Khosla Responds: "Imagining the Future of Gasoline: Reality or Blue-sky Dreaming?"
Posted by Robert Rapier on August 9, 2006 - 10:56am
[editor's note by Super G] Previous posts on Khosla are here.
One thing I strongly believe in is the issue of fairness. I enjoy a good scientific debate, and I find that the best debates are those in which opposing sides are honestly presented. With this in mind, below I present Vinod Khosla's vision of our energy future. If you are like me, you will find aspects of agreement, and aspects of disagreement, and perhaps even strong disagreement. But it would benefit all parties to have a good debate on the technical merits of the issues.
Mr. Khosla is to be commended for presenting his ideas to what I expect will be a relatively hostile audience. So let's be respectful, and if you have criticisms, please make them constructive criticisms. Mr. Khosla has heard my specific objections on several occasions, so I won't reiterate them here. But I have assured him that readers of The Oil Drum are a sharp group of people with diverse backgrounds, and this will be a good place not only to present his vision to people concerned about energy policy, but also to get some good technical criticisms of his proposals. Mr. Khosla will be reading responses, so be sure to present your criticisms, praise, suggestions, or ideas with this in mind. Many of us wish to influence the direction of energy policy in this country. This discourse with Mr. Khosla is a golden opportunity.
Imagining the Future of Gasoline: Reality or Blue-sky Dreaming?
I recently received the following email: "I find it distressing and bothersome to see ...... how often people assume that we need to find a single silver bullet for our looming oil and/or natural gas challenges, as opposed to relying on a collection of smaller solutions--what I've been calling the "silver BB's" approach.... I'm convinced that we do indeed face a set of harrowing challenges on the energy and environmental fronts, and that they will require all the ingenuity, flexibility, and collective effort (from public policy to large commercial companies to the emergent properties of mainstream consumers embracing conservation) we can muster." I agree.
If you are one of the people who think modern civilization is on the verge of collapse, stop reading. If you think all rich people are bad or everyone has evil or self-interest as their only goal, stop reading. People do care and while there are many people, and especially large corporations, who only care about their self-interest, there are people and corporations (large and small) who care about what happens on this planet. Also stop reading if you believe in massive conspiracies, want to revolutionize the world with rebellion, change the consumption pattern (4% of world population consuming 25% of its resources- I hate it too but don't count on it changing) overnight, dramatically change behavior like getting Americans to drive less(lots of idealized solutions I can think of but it won't happen except through legislation like higher CAFE; or higher gasoline prices, and most such legislation is politically infeasible).
I support increased CAFE;, free markets (I am not a fan of ethanol subsidies or import tariffs in today's environment and have proposed politically feasible compromises to reduce both: "A Near Term Energy Solution" at www.khoslaventures.com/resources.html) as long as we ensure a level playing field which we don't have in the gasoline market today. I don't believe all oil executives are bad and I don't bash them just to get votes for our ballot initiative in California, but because the oil interests are misleading voters in California and in general often slowing the adoption of alternatives to gasoline, using the massive financial power they have to hire hordes of consultants to spread mis-information (like the royalty fee is a tax that will be passed on to consumers when the California Attorney General says it cannot be passed along and market forces will ensure that this pass-thru wont happen - www.yeson87.com). Vote YESON87 if you are a California voter.
I am working with certain oil companies that are looking beyond the California ballot initiative to find and evaluate new businesses. The single biggest thing we can do to help climate change is a carbon tax (worldwide) or a "cap & trade" system, but I don't think it is politically feasible in the US today. Its time will hopefully come soon, probably in the next decade. I would also like to see much broader energy efficiency legislation but I suspect that is harder and will happen in pockets and spread slowly (I am optimistic about the latest CAFE proposals). I would love for us to bias towards public transportation (even with subsidies) but I suspect that will not happen easily and is not an effective use of my time.
The personal automobile is here to stay. Finally I believe that the problem of stationary power (electricity) and mobile power (mostly transportation) are different and can be addressed separately. So let's not confuse the two problems. I even separate the heavy (diesel) transportation from cars and light trucks (gasoline). I believe we need liquid fuels for transportation and have to live with coal for electricity for a while, even though I would love to see a greater emphasis on nuclear, wind and solar. Without a material breakthrough in storage technologies, wind and solar combined will be no greater than 20% of our electric power needs because of base load issues.
First, what am I invested in? One corn ethanol venture, one corn plus cellulosic ethanol venture, three cellulosic (only) ethanol ventures (all very different approaches), three non-ethanol liquid fuel ventures (next generation fuels to replace ethanol we hope), two gasification ventures (one for coal to natural gas and one for biomass), one solar, one high efficiency lighting (LED - very high risk project), one new high efficiency engine venture, one sugarcane venture, one low impact very low cost housing venture ($5000 homes), a few microfinance institutions and a few others. Battery technologies are among my highest priorities. Many of these are very high risk science projects and will fail but many will succeed too. So I don't have a particular perspective or bias other than the fact that alternatives to dirty coal and oil have an important role to play in our planets evolution.
We have to find solutions and only the ones that are economically driven will achieve substantial scale. To balance the large ongoing investments in oil, the only solutions that can compete effectively are ones that leverage Wall Street. I like solutions that the average American can be coaxed into adopting, not the ones the 5% who care most will adopt. The 5% fringe play a valuable role in buying early, demonstrating feasibility, establishing markets, but in the end impact happens when the average American adopts something. New businesses happen when Wall Street gets excited about a new market or technology.
What have I done in my personal life? A solution I believe many if not most Americans would adopt more easily than buying a Prius- every car I buy gets a sticker to be a 100% carbon neutral from www.terrapass.com and the rest of my life is carbon neutral by buying carbon credits on the Chicago climate exchange or from www.carbonfund.org. But I am not spending my time convincing most Americans to bicycle to work or drop their personal automobile. Why?
On the public debate, why have I chosen to speak mostly about ethanol? I do support solar, wind, biodiesel, and many other alternative technologies. First, I am only focusing (for now) on gasoline, not all petroleum. Yes, later diesel, plastics etc will also have to be addressed but I handle "material but manageable" problems one at a time. That is my nature. It does not say that others should not address other problems or that I don't care about other problems. I spend my time where I am most effective per hour spent. That means that some even more critical problems are left to others. For example, if I had an equally effective solution for stationary power generation (yes I am invested in that too - solid oxide fuel cells for greater efficiency) I would spend more time there. I do recognize it as an even bigger problem than gasoline replacement, especially as it pertains to green house gases. But since I see an easy path I can believe in, ethanol (really biohols which include all liquid fuels from the same feedstocks and same ICE engines - some of these are my other liquid fuel investments), I choose to spend my time there.
I do not focus on peak oil as much but that does not mean I don't recognize it as a potential problem. I do think we will probably (nothing is certain) run out of air to put the oil emissions into before we run out of oil. I am personally not excited about coal to liquids technology because of its greenhouse gas implications which I consider a bigger issue than the peak oil issue. But given I see no easy solutions to the stationary power from coal problem (especially in India and China, I am very interested in clean coal technologies for stationary power.
But the reason to support ethanol in public policy debates for me is the feeling that I can really make a visible difference and it will lead to more than a marginal change. But the real answer is my belief that it has the lowest risk strategy to impact peak oil, green house emissions, energy security and independence, while having huge collateral benefits like sustaining farm incomes, rural employment, and reducing worldwide poverty. Ethanol has the best TRAJECTORY! There are other options like coal to liquids and natural gas which are also reasonable options if one is not looking for a trajectory that leads to a 100% renewable source. Others, especially the oil companies are working on some of these.
It is all about the trajectory! The factors that matter are TRAJECTORY, TRAJECTORY, & TRAJECTORY.
There's a huge difference between people who focus on "what is", and people who focus on "what can be". Ten years ago nobody in the established telecommunication world believed in the internet because the "what was" was not as good as an alternative technology called ATM. Every telecom carrier said, "no way would we ever switch our core network". The state of the internet protocol was so much worse than the alternative ATM for telecom carrier purposes. But "what can be" ended up so much better and so much cheaper because of the trajectory it was on, such that any company not adapting it will over time go out of business.
The difference between what is and what can be has to be reached in an evolutionary not a revolutionary fashion. IP & the web browser had a useful purpose, got deployed, was used and hence attracted both implementation and R&D investments. Next generation stuff was built on top (like better routers, IP management and network software, JAVA, Flash, Dynamic HTML pages, AJAX, and the semantic web) and is still being pursued because the technology had an incrementally improving path. Both the incremental steps and the long term vision have to be attractive for a technology to cause a revolution. If the two trajectories are in conflict, the incremental path generally wins. It is the road more frequently traveled.
Cell phones have followed the same path, starting from heavy scratchy voice quality devices to being dominant today. How many of you thought twenty years ago that they would mostly surpass land lines? Trajectory often determines where societal choices end up, especially when we cannot or do not legislate the outcome.
What can be with hydrogen is also great, but there is no way to incrementally get there from what is to what can be. The most likely path for hydrogen is co-producing it from ethanol, running it in today's internal combustion engines, getting hydrogen distribution, and then replacing internal combustion engines with higher efficiency fuel cells or improving the internal combustion engines.
