People in Glass Houses
Posted by Robert Rapier on November 4, 2006 - 12:38pm
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: california, ethanol, oil companies, politics, proposition 87, vinod khosla [list all tags]
Since there is likely to be little overlap in the readership of TOD and VentureBeat, the TOD staff thought it would be topical material for cross-posting here. Therefore, below is the text of my rebuttal to Vinod Khosla's claims, which can be found in essays that he wrote for VentureBeat and The Huffington Post. Please note that I am not arguing for a "No" vote, nor am I making a blanket defense of the oil industry. I am responding to Mr. Khosla's claims.
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Apparently some Proposition 87 proponents have never heard the adage "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." They complain about slimy tactics, while engaging in plenty of slimy tactics and hypocrisy themselves. In this essay, I will address Mr. Khosla's second essay and show that his glass house is vulnerable to my pile of stones. This is also why I become concerned when people with expertise in one field try to influence policy in another. My dentist is a great guy, and very good at what he does, but I wouldn't let him remove my appendix. And while he should certainly be involved in the discourse, he shouldn't receive undue influence on energy policy just because he is a good dentist.
I explained in my previous essay who I am, and that I am not campaigning against Proposition 87. My interest is in raising the level of political discourse with respect to energy policy. My criticisms are aimed at the "Yes on 87" campaign, because much misinformation is being directed at my own industry. I find it very ironic that those who are flying around the country to decry the "evil oil industry" are doing so using jet fuel supplied by the oil industry. They enjoy many conveniences as a result of oil and gas production, but have deluded themselves into believing their lifestyle could be maintained if we all switched to alternative energy.
I don't live in California and have never seen an ad from either side, but I have seen a number of "Yes" essays in the mold of Mr. Khosla's latest missive. So let's dissect his latest entry for some examples of hypocrisy, misinformation, and faulty logic. Mr. Khosla's comments are in quotes.
Given the current oil situation the ONLY way oil prices will go down is if we have alternatives to oil.
Since it doesn't benefit any big business interests, conservation, probably the most valuable "alternative" out there, is mostly overlooked in this debate.
Mr. Khosla: Given the massive profits they make on oil they wouldn't want a cheaper alternative in the marketplace.
I covered profit margins in my previous essay, and noted the hypocrisy coming from an industry that sees double the profit margins of the oil industry. But "they wouldn't want a cheaper alternative" is misinformation. The entry barrier for ethanol production and biodiesel is quite low. If ethanol is ultimately a cheaper option, oil companies will start making ethanol. Right now, most do not see that it is clearly viable in the long-term without subsidies. In fact Mr. Khosla was recently quoted in Red Herring: "Contrary to what you might believe, I think it's extremely unlikely that in 20 years we will be using any ethanol in cars." I think the oil industry shares this view, which is why they aren't rushing out to build ethanol plants.
However, oil companies have made big investments into solar, wind , and biofuels. In fact, Iogen, a company running a large scale cellulosic ethanol trial, is receiving major funding from Shell. Of course this puts oil companies in a "damned either way" position. If they invest in alternatives, critics say it is a token effort, or just for public relations. If they don't, then they are standing in the way of progress.
It is also unfair if they use their political clout to wrangle billions of dollars of subsidies from American taxpayers.
Given that the ethanol industry receives billions in direct subsidies and you are trying to secure even more with Prop 87, I am going to call this a bit of hypocrisy. The ethanol industry is the recipient of $0.51 gallon in direct ethanol subsidies. However, the subsidy is per gallon of ethanol produced, as opposed to actual net energy produced. If the ethanol energy return is 1.3/1, then it takes 3.3 gallons produced to net the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline. The website Zfacts, strongly supportive of alternative energy, concludes that when all the subsidies are added in, displacing a single gallon of gasoline costs $7.24 in ethanol. Furthermore, the ethanol industry depends on fossil fuels to drive their trucks and tractors, so any oil "subsidy" is also an indirect ethanol subsidy.
Many ethanol advocates claim that the $0.51/gallon subsidy actually benefits the oil industry. Without going into a detailed analysis of why this claim is wrong (it essentially allows ethanol producers to charge $0.51/gal more than market conditions would warrant), ask yourself why it is the ethanol/farm lobby who is fighting to keep this subsidy, and oil interests who are speaking out against it. Note that the executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol vigorously defends the subsidy. Is this a case of oil company benevolence?
And they often make us pay for their R&D.
