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DrumBeat: May 14, 2006
Posted by threadbot on May 14, 2006 - 9:00am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Now for some wise words from the readers of The Oil Drum...
Jacques Chirac, the French president, pledged in his 2006 New Year Address that by 2026 no SNCF or RATP train would be powered by fossil fuels."
"France will run trains free from fossil fuel, says Chirac." The Times
(London), Friday,January 6, 2006, p54.
This promise will be relatively easy to keep because electrified lines carry perhaps 80 percent of all French rail traffic - and most of the traction energy used by
French trains is provided by nuclear power stations. It will be interesting to see how they intend to replace
diesel railcars on branch lines and diesel locomotives on industrial sidings.
Leroy W. Demery, Jr.
copied from his post on another forum,
Alan Drake
http://www.railpower.com/products_hl_ggseries.html
Upgrading low-volume branch lines will be fairly expensive, because there are so many of them, making up quite a bit of the route-miles.
http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting/map.php?file=maps/french-network/french-network.gif
But if they are going to do it, better sooner than later. Perhaps they could fund it by raising their petrol/diesel taxes even more.
Unfortunately I have no idea how much diesel fuel France's rail system requires so I can't say if it would be possible for them to switch their rail to biodiesel. I have only looked into automobile fuel in the US so far. If anyone knows more about that, they could shed more light on the feasability of biodiesel trains.
I am proud to have been associated with the French railways, because they are the best in the world; But in fact that's not saying much, they could be so much better. The business is between a rock and a hard place : a proud tradition of public service is compromised by the opening up of the European Union "transport market", which means they have to concentrate on the profitable sectors (or else see them cherry-picked by Euro rivals), to the detriment of the "dead wood", i.e. those services which are socially or economically useful but not profitable.
This is especially frustrating in the area of freight : trucking stuff around is so much more convenient for businesses, and generally cheaper, due to the fact that, compared to electrified rail, truckers get to externalise a large proportion of their true costs, onto government, other road users, people who live near roads, the environment, the whole planet...
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/14.html#a8280
10 90%
5 80%
3 67%
2 50%
1.7 41%
1.5 33%
1.3 23%
1.1 9%
At an EROEI of 2 you have to invest half of a year's energy to have the same available energy next year.
What you call technology is made of the following :
- Invest time (and energy) to make a concept for harvesting energy
- Elaborate the means to build it
- Find and extract the needed ressource in order to built it (all ressources need to be extrated or salvaged from previous extraction)
- Transform and put in basic shape the founded ressources
- Transport the needed ressources to some kind of manufacturing system (be it a plant, a coop, a oneman operation, it needs to be manufactured)
- Do all the needed operation to build it.
- Transport and install the built device to the place of energy harvest location (be it wind, solar, oil, hydro, coal, biomass, etc)
- Use part of the harvested energy to make the device work.
- Convert that energy in a portable fashion.
- So on
You get the point, in no place can you make more energy than what is harvestable.I wonder if the EROEI of feeding an horse is better than producing any biomass fuel.
Why would you keep using a car anyway?
Where would you go with it?
To your current unsustainable job? (that you will loose no matter how hard you will try)
Ask yourself what do you really want to do with an electric handmixer. Do you want to save time cooking so you can still keep your work?
Right now, use all the tool you can, that's what I do. I have a car and use it because I can and it is the way the system work.
When the system will cease to function, you will have to adapt and I predict a handmixer will be of relativly low help.
So what's the problem? The problem we have is not in capturing available renewable energy. The problem we have is one of mindset, of psychology, and of deliberately choosing to begin going down a road towards a renewable sustainable lifestyle. This problem is not only about energy. It's also about the myth of endless growth (which must stop) and that includes the endless growth of human population.
Even at 6 billion people, we have the knowledge to make the world a sustainable place. It would be very very different from the culture in which we live today but it doesn't have to be medieval serfdom or mad max. We just have to choose to do it. The sad thing is that so far we have actively refused to deal with these issues, especially the myth of endless growth being sustainable.
Maybe you havent understand that Oil is the energy subside of everything NASA scientist could come up with.
I'm certainly aware of our planet receiving more solar energy than what is used as fossil fuels. The problem reside in getting it concentrated enough.
Even if we could (for very not any good reason) power some kind of car, the problem would then reside in getting enough nat gas or coal to keep on manufacturing fertilizers.