A more likely path is ethanol in today's internal combustion engines, followed by better hybrid technology to make hybrids more broadly acceptable, to increasing the amount of battery storage on cars to make them more "plug-in" capable and over time to reduce the size of the ethanol driven internal combustion engine, thereby reducing the amount of liquid fuel we need for our automobiles.
The more we use batteries the cheaper and better they will get, the more investment and R&D interest they will attract, and the faster the cost performance curve will improve. Batteries will get cheaper and we will use more capacity in our cars, enabling longer range, making such cars cheaper and better and driving towards lower percentage use of liquid fuels. If you tell me we should replace today's cars with sixty mile range cars (since that is what most consumers use), I wish you good luck getting in getting it done. And the energy ratio of electricity is far worse than that of corn ethanol. If we get more wind and solar we should be replacing coal plants with that additional capacity, assuming it is cost competitive.
In parallel we will see better liquid fuels, fuels I call biohols. Butanol has already been proposed by BP and DuPont, and other liquid fuels have been discussed among researchers. They are superior to ethanol in many ways but will use the same or similar feedstocks and run interchangeably with gasoline or ethanol in today's engines. Some will require minor engine modifications and others will not. But if we tried to legislate butanol today it probably would not happen.
The bigger the ethanol market, and we must move it from a blend of only fifteen billion gallons a year US market to a primary fuel 200 billion gallons a year market, the more investment and R&D it will attract to reduce cost, improve engine performance to find additives and alternatives like butanol, to make it even better. With ethanol and biohols in general it is very possible to get there incrementally without disturbing a lot of current investment, vested interests (like automakers), and natural market forces.
The oil industry spends hundreds of billions in investments in oil every year and to find a replacement it must attract the same kind of capital. The only source of such capital is Wall Street. If we want to make change happen, make it worthwhile for the entrenched interests without making it easy enough for them to rest on their laurels. Make it attractive for Wall Street. In the end I do believe the oil companies will be big players in the biofuels game.
Why not biodiesel? First, its trajectory does not lead to cellulosic ethanol and other biohols. Most importantly, though I like biodiesel, there is a fundamental difference. Even though biodiesel has a better energy balance than corn ethanol, I don't believe it will scale beyond hundreds of gallons per acre of land. Ethanol, butanol and any liquid fuel that has a shot at replacing our gasoline needs has to scale up to 2,000-3,000 gallons per acre.
Add some form of increased CAFE; (the current 4% a year increase proposed by Senators Biden & Obama seems good and even politically possible, even a 2% per year compromise would be great), better engines (we hope our startup in the area is successful and gets to fuel cell efficiency in an ICE engine but if not there are at least a dozen other ICE engine efficiency startups), 3,000 gallons per acre results in some part of our export crop lands and CRP lands being sufficient to replace all our gasoline needs (my current best guess for 2030 - see Appendix A in "Is Ethanol Controversial?" at www.khoslaventures.com/resources.html). This involves improved yields of energy crops, cellulosic ethanol optimization but does not assume alternative biohols (something that is very likely - butanol could reduce gallons of fuel needed by 25%), improved engines (easy to get even ethanol mileage per gallon close to that of gasoline, not 33% lower as is assumed by many who base it strictly on energy content), higher CAFÉ standards (likely by 2030 - even a 2% per year increase in CAFE cuts our gasoline needs in half) and other positive surprises. If all these happen our likely needs will be a third of what we assume today, and we will get there incrementally and in a politically acceptable fashion. But we don't need these "extra" improvements to replace most of our gasoline consumption with ethanol.
And then there are better ethanol and biohols production strategies. I have seen plans (not one I funded) to get 22,000 gallons per acre using current carbon dioxide sources (like power plant exhausts), proposals for ocean based dense algae farms (something that seems like a good idea) that convert algae to biodiesel and ethanol. We need to set a path that leads to revolutionary vision but has short term steps to renovate, innovate, and make money for our scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and established companies that choose this new path. The steps will be incremental. The bigger the market, the more the attention, the greater the funding for both implementation and R&D, the greater the competition and hence a faster and faster pace of innovation and revolution. This is the trajectory I believe is possible here in the short term.
So am I over promising on cellulosic ethanol? I don't think so but if I am I don't see another viable alternative. What makes me believe in cellulosic ethanol? If the goal is ethanol production costs of $2 per gallon (roughly equal to gasoline at today's prices), we are there already. We have a number of different ways to do it except that no investor is willing to bet on these price points being viable.
So the real question is do we expect cellulosic ethanol production costs to drop sufficiently to be competitive with corn ethanol? The expected dozen or so (I have heard 60+) serious respondents to a recent Department of Energy RFP are willing to invest $60-70m of their own private money on the belief that their particular technology can meet the requirements. They could all be wrong but it is somewhat unlikely that so many different approaches and distinct technology sets will all prove wrong. I have significant funds invested in three such projects and unfortunately those of you who looked at the technology in the public domain will never get to see what private companies are doing. Am I certain this will work? No, but it is very likely that one of the dozen or more projects will achieve the cost target. The risk of a failure is much lower than the risk of a battery breakthrough to make plug-ins economically attractive (in my view).
Further if we did not have corn ethanol priming the pump, helping create a market for ethanol, getting the fuel infrastructure and FFV's lined up, I would not be investing in cellulosic ethanol as the cascade of distribution, market demand and infrastructure risks with the technology risk would make it too risky for me. In fact the corn ethanol investments we have made will make the cellulosic risk smaller as it is likely (but not guaranteed) that the initial cellulosic plants will be add-ons to today's corn ethanol plants, making them economically viable sooner.
To make this future happen this is a pretty modest risk to take compared to the risks we are taking with oil today, shipping lanes, supply, and geopolitics. We have a climate crisis and energy crisis. We have a terrorism crisis and a foreign policy crisis and all of them are linked to oil. Ethanol is a risk worth taking. And it takes us down a path that can lead to revolution through a series of evolutionary steps, at little cost to government, consumers or US automakers. Little cost, lots of upside - what is there not to like. I don't buy the argument that this will lull us into not pursuing other solutions (like increased CAFE;, better batteries) in parallel.
To address the issues we disagree on according to Mr. Rapier, on corn ethanol most of the community does not get the questions right. EROIE is not relevant (By the way, the fossil energy ratio of electricity today is four times worse than corn ethanol according to the Argonne National Labs GREET model!). What is only the "somewhat wrong" question is the "fossil energy ratio" - fossil energy in to total energy out. Renewable energy like solar is free, if one can take care of land conservation (addressed later). Otherwise a 15% efficient solar cell would have an energy ratio of 0.15! And nobody thinks that is bad.
Here, more accurate than the fossil energy ratio is the fossil energy used per mile driven (to take the differential mileage actually or potentially achieved into account), COMPARED TO GASOLINE. Even better is to directly measure our goals -(i) how much petroleum do we displace and (2) greenhouse gas reductions. So what is the trick? Most of the fossil energy used in corn ethanol production is natural gas, not petroleum so for peak oil fans, the typical US corn ethanol plant reduces petroleum use dramatically, according to the NRDC and Dr Wang at Argonne National Labs (90% or more reduction)! That addresses peak oil and energy security issues even if it does not address the green house gas issues. (2) We get moderate,(roughly 20% depending on production methodology for corn ethanol plants) green house gas reductions but as we try and reduce cost of production and make the process more energy efficient we can get 5X the fossil energy balance (www.e3biofuels.com) as verified by the National Commission on Energy Policy (personal communications)even with corn ethanol.
As explained above, in my view the only solution we can implement rapidly will have to fit in today's engines and we should chart a path for improving engines and improving fuels in smaller manageable steps without a dramatic big-step change. If we require a big step we know it won't happen. Pragmatics is what rules doability in my view. Others are welcome to disagree and spend their time trying to make it happen. I won't spend my time on it but I will sincerely hope they are successful. As described above it will probably (but not certainly) lead to the same place.
Corn ethanol will lead to other fuels but will it be completely displaced? I don't know the answer but probably not. I do think it will become an immaterial part of our liquid fuel infrastructure because of its inherent limited capacity (15 billion gallons per year). Biofuels in the US will be a 100-200 billion gallons per year market and if we have excess capacity (something I think is likely) excess capacity will be applied to bioplastics, stationary power and other applications. Compared to what we are likely to pick as politically acceptable options, the consequences of failure are small. I don't know a pragmatic solution that will get past the various interest groups that I can advocate.
All electric cars in one step is not something I can believe in. Despite incentives it has already failed and I don't see a smooth path to massive adoption, except as described above. If others are more successful with electric then nothing I am proposing will be in conflict. We will get to oil independence sooner as electrics catch on rapidly. I do hope they are successful. Personally I believe running electric cars off wind power or off hydrogen generated from wind power is an unrealistic pie-in-the-sky idea from academics who have no understanding of the politics of change and have not participated in real change. Theory and practice are often different. But I wish them well.
