Adhesives, Batteries, Cardboard, Crayons, Degradable Plastics, Dyes, Plywood, Paper, Antibiotics, Chewing Gum
OR
33 Pounds of Sweetener
Shoe Polish, Soft Drinks & Juices, Jams and Jellies, Canned Fruit, Cereal, Licorice, Peanut Butter, Pickles, Catsup, Marshmallows
OR
2.7 Gallons of Ethanol/Alcohol
Motor Fuel Additive, Alcoholic Beverages, Industrial Alcohol
http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_10.html
Great overview. I appreciate it. What amazes me is that the corn ethanol production is on par with exports and might actually begin cutting into our corn exports, thus raising our foreign trade deficit, yet again.
How about that? Is that fear substantiated?
The other thing that boggles the mind is that dozens of pounds of other products are being displaced by the equivalent of 2 gallons of gas (at the additional cost of the import of oil worth 1.6 gallons of gas...). So we can have dozens of pounds of other stuff for the savings of 0.4 gallons of gas. At current market prices any of that stuff is worth tens of times, if not hundreds of times more than the 0.4 gallons of gas we save, at best.
What a waste!
Maize exports are $1.3-Bil within a total goods export of $100-Bil. IOW, zilch effect.
Come on, Robert. No one credible I know says we shouldn't conserve or increase efficiences due to Jevon's Paradox, but that increased efficency leads to greater use, while conservation drives down the price increasing consumption or susidizing those who choose not to conserve.
We need to counter these consequences with increased fuel prices as efficiency/conservation increases to curb increased use. Or we ration it.
Putting fuel on sale will not lower it's use in a free market. History abounds with the facts to support this.
MANDATORY RENEWABLE ENERGY – THE ENERGY EVOLUTION –R11
In order to insure energy and economic independence as well as better economic growth without being blackmailed by foreign countries, our country, the United States of America’s Utilization of Energy sources must change.
"Energy drives our entire economy." We must protect it. "Let's face it, without energy the whole economy and economic society we have set up would come to a halt. So you want to have control over such an important resource that you need for your society and your economy." The American way of life is not negotiable.
Our continued dependence on fossil fuels could and will lead to catastrophic consequences.
The federal, state and local government should implement a mandatory renewable energy installation program for residential and commercial property on new construction and remodeling projects with the use of energy efficient material, mechanical systems, appliances, lighting, etc. The source of energy must by renewable energy such as Solar-Photovoltaic, Geothermal, Wind, Biofuels, etc. including utilizing water from lakes, rivers and oceans to circulate in cooling towers to produce air conditioning and the utilization of proper landscaping to reduce energy consumption. (Sales tax on renewable energy products should be reduced or eliminated)
The implementation of mandatory renewable energy could be done on a gradual scale over the next 10 years. At the end of the 10 year period all construction and energy use in the structures throughout the United States must be 100% powered by renewable energy. (This can be done by amending building code)
In addition, the governments must impose laws, rules and regulations whereby the utility companies must comply with a fair “NET METERING” (the buying of excess generation from the consumer at market price), including the promotion of research and production of “renewable energy technology” with various long term incentives and grants. The various foundations in existence should be used to contribute to this cause.
A mandatory time table should also be established for the automobile industry to gradually produce an automobile powered by renewable energy. The American automobile industry is surely capable of accomplishing this task. As an inducement to buy hybrid automobiles (sales tax should be reduced or eliminated on American manufactured automobiles).
This is a way to expedite our energy independence and economic growth. (This will also create a substantial amount of new jobs). It will take maximum effort and a relentless pursuit of the private, commercial and industrial government sectors commitment to renewable energy – energy generation (wind, solar, hydro, biofuels, geothermal, energy storage (fuel cells, advance batteries), energy infrastructure (management, transmission) and energy efficiency (lighting, sensors, automation, conservation) (rainwater harvesting, water conservation) (energy and natural resources conservation) in order to achieve our energy independence.
"To succeed, you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality."
Jay Draiman, Energy Consultant
Northridge, CA. 91325
Jan. 25, 2007
P.S. I have a very deep belief in America's capabilities. Within the next 10 years we can accomplish our energy independence, if we as a nation truly set our goals to accomplish this.
I happen to believe that we can do it. In another crisis--the one in 1942--President Franklin D. Roosevelt said this country would build 60,000 [50,000] military aircraft. By 1943, production in that program had reached 125,000 aircraft annually. They did it then. We can do it now.
The American people resilience and determination to retain the way of life is unconquerable and we as a nation will succeed in this endeavor of Energy Independence.
Solar energy is the source of all energy on the earth (excepting volcanic geothermal). Wind, wave and fossil fuels all get their energy from the sun. Fossil fuels are only a battery which will eventually run out. The sooner we can exploit all forms of Solar energy (cost effectively or not against dubiously cheap FFs) the better off we will all be. If the battery runs out first, the survivors will all be living like in the 18th century again.
