The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Biomimicry and Ocean Generated Energy: Are Humans Smarter Than Sea Sponges?

70 comments on Biomimicry and Ocean Generated Energy: Are Humans Smarter Than Sea Sponges?

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SamuM on May 26, 2008 - 3:06am

I think you and Cliff are talking past each other.

We need liquid fuels RIGHT NOW and for the next, say 25-40 years, until we transition to whatever comes next.

The fact is that the whole of the mobility of this world and a lot of everything else runs on liquid fuels.

You can't pour electricity into a tank of a car running with a combustion engine.

All those bits and pieces of infra need to be changed.

Until they are changed, liquid fuels is what we will need.

World does not change overnight, even if all factories started churning out batteries and electric motors as of today. And that kind of change is very unlikely to happen overnight, but more like as a transition over a whole human generation.

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Engineer-Poet on May 31, 2008 - 11:55am

We need liquid fuels RIGHT NOW and for the next, say 25-40 years, until we transition to whatever comes next.

I think that's an exaggeration. The US vehicle fleet has been replaced every 17 years or so, and this replacement will be accelerated under the pressure of high fuel prices. Even today, half the lifetime mileage is driven in the first 6 years. If the vehicles rolling off the lines became PHEV-40's starting tomorrow, we'd see demand for liquid fuels drop at about 6.7%/year to start. Even 10 years of this would cut total fuel demand by well over half, and that's assuming no additional bias toward use of the newer vehicles.