Having dismissed energy ratios as mostly irrelevant I want to stress that even corn ethanol from a typical natural gas powered corn ethanol plant today has almost twice the energy balance of petroleum. Apples to apples a unit of fossil energy will deliver between 1.3 to 1.8 units of liquid fuel energy out in corn ethanol and 0.8 units of energy out for gasoline per Dr. Wang at the Argonne National Labs and the GREET simulation model. There is additional renewable energy going into corn ethanol production, mostly solar energy, but that is in my view free. Otherwise solar cells would make no sense and would have a terrible energy ratio. This fact is the subject of much confusion. And this energy, being of higher octane can be used more efficiently than gasoline -some where between 10-30% more efficiently depending upon the engine. With 33% less energy mileage with ethanol is between 5-25% lower in most cases (the 5% case is hypothetical but feasible as real engines in the SAAB 9-5 Biopower car gets 18% less mileage but about 20% more horsepower. If it was sized to give the rated 150hp it gets on gasoline, mileage would improve substantially).
Even better, the ethanol production uses about 90% less petroleum so for peak oil enthusiasts it is by far the best and easiest solution. It will result in a 10-30% lower green house gases per mile driven for environmentalists. The plants one of my investments (Cilion) is building do not dry the distillers grain, cutting the energy use substantially and hence are much greener. Later they will replace the rest of the natural gas by utilizing the manure from local cattle feedlots (they are mostly building plants near cattle feedlots).
The following graph illustrates that even for standard corn ethanol plants ethanol comes out way ahead when evaluating (1) the amount of fossil energy needed or (2) the amount of petroleum energy needed.
Fig 1: BTUs Spent per BTUs Available Source: DOE
The following NRDC chart shows green house gas emission per mile driven for various ways to produce corn ethanol. E3 Biofuels corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol are dramatically better than corn ethanol but traditional corn ethanol is good enough on all counts and we should not let perfect be the enemy of the good.
Fig 2: Carbon Dioxide Emissions of various fuels Source: NRDC
Ethanol is clearly going down the right trajectory, even without other biohols like butanol which will improve the potential of this trajectory further.
The there is the food versus fuel controversy. Why have the developing countries been fighting so hard to eliminate the food subsidies? Because with cheap western food exports their farmers cannot generate enough income to sell their own crops or generate enough income to feed their families. There is no scarcity of food but rather a scarcity of income to buy it for the poorest of the poor. The current Doha round of talks on international trade broke down mostly over this issue. Developing liquid fuels based on biomass to replace gasoline is among the best things we could do to alleviate poverty and increase the value of lands in Africa, Latin America and other parts of the poverty belt. Temporarily food prices in America may go up but long term this will be a boon to farmers and consumers in America and around the world. Incidentally, we devote 250 million acres to animal feed in this country and it takes 15 ponds of corn to produce a pound of beef/pork/poultry today! Beef use has been declining in favor of poultry and if that trend continues, we will use only 10 pounds of feedstock to generate a pound of meat, freeing up 33% of the land currently used for meat production (and lots of water).
If you see anybody extrapolating corn ethanol use to meet all of our gasoline replacement needs, you are seeing a person with an agenda. Nobody in their right mind is proposing we meet more than a small fraction of our gasoline needs from corn. Are there issues with ethanol? Sure. Today it is less than perfect. Corn uses more water and fertilizer than I like (E3 Biofuels corn uses far less). With all factors like fermentation emissions, crop growing and transportation etc it reduces green house gases only about 20% ( actually between 10-30% generally but getting better every day). I would like to see much higher numbers on green house gas reductions and less intensive crop cultivations.
Cellulosic will make all these issues much less critical - Miscanthus will use a lot less water and almost no fertilizer (after the growing season it sends its nutrients back to the root system (stored in rhizomes for the winter) which is not harvested, almost no tillage, richer soil because it actually fixes carbon into the soil (hence the negative carbon per mile driven in the NRDC charts), and much greater biodiversity. We will still have to do grass cocktails to avoid monoculture, probably more complex crop rotation schemes and better management of the land. Unexpected problems with agriculture will crop up and will need to be managed.
Likely we will have mixed species of C4 photosynthetic grasslands. Highly diverse native hay meadows, mowed annually, were once an important part of the Oklahoma landscape and should serve as models. They can provide carbohydrates to convert into liquid fuels for our cars and remnant proteins to turn into animal feed protein. It is not only unlikely that we will not get our gasoline replacement from corn; it is also unlikely that economics will support our getting the biomass from byproducts of today's annual crops like corn stover. Economics will dictate biomass density of atleast 6-8 tons per acre initially and 15+ tons per acre later to keep the collection radius small (below 30 miles probably) and delivered cost of biomass below $40 per dry ton (or about $0.40 per gallon of fuel). This will dictate energy crops like Miscanthus. We will probably design higher energy density fuels with even higher octane ratings and higher burn efficiency, higher compression ratios before knock occurs and more.
Finally on the issue of subsidies, we force the cheapest oil in the world from Saudi Arabia to compete with expensive US ethanol, while keeping out cheap ethanol from Brazil. In addition there are plenty of direct and indirect subsidies for oil. Keep in mind that oil is an even more potent political force than the ethanol interests and has many different subsidies, direct and indirect, that it receives. A recent General Accounting Office of the Federal government listed a few of direct and directly measurable subsidies. Something esoterically called the "Excess of Percentage over cost depletion" has been a $82 billion dollar subsidy to oil. Expensing of exploration and development cost was listed as another $42 billion subsidy. Add on alternative fuel production credit (read oil shales, tar sands etc), oil and gas exception from passive loss limitation, credit for enhanced oil recovery costs, expensing of tertiary injectants, and other esoteric tools the oil lobby has inserted into various pieces of legislation, (including shameless attempts to get royalty relief from Katrina related legislation to the tune of $7b). And none of this includes any of the indirect subsidies. They have been variously estimated at from a few tens of cents to many dollars per gallon once one includes indirect costs like military costs. We spend over $50 b per year defending the sea lanes through which oil passes!
But does ethanol need a subsidy to survive? NO. It may get subsidies but it doesn't need them to be competitive with gasoline at any projected price of oil within the next twenty five years (Energy Information Administration projections, 2006). But the ethanol interest group is a potent political force and if it is getting subsidies, it won't give it up easily. But getting it does not mean they need it. We have a subsidy for ethanol but we also have a tariff of $0.54 per gallon, making expensive ethanol from the US compete with the least expensive oil in the world (Saudi oil), while keeping out Brazilian ethanol.
Today, even if ethanol prices were cut in half or more to $1.40 a gallon wholesale, corn ethanol producers would make adequate margins of profit. If we did not have a tariff or a subsidy ethanol would compete extremely well with oil. And while we are at it, I should point out that cost and price are different things. E85 market pricing would be much lower in a stable market because production costs are so much lower than gasoline. If production costs are half of gasoline why shouldn't it sell for half of gasoline? Answer: because of distortion and mismanagement. Frankly it is in the interest of the oil companies to keep ethanol prices high so as a primary fuel it doesn't start to replace gasoline. In the end for any commodity, price will be related to production costs but the oil companies are in no hurry to see rapid change happen here. If we ever get a real cap and trade system like we should have it will make ethanol more competitive. In some sense I view the current subsidy on ethanol as just offsetting the current subsidies to oil and in the future to substitute for what will be a cap and trade credit.
How much biomass can we produce?
We can only go by current data points and the realization that corn yields have increased by 7X and are still increasing (expected to go from 140 bushels per acre average currently to about 200 bushels per acre by 2015). We assume only a modest 60% increase above experimental Miscanthus yields in our model after twenty five years (2030) of development and optimization using plant breeding and genetic engineering. In the only side-by-side comparison of switchgrass and Miscanthus undertaken to date in the U.S., Miscanthus averaged 16.5 dry tons/acre/year whereas switchgrass averaged 4.6 dry tons/acre/year for three Illinois sites with data taken over two years (Heaton and Long, in preparation). The fact that a well-controlled study showed a 3-fold productivity increase relative to the cellulosic energy crop most widely-studied in the United States is indicative of the nascent status of the field. At the best of three sites in the best of two years, a yield of 25 dry tons per acre per year was realized. We assume this best yield will become the average yield after twenty five years, across 40-60 million acres of good cropland that is currently used for export oriented crops. The maximum potential yield of switchgrass - based on simulations founded on plausible physics, biochemistry, and physiology of the crop in its normal growing environment - is estimated by McLaughlin et al. at 21 dry tons/acre/year.
New tools for plant breeding are available that are expected to foster fast gains. These include marker-assisted breeding, which do not result in GMO plants, as well as development of transgenic plants (McGlaughlin and Kszos, 2005). Sugar cane experts (Frikkie Botha, South Africa Sugar Research Institute; Fernando Reinach, Allelyx and Votorantim New Business) project that breeding and cultivation of cane with the goal of maximizing total biomass yield can likely result in about 25 dry tons of harvestable biomass per acre per year in the relatively near term. Megaflora corp. has measured productivities of 28 dry tons per acre per year from crossing North American Hardwoods with the polonia tree (Ray Allen, personal communication). Ceres, a leading plant biotechnology company, has concluded that available information "strongly suggest[s] that over the next decade or so the deployment of modern breeding technologies will result in average energy yields of at least 15 tons per acre, and that these averages can be sustained across a broad range of geographic and environmental conditions, including the approximately 75 million acres of crop and pasture land in the United States that could easily be converted to their cultivation without impacting domestic food production." (Richard Hamilton, Personal Communication).