Every new home built should come with a solar package. A 1.5 kW per bedroom is a good rule of thumb. The formula 1.5 X's 5 hrs per day X's 30 days will produce about 225 kWh per bedroom monthly. This peak production period will offset 17 to 24 cents per kWh with a potential of $160 per month or about $60,000 over the 30-year mortgage period for a three-bedroom home. It is economically feasible at the current energy price and the interest portion of the loan is deductible. Why not?
Title 24 has been mandated forcing developers to build energy efficient homes. Their bull-headedness put them in that position and now they see that Title 24 works with little added cost. Solar should also be mandated and if the developer designs a home that solar is impossible to do then they should pay an equivalent mitigation fee allowing others to put solar on in place of their negligence. (Installation should be paid “performance based”)
Installation of renewable energy and its performance should be paid to the installer and manufacturer based on "performance based" (that means they are held accountable for the performance of the product - that includes the automobile industry). This will gain the trust and confidence of the end-user to proceed with such a project; it will also prove to the public that it is a viable avenue of energy conservation.
Installing renewable energy system on your home or business increases the value of the property and provides a marketing advantage.
Nations of the world should unite and join together in a cohesive effort to develop and implement MANDATORY RENEWABLE ENERGY for the sake of humankind and future generations.
Jay Draiman
Northridge, CA 91325
Email: renewableenergy2@msn.com
For what it's worth... you got my vote.
I agree. The "Jevon's Paradox" line was a throwaway. I've never seen it used as an excuse not to conserve...perhaps a rationale for those who wouldn't conserve in any case, but that's a different matter.
At the same time, the potential for savings from efficiency are highly overstated, but not from the strict sense of Jevon's paradox.
This is due to the fact that people don't save energy...they save money. Not a kW nor joule of any energy has ever gone into a person's pocket. What they see is dollars, euros or yuan.
There are three main offsets to efficiency.
First is the direct rebound effect. When you can have a light on for the cost of 13W (CFL) instead of 60W (incandescent), you might use it more...perhaps not turn it it off when you leave the room. Your monetary savings are somewhat reduced and kWh usage raised. We've seen this in a very big way with car efficiency gains, which have been more than offset by higher VMT. On the other hand, this has not been a factor with refrigerator efficiency gains of over 50% since 1983. Since they already run 24/7, there's no additional use possible (unless you want to leave the door open for some reason).
Second is the indirect rebound effect. This refers to the offset of your energy savings from efficiency by the use of the monetary savings for other consumption. Say you save $20/month on your electricity bill from your new efficient refrigerator, but spend this on Starbucks, or another tank of gas or a few books. Each of these items require energy that would not have otherwise been demanded, and offset your savings to various degrees. Further, your purchase is someone else's income, so there is the multiplier effect in action.
The third is the general equilibrium effect. This is most powerful. This refers to the economic impact of having your monetary savings recycled through our fractional reserve banking system. Say a factory has an audit and replaces a series of inefficient equipment with more efficient ones and saves $10,000/month in energy costs. This $10,000, as savings or a bank deposit, form the basis of up to $90,000 (on average) of new money (in the form of credit with interest obligations) in the larger economy. This, of course, requires some kind of growth in order to generate the profit to pay off the principal and interest. The additonal energy demanded for this new economic activity can swamp your savings.
Why don't we see this? Because the boundaries of energy efficiency measurements are drawn very narrowly. When US DOE does its savings estimates of new appliance standards, it draws the boundary around the single piece of equipment itself. Direct rebound effects are sometimes mentioned, but the indirect and general equilibrium effects are completely ignored. Do you ever wonder why, when you see all these claimed savings of TWhs or GJ why total energy consumption just keeps rising?
There's only a few ways to offset this. One would be to tax away the monetary gains from efficiency and sterilize the money. Second, and important in our context here, is that these effects don't accrue when efficiency is used to offset the rising price of energy. Personally, I have not saved a penny from installing an efficient gas water heater 2 years ago because gas prices have risen faster than the increase in efficiency, but I have foregone spending more. And third, the savings can be tapped away to recycle into natural capital formation (soil, air, water), but we simply don't have a mechanism to do this.
So don't completely dismiss the impacts of Jevon's Paradox in the broad sense because of its common misuse in the strict sense. Unless the monetary savings from energy conservation don't return to the economy, we are fooling ourselves to think that these measures can have a significant impact over the long term.
I agree. The "Jevon's Paradox" line was a throwaway. I've never seen it used as an excuse not to conserve...perhaps a rationale for those who wouldn't conserve in any case, but that's a different matter.
How it has been used before, even in this forum, is to suggest that conservation efforts are ultimately useless because the energy we save will be used by China or someone else. I have had this very argument with a couple of the regular posters here, and I always answer that even if overall energy usage doesn't go down due to Jevon's Paradox, those who practice conservation will be better positioned to deal with Peak Oil.
Individuals who practice conservation can see results, sure...until that conservation takes their job. We are talking about conservation having a meaningful longterm positive effect. Sparaxis laid out the consequences of conservation in a free market.
Conservation in a capitalistic system are like oil and water, they do not mix.