As compared to making your competitor pay for your R&D? I will admit, it is a brilliant move to force your competitor to fund your own research, but the above statement really takes hypocrisy to a whole new level.
The world uses about 12 billion gallons of ethanol today. If that was removed form the market, oil prices would spike up. If we produce more, oil prices will decline as supply increases.
This one is just faulty logic. Ethanol production in the past few years has exploded. Did oil prices decline?
A few token projects to "sound green" are thrown in but almost no money goes into finding real alternatives to oil.
As I stated earlier: "Damned either way."
Even the small technology oriented Silicon Valley company can spend 20% of its revenue on R&D.
I have an idea then. Since Silicon Valley is so innovative, and we know that companies there are quite profitable, why don't we tax them to fund this measure? That seems like a real win-win solution. The people who most strongly support this proposition will be the ones who will both pay for it, and "benefit" from it.
The oilies are scare mongering with their massive dollars.
We actually prefer our pejoratives to be capitalized. But this is an example of the need to raise the political discourse. Also - and feel free to correct me if I am wrong - the proponents are spending tens of millions of dollars to push this measure, and they are doing it with tactics that have been more along the lines of hate mongering.
President Clinton has said ethanol is 33% cheaper. I know it is cheaper to produce, even with the subsidies oil currently manages to get.
Ignoring the repeated hypocrisy over the subsidies, let's talk about economics. Now, I may not be well-versed in Silicon Valley economics, but here's what I think. If I have a product that I can make for cheaper than the competitor, why would I need mandates, subsidies, and an extortion tax on my competitors in order to compete? I don't really think I would need this, if indeed the claim is true. So, that leaves me to believe that either the claim isn't true, or ethanol companies are worse than oil companies at "ripping people off."
Let's consider the following graph from the official Nebraska government website:
A 25-Year Price Comparison
This is a comparison of the average annual rack price of ethanol versus mid-grade gasoline for the past 25 years. Ethanol, with lower energy content, has been more expensive than gasoline in each of the past 25 years. So there is a track record over a long period of time that suggests that not only do ethanol prices rise and fall in response to gasoline prices (putting a damper on the argument that ethanol is going to drive down gasoline prices) but the price differential is actually greater since most people don't buy the more expensive mid-grade.
Now, if Mr. Khosla is correct, and it is in fact cheaper to produce ethanol than gasoline, it suggests that 1). Ethanol profit margins are far higher than gasoline profit margins; 2). Ethanol producers are "ripping us all off"; and 3). Ethanol producers should have no problem funding their own growth.
I hope that Mr. Khosla can see that his glass house is quite vulnerable. I call on him to raise the level of discourse on our energy policy - regardless of the outcome of the vote.
I am not against funding some ethanol research myself -- and it appears that you agree with funding some ethanol research. How would that best be done?
I think it is especially good to point out -- as you have done -- that conservation is the most effective strategy with regard to energy. What would an energy consevation program with regard to liquid fuels look like?
I think it would be good to articulate some clear and attractive alternative proposals to prop 87. At the very least it would be good to get some public policy discussion of conservation-based energy policy going.
Any thoughts on this?
In my opinion, this could have been sold by just proposing a modest gas tax increase, with the proceeds being directed to alternative energy and rebates for fuel efficient vehicles. I think the public would have bought into this. I don't even think the oil companies would have opposed this, and over a hundred million dollars would not have been spent in this mud-slinging contest.
What we see now is that support is slipping, because many economists have come out and suggested that this will indeed raise gas prices. But the amount is uncertain. It depends on many factors. I think this uncertainty is discomforting to many people, who might have had a much easier time supporting a nickel a gallon tax increase.
I hadn't realized that until I looked at the production and consumption numbers. It looks like Khosla & Co. are wrong, and T. Boone Pickens and the other folks who favor stiff fuel taxes are right.
It will be interesting to see how Californians vote on this. We'll know soon enough!
I do think that a definite tax is smart. A definite amount on gas, for example. Also it would help to direct the dollars to various efforts to bring about change.
Money directed to transit, fuel-efficient vehicle rebate programs, and perhaps some research might be a better strategy than just subsidizing one silver bullet very heavily.
Prop 87 right now looks very much like one special-interest group demanding more subsidy for themselves while also demanding that "Big Oil" foot the bill.
"Big Oil" is my primary pusher, and as an oil addict I have a strong love/hate relationship with this industry. But I do not want to "meet the new pusher, same as the old pusher" in "Big Ethanol."