Many researchers, especially in the environmental community assume that energy crops will not use genetic engineering while we continue to use these techniques for row crops. They further assume we will use marginal lands or get our biomass as a byproduct of crops on currently managed lands. The DOE estimates that this scenario of collection of existing biomass with only small change in agricultural practices could generate 1.3 billion tons of biomass in the US. We personally believe that it is likely we will use dedicated energy crops (cocktails of C4 photosynthetic grasses like Miscanthus) on lands that are currently used to produce export crops and 40-60 million acres of this land will be sufficient to meet most of our gasoline needs. Quoting form the 2005 DOE study's conclusion "In the context of the time required to scale up to a large-scale biorefinery industry, an annual biomass supply of more than 1.3 billion dry tons can be accomplished with relatively modest changes in land use and agricultural and forestry practices" (Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply, US Department of Energy Report, April 2005). At an average of 100 gallons per ton, that should be a130 billion gallons of ethanol. We use 140 billion gallons of gasoline today.
And how much land could we use?
We have over 120 million acres of CRP and export crop lands. Our default assumption is that we will use some fraction of these lands to eliminate our oil imports for gasoline and then go on to replace even domestic oil used for gasoline. It is also worth contemplating that harvested land has stayed constant as the US population has tripled and the per capita calorie consumption has gone up. Further, in the US approximately 250 million acres of cropland are devoted to animal feed production (including forage crops) and pasture for meat production, essentially all of which could be used to produce energy crops. In addition, about 350 million acres are devoted to range land, of which some but not all could be used to produce energy crops.
In 2005, 75.1 million acres of corn grain were harvested in the U.S., about 80% of which was feed to livestock (~60 MM acres; ); 71.4 million acres of soybeans were harvested, with 70% going to feed animals (~50 million acres); and 61.6 million acres of hay were harvested. In 2002, 62 million acres of cropland were used as pastureland. An estimated 20% of the 50 million harvested acres of wheat are used to feed livestock (~10 million acres). Additional crops that are primarily fed to animals include sorghum (6 million), oats (2 million), and barley (3 million). The total allocation for animal feed production, therefore, is an estimated 255 million acres, not including other crops commonly feed to livestock (e.g. millet, rye, peas, beans, lentils). Crop acreages from NASS, 2006. Pasture acreage from USDA, 2006. Corn grain and soybeans allocated to animal feed from Etherton et al., 2003. Wheat allocated to animal feed based on FAO, 2006.
Table 3. Feed conversion efficiencies for major animal food types.
Mass conversions from Smil, 2000, assuming feed is corn; corresponding caloric values from USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
Changes in the relative proportions of various kinds of meat also have large potential impacts on land availability. In 2000, relative consumption of beef, pork, and poultry was as follows: 41% beef, 27% pork, and 32% poultry. Using these values and the data in Table 2, a weighted average of 14.3 kg feed per kg edible animal product can be calculated. Per capita meat consumption changed significantly throughout the 20th century however, and there would seem little reason to assume that it will remain constant in the future. Between the mid seventies and 2000, for example, beef consumption fell by 19%, pork consumption remained essentially constant, and poultry consumption increased by 92%.
For a hypothetical future scenario in which beef and pork accounted for 25% of meat consumption and poultry accounted for 50% - which would not seem unreasonable given recent trends - a weighted average of 10.85 kg feed per kg is calculated; a 24% change relative to the situation 2000. Devoting 24% less cropland to animal feed production would make available very roughly 50 million acres. We will also see the emergence of new practices. For example, Sweet sorghum, (currently being studied in India for fuel production) can make an excellent and cheaper substitute for corn in ethanol plants and can be grown on marginal lands with less little water and fertilizer.
Failure to look at these possibilities is a failure of imagination. We need to thread the needle between the "what is... and let's extrapolate today's corn ethanol production" tunnel vision crowd (generally done with an agenda - The American Petroleum Institute is concerned enough about world food supply and our welfare to have issued press releases on it!) and the "pie-in-the-sky academics who will dream up "what can be" without consideration for the path dependence of the choices we make and the pragmatics of how business works and what is needed to make a revolutionary future happen through a series of evolutionary steps. We should take our lesson from nature - from single celled amoeba to complex humans was an evolutionary process. It is the only way we can get billions of dollars deployed to make this alternative future happen.
Khosla Responds: "Imagining the Future of Gasoline: Reality or Blue-sky Dreaming?"
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Khosla Responds: "Imagining the Future of Gasoline: Reality or Blue-sky Dreaming?"
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He discounts EROEI as irrelevent. He uses EIA projections.
He uses increased CAFE standards as an argument. Huh? Well then why can't we? What do CAFE standards have to do with ethanol? Especially when ethanol gets worse mileage?
Why is more horsepower important? So we can be more inefficient per dollar but go from zero-to-60 faster.
He ends up by telling us the ratio of chicken and beef we are going to be eating.
There's too much "stuff" here. His workable alternative future based on ethanol depends on too many other pieces of the puzzle coming together in exactly the way he fantasizes it should.
The argument that you and others here have made well can be put forth succinctly in a few paragraphs accessible to the average person.
$1.40 ethanol. Fine. But apparently that's not happening now. In fact the current situation couldn't be more different. If that would change first, then maybe I'd be willing to reconsider some of his points.
I think he's living on another planet. Thanks Robert. Is this the first place this has been published?
Yes. I have read through and commented on the drafts as he was working on the essay. We also spent another hour on the phone this week discussing some of these arguments. I obviously still have areas of disagreement, but I will let others make their specific criticisms known.
Whether readers agree or disagree with Mr. Khosla's ideas, I think we can all agree that debating the issues is the best way to get past hype and myth and into what can be scientifically supported.
Am I being unfair?
So this is not exactly Star Trek technology.
I believe in counting chickens when they are hatched. In this case, I think a commercial plant, esp. with open books, would be "hatched."
You can guarantee that some variation of this will become known as the new, worse version of Monsanto's "Frankenfoods" or "terminator seeds."
Just as the petrochemical driven Green Revolution morphed into the reviled slogans above, so too with FTF (food to fuels). Right now biofuels are the darling of the sustainable development crowd, but that will change in short order when masses of economically marginal "consumers" begin to starve and die.
As you point out, "Trajectory" is what counts. And the Trajectory is to gradually convert food staples and cropland to motor fuels.
Imagine the bumpersticker
The first part might contain the name of a company, country, or even individual (if they become too closely identified with FTF). The last part might contain a motive or result, "so SUVs can drive, while people starve." etc.
If you dive into this, you and your companies will risk becoming the new Monsantos.
One thing I wonder about is his belief that cellulosic ethanol will outcompete biodiesel in gallons per acre. Currently, that is so not the case. Putting aside the ecological problems with palm oil, it's 5000 kg per hectare, far better than any currently producing ethanol crop. And what about biodiesel from algae? That's the fair point of comparison with cellulosic, which isn't quite there yet either.
Unless the problems of biodiesel from algae are more than efficiency and scaling...
But I think his rejection of EROEI is weird. What ultimately matters is how much energy we can use in total.
But I am playing devil's advocate. Speculating on future trends is what entrepreneurs are in business to do. Governments shouldn't bet on one horse when there's a whole field of promising contenders and new breakthroughs are announced every month. Better they should all compete without subsidies or preferential treatment.
On the one hand, it is fairly clear that we can not replace every drop of oil we use from corn. On the other hand it seems equally obvious that ethanol, particularly if you are willing to consider cellulosic (I tend to agree with Odogragh here however), could play a very important role in offsetting declining oil supply.
I read somewhere that if you wanted to replace all global electricity consumption with solar technology, you would ahve to cover the entire earth with panels - so solar is worthless, right?
I see no facts criticised with no facts. Save the atta-boys for something worth reading not put-downs.
I believe your solar assertion, while I realize that you were using it to make a point, is erroneous.
http://www.quaker.org/tqe/2006/TQE145-EN-Hybrid-Details.html
OK, it's one source and who knows how close it is, but let's see what happens...
Assume 4 sun hours per day (4 hrs at 1000 watts/sq.m), a 12% efficient panel will produce 1000x0.12x4x365=175,200 Whr per year. Take 4000 TW (4E15 Watts) divided by 175,200 = 22.8E9 square meters, = 22831 sq. km = 8800 sq. mi. for a square area that equates to 93 miles x 93 miles. To cover the electrical use for the entire country.
So unless the 4000TW number is off by orders of magnitude, we are nowhere near having to cover the US with solar panels to provide our current consumption (which BTW could be easily reduced substantially, but that's another topic). Does the rest of the world consume orders of magnitude more electricity per surface area than the US? I'd bet dinner not, and I only bet dinner when I know I'm going to win.
I wonder how much demand you could satisfy by covering a substantial fraction of all the roofs with solar panels? I realize currently that is cost-prohibitive, but I hope we see this happen someday.
The NanoSolar plant being built in/near silicon valley will produce 430MW of panels per year, supposedly at much cheaper prices than anything currently available. That's enough panels for one heck of a lot of rooftops, and from just one plant. It's a safe bet that if they come close to their price points and production volumes after they ramp-up that we'll see them getting tons of additional funding and building more plants.