Conservation is reduced economic activity. Loss of sales.
Who absorbs these losses? How do we re-employ people who are displaced by conservation efforts so that supply can meet demand? Any new energy expenditure must come from the existing supply...which has no extra energy...it all goes to meeting existing demand. It must come from a further reduction in the standard of living, starting a whole new cycle.
Not to mention the 3 billion newcomers by 2050...if the standard of living in developing countries continues to rise, as this is what is shrinking the growth rate of the world's population. Otherwise, at the current 1.3 % growth rate, we double to 13 billion in 2061.
There's a letter by two Brazilian scientists in the Jan 25,2007 issue of Nature that's concerned with the negative externalities of sugarcane production. They mention three. Summarizing for those without web access, they are:
- Soil erosion, which is widespread at up to 30 tonnes per hectare per year. Also, only 30% of riparian zones have been protected.
- Sugar cane fields harvested by hand are burned twice a year. The resulting smoke is a serious problem in Sao Paulo and other states, and it leads to acidication of the soils. Atmospheric particulates are associated with human respiratory diseases.
- Working conditions for manual harvesters are "extremely poor and often associated with causes of death".
MANDATORY RENEWABLE ENERGY – THE ENERGY EVOLUTION –R11
In order to insure energy and economic independence as well as better economic growth without being blackmailed by foreign countries, our country, the United States of America’s Utilization of Energy sources must change.
"Energy drives our entire economy." We must protect it. "Let's face it, without energy the whole economy and economic society we have set up would come to a halt. So you want to have control over such an important resource that you need for your society and your economy." The American way of life is not negotiable.
Our continued dependence on fossil fuels could and will lead to catastrophic consequences.
The federal, state and local government should implement a mandatory renewable energy installation program for residential and commercial property on new construction and remodeling projects with the use of energy efficient material, mechanical systems, appliances, lighting, etc. The source of energy must by renewable energy such as Solar-Photovoltaic, Geothermal, Wind, Biofuels, etc. including utilizing water from lakes, rivers and oceans to circulate in cooling towers to produce air conditioning and the utilization of proper landscaping to reduce energy consumption. (Sales tax on renewable energy products should be reduced or eliminated)
The implementation of mandatory renewable energy could be done on a gradual scale over the next 10 years. At the end of the 10 year period all construction and energy use in the structures throughout the United States must be 100% powered by renewable energy. (This can be done by amending building code)
In addition, the governments must impose laws, rules and regulations whereby the utility companies must comply with a fair “NET METERING” (the buying of excess generation from the consumer at market price), including the promotion of research and production of “renewable energy technology” with various long term incentives and grants. The various foundations in existence should be used to contribute to this cause.
A mandatory time table should also be established for the automobile industry to gradually produce an automobile powered by renewable energy. The American automobile industry is surely capable of accomplishing this task. As an inducement to buy hybrid automobiles (sales tax should be reduced or eliminated on American manufactured automobiles).
This is a way to expedite our energy independence and economic growth. (This will also create a substantial amount of new jobs). It will take maximum effort and a relentless pursuit of the private, commercial and industrial government sectors commitment to renewable energy – energy generation (wind, solar, hydro, biofuels, geothermal, energy storage (fuel cells, advance batteries), energy infrastructure (management, transmission) and energy efficiency (lighting, sensors, automation, conservation) (rainwater harvesting, water conservation) (energy and natural resources conservation) in order to achieve our energy independence.
"To succeed, you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality."
Jay Draiman, Energy Consultant
Northridge, CA. 91325
Jan. 25, 2007
P.S. I have a very deep belief in America's capabilities. Within the next 10 years we can accomplish our energy independence, if we as a nation truly set our goals to accomplish this.
I happen to believe that we can do it. In another crisis--the one in 1942--President Franklin D. Roosevelt said this country would build 60,000 [50,000] military aircraft. By 1943, production in that program had reached 125,000 aircraft annually. They did it then. We can do it now.
The American people resilience and determination to retain the way of life is unconquerable and we as a nation will succeed in this endeavor of Energy Independence.
Solar energy is the source of all energy on the earth (excepting volcanic geothermal). Wind, wave and fossil fuels all get their energy from the sun. Fossil fuels are only a battery which will eventually run out. The sooner we can exploit all forms of Solar energy (cost effectively or not against dubiously cheap FFs) the better off we will all be. If the battery runs out first, the survivors will all be living like in the 18th century again.
Every new home built should come with a solar package. A 1.5 kW per bedroom is a good rule of thumb. The formula 1.5 X's 5 hrs per day X's 30 days will produce about 225 kWh per bedroom monthly. This peak production period will offset 17 to 24 cents per kWh with a potential of $160 per month or about $60,000 over the 30-year mortgage period for a three-bedroom home. It is economically feasible at the current energy price and the interest portion of the loan is deductible. Why not?