That's where Prop 87 is weakest, in my estimation.
Specal earmark taxes really irk me. If the government is so incompetent that it can't figure out how to apportion tax revenue appropriately, then that is the primary problem that must be fixed first.
So, how about: Keep the proposed extra taxes of 87, but put 1/2 the money in the "general fund" and 1/2 the money in a special group that fixes government waste and fixes the government's inability to balance the budget.
You wouldnt, unless you a) needed someone to pay for the infrastructure to sell your product or b) you realized your product wasnt't too great at present, but smart persuasive people told you to expect your product to dramatically improve in the near future (cellulosic). At least thats what I would expect Mr. Khosla to say.
The energy return on corn ethanol is very poor, as has much been discussed. The energy return on cellulosic ethanol is higher, by a magnitude of 10-20 (magnitudes are somehwat meaningless when the net energy of something is less than one). However, as you have oft pointed out, and I will take a step further here, an energy technology is part energy harvesting and part energy conversion. Energy harvesting of cellulosic material is actually pretty good, but then the embodied energy in the lignin or bagasse is yours to choose what to use it for.
Using it for fermentation to create a product like ethanol (with less than 70% of BTUs per gallon as gasoline) is a poor conversion process. Much better, from a straight energy return standpoint, would be to gasify or burn the cellulose and generate some other form of energy service for society.
This gets at the energy quality issue. Currently electricity is higher in price than oil, per BTU. In a post peak oil world, UNLESS we transform our transportation into more electrical, liquid fuels will be so needed for transportation that the energy quality upgrade from biomass to ethanol may be worth the energy loss. (though if at that point we are still use natural gas at the still, it will be turning gold to lead, and if we use coal we are turning Alaska to Hawaii)
I think the difference in yours and Mr Khoslas position can be summed to this basic point: he BELIEVES that cellulosic ethanol will work for the US and that corn ethanol is priming the pump. You KNOW that corn ethanol is poor idea and are uncertain as to what the future of cellulosic holds, because the past has not produced any miracles.
Nationwide ethanol infrastructure is betting on the come.
That's exactly what he and his sycophants say. However, we don't need a massive infrastructure build out. We can't even fill the infrastructure we have. All the vehicles in the country can run on E10. But this would take triple the ethanol that we now make. So, I would suggest that they start building out more infrastructure once they begin to fully utilize what's already in place.
Question: do manufacturers who make diesel cars also get the CAFE bonus like cars that can burn E85?
Absolutely, and I told Khosla this on the phone. His response was essentially that diesels are dirty, and market penetration is not great enough to make it worth his while. Well, isn't he trying to force market penetration of E85? I think he is just pushing the wrong technology.
Question: do manufacturers who make diesel cars also get the CAFE bonus like cars that can burn E85?
I don't think so. If they do, I have never heard about it.
McElroy technical paper discusses some of the criticisms made of Pimentel's work, and develops alternate estimates. McElroy's conclusions about corn ethanol include:
One thing the ethanol bashing community must be aware of: Almost all the subsidies that corn farmers recieve happen under the historical cheap corn prices we have had. With corn prices rising like they have, those subsidies go away, and the few remaining ones will most likely be eliminated fairly soon.
I will not disagree that ethanol recieves a 51 cent/gallon subsidy, and that equates to around $1.25-$1.50 per bushel of corn, but to say there are additional subsidies on top of that is to fail to understand how the government backed farm program functions.
The reality is, when oil/gas prices skyrocketed we had just come off record large corn harvests, and therefore cheap corn. So ethanol plants were basically printing money. For all the bashing market forces get, they work in this regard. Massive ethanol investment, driving up the price of corn and ultimately the price of ethanol down (corn is going up not b/c of tight stocks today, but what the market percieves when the new plants come online in the next 1-2 years). Ethanol refinerys will be like any other business, marginally profitable with profits flowing to those with some type of competitive edge.
Once again, not suggesting any of this is good or bad policy, just injecting a little "ground truthed" reality into this debate from a simple Kansas dirt farmer :)
I would love to see ethanol opponents give serious consideration to the contributions that biotech could make in developing new crops designed to produce fuel.
I was very disappointed that there was so little discussion of the Scientific American article a couple of weeks ago on Japan brewer pursues 'Monster Cane' ethanol dream
If the claims made in this article are even half true, this report has tremendous potential significance as evidence that technologies that exist now could play a significant role in mitigating an emerging peak oil crisis.Nature knows how to produce fuel from sunlight in a CO2 neutral way that would not exacerbate global warming. It's called photosynthesis.