I think it would be downright funny if all this talk about ethanol, hydrogen, CTL, etc. was largely derailed by one of the "old school" renewables, solar, that finally had the major price breakthrough we've all been hoping for since the 1970's.
Why would you put all the solar panels in one 93 square mile area? For one it would become a huge terrorist target. Second it would be vulnurable to natural disasters (tornados, earthquakes, etc..)
I think a distributed solution of using business and household rooftops makes way more sense. Supplement that with wind and tidal power, and it could go a long way towards getting households and small business into a more sustainable model.
It doesn't solve the liquid fuel problem though.
Rooftops are the perfect place for panels, and there's way more than enough existing roof space to cover that 8800 square miles. The only down side today is the high up-front cost, and the low supply of panels due to heavy solarization in Europe and Germany in particular.
Also, in California, at least, they figure 5 hours of sun/day; some are now starting to use 6 hours. Right now, I'm expected to be putting out 5.6KW/day; I'm actually at 9 +/- 0.3. Remains to be see what happens during 35 or 40 staight days of rain.
Rat
I think at some point it will become apparant that we can live pretty comfortably with alot less electricity than that though, so we really won't need even as much generation as you calculated.
There is alot of energy in wind and solar, you just can't put them in your gas tank. Oh well.
You can if we had electric vehicles. Has everyone seen this?
http://www.teslamotors.com
I can. Here are the raw numbers I will start with:
Total land are in the U.S. = 3,718,711 sq mi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states
Percent arable land in the U.S. = 18.01% https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html
Average corn yield per acre (2005) = 148.4 bushels http://www.usda.gov/nass/aggraphs/cornyld.htm
So, 18.01% of 3,718,711 is 669,740 sq mi arable land, times 640 acres per square mile is 428633504.7 acres of arable land, times an average yield of 148.4 bushels times 3 gallons ethanol per bushel is about 190 billion gallons of ethanol. The U.S. uses about 150 billion gallons of gasoline per year. I don't have the exact energy conversion between ethanol and gasoline, but the amounts of energy are in the same ballpark. So we could theoretically not only fuel our trucking fleet but all of our automobiles, and an be energy independent without sacrifice if we just grow corn of every arable acre in the country. Fortunately, Canada is obligated by NAFTA to supply us with natural gas, so we can still make fertilizer to keep the corn yields up, and we can still eat if we can find an optimal deer population that will feed us but without eating so much corn to have an significant impact on yields.
This is looking easy. On an unrelated topic, I think I can run a marathon in about an hour and twenty minutes based on my time in the 100m when I was in high school.
Ah, but the trucking fleet runs mainly on diesel, which is not included in the gasoline number. Diesel has an even higher energy content than gasoline, and diesel engines are far more efficient. So, to replace the 50 billion or so gallons of diesel we use each year would take around 100 billion more gallons of ethanol.
Regarding the energy content of gasoline versus ethanol, ethanol has about 65% of the BTUs of gasoline.
However, using your numbers, it does seem that it could make a difference. I have argued before that 10% of consumption on a BTU basis would make ethanol a huge contributer to replacing declining oil reserves. Even 10% of gasoline use would mean a lot, both in terms of its contribution as a fuel and as a replacement for the lightest refinery products - freeing up much needed capacity.
So, 10% of 150 billion gallons times 1.3 (to convert from volume to BTU) equals about 20 billion gallons. This is about 10.5% of the 190 billion gallons figure you cite for all US agricultural land.
Now, I also acknowledge that taking a mid-range EROEI figure of of 1.25, the net contribution to energy is only about 2% of gasoline use with the remainder being converted from other fuel sources.
My point is not that it is a good thing to do. It may not be. However, this analysis reveals a lot more about the actual tradeoffs than dismissing it because it can't solve all of our energy problems single handedly.
The average yields cited per acre are in places that have 8-10 feet of rich soil and sufficient water.
"Ethanol, butanol and any liquid fuel that has a shot at replacing our gasoline needs has to scale up to 2,000-3,000 gallons per acre."
Using your own calculations if cellulose ethanol is scalable to 2,000 bushels per acre as Mr. Khosla seems to believe, then it would require less then 10% of the U.S. arable land to completely replace our gasoline consumption with cellulose based ethanol. 10% seems like a much more reasonable number and something that may be achievable.
However this changes the main question to, "What is the evidence that Cellulose Ethanol can be scaled to 2,000 bushels per acre, given current methods." I think this question deserves much consideration, because it is at the heart of the debate.
No! You do not need to cover the entire earth with panels to replace the entire electricity demand with solar. For rough calculations... The earth is receiving an average of 1,000 watts/m2 with half the earth's surface lit at any given time, 5x10^14 m2. This yields 2.5x10^17 average watts at any moment. With 8760 hours available per year, this yields 2.2x10^21 watt/hr or 2.2x10^12 GW/hrs!! Solar cells vary in their efficiency from 6% to 30%. Most solar cells have around 14% effeciency. Thus using 14% effeciency that gives 3.1x10^11 GW/hrs per year.
In 2003, the world used 14,781 billion killowatt/hrs or 1.4x10^7 GW/hrs for easy comparison above. That is 4 orders of magnitude lower.
Maybe you meant only on available land mass? The oceans make up 71% of the earth's surface. Thus that reduces available energy to 9x10^10 GW/hrs per year. Obviously, it is still orders of magnitude more than needed.
So what percentage of land mass would be needed? .02%!!
- Jack
-PoP
http://sharesleuth.com/2006/08/moonshine_blindness.html
This doesn't undermine the potential of another company to do it right, but there's a lot of hype about innovation that isn't being matched with results (or even effort).
:-)
Agreed. I found it much more compelling and convincing than the presentation which RR critiqued to begin this discussion. Something very tangible has been gained and it has been fun and engaging to watch the discourse play out. Kudos, Mr Khosla, on your efforts.
Most of the early critiques here are kind of annoying and nitpicking. "It's too long" -- c'mon. It was written for an audience that values detailed analysis over the punchy and dumbed-down distillations (often misleading) you'd get in commercial contexts.
The pricing issue with ethanol seems like a serious issue though. Mr Khosla, you invoke a conspiracy theory of your own after waving off readers who believe in such things. Somehow, after 20 years of incentives, the oil industries are still manipulating the price to remain at precise margin above gasoline? I'd like a more compelling (or at least better supported) explanation there.
One comment I'd like to add is that it is not only in poor counrties that the rural poor are likely to benefit from a large increase in ethanol production but also farmers and rural communities in the U.S. and the E.U. too. The price of corn is ludicrously low now, and if increased ethanol production can bring a doubling of corn prices, that would diminish greatly the subsidies that U.S. tax payers pay to farmers while also increasing incomes in very small marginal communities in the corn-growing and grass-growing regions of the U.S.
In my opinion, cost-benefit analysis should include social costs and social benefits, and in this case the economic and social benefits to rural America are potentially huge.
I hope Mr. Khosla is correct in his vision. In any case, we will know within a few years if some of his essential and questionable premises are right--or are merely excessively optimistic assumptions. Either some of the technologies for producing alcohol from grass will scale up and work at low cost--or they won't; the outcome may be clear pretty soon, in a couple of years or thereabouts.
The rural farmer will make no more money on corn for ethanol than they do for corn now. ADM stock isn't up 50% over the past calendar year because the rural farmer is pulling down the ethanol money.
This money for the rural poor is the same lie trotted out every time venture capitilists and multinational corps have needed us to vote for their politicians in the past.
Please compare previous promises of sudden money for the rural poor to how events actually played out.
It is the old give me your vote now and I promise wealth and happiness later.
I hate to be so pessimistic,,but I have heard this too many times and have yet to see the working farmer gain.
If ethanol could stand on it's own merits they wouldn't have to trot these tired lies out in front of us again.
Hopefully I'm wrong, maybe there is a farmer on TOD that can tell me different. If so I will happily vote for ethanol just to bring some money into the fields.
Regards
If the production of ethanol increases the demand for corn, please explain why you think this would not tend to cause the price of corn to increase.
Econ 101 strikes again.
I wish someone could show me the money helping out the rural poor and small farmer now.
This tired lie of vote for the politician that supports X and it will bring money into the poor folks has been around since the coal companies told it to the people of appalachia 150 years ago.
Are any farmers seeing good money from ethanol now?
We are making ethanol now right?
<Econ 101 strikes again>
You are exactly right..Every farmer in America is salivating to make whatever the ethanol crop dejour is. And they will grow millions of tons of it,,but guess what. Vinod's ethanol plant will only need 1/2 a million tons this season,,.so the farmers will get what they get every year...dick.
If the ethanol industry wants to help the rural poor why don't they contract a fair price on the front end. Tell me now how much they will pay per bushel.
Not when you have the crop du jour gushing out of the silos ,,and oops ,,suddenly low demand.
In these hear parts, relying on arguments from economists means you are gonna have to prove what you say, not just hand wave.
Now the orginal poster expressed:
Please compare previous promises of sudden money for the rural poor to how events actually played out.
It is the old give me your vote now and I promise wealth and happiness later.
And your response was:
In fact (not fantasy) new ethanol distilleries have saved more than one small Minnesota town.