Title 24 has been mandated forcing developers to build energy efficient homes. Their bull-headedness put them in that position and now they see that Title 24 works with little added cost. Solar should also be mandated and if the developer designs a home that solar is impossible to do then they should pay an equivalent mitigation fee allowing others to put solar on in place of their negligence. (Installation should be paid “performance based”)
Installation of renewable energy and its performance should be paid to the installer and manufacturer based on "performance based" (that means they are held accountable for the performance of the product - that includes the automobile industry). This will gain the trust and confidence of the end-user to proceed with such a project; it will also prove to the public that it is a viable avenue of energy conservation.
Installing renewable energy system on your home or business increases the value of the property and provides a marketing advantage.
Nations of the world should unite and join together in a cohesive effort to develop and implement MANDATORY RENEWABLE ENERGY for the sake of humankind and future generations.
Jay Draiman
Northridge, CA 91325
Email: renewableenergy2@msn.com
Ethanol from corn production has an EROI of 1.1 or 1.3 depending on whether one counts the animal feed by-product. What is the EROI of ethanol made from sugar cane and sugar beet? What is included? Pumped irrigation, or, as they claim in Brazil they rely solely on rainfall and the land needs no fertilizers?
From an Australian perspective (my neck of the woods) I doubt rainfall would be sufficient. In fact I heard 1 ton of cane requires 800 tons of water, an amount that seems well outside Australia's limited resources.
Robert states that cellulosic ethanol has few downsides but didn't say what they were. Is it anticipated that all of the nutrients that are pulled from the soil by the plants that end up in a cellulosic ethanol production facility are returned to the soil from which they were pulled? If not, then it contributes to topsoil depletion. Why state it as a negative of corn ethanol but not of cellulosic ethanol? The plants have to come from somewhere, and waste is not really waste.
On sustainability, it needs to be stated explicitly at what level of production the energy source is sustainable. There is no point in pretending, for example, that wind and solar are sustainable if an attempt is made to grow those sources exponentially, for ever. Wind and solar need resources, need land, need maintaining. Some of these things will compete against other uses in the economy. They are not sustainable beyond some level. The same is true of sugar cane ethanol and cellulosic ethanol. I know Robert mentioned scalability in some of the energy sources, but this needs to be stated explicitly in the sustainability section.
I couldn't agree more, but given that an energy efficient house would require a 3kW PV system (at least) just to cover its own energy use, where is the surplus electricity going to come from to charge the PHEV? Are we going to put 5, 6, 7kW PV systems on every rooftop? That would be a very expensive option at today's prices.
You have to keep in mind that we have a lot of renewables in our energy mix, already, in form of hydroelectic plants. They will not go away, thus we will not have to replace 100% of our energy demand with solar. Moreover, we can reduce our demand by 50 percent and live just as well as the Europeans, i.e. better than we do today.
As far as ideal roof area for solar goes, it happens to be industrial: large, flat roofs with minimal installation cost. As an example: the company I work for has roof area two or three times worth it's own consumption. With solar panels on our roof we could supply at least a dozen homes.
A typical US mall has enough area to supply itself and the whole neighbourhood. Use Google Earth to look at the roof of your local mall. You can measure the roof area with the measurement tools. Multiply that with 20W/m^2 (or 2.2W/square foot) to get the average solar capacity of that roof.
By covering industrial and commercial parking lots with PV more energy can be created than is used by EVs that will park on those very same parking lots.
"That would be a very expensive option at today's prices."
Solar electricity can be made at 25 cents/kWh at residential prices today. That price is mostly due to enormous demand that outstrips supply of PV modules (there is a real shortage in the market at the moment).
The cost for 500kW and larger industrial sites is roughly half that much and quite competitive with peak electricity prices.
Dedicated solar thermal plants achieve 8 cents/kWh in the Southwest.
Despite the tight market, solar energy installation prices are coming down at a rate of over 5% a year. Extrapolate that to 2015 and you have to scramble for excuses not to install solar panels.
IP, I love your enthusiasm, but even if we covered every rooftop on the planet with solar PV I doubt it would make more than a token contribution to our energy usage. Certainly I can't see rooftop PV replacing the energy currently supplied by petroluem.
George Monbiot is very dismissive of the idea that rooftop PV could make much of a contribution:
Yes I know they don't get much sun in the UK and the prospects for rooftop PV are better in the US and Australia (where I live), but we'd need at least 2 orders of magnitude more sun if Monbiot's calculations are accurate.
Your own quote shows that to be false:
Of course, it's possible you fell for the negative spin in the article:
What's the justification for division by four? Are there no flat roofs in the country? Are there no A-frame buildings with only 2 effective sides?
The author is pulling sleight-of-hand here, arbitrarily cutting down the effective area without providing solid reasons for doing so.
More sleight of hand, by both of you this time.
You use his estimate to dismiss the theoretical potential for solar power, incorrectly referring to his current-economics figure rather than his maximum-potential figure.
He assumes solar panels will be no cheaper and electricity will be no more expensive in 20 years than it is now, both of which go against historical trends.
The problem isn't the calculations; it's the unreasonable assumptions and misleading mis-statements.