If biotechnology is already capable of breeding new plants specifically designed to produce fuel, isn't it madness to throw this baby out with the bathwater of ethanol produced from current corn varieties that were BRED TO PRODUCE FOOD, NOT FUEL!
I see no evidence that the biotechnology's potential has been adequately explored in this forum. If Mr. Rapier disagrees with this, I respectfully challenge him to enlighten us.
No, I actually agree with this. My research advisor and I had a disagreement about this in the early 90's. I said that I thought it was going to take some genetic engineering to make cellulosic ethanol viable, but he disagreed.
To be honest, I am a big fan of biotechnology. I think it has great potential in many different areas. I have closely followed Craig Venter's work on identifying genes that might be useful for energy production.
However, I think we ought to continually distinguish such efforts from false promises of technomagic solutions.
It does seem that the corporate world promotes only the notion that we can have our cake and eat it too. In other words, we will grow ever more wealthy as we solve the energy crisis and address global climate change, while dealing with increasingly volatile geopolitics on an overcrowded planet where we are bumping up against the consequences of population overshoot and overconsumption.
We will never invite most of the world into the lifestyle that has been enjoyed in the USA for some years, and I cannot believe that anyone with any intelligence believes that we can do so, or that anyone seriously intends to do so.
My point is that I hope we can be very clear about this: there will be no magical solutions to the very real problems that we face, and so we need to transform our culture so that we consume less energy and at the same time turn away from resource wars as a way of solving our problems.
Biotech? Yes. Ethanol? Perhaps -- let's do the reseach. But in any case, we will need to change ourselves in fundamental ways.
There is an estimated 72 terawatts (~2150 quads/year) of wind energy alone available on Earth. Then there's solar, which is several orders of magnitude bigger.
We clearly can invite the world's population into a lifestyle which is equal or even superior to that enjoyed now in the USA. It can't be done the same way, but that's mostly engineering.
...right, we all know that copper cannot possibly be recycled...tell that to our local housing project director, who has to constantly guard against the meth addicts ripping the wiring and plumbing out of public buildings to sell to the scrap dealer......
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I work for a company that recycles scrap metal and electronics, and I witness everday at work how a small percentage of the salvaged metals are sent off to a local landfill along with the trash. Presumably never to get recovered again.
As anyone with a basic knowledge of math will know, if you recycle something a 100 times, and loose, say 1%, each time, it's not going to have a happy ending.
So there is no point in telling me everything is going to be fine in our future. I see firsthand at work it most certainly will not.
After the dieoff there should be plenty of free copper to provide for both windmills and houses. And hopefully people then will have the brains to use it in such a way as to allow a 100% recovery rate. But to suggest that there exist enough available copper to provide the infrastructure to cover our present needs is absurd.
Solar and wind will become essential after the dieoff but will remain a niche until then.
Hurin,
And my point is? Simply this: That of the many hurdles that renewable energy will have to overcome to be accepted and used on a scale large enough to be viable as a mitigation to oil and gas depletion, a copper shortage is pretty far down the list. Despite some of the recent price run ups, there is no real indication that the world is "running out" of copper. Your point that it is getting more expensive to get I think is correct, and your point that the waste of copper and other minerals in lack of recycling, or in sloppy recycling is again correct, however, and this is one more MASSIVE opportunity for energy and resouces conservation. EVERYTHING IS WASTED, which simply proves how cheap everything has been.
This brings us back to the theory of "peak everything". I know, form my years on Earth, that every time commodities prices shoot up, it becomes "the theory of everything". WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF EVERYTHING!!
I also know, from my reading of history, that this has been going on for many, many years before my time on Earth.
The problem with "peak everything" is that on even a small amount of thought, it makes no sense. Despite the different introduction dates, the different use rates, the rise and fall of commodities usefulness in industry and personal tastes, and the differing amounts of commodities throughout the Earth, and the differing technological rates of changes in extraction, we are to believe that all commodities started to "run out" at the same time , this time interestingly, in about 1999! Does this seem likely?
More likely is (a) a normal commodities price cycle (the world has been through many, and everyone admits that commodities had been stupidly cheap and investment in extraction stupidly low for the 20 years preceding 1999) or (b) devaluation currency to buy the commodities with, and or (c) a rise in the cost of a fundamental commoditiy used in the production and processing of almost all major commodities went up price....uh, could we mean oil and natural gas?
