The contents below are paid advertisements. Their appearance does not imply an endorsement by The Oil Drum.
“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
Search The Oil Drum with Google
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Technician: Super G
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Summer Streets a Success!
- Plan for Hydro-Fracture Drilling for Unconventional Natural Gas in Upstate New York
- Enjoying Life Close to Home: Fun Streets
TOD:Europe
- Should EROEI be the most important criterion our society uses to decide how it meets its energy needs?
- Oilwatch Monthly - August 2008
- Italy like Ryanair: can it exist with oil over $ 100 per barrel?
TOD:Canada
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
- Weekend Energy Listening: Wind Power with Paul Gipe
TOD:ANZ
Peak Oil Primers
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- Ecological Economics
- David Strahan
- Econbrowser
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- Environmental Economics
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Organizations
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
OlePossom, that may be a long term strategy but it could not possibly be a short term strategy as you suggest. It takes about 15 years to completely replace our automobile fleet. So unless you expect all automobile companies to completely change their fleet next year, and everyone to buy a new car next year,... Well, you get the picture.
On the other hand if we had a biofuel that everyone could run their car on today, all they would have to do is pull up to the pump and fill her up.
Ron Patterson
Most fuel injection cars can be retrofitted for not too much money to burn E85. I seem to recall figures like $150/car. Essentially a few fuel lines may need to be replaced and the computer's fuel tables must be altered to allow the burning of E85, along with a sensor to allow the computer to determine how much of an ethanol blend is in the fuel.
I'm personally more interested in retrofits with motorcycle engines or electric motors, but those are MUCH more expensive. :)
Doesn't E85 rot seals and fuel lines and such?
I guess one nice thing about being out here in the Red State Asteroid Belt is, no E85. And when/if I return to the Bay Area, it's bicycle for me and that can run on pure ethanol. Especially in cold weather. This type of bicycle fuel is also very contamination-tolerant, such as the worm in good tequila, or whatever it is they put in Jager.
15 years to turn over the fleet is still more than 6% per year- more than all but the most pessimistic estimates of the decline rate of oil (elm has upwards of 20% in the last few years though)