Interestingly Monbiot is seen as a 'radical environmentalist' who, for example, things there should be restrictions on air travel.
He's become the bete noir of the global warming denialist crowd.
The chief of the largest airline in Europe, Ryanair, has specifically singled him out as an enemy of progress, AFAIK.
I don't like his articles because he throws numbers around, it's not always clear even if he understands his numbers-- I always feel after I've read the article that unless I spend 2 hours checking his numbers, I don't know if he is right.
I *think* what he is arguing is very specific to Britain:
- we are at a very high latitude. London is on the latitude of Churchill, Manitoba, I believe (50 degrees N). The Gulf Stream gives us a mild climate.
So solar doesn't work well in winter (not enough daylight). It doesn't get light in London until 7.30 am, and it's dark by 4.30, 5 weeks past solstice
- it's cloudy here and it rains a lot (but a lot less in the southern 1/3rd of England, where about 25 million people live)
I mean I don't think any of us think solar power is going to save Portland Oregon, let alone Seattle or Vancouver.
Of course the quid pro quo is that we have some of the best wind resources in the world-- in the developed world, I think only the US Great Plains have consistently more wind at higher velocity than the West Coast of Scotland.
Oh and wind blows at night, as well as in the day ;-).
In the framework of renevable electric generation, I've searched the entire blog about the KITE WIND GENERATOR and found nothing.
That's strange, considering that this technology is very promising under every aspect (from point 1 to 7 of this post), and just now is undertaking tests on a mobile prototype.
If you want to know more, just google in "KiteGen" or "Kite Wind Generator"
Cheers
Phitio
RR,
How hard would it be for typical ethanol plants to be converted to producing methanol instead?
I don't enough about the biochemical route for methanol to know whether it would require major retrofits. I am guessing yes, especially in the distillation section.
Iceland has vast quantities of geosteam and superheated water. They use some of it for electrical generation (not quite 200 MW) and Reykjavik alone uses/wastes 800 MW of geoheat (outdoor swimming pools, {visions of blond Icelandic lass running through the snow in her bikini towards the steaming pool} heated sidewalks, open store doors in wintertime, etc.)
Massive quantities left untouched.
Could ethanol liquor be distilled in Iceland ?
Barge 8% to 12% ethanol downriver, transfer to tanker, ship to Iceland, distill via geoheat and return distilled ethanol for a better EROEI ?
Your thoughts RR ?
Alan
Your thoughts RR ?
I think the question one always has to ask, whether proposing a solar-based distillation scheme or something like you have suggested above: Are there more efficient uses for those BTUs? A major problem with ethanol distillation is due to the water content you are always going to waste a lot of BTUs getting it out. That's a big reason that the energy balance is so poor.
Robert, as I keep pointing out, the main source of energy waste is at the stage where you grow crops. What is wrong with ethanol plants that use solar heat for the distillation process and get somewhat better EROEI? A thousand acres of land will probably get you more heat than you need to run such a plant and that upgrade returns as much energy as a 50 or hundred times larger area of crops.
Now, I fully believe that $RO$I would be far worse for the plant's owner, but since we are not feaking out over that question, anyway, (despite that we should), I don't see any problem with asking if an how tight coupling of industrial solar technology could actually pull this horse out of the swamp.
Back to the question of most efficient usage of those BTUs. Better to use your solar power to make electricity and use electric transport. Using it to distill water off of ethanol is not the most efficient usage of those BTUs. Most are wasted.
I agree... I think the argument goes along the lines of "if you are dead set on that stupid ethanol, let's at least see if one can do it "right"...".
But you are absolutely right... making idiocy better is still idiocy.
Which is why this will be the world's first hydrogen economy.
They are targetting it, even looking into hydrogen fuel for fishing trawlers.
I disagree with some of the statements in the article from CorpWatch.
Specifically this portion(and perhaps some others as well):
"Yet the enormous amounts of corn that ADM and other ethanol processors buy from Midwestern farmers wreak damage on the environment in a multiplicity of ways. Modern corn hybrids require more nitrogen fertilizer, herbicides, and insecticides than any other crop, while causing the most extensive erosion of top soil."
First let me say that ag practices in other regions may differ markedly that in my region. My region I define as the bootheel of Mo.,southern Illinois and the heaviest grain crop produding area of Kentucky.
Now what do I disagree with. First they do not make a distinction as regards 'herbicides'. Herbicides are a broad brush. They can include many treatments. What they should do is differentiate as to insecticides and herbicides. Corn here does not need much in the way of insecticides. It need pre and maybe post emergence treatments depending on your method of tillage. If you use RR corn then you of course will use roundup.
What one must realize is that grass will steal a large amount of your nitrogen. When you can walk the corn rows and they are very clean then you have very likely been able to reduce you nitrogen needs since the grass is not competing and you also have a greater yield. Johnsongrass will totally destroy your corn crop. There is no question of this.
So they are being rather imprecise in that statement.