One thing that confronts the theory of "peak everything" is that the Earth has to be made out of something! Yes, much of it is what we would call useless inert matter when it comes to the commodities trade, and there is no doubt that the easiest to get of many commodities has already been extracted (that again would be true of about EVERYTHING, wouldn't it?). But, the total weight of the minerals in the weight of the rock on Earth having been consumed, and all at almost EXACTLY THE SAME TIME (!) would strike as a contention that must be proven, I would think. If we wanted to, we could make a case that we should have run out of copper and iron first because humans have been using them for over 4000 years, as opposed to using oil and gas on a large scale for only a century and three quarter or so....but of course, that argument would seem silly....wouldn't it?
My point? All this talk of "dieoffs" and "peak everything" and "running out" of anything (even the educated class in the peak movement do not accept "running out" of even oil and gas as possible this coming century) makes the whole ideology of "peak" and the real concern and education we MUST develop in the mind of the public concerning resource conservation and reduction of waste seem like it is being pushed forward, at times even led by hysterical chicken littles, and people obviously uneducated in matters of resource history, development, and use. It seems like doom cult run by amatuers if these types of misrepresentation and wild conjectures are not confronted FAST.
To use your misquote of what I said "So there is no point in telling me everything is going to be fine in our future."
I would not tell you that. I am not a prophet. There is CERTAINLY KNOW WAY TO KNOW THAT.
Your contention,
" I see firsthand at work it most certainly will not."
I cannot agree with that. I am not a prophet. I most certainly have no way of knowing that. You may be right, and it may well not, depending on your own definition of "fine". In my own case, I can only confront the issues that the so called "facts" seem to give me. Right now, running out of copper is not at the top of the agenda. We should not waste it. We should recycle it. We should consider the longer term future of it. It is on the agenda, as all finite resources should be. Just not at the top of it.
Thank you.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Aluminum is 8.1% of Earth's crust. There's about 1.6 kg of carbon above every square meter of the Earth, as 379 ppmv of carbon dioxide. We cannot run out of either one.
The only way to separate it is to run it trough a separation machine equipped with metal detectors. But they are few and far between, and the amount of scrap aluminium is just to big.
We do send a lot of non-magnetic metal to China where I have been told it gets sorted by hand. But our primary focus in non-magnetic metal is copper and aluminium is really just a prime landfill candidate.
What if we sort it out as we use it and put it in recycle bins?
I have been writing a thesis on advanced scope of practice and helping my fiancee translate her thesis into English.
The plant I went to presses the cane through rollers and makes food sugar. The cane is rinsed with water from a stream not municipal water then some batch tests are done on the mixture and any nutrients the yeast needs are added. The baggasse from previous batches that has air dried is used to burn for distillation heat. Some electicity is produced from the burn but not as much as the plant uses overall (my neighbor is still collecting numbers for me on inputs and outputs) no enzymes were mentioned but I'll ask the specific question. When I made rum I mean ethanol I just used brown sugar and yeast. So the plant makes a considerable amount of sugar and as a by product makes ethanol and is close to breaking even on electricity. The sugar is for food but we should consider it since it has value and the process could easily divert more towards ethanol. Mario (my neighbor) says that some of the plants dont make sugar only ethanol but use lower grade cane fertilized by sewage.
The ash from the baggasse he does not believe is used but that is something they want to capture. I definatly think it is an efficent process but the numbers need crunching.
I finish my papers for school by the 20th and will put more time on this.
Senoritas and margaritas,
matt
As I understand it, Brazilian electricity regulations don't provide a very good rate for small generators, so the ethanol plants purchase low pressure boilers which cost less and only provide enough power for internal use. I am sure they aim low because it is more cost effective to spend less and pay for the gap from the grid than to spend more and waste it. In Thailand, the rate is more favorable and sugar/ethanol companies produce three times what they need. I did hear Brazil may be changing the regulations.
Most Brazilian ethanol plants run parallel ethanol and sugar operations from the crushing stage onwards, unlike Thailand and India, which are serial. Brazilian plants divert half of the drushing rpocess to sugar and half to ethanol.
In Thailand and India, cane is more expensive and it makes more economic sense to use all of the juice to produce sugar and then distill ethanol from the resulting molasses (about 30% of total volume).
Here are links to some great studies with wonderful detail on Brazil, down to the costs of each stage in the process. They may be helpful if you are planning to look at ethanol further.
