The European cold is continuing
Posted by Heading Out on January 25, 2006 - 1:18am
More seriously as I traveled, I noted that the USA Today is reporting that the bad weather in Central Europe is continuing. As a result for the sixth day Gazprom was unable to meet its international market commitments. And, with sabotage to the pipelines, supplies to Georgia and Armenia remain cut-off. The Turkmenistan President is in Moscow possibly to talk about Gazprom taking over Turkmen gas. The BBC reports that:
some experts doubt that Turkmenistan has the gas, or the pumping capacity, to cope with what is expected to be a 30% increase in demand for its gas from Ukraine.In fact some think that Turkmen gas may be at peak levels.
For the short term Gazprom is sending some gas to Georgia via Azerbaijan but if the cold weather persists, as is anticipated, it may get more complicated. Iran, for example, is also willing to supply Georgia. This may be needed since the Russian supply is providing only 35% of that which is needed.
In which light one might note that the White House may end up betting on ethanol.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, became the latest in Washington to advocate that biofuels may hold the answer to cutting US oil imports."What you hear from me may seem implausible," he said before arguing that ethanol could replace oil imports in three to five years if the federal government mandated that most cars be made fuel-flexible -- able to run on gasoline or a combination of gasoline and ethanol -- and provided automakers with financial aid to retool their manufacturing operations. In addition, he said, the government should remove a tax on ethanol imports; require E85 fuel (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) in at least 30% of gas stations; and help finance the first five large ethanol refineries. The thrust of his proposal is embodied in a bill sponsored in November by a bipartisan group of 10 senators.
To promote greater use of ethanol, the Energy Policy Act that Congress enacted last summer required production of 7.5-bil gallons of ethanol by 2012. It also authorized the Energy Department to provide financial assistance to the first large-scale ethanol plant.
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(And save some tax-payer dollars!)
The politicians think they can grow enough corn / sugar and build infrastructure to make ~ 14mbpd or ethanol in 3 years?!?!
This would save 5 days (1.37%) of current USA oil consumption annually which might not be impressive but is not that insignificant. I agree though that with higher CAFE we could save much more.
On the other hand, I think that we are going to have to wait to get "permission" from the "powers that be" to start using non-liquid fuels for our cars... this is because of the road tax issue, and the fact that electricity would become a major competitor for liquid fuels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
Some countries as Germany and Japan show interest at buy Brazil's ethanol. The problem is that Brazil can produce maybe enough ethanol only for Brazil's consumption. So, not enough ethanol to export. And when the sugar's price goes up the ethanol productions goes down...
I think that the sugarcane's ethanol EROEI is positive. The problem with the USA's ethanol program is that is based at corn and the EROEI appear be negative.
João Carlos
Sorry the bad english, my native language is portuguese.
(Oh, your English is fine, communicated what you wanted, and is far better than my second language ability)
2004 US maize crop: 11.8 billion bushels. At 2.66 bu/gallon, it would yield perhaps 31 billion gallons of ethanol.
Iogen claims its cellulosic ethanol process yields 330 liters (87 gallons) of ethanol per ton of biomass. If we can get to the "billion ton vision", we might get as much as 87 billion gallons of ethanol.
Ethanol from any domestic source is not going to replace gasoline. Not even all domestic sources can make it. The problem is that the process is far too inefficient (biomass to ethanol, 48%; ethanol to power, 15.9%, total 7.63%).
I understand we can't replace all our gasoline with ethanol from domestic sources. But we don't currently supply all our gasoline needs from domestic sources either. If we didn't import oil how much gasoline would we have for all domestic transportation? Now try substituting domestic ethanol into that figure and see what you get.
Importing ethanol from all sources, all continents, with a severe conservation program might get us to a new stable state after peak oil. The key is having an infrastructure that can use ethanol or electric (anything other than petroleum based) as we reduce total consumption of transportation fuel. We are not even close to moving in that direction at present.
I have been at TOD long enough to know you are seriously concerned about the details of energy exchange. And you produce the figures to back up your statements. Not a slam at you but many people forget the U.S. is not self sufficient in energy now but all alternatives must be or are not worth pursuing.
This is backwards. Start with our energy balance without imports. What is the gap to todays usage. How much can be made up with alternatives. Drive to close the gap and eliminate as many imports of petroleum products as possible. Calculate the benefits to the U.S. economy for doing this. Repeat with next generation of efficiency.
Are we going to buy tankers of ethanol from the leaders of Zimbabwe while its people starve? Even if it doesn't come down to that, will we try to keep their economy from developing so they don't become competitors for the fuel they make? Then there's the security angle.
The only way to get around those issues is to produce our needs domestically, which we can probably do if we stop using the inefficient systems which prevail today. There are enough different options and sufficient available energy that it makes no sense not to try; even if we only get partway, we'll be far better off than if we decided to depend on liquid fuels for internal combustion engines.
Without this we are are going to run into a wall in the near future where the infrastructure requires liquid fuel and there isn't enough oil based to meet the need. All other approaches other than renewables, coal to liquids for example, are going to take longer to get ramped up. IMO there must be a transition period (at least a decade) where some other liquids are consumed until we can change the transportation infrastructure.
We also need population reduction, huge increases in energy efficiency everywhere (motors, heating, manufacturing) and reduced expectations on our freedom to consume energy for personal comfort. But I don't see the rest of my coworkers ready to deal with these issues just yet. Most don't even see the need for increased fuel efficiency in conventional vehicles.
The U.S. consumes so much energy compared to what we produce domestically. We could lose our civil society and system of government if there is too much of a shock after peak oil if we don't have some quick stopgaps.