As regards erosion. In Ky we are very successful in combating erosion. RR said he never heard of No-Till in Okla. The advantages of no-till are well known. If you can use it you should.
RR also said" Water moves, and it takes dirt with it" or words to that effect. Well not true. It all depends on how FAST water moves. On creek bottom or flat land water SITS. If it does move it moves slowly and any sediment will settle out also there will be little sediment. The problem with sitting water is it can flood and kill your crops so its better to have slopes or you will have to put down field tile or ditches(pto ditches in our case). If you have HEL land you should farm it with special care and therefore have very little erosion.
Bad farm practices should not be the cause of crying about erosion and chemicals. Atrazine has very special handling by law. Practicing good erosion control will minimize the runoff and hence the pollution effects.
The statement that corn is more erodible than other crops is misleading IMO. Simple observation will tell you that this is a very dense crop and made of up very tall and robust stalks and leaves and the root mass is very large and well anchored to the soil in order to support the tall growth. There for erosion for corn is very minimal and as opposed to say soybeans. When you combine beans you leave very little residue. With corn the residue is very large and effective and puts a lot of OM back into the soil as well as diminishing greatly the effects of rain and washing.
Also I would further add that crop rotation is very effective at controlling erosion. When you plant winter wheat you are planting what is in effect a cover crop. You combine the wheat in the spring and immediately follow it with seeding in soybeans. There fore you ground spends very little time bare and therefore less erosion.
Also the soybeans being a legume will contribute nitrogen. Another benefit.
We do 3 crop/2year rotation usually. We also employ grassy strips.
We do many things that I believe the writer of the article in CorpWatch appears to be ignorant of.
There are many articles on soils,crops and erosion in the archives and online at the Univ of Ky.
I maintain that a good farmer indulging in good practices does not introduce erosion to a large degree. That our soil(in my area) is not eroding away else we would have steadily worsening crop yields and the land would become infertile. I also submit that the Ag Chem company I worked for last spring followed proper procedures in the applications of various chemicals they applied. This chemicals are expensive and you do not wish to spray them when the wind is blowing or waste them by application. The effects are well known.
I have a well that I get my water from. Its tests fine and showed no signs of contamination. I am surrounded by many acres under constant cultivation. I drive by and observe these fields every day.
If the question of erosion is one of concern then I would ask where is this happening and what practices are they following. Saying that they have several feet of topsoil and can afford to waste it therefore is not an acceptable answer.
Modern practices are what we have developed. To not use them is incorrect.
Personally I much prefer a different more organic and sustainable approach to farming. I find that animal manure and practices such as Ruth Stout advocated many many years ago produce far better produce and products. Yet we all know that this is not what the populace demands and wants. They want utter and total preprocessed convience at large boxstores. They are the ones who make the market and cause the demand.
Take a mirror and look into it closely and think about you being the problem instead of the farmer who feeds you. You might want to even say that your thankful that you can buy that food. You might not want to bitch about him when you mouth is full. He has a living to make as well as all those who drive all the VMTs to simply provide 'services'. He takes food out of the ground for you to eat. Same as the oil companies as well.
So you get the food and the fuel and the means to cloth yourself.
The revolution , if it comes and is needed ,will circle around the consumers and their demands and not those who supply it.
Most everyone who whines about farmers would not have the stamina to even follow the average farmer as he goes about his work, not for even one day. Not get down in the dirt nor stand the dust , grime and elbow grease it takes to bring crops to market so the rest can buy very cheap food and sit back and whine about agriculture with a full belly.
My rant and I am proud of it. If you don't like the idea of ethanol, and I don't like it as well, then you need to go find a ballot box as well as the office of your elected representatives as well as become very active in promoting a sustainable alternative fuel.
In closing. If the demands are for the crops to create fuel then I would say that the farmer will meet those demands IF the market is profitable. He would literally doze the trees down and plant the CRP. He would do what is necessary to meet the demand. I don't see farmers backing away from that. Heaven help us if we do throw out all our correct practices and allow the rape of the land to occur. We would surely be consuming our seed corn(analogy here) and we would suffer the same fate as we currently see in 3rd world countries.
airdale
PS. I forgot. I am not in favor of creation of GMO hybrids yet it must be understood that with the BT implants you do not have to spray for what it prevents. The statement quoted above regarding more pesticides,insecticides is obviously incorrect.
Your whole chain of argument unfortunately gets burried under the fact that the same farmer who plants 100 acres of corn could get more net energy out of two acres of solar panels or a single 2.5MW wind turbine.
"If you don't like the idea of ethanol"
I simply don't like the idea that my tax dollars are being wasted on the salaries of a few hundred agricultural industry execs. Because that is where the majority of the money that goes into corn ethanol ends up: in the hands of people who could not care less about the advantages for the nation as long as their own pockets are filled. No technical arguments about how the corn is grown changes anything about the real life facts that corn ethanol was conceived and is being used as a porking vehicle.
IP I asked you not to comment on my posts. This is the reason why.
You must never read what you post. How can someone eat solar panels?