- When Don Sailorman uses the word "fact" he's been known to tie that to global sea water levels not rising and that e85 gets better milage in cars.
- Exactly how is an Ethanol plant NOT a manufactoring job?
Farming has historically ment long hours and low pay per gunga2006, and thus far Mr. Sailorman hasn't actually rebutted gunga2006's position.Lets move onto 'Econ 101':
Making booze from corn does mean a market for the corn. Howwever, such a world also means that the ultra-cheap energy that drives the tractors and makes rural land prices so high will be going away. Considering how most modern farming is done, exactly how will more expensive fuel and less valuable land effect operation of the modern farm? (Hint: The land is used as collateral to borrow against to buy the fancy, big, tractors and other equipment) If fuel prices go up and land prices drop ($7000 an acre 'farmland' becomes $500 an acre) how high does ethanol have to rise to balance out the spreadsheet?
Sorry about the multiple posts in reply but the more I think about this the more obvious it seems.
Say in a given year, CY2007, ethanol increases demand for corn by a factor of X. All of this talk of big money is ensuring supply will increase by a factor of X+.
If the price per bushel is going to rise, why don't the ethanol plants contract their price per bushel on the front end? Because they are pushing production to ensure supply is greater than any given years demand.
The ethanol proponents could kill this argument today. Vinod could come in and say " Gunga, you a**hole, I'm contracting a per bushel price of $X on the front end which is more than the poor farmers have ever seen. "
Most farmers would love to know how much they will be paid per bushel before they put seed to ground. If the price per bushel is going to be so high why don't the points of demand use front contracts instead of waiting to price the product at the silo?
Econ 201- The source of supply is fractured and the different sources of supply don't coordinate production for the most part. The point of demand relative to supply is consolidated and can choose their source of raw material.
This is why the small American farmer historically stays hand to mouth.
If ethanol will help America's energy needs let it stand on it's own. I just have a hard time accepting this, "all you poor folks will be paid" arguement until I see the money going to the fields.
Regards
The "Minneapolis Star Tribune" did a series on this topic not long ago, and so has WCCO TV news and various other Minnesota news organizations in case you want particular names, dates, amounts, profitability, and specific impacts on certain rural communities.
Is ethanol a silver bullet? Of course not. Could it be a silver BB? I'd say yes, based on hard evidence that exists now.
If the farmers saw money coming to the fields they wouldn't become ethanol plant ownners.
In yesterday's news, our US-house representative, Tom Osborne, spoke of concern of ethanol expansion moving too fast for our infrastructure. Of our 12 plants producing ethanol right now, only 4 are farmer-owned. See article:
http://www.Kearneyhub.com/sitelprinterFriendly.cfm?brd=268&dept_id=577571&newsid=17032387
Please provide a link showing us that most of Minnesota's ethanol plants are farmer owned.
The article also mentions that 12 plants are producing, 9 are under construction, and 23 are in the planning stages. Currently 1/3 of our corn is going towards ethanol. That means when all 44 are up and running, 8 of them will not have any corn to buy, because 36 of them will be using 100% of the corn produced in this state to produce ethanol. A lower post suggests the same situation in Iowa. Think about the implications of this: farming every inch of land that can possibly be farmed because of increased corn prices--farming what is now CRP land(often the only resting land, or wildlife habitat in an area of intensively farmed land), plowing up more virgin prairie, irrigating even more, less diversity in farm production (more corn-less of anything else), larger farms, more industrial farming, increased cost of food and any corn based products, less US ag exports, etc. In my drumbeat post, citing an excellent article from the Omaha World-Herald this past Sunday, it stated that a $100 million ethanol plant can be paid for in 1 year's worth production.
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/8/6/9105/08126/9#9
Now, reading between the lines, there is one hell of an incentive for investors to build these ethanol plants, get them paid for in one year, and then bail out?? (my guess) So, I differ in thinking with Tom Osborne, in that I am relieved that only 4 of our 12 plants are farmer owned, because I seriously don't think these plants will be operating in five years from now, but thats just MOHO. Now, I know that I have just provided some insight for a VC to speculate on when to get out of his investment in ethanol--I'd say about one or two years from now, if not sooner.
Renewable resources such as solar and wind with a move towards electricfication of transportation, increased rail both electric and other, and conservation are the way to go. The sooner we can move towards decentralizing our infrastructures the less hard we'll fall, but it doesn't look like that will happen soon enough.
http://www.kearneyhub.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=268&dept_id=577571&newsid=17032387
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/8/6/91051/08126/9#9
Any industry has the potentiality of growing too fast. (or too slow)
As you may or may not be aware, the hot new idea in Minnesota is to make legal the gadgets that will convert your car to run on flex-fuel--anything from E-85 to pure gasoline, and any blend in between. If this idea flies (and I think the odds are good), then it seems reasonable to expect a rather rapid expansion in the demand for E-85 in Minnesota, where it sells for forty cents a gallon less than 87 octane gasoline. Thus, if this gadget becomes popular, the demand for E-85 in this state could increase at double-digit percent rates for some years to come.
As so often happens, Minnesota leads the rest of the country in progressive ideas;-)
Making fatalistic assumptions is no better than diehard optimists who think technology will solve our problems with no need to worry about it. The similar end result on either end of the optimism/pessimism scale is that no attention is paid to trying to solve the problem.
Matthew Simmons has talked about this, about how much longer do you think the oil producing countries will continue selling their oil before they shut off the valves to keep what is left for them selves. I do not see this happening over a long period of time. I will not blame them one bit when they do. If this is not a worst case when it happens, I have no idea what would be greater than this affecting humanity. When I look at our world leaders and their involvement in how to deal with resource depletion problems, one only ends up with "worst case" feelings. I am a realist and have never had anything given to me to make my life better. I really do not care if someone wants to debate me over how I feel I should prepare for a possible disaster. I live in (shake and bake) country (California) and have seen over and over again how people were not prepared when we have an earth quake. I believe that we are heading towards an oil and economic crash, and again, I do not think this is going to happen over a long period of time. I'll survive quite well, no matter what happens. I sincerely hope that you do too.
Most of the above post seems to assume continued petroleum and fossil fuel inputs to grow crops to generate feedstock to distill alcohol, whats the picture look like w/o it? Why is this important? Sustainability and a reasonable look at what the future may hold. Plan for the worst, hope for the best, lives and the future are at stake. I think overall alcohol will have a place and role, albeit a small one, but the competition for food vs fuel is a dangerous game to play given the nature of the US these days methinks.
Exactly I think that by ignoring peak oil he is ignoring the skyrocketing costs of oil based inputs costs of modern agribusiness methods.
Here is his vision of the future.
1.) GM crops
Profit !!!
2.) Large cellulose ethanol plants gm microbes
Profit !!!!
3.) Expensive distribution of water sensitive ethanol
Profit !!!
4.) American Consumer paying 8 bucks a gallon for gasoline
5 dollar a gallon ethanol.
Profit !!!
He paper does not show the above is not true. What's happened is that the world is like Romainia where people are willing to spend up to 30% of there income on transportation. How do I know friends from Romania. Fleecing the sheep for transport is the growth industry of the future.
Whats not happening.
Even for ethanol what is the cost of chemical conversion to butanol a much much better alchohol for transportation ?
What is the cost of decentralized processing i.e on the farm
or small scale this could benefit from solar distilation waste heat sources bio-methane and profits go to the farmer ?
Theres more but what I don't see is I don't see a process thats been close looped early i.e. the inputs and outputs to the farming process can be easily accounted for.
Lets take simple farming can we eliminate the huge tractors in favor of carbon-fiber combines pulled by mules ?
Whats wrong with my simple biodigesters proposal and how do they compare to the big cellulose conversion plants.
Plus by focusing on syngas/methane production and handling on the farm you can with a small simple conversion plant produce any chemical output needed.
But I don't care because for a very simple reason cellulose ethanol won't work.
There is no reserve !
Where are you going to store 6 months of cellulose or a 6 month supply of ethanol much less a year or more.
Without storage your subject to the whims of nature with significant crop shortages possible any given year these would translate into real fuel shortages.
Right now the ethanol industry is using up the stored grain supply consider what happens when its our only source ?
They can't solve this problem with centralization thus there doomed so I see no real reason to argue with there schemes because I assure the moment they have people hooked on there expensive ethanol then can't supply it because of drought etc there doomed. Assuming they can even figure out how to supply cellulose based ethanol for a whole year using a centralized model I can't see it.
So where are you going to pile 6 months worth of cellulose or store 6 months worth of ethanol or a years supply ?????
Good luck.
Using any fossil fuels to make ethanol is an automatic loser, your better off using those fossil fuels as directly as possible to avoid the losses incurred every step of the way. Like I said above, ethanol has its place, albeit a small one. On a small scale it works, but I have serious doubts we will be able to or want to industrialize it to the degree that petroleum has undergone, it would be a mistake. It may even end up being a mistake not easily undone faced with the consequences if it fails, civilizations before have made the same mistakes and died because of it !! This is not an issue that should be taken lightly or jumped into without PROVING its viability, and viability long term.