1) FO Licht presentation to METI,
http://www.meti.go.jp/report/downloadfiles/g30819b40j.pdf
2) IEA Automotive Fuels for the Future
http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/1990/autofuel99.pdf
3) IEA: Biofuels for Transport
http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2004/biofuels2004.pdf
4) Worldwatch Institute & Government of Germany: Biofuels for Transport (Link to register - study is free)
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4078
5) Potential for Biofuels for Transport in Developing Countries
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2006/01/05/000090341_20060105 161036/Rendered/PDF/ESM3120PAPER0Biofuels.pdf
Jack
AND yes we were sending A LOT of the output to China. Plastics were sorted, metals were sorted, gold was even sorted. I don't know how the machine did it all, but I asked as much as I could at the time.
I sorted and Handled their HAZ-MAT stuff. The company had some problems unrelated to the process of the recycling.
But the Process is out there.
We can sort out our trash, we just have not been doing it to the scale we need to do it. Nothing is going to be easy.
But I have seen people who have reduced their total family Garbage output to less than handfuls a week.
We can reduce packaging, we can increase recycling, we can change the metals we use, it is all possible. We SHOULD NOT be in the mess we are in. The solutions have been out there for decades now.
It is like my post above, we let it go to long, we got lazy, we stopped cutting out the coupons and started eating out all the time. We became our own worst enemies.
Talk to anyone over the age of 60, ask them how they lived. Talk to anyone over the age of 70 or 80 and ask them how they lived. Ask them how their parents lived, they have stories.
Sure we are 6.5 billion young and old minds, but we have gotten lazy in thinking it will all be a quick fix. I am still a doomer, but I am more a Practicalist. I see the problem and find practical solutions for the issue at hand. My mom is 76, born 1930, my dad is 70 born in 1936, they remember how their parents lived. I am among other things, working on a biography of my mom's father. He was a Practicalist as I have defined it.
We can completly do away with the massive landfills we have had to use, but we have to work on a local and global methodology to do this. WE have to do better than we are now, go back to the old ways of doing things in some cases.
10,000 things need and could be done. Getting them started on bigger scales than just one or two people is what we need. Some People are doing great in this, but if you have not heard of them, then it's still not big enough to matter in the grand scheme of things, but keep doing them.
Improvement requires making one step forward, even if it is so small no one notices but you.
Charles E. Owens Jr.
Author At Large, aka Dan Ur
It's conductive, and can be pushed out of a stream of mixed waste by inductive repulsion. Non-mixed waste is far higher; in states with deposit laws, some 80% of aluminum drink containers are recycled. And if municipal waste was processed by e.g. pyrolysis, the metals would wind up concentrated in the ash.
But the sort of stuff we're mostly talking about is not mixed waste. Industrial machinery made of steel and other metals can be shredded and separated by magnetic properties and specific gravity (flotation). Cables are even easier to recycle. For the inevitable losses, there's always that 8.1% of Earth's crust to fall back on. That last 1% of needs may be energetically expensive to pull out of clays and the like, but it's not going to have a big impact on the invested energy in a big wind farm.
This changes even more if you go to e.g. magnesium instead of aluminum. The raw source of magnesium is seawater. The ultimate reycling method is to throw it someplace where the oxide washes back to the ocean. And when carbon nanotube production gets cheap enough to use them for wires, the atmosphere is the ultimate "mine".
If we use the right things, we can quite literally never run out.
I know you work in a recycling plant but have you not heard of a) pre-sorting and b) eddy current seperation? I won't disagree with your prognosis for ensuring a steady supply of recycled aluminum - far too much goes into composite and useless products (like domestic aluminum foil) - but surely these problems you cite can be effectively addressed without resorting to big metal detectors (how does that make sorting easier?) and hand sorting by former Chinese farmers.
I've often wondered how much of the world's steel production is consumed or locked up in pipelines, oil and gas well, rigs etc. If we have been capable of producing so much steel to meet the needs of the energy industry "profitably" it seems possible that we could achieve something similar with metals necessary for electrical transmission...
That being said, I think covering the planet in wind turbines is impractical and not so smart. Turbines are expensive (so are the materials to make them) and they are best installed where we'd find the best wind - like in northern Canada. To do that we'll need some very very long transmission lines or, lots and lots of recycled aluminum cans.
Won't bother me when Coke is sold in syrup form in plastic coated corrosion proofed paper bags.
I drink RC.