Robert, just think about the jobs lost as we impose a self-induced recession on the 1 in 6 jobs that are tied to the auto industry who service those "trips" from auto insurance to body shops, batteries, tires, fast food, etc.
How will we deal with this displacement?
We depend mostly on Canada and Mexico for our imported oil. Only 17% or 2.24 mbpd or our 13.2 mbpd of imports comes from the ME.
Since oil is a fungible commodity, how do you plan to subtract conservation gains only from ME imports? Are the Saudis aware of this? What about the Production Service Agreements with Iraq? We abandon them to reduce our oil dependency?
Besides, imports are growing at 1.7% per year. Reduce our dependence through conservation? Maybe slow the rate of growth of imports.
Robert, just think about the jobs lost as we impose a self-induced recession on the 1 in 6 jobs that are tied to the auto industry who service those "trips" from auto insurance to body shops, batteries, tires, fast food, etc.
Not sure if your tongue is in cheek, but Peak Oil is going to take those jobs sooner or later anyway, and when it does the economic climate will be much more difficult for someone looking for a job.
Since oil is a fungible commodity, how do you plan to subtract conservation gains only from ME imports?
We still choose our trading partners, though. If we can get a barrel of oil from Canada or the ME, and the price is comparable, we are probably going to go with Canada as opposed to sending those dollars to the ME.
Then conservation won't help much, will it? All those fuel savings will just get spent on some other energy consuming item won't they? Or efforts to create another energy consuming job. I guess you are saying we might zs well get the job losses over with as they are going anyway. Hardly a reason to impose a recession. Tough sell.
When I asked how do we deal with this displacemet, I guess I should have said, how do we spread around the pain so that we all share the burden?
As to trading partners...that is, unless we have agreements with them like we do with Saudi Arabia to buy their oil. And the PSA's with Iraq? We abandon them? The Iraq War for nothing? Why don't we just buy all our oil from Canada now? Because 60% of the remaining oil is in the ME. If not for the embargo, we would be trying to get as much as we can from Iran.
I know of no govt plan to reduce imports of oil from the ME as any alternative source of energy comes on-line.
It's all spin. Why the WhiteHouse focus on just ME imports? Creating fear amongst the masses. Letting uninformed Americans continue to believe most of our imported oil comes from "those terrorists." I was surprised you even made a reference to ME oil imports.
Don't get me wrong, Robert. I have great respect for most of your writings. I quote you all the time.
BTW, I'm the Senior Moderator over at Peakoil.com
"Robert, just think about the jobs lost as we impose a self-induced recession on the 1 in 6 jobs that are tied to the auto industry who service those "trips" from auto insurance to body shops, batteries, tires, fast food, etc."
For an economist, the answer is elegantly simple. The money saved through conservation will almost inevitably be spent by consumers in another sector, creating an equivalent job payroll. (This could equate to more low paying jobs, or fewer very high paying jobs.) Since oil will be increasingly expensive, the new jobs will tend to be more in industries with a lower oil footprint.
Of course, if energy is so expensive that the average consumer has to conserve just to purchase the essentials, then conservation won't stimulate the economy. But the problem then isn't conservation, but the lack of oil.
Ah, but is not so simple. When conservation is used to allow demand to meet supply, there is no extra energy to create jobs with. Remember, we are in a declining energy environment post-peak. We are used to creasting new jobs by growing the economy and increasing energy consumption. Any new jobs or renewable energy creation will have to come from the existing declining supply.
Who will go without so that we can spend it creating new renewable energy sources that won't be net postive for, in some cases, years?
And if you just create different jobs, then where is the conservation? Switching end use is not a solution.
Then there is the matter of population growth....
Conservation cannot offset oil decline, create new jobs for displaced workers from conservation, and create new jobs for the 3 billion newcomers by 2050.
Plus fund Social Security, Medicare, service the debt, and deal with global warming.
Connect the dots.
One productive gov't jobs program would be massive construction of Urban Rail systems. "Peak Streetcar" was 1897-1916 and were built with "Coal, sweat & mules"#
Wind turbines are in the energy "black" within a year to 18 months in most cases. Many energy conservation measures repay their energy investment in one to two years.
Best Hopes,
Alan
# I did see one construction photo, dated 1915, with one truck on site.
Hi Monte,
Thanks for your post. Further up, Nick says (if I'm conveying it correctly, please check?), we can turn over to a completely electricity-based, hence renewable-fueled (i.w., wind and solar) infrastructure, starting from today's FF based real-world arrangement.
Do you agree?
In other words,
"Remember, we are in a declining energy environment post-peak."
That's what I'd figured.
My Q is: So, if the first statement above statement is true, it's theoretically possible to scale-up and "transition" (somehow I have to put that word in quotes) to all renewable (wind, solar - no nuke?) fuel sources, and at the same time, convert end-use to electricity based (electrified rail,etc.)... then, it seems we are *not necessarily* in a "...declining energy environment post-peak."..?
Given...1) how much time, and 2) stopping how much of what, 3) to start to do what?
4) (and whose in charge of this?)