We al need to face the facts that the REAL solutions here are going to involve sacrifices, conservation, alot more hard physical labor, and at some point we can either deal with population overshoot, or nature will do it for us.
The Oil Drum has hashed out most of these arguments pretty thouroughly at this stage, much thanks to Mr Rapier, and Mr Khosla though. I agree there are NO silver bullets, and I for one dont want any either. Im perfectly happy to work like a dog to earn my keep, I have a feeling much of the rest of the US isnt though. I kicked my car habit years ago, one of the gutsiest and toughest moves Ive ever done, well worth it, wish I had done it long ago. Im willing to take more steps too, already working on it, but I have no illusions that I will ever reach my ultimate goal of zero impact, not without help anyway.
I couldn't quite slip thru the many stop signs that Mr Kholsa erected as the price of admission to his piece. Nevertheless I peaked thru the fenceposts to get a sense of his vision and TOD'ers reaction to it.
It is too easy to divide the comments and commentators into optimists and pessimists, realists and idealists, theorists and doers, ad nasuem. This categorization does not deepen or broaden real understanding. It can create an "I'm right/you're wrong" mindset that limits creatiivty and cooperative action.
My own perspective is based on a deep sense that "the system" is deeply out of alignment with reality itself.
I support perspectives and initiatives that tug us towards acknowledging that the current trajectory is unsustainable while still nourishing the hope in the inherent adaptability of us to respond to the challenges before us.
So although I couldn't get thru all of Mr Kholsa's gates I would certainly not want to fence him in. I admire his willingness to expose the assumptions, beliefs and opinions that support his vision to a critical audience. Perhaps his efforts and enthusiasm will inspire others to get involved, ask critical questions and invest in creating new possibilities. Bravo!
It has BEEN responded to, and you have chosen to ignore the response is all.
Where are you going to store 6 months of cellulose or a 6 month supply of ethanol much less a year or more.
Here's what's NEAT about ethyl alcohol. Once its made and in a high concentration...it STAYS that way, barring outside changes via water or vaporization. There are people who spend their days collecting old booze, because a bottle made in 1880 is about the same (the tannins from the wood storage cask may change)
So long as you keep it in a closed container, it sticks around.
But I don't care because for a very simple reason cellulose ethanol won't work.
There is no reserve !
errrr
- The idea of ethanol is that it is RENEWABLE - thus 'reserves' arn't a generational issue. (unless the biosphere collapses)
- no one has a reserve of ethanol as fuel today because demand is high, thus what they make is sold.
Right now, huamns have a good life based on the ability to suck on RESERVES of oil. I've YET to see any proposal for an oil-less future where things continue as they have been that does the math on what's needed to keep reserve energy on hand.I'm not sure I've found a bottom line here, or missed one, but my feeling is that we should spread bets on the alternatives, until they prove themselves. I mean, Proponent A might like us to build (premature?) infrastructure for electric cars, while Proponent B might like us to build (premature?) infrastructure for hydrogen cars, and Proponent C ... might have something to say about ethanol.
This gets back a little bit to the nature of funding and innovation. Typically small players choose one course, and gamble big. They have to. But I think over-arching organizations have the luxury, and the obligation, to be a little less committed to a single course.
IMO the flaw in our national strategy has been to "choose one" and then change our minds and "choose another."
... I say spread the bets, and don't build out infrastructure technologies prove themselves. In the case of ethanol, I'd say it has proven itself viable as a niche (corn) player, but not yet as a wide (cellulosic) solution.
(I think my typo and missing word rate is actually better than my average in that piece ;-)
But what I do know is that farmers in my state are getting crushed by fuel and fertilizer prices, they are salivating at the prospect of ehtanol, my governor (Phil Bredesen) can tell you the converision and EROEI ratios for corn based ethanol and cellulosic ethanol off the cuff, and my candidate for Senate, Harold Ford, Jr., has an ad standing in the middle of a West Tennessee soy bean field talking about energy independence.
I love the "silver bb's" concept. But I think everyone has to understand peak oil sooner or later, to grasp the importance of the silver bbs on a national scale, as opposed to "what hits my pocket book."
I am heartened to know that my governor and my senate candidate get all of these concepts-- peak oil, silver bbs, and pocket book issues. But they are marketing them in a way that farmers and individuals can comprehend within their existing frameworks, to accomplish at least some change now.
Could you have your Governer give my Governer a call? Six month's ago, when asked about Peak Oil, the governer of Vermont didn't understand the question.
Mr. Khosla,
If this is your attitude, why even bother? You would actually make a great (what we call) "doomer" on this website.
You talk about the "car not going away." Yes that's correct, it's not going away, but they don't need to be 3-ton assault vehicles for carrying one person to the mall and back 17 times a day.
The biggest problem with ethanol is that it perpetuates the consume-and-burn lifestyle rather than attempting to bring it to an end.
Let's start with massive sticker taxes on these stupid vehicles. Let's start with raising gas-taxes gradually to $3 a gallon. Let's start with convincing the government and the people that we need to conserve more and consume less. Any reasonable success in these departments would negate the need to even think about ethanol.
I'm not trying to change things overnight. I'm just trying to hope things will change. But that hope is destroyed when I see that you and others are pushing the notion of continued, unlimited energy consumption at cheap prices.
Idealized solutions? Yes, but they are solutions, and as far as I can see they are the only real ones on the table. Ethanol is a "solution" like a $10 bag of heroin is a "fix."
"Addicted" to oil. I believe the President of the United States has used that one.
Thank you for your time. Peace.
People thought that no one would use the internet to buy things because they couldn't touch or feel their goods before purchase. This has been wrong. People now even buy groceries, including produce, on the internet. That "trajectory" changed.
People thought that companies or individuals wouldn't stop using paper for certain transactions, not trusting the reliability or evidentiary proof of electronic transactions. Wrong. That "trajectory" changed.
So for all this talk of "trajectory", Mr. Kosla bases a substantial part of his viewpoint on an assumption which he appears unwilling to question -- that the "personal automobile is here to stay."
The use of the "personal automobile" trajectory may change too -- regardless of whether we at the TOD, Mr. Kosla, or anyone else wants it to or not.
I am a personal example. I grew up in what you would call an "automobile family", my dad worked in the auto industry his entire career. Now my wife and I have one car, and eventually, we will own no car. And we couldn't be happier. It's actually cheaper and more convenient not to own one. Many friends are coming around to this too -- regardless of peak oil, in fact.
The inefficiencies relating to personal automobile use -- energy is huge one, but really just one of a whole number of inefficiencies -- may eventually change this trajectory, too.
Mr. Kosla, you make a number of strong points, IF one assumes that your assessment of the proper "trajectory" is correct.
But I fail to find any persuasive evidence -- indeed, any evidence at all -- that your assessment of "what can be" is correct.
I think that "what can be" is much broader, more different, and eventually, much more satisfying than what you are willing to give human beings, particularly Americans, credit for. Don't get me wrong that it will be a (very) bumpy path to getting there, though, and especially for Americans. We're going to be griping about the pain of the shot in the arm for a long time before we pipe down and realize the benefits of immunization, so to speak. . .
Also, I find the argument that EROEI is "irrelevant" to be unpersuasive. Robert Rapier's analysis appears correct to me. Citing to Argonne work product without getting into the first principals of the methodology cannot persuade me otherwise.
Well said.
I don't mean this in kind of a dippy "transformational" way, but I do beleive we might be near one more important societal and civilizational inflection points. An obvious one is the threat of political authoritarianism which even extremely moderate voices like Sandra Day O"Connor have been acknowledging recently:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20&%20Legal/OConnorWarnsOfDictatorship.html
but the possibility of very rapid transformation in infrastructure and societal logistics is certainly present as well and can--to some extent--be planned for.
That is where being too doctrinaire about notions of "what's possible" seems to me to fall flat. I'm quite certain that someone looking back in ten years would perceive a very different set of possibilities than someone trying to be politically savvy and "realist" in his perspective at the current moment. The lesson: to not cast off good ideas because they aren't "realistic."
Now, Mr Khosla probably isn't going to have much effect on the gas tax debate, compared to the effect he's having on the ethanol debate. And I think his calculus of where is effort is best spent is completely honorable. That's why some of the outrage and haughtiness directed his way rubs me wrong.
The question of food supply and yields is a serious one, especially when rising temperatures lower yields and we've had a grain production deficeit for 7 of the last 8 yrs.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/2006.htm
Certainly our food production system has a lot of slack. But short-term there could be some real uglyness with grain prices and shortages and that might pose a real challenge to the politics of grain-based fuels.
Errr, touching the items from in a catalogue was not possible, yet Sears and Mongomery Wards made a good living selling from catalogues.
Mr. Kosla, you make a number of strong points, IF one assumes that your assessment of the proper "trajectory" is correct.
Isn't that what this whole web site is - trying to figure out "the trajectory" of how the end of cheap oil is going to work out?
I think it's a mistake to think that people won't change, just because they don't plan ahead. When faced with the problem so they can't ignore it (getting too expensive to fill up that H3), they will then be forced to accept it and make changes. Right now they won't listen, as they don't believe in peak oil yet, and don't see any reason to be concerned.