I am a classic Peak Oil believer. I go back and forth between depression and optimism on what the future will bring. I'm in an optomistic phase now where I see some real synergisms between using corn and beans for biofuels without major reductions in energy conversion in meat animals via feed.
I live in Iowa and work for a company that is integrated into grain, animal production, human foods, and ethanol plants. In my state, which is #1 in corn and soybean production, most of the crop is not consumed directly by humans. It is almost all cycled through animals or used for industrial purposes already. Recent data is showing that animals do not optimally digest and convert calories to animal mass from whole grains. They do much better with partially converted grains. Not all the energy striped out for biofuels is lost when feeding to animals.
It is not correct to subtract all the energy converted to ethanol from the food chain side. Significantly fewer "food" calories can be used to produce the same tonnage of animals. This is due to very significant gains in feed efficiency in the animals themselves. Less waste heat and feces waste. Much of this data is unpublished at this time because companies are looking at intellectual property and business advantages in the market.
This is one of the few areas of energy that I feel competent to speak on. I'm not a chemical engineer or oil insider so I mostly soak up those energy discussions. Thanks for the dialog on the issues defining the scale of the problem. I am not a cornucopian with respect to renewables but see some real niche uses for these approaches in the U.S. energy portfolio.
how much extra water would that be if we didnt water the animals and all the extra food that they eat?
how much fuel would be saved not growing those extra crops (there is a massive surplus if you dont have animals to feed) all those crops need to be fertilized and sprayed using lots of precious oil.
The meat from the animals also has to be transported as does the animal to the slaughterhouse, and all the refrigeration for animal products??
I defy anyone to come up with a reason to eat meat, apart from taste (which will be the same argument as the SUV drivers)
bit of a rant, but all the cereals being fed to animals now in the world, when people are starving,IMHO its a disgrace
now all I got to find out is how many cows a year are raised in the USA
Growing corn in west Texas is probably going to yield a lot less per unit energy than putting longhorns on the range.
He then told me a tale I've not seen/heard elsewhere. It seems the Soviet Union had in the cold war past one of the largest explosions ever due to a 'gas line failure'. The cause of the failure? The gas controllers bought from a US Supplier had 'a back door'.
Had anyone else heard of such before?
The story was that the CIA intentionally introduced a flaw in the software such that at a certain time the whole thing would go haywire and the pumps would run at full speed until something gave.
According to the story, this made the Soviets question all kinds of the technology that they had been stealing from the West.
I don't know how true it is, but that is the essence of the story...
I was dumb enough to believe him, but, later, I read House, by Tracy Kidder, who said that such stories were common, but generally mythical, because many builders find it impractical to collect their last payment.
This sounds like the same wishful thinking.
(And I DO like the 'sheet of glass' bit BTW.)
The gas line explosion which happened in 1982 appears to be the highlight of the book.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002
Business in Asia -- Oct. 26, 2005
PRNewswire - Oct 26, 06:52 AM 2005
SYDNEY, Australia, Oct. 26 PRNewswire
GE REFUSES LNG EQUIPMENT TO IRAN, INDIAN IMPORTS IN JEOPARDY
NEW DELHI - India's US$22 billion deal to import 5 million tonnes of LNG from Iran is in trouble after General Electric of US is believed to have refused supply of crucial equipment needed to make LNG to Tehran. GE has refused to supply compressors, a crucial link in converting natural gas into liquid for transportation in ships, to Iran, industry sources said. German firm Linde had also refused liquefication technology to Iran. The only two commercially proven LNG liqueficiation technologies are of US origin and the sanctions preclude US based firms to associate with projects in Iran.
I don't know if the US is also supposed to pay compensation for the economic damages or hand over the individuals responsible for prosecution for premeditated murder of the pumping station crew.
The Ukraine is now considering cutting off the gas to industrial users:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WEATHER/01/25/ukraine.russia.gas.ap/
Statoil to Write Down South Pars in Iran by NK1.6 Bln (Update2)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=ajUBRVARex9U&refer=europe
Perhaps you'll explain further about what's happening there. I certainly can't figure out what's really going on.
1. I read in the Energy Bulletin a few weeks ago an article discussing the reduction in flow of the North Atlantic Drift by some 30% as compared to data from 10 and 20 years previous. The research was done by British scientists so of course it got no mention in the US press. This lesser amount of warm water reaching the Barents Sea before cooling and sinking is taking its heat somewhere ( see two Atlantic tropical storms/hurricanes in December of '05). I'm not a climatologist but I can't help but "wonder" if the extreme cold being experienced in northern Europe could be in some part related to this drop in the amount of warm Gulf Stream/NAD water not reaching the Arctic. This shift in warm water movements could be related to the enormous increase in Greenland melting over the last few years. Nah, there's NO peer reviewed science supporting global climate change. Just ask the neocons.
2. Politicians discussing ethanol are blowing it out their collective whazoos. To grow that much corn to make a dent in the nation's supply of transport fuel would, at least under current farming methods, require even more petroleum inputs than we're making now. Where's this petroleum gonna come from? Our industrial farming methods have become such a travesty on our farmlands and waters that there is no way we can just grow more corn to make into ethanol. Corn is an extremely heavy feeder thus requiring large inputs of largely synthetic nitrogen fertilizers let alone all the god-awful petroleum based herbicides we spray on the crops to cut weed competition. This is just more pie in the sky. Ethanol could make a difference on more local economies. Unless we develop and commit ourselves to more sustainable ways to grow this and other crops, we are only fooling ourselves. This next growing season will be a real eye opener for many as the costs of production hit the accelerator due to much higher fuel and fertilizer costs. If we expect farmers to eat those increased costs without being paid more for their crops, it's not gonna play well in Peoria.