PS I've got the pop. growth covered, thanks to poster Nov. 21 (I'll look it up) : Somehow insure full legal rights for women and children.
Also, wondering:
"When conservation is used to allow demand to meet supply, there is no extra energy to create jobs with."
Could you please expand upon this? (ie., it makes sense to me, and at the same time, I believe I've heard the opposite said many times.)
Aniya,
Please see my post above. On the basic question of the viability of renewables, you should keep in mind that a lot of the pessimism in PO circles is due to pessimists like Kunstler, Heinberg, Savinar and Hanson, and those guys deal with renewables (wind, solar, wave, etc) in an astonishingly superficial fashion. They don't even really try, they just dismiss them as unworkable. Kunstler clearly wants a crash that will end suburbia. As best I can tell Heinberg and Savinar seem to want to scare people into thinking about the problems, and don't want to admit there might be solutions, lest people stop paying attention. Hanson gives a great deal of info about solar that makes it clear how much potential it has, and then dismisses it as too "dilute". Very puzzling.
People like Goodstein, Simmons, Hirsch and Deffeyes say explicity that they think that renewables are perfectly viable - they just want to make clear that the transition is a very large project, and needs to start now.
This is frequently stated but never backed up. Do you have any evidence you can share? Any references? Post peak there will be a decline in oil energy production, but not necessarily in total energy.
Conservation is making demand meet supply.
Part of that demand is creating new (lower-energy) jobs for displaced workers.
Ergo, new jobs are available.
It all depends on what your implicit assumptions are. Yours appear to be that society will, for some nonsensical reason, happily spend energy to drive to the movies, but will refuse to spend any energy to allow new jobs to be created. Unless you can provide evidence supporting such a highly anti-historical assumption, there's no reason to take it seriously.
So, by your own admission we are talking about a massive reduction in the standard of living, as we go from high paying energy intensive jobs to low-paying low energy intensive jobs.
Who will give up their job at the movies so we can create that new job?
Cultural direction and asset inertia will not go quietly into the dark night.
For full a explaination of where I am coming from, make a jump over to peakoil.com and read my various threads on the subject.
Solving Oil Depletion; Solutions in Isolation
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic14226.html
Energy and the Mother of Invention
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic20898.html
Peakoil and the Growth of Renewable Energy
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic21694.html
No, I do not. If we had started decades ago, perhaps. It takes energy and time to build these systems. If peakoil is decades away and we start now, then perhaps. However, wind and solar still comprise less than 1% of our primary energy. We will have to stand on a fossil fuel platform to build these systems; a plaftform that will become increasingly expensive and increasingly unavailable. In fact, as we decline, producing fossil fuel energy will become an ever-increasing consumer of energy as the EROEI falls.
Read the links in my above post on the growth of renewables.
And if we move to an electric-based infrastructure, it will put an untenable demand on an already weak and collapsing grid infrastructure.
Report Card for America's Infrastructure
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic10050.html
And a recent blog:
The World’s Biggest Machine is Breaking Down
http://anthropik.com/2007/01/the-worlds-biggest-machine-is-breaking-down/
To shift to viable renewable and sustainable systems will require a powerdown, restricted per capita energy consumption and a reduction in population from current levels.
Population being #1 priority.
The critique of our electrical grid was discussed & disected here. I personally thought it was written by someone that does not understand the basics of our grid. He made his conclusion and then selectively searched for data to support it.
Only way to control population in the timeframe of post-Peak Oil is to:
1) stop spending $ on Medicare (in the US), let the old people die off
2) encourage suicides (see New Orleans, Great Depression)
3) Encourage lifestyles that shorten life (see Russia and male life expectancy
4) Discourage immigration (for US) or support emigration (see Mexico).
Birth control will not affect the # of adults for two decades, any real effect will take decades more.
Best Hopes,
Alan
"We will have to stand on a fossil fuel platform to build these systems; a plaftform that will become increasingly expensive and increasingly unavailable. "
That makes little sense to me. IIRC, Oil is only 30% of energy consumption in the US, and coal will last another 50 years with decent E-ROI in the very worst-case scenarios. Energy production would be the very highest priority for energy consumption, and renewables (with their high E-ROI and therefore low energy input during manufacturing & installation) will be very little affected by high prices.
Don't project your biases onto my words; I didn't say anything of the sort.
In particular, it is not at all clear that your claimed correlation between energy intensity and high pay bears any relation to reality. I don't pay a taxi driver half as much because we're in a Prius rather than an SUV.
I covered the correlation at length in the links I provided to my articles.
It's not entirely reasonable to expect people to read multiple (offsite) threads, articles, or blogs before engaging you in conversation. If you don't back up your statements where they're made, most people won't pay much attention to them.
No, you asserted your opinions again; I could not find, in the article or the first pages of any of the threads, any evidence for your claimed correlation between energy intensiveness and job remuneration in a first-world economy. The closest I could find was:
That isn't evidence, that's just naked opinion based on a spurious and incorrect perusal of the dictionary.
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