The problem is NOT a supply problem, it's a DEMAND problem. Until the system is working, you will be able to use your car. Once the system break, you wont need your car.
Certainly not. I have about 3 acres of pasture around my house. This is not enough to feed a hores all the year round (I would have to buy hay for winter, or have another couple of acres of pasture to make my own).
I'm sure that if I planted rapeseed, I could get more miles as biodiesel than I would ever get out of a horse; I really ought to do the calculation. (bearing in mind that a certain proportion of that biodiesel would be consumed by the tractor required to plough it).
visit http://www.landinstute.org/ and search for "Sunshine Farm."
My recollection of their early conclusions was that there are pluses and minuses to both approaches. Under certain conditions, there may not be much difference between the two. One advantage to horses is that they replicate themselves, and do not require factories, metals, etc. to do so.
Considerations in choosing one over the other may include the proclivities of the farmer (some folks do better with animals than others), the type of land included in the farm (amount of land that may be useful only for pasture or hay) and the suitability of the land and climate for growing oil crops.
I found the article :
Fair enough, and very encouraging in terms of the productivity of post-oil farming... but this is discussing farm traction, not transport, which was the original question.
Another quote from the article is pertinent to that aspect :
Timeliness is important in transport. I live about 8 miles from the nearest market town. I could go there with a pony and trap to do my shopping, but it would take me all day. If I can go there with an ethanol-powered scooter, or some lightweight biodiesel car, for the same energy input in terms of agricultural surface, then I've gained several hours.
Here in the U.S., farmers frequently lived not more than 3 miles from some town, which is a distance than can be covered by horse and buggy in about an hour. You still see a town, or the remnants of a town, every 6 miles. That is truly the case in the area where I grew up. In less populated areas, you would often find some sort of small general store, the 1900s equivalent of a convenience store, on a rural crossroads. These stores also doubled as post offices. In addition, many farm families did not go to town during the week, but only made the big trip on Saturdays or to sell livestock or crops.
Formerly, many towns in the Midwest, East and South were on or no more than 20 miles from a railroad, which made delivery of goods much less energy intensive. If we here could rebuild some of these low-use or spurs even for light use, we would be in much better shape. That would be hard to do, though, on a sixth to a third the amount of liquid transportation fuel.
Or this interesting How To Convert
The extra weight of batteries and low-end torque of electric motors are great features for a tractor. Electric motors don't waste any energy when you aren't moving and the torque is greatest when you first start moving, right when you need it the most.
And although 'timeliness' is a factor, tractor use is intermittant with the tractor frequently found sitting in the shed for long periods of time...
Future developments of Gantry Systems my also help ameliorate other problems - depending on the situation.
Whatever the case, the present range of Very Large
Tractors may not have much of a future...
Other thoughts/comments?
Bio-Butanol
You wrote about it six months earlier in that FAQ.
RR
Funny thing, almost 40% of today's hits at The Ergosphere have been from clicks on that one link. I hope people found it worth their time to read!
..omigod, the C word!!!...and:...ohhh, brian, i didn't know you could say it like that..you go girl!
...in montana , this is practically unheard of....don't you know , if you want votes , you gotta wear a cowboy hat???
RR
RR
Refiners are coming out of turnarounds right now, so many are short of product. If they don't come up smoothly, they can run out of product in a hurry.
RR
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=46&u_sid=2169097
(Unfortunately, story is available only to World-Herald members.)
Pres. Bush has also threatened to veto the bill, partly because it is inequitable, in that it would only be distributed to commodity growers as a 30% additional subsidy to the subsidies they are already receiving.
It makes sense in the context "I understand that is exactly what's going on". It obviously makes little sense from an energy policy standpoint, but since when do politics make sense?
This emphasizes what I have been saying for a long time - as energy prices increase, ethanol prices will increase because of the heavy reliance on fossil fuels. I hadn't considered the possibility that the government would step in with even more money to keep this illusion going.
RR
Similar to one of the above posters saying we can fullfill all our energy needs by launching tons of solar pannels into space and beam electricity back to earth by microwaving it.
Only thing is, it grows geometrically. 1, 2, 4, 16, 32, etc, kilowatts. We would have had to have started twenty years ago to get it working now, and if we start now we have to wait twenty years.
We really ought to start now. But we won't, so we'll spend a hundred times as much each year instead to get a bit more oil, or wind or solar to make up for the gas we can't get anymore.
The only short term solutions are wind, solar, conservation, and coal to oil synfuel plants.