I do agree with you that there is nothing more counterproductive than doom and gloom forecasts. Such pessimism accomplishes nothing. It doesn't win people over, it doesn't help push us along the route to finding an alternative or solution to the problem. It's just useless hand wringing. A lot of pessimists probably see themselves as being a cut above the "mindless" people out there who don't think there are any problems, but the reality is they are exactly the same.
For practical purposes there is no difference between someone who thinks there is no problem, and someone who thinks the problems are insurmountable. Neither is going to do anything to try to overcome them.
Its nice to see people working on stuff. But you must realize its people like Vishod that are playing a very very dangerous game. The decisions we make over the next few years will have deep ramifications for our near term future. If you believe like me that were heading for a cliff then you do care how these people move. The moment people realize were in deep shit there not going to be thinking hard about sustainability thus its up to the Vishod's of the world to really get beyond the car culture and the contraints of todays soceity and consider the needs of the future. I've seen the posters at peak oil with a widly diveregnet background narrow down what needs to happen and present arguments I can agree with.
We know what needs to happen
1.) compact our sociey ( smaller closer housing business)
2.) Electrify
3.) Solar/Wind/( Real renewable biofuels )
Thats the right thing and I'm conviced the only thing that will work as the oil depletes.
The Vishod's of the world are doing a huge disservice not jumping beyond the concept that the care is here to stay.
I bet in ten years non hybrid/all electric will be very rare
and roads themselves will degrade dramatically.
We will see.
(Ouch, I hate writing this sort of stuff. VK is just another guy. He has his beliefs and emotions, as we all do. Perhaps we should just let him get on with pursuing his dream - if he doesn't, someone else will).
Probably yes, but right now the alternative is running out of fuel and suffering a potentially cataclysmic collapse.
I for one would rather we switch to ethanol and buy some time to let us adjust our economic system and make improvements, rather than all die off through starvation. Yummy.
That implies some big assumptions, foremost would be that we would choose to "run out" rather than restructure.
Some of the ethanol argument chases its tail in that sense. We are to use ethanol because we won't restructure, and we won't restructure because we have ethanol. Etc.
Tony
errr, right now ethyl alcohol is made from stuff that could become food.
Celluatic alcohol in a cheap mass produced way is still 'expermental'. Now, you CAN do it if you take concentrated sulfuric acid or low concentration/high temp sulfuric acid process.
There WILL be starvation. All dying off - only if the fight for cheap energy causes the die-off or the biosphere collapses.
Below iss my DrumBeat post today. I daresay that my efforts may result in more net positive effects on PO & GW than those of Mr. Khosla.
The recent HydroPower conference in Portland has been quite productive in leads or starts on ideas that are relevant to PO and/or GW. Just to report, and show that one person with "good ideas" can have some impact.
People ARE looking for solutions to an ill-defined "problem".
1) I talked a utility executive (in charge of development) to join with 3 other utilities and jointly offer electrification to a large railroad for a ~1,500 mile section of line. The utilites would be willing to do this on a turn-key basis; or just sell power at the wire to the RR loco from utility owned system.
I HOPE that the first railroad electrification will start many more up in a cascade.
2) Talked two senior engineers at Landsvirkjun to look seriously into a HV DC line to Scotland (old plans exist). The UK will have serious problems starting in 2012/14 and Iceland could sell renewable electricity "at a good price" in competition with LNG imports. Perhaps average 1 GW.
The French see the same problem and are building an unneeded (by France) 1.6 GW nuke 50 km from England.
3. Possibly matched a surplus high head powerplant equipment with a plant in Zambia that wants to expand. Also, suggested privatizing RR from Zambia to Tanzania with the condition that it be electrified. Transfer large truck movements to rail. RR ends at large copper mines. The Zambian claimed to have ear of the President (democratically elected) and thought it was a GREAT idea. 20% of Zambia has electricity.
4. Several leads for Chile, which is in a MAD rush for renewables. They are burning oil today for electricity due to shortfalls in Argentine NG deliveries and are planning for zero NG deliveries in 2 or 3 years. 30% to 40% of their electricity (depends on how wet a year) comes from NG.
Landsvirkjun plans to send a team to look at 60 prospects already defind by gov't. I told Chile that some wind turbines might be available from India (they are having trouble finding any for delivery before late 2008).
5) I meet with local Streetcar President in Portland and was invited to join a new national group he was forming. Portland is planning for major streetcar expansion on both sides of the river as well as a new Green Line Light Rail opening in late 2009 and a commuter rail line.
Also meet with Portland TODer and a local consultant.
All in all, an extraordinary 11 days !
France has about the lowest per-capita CO2 emissions per capita in the developed world... nuclear is why (good trains is another contributing factor) Air is way cleaner around here than 20 years ago, no more coal...
On the other hand, presumably a few new nukes will be handy if, say, 50% of cars are to be electric or plug-in hybrids in 10 years.
He also noted that Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands were not far away either from this site. So it is (IMO) an export power reactor, with potential customers other than the UK.
http://www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/france.html
Per news reports, EDF wanted it built at Penly, but local opposition resulted in it being sited at Flamanville.
It is a near twin of the new Finnish nuclear reactor.
Well, you stole my thunder. I read that same paragraph and then stopped reading. I hate these artificial limits on such discussions.
Even if the peak oil problem can be solved, there are plenty of other serious problems confronting our species, and most if not all of them can be tied to capitalism and its constant need for growth. Climate change, desertification, declining water tables, soil erosion, etc. The list goes on. We do not have a sustainable system.
Any chance soil erosion may have a future impact on our ability to produce ethanol? Any chance climate change may affect our ability to produce ethanol? Any chance a lack of water might affect our ability to produce ethanol?
And of course we don't have limitless energy resources, which merely adds one more item to our list of looming challenges.
Society is an integrated whole, and it can always be helpful to look at the big picture. I find it very hard to deal respectfully with anyone who tries to artificially limit the terms of the debate.
Ethanol is not better than nothing. Cutting our car use by 70% is way better than nothing and may be sufficient as far as the private vehicle sector goes. Ethanol is worse than nothing because it is used by people like Prez Bush to say we need to nothing other than alternatives -- that the only real problem is our addiction to oil. No, our real problem is that we are addicted to autos and pushing ethanol won't change that nor will it do much of anything to cut greenhouse gases.
Here is the basic problem. To do that which is politically feasible doesn't solve the problem. To do that which will solve the problem is not politically feasible.
Yes, the above is true. But we still need to push real solutions, not just approaches that get us past the next election. A dead world will still be dead, whether that world is run by democrats or republicans.
We have no goals, just "solutions" like ethanol which don't solve any problems.
Ethanol is being used by GM and Ford to avoid solving the reqal problem,their monster vehicles. Their problem is sales of the vehicles; therefore, flexible fuel vehicles are part of their solution to the problem of selling more vehicles. Once again, ethanol is creating more problems than it is solving. If I can argue that ethanol is marginally more efficient than gasoline, I accomplish nothing if I am using it to perpetuate Suburbans.
First focus on more efficient vehicles needing to be driven much fewer miles. Then focus on the best fuel to do that. It may turn out that the best fuel is not a fuel at all -- but electricity.
Ultimately it will have to boil down to decentralized energy production / consumption. It worked for generations upon generations before oil.
I feel that the big picture is not being addressed.
Sure the topic of agriculture is a local issue but, when all else is global (mexican and Canadian ties i.e) trade dependant . What the hex... Americans solve the problem , Americans caused !!! But MSM points the finger and average voter thinks .... it's those industrious Chinese and Indians and ??? South Americans and ???
So really its a global crisis. Energy - food - water ...
If America is leading the way for the world...
Then you fellas with pie in the sky had better except some cold reality.
THINGS CHANGE.... The real problem is The American ...be it Early American or latter day solution is to remove ...that which causes friction... aka ... might makes right. And I doubt to few understand that U.S citizens are no better off than the Native American Indian. AND history clearly proves my statement as to their removal.
The Oil Drum community is transparent... ideas are surfaced and concepts formed...exchanged ...a discussion entails...the emotions of the contributors.
I am not so certain that what goes on here is not so different as to the discussions held behind closed doors by the present movers and shakers.
The exception is this transparency... honesty?
When one removes the moral and ethical transparency of the masses and sucumbs to the alternative of a minority it would seem logical that... as history has shown a removal of the friction would be an exceptable answer.
Huuuummn .... Bird flu removees how many ... a draft and expansion of a miltary venture.... an economic collapse that contributes to many lives lost> And by my definition a conspiracy is not transparent.
Why couldn't for the people by the people be done
via internet ?
Duh... national security...
screw it... in the box, stay in the box ...
loving nation under god has more enemies and more reasons to be nervous about than !!! Cole Sweat
but, thats just the way i see it.
My hillbilly nose smells a fox in the hen house...
The political arena is not .. will not ... can not solve the problem of economic dependancy. The problem of what if no one went to work tomorrow what would happen? How many lives would be lost if everybody stayed home and spent time with their families??? Why don't people get it?
Greed and stupidity .... Greed = Demand and stupidity = supply...
WIGZ SIT DOWN. AND SHUT UP !!!
I just flamed myself ... feels good.
That is because that is the view of the governenment. (Carter Doctrine) The government has that position because that is the view of the largest consitutants - businesses.
While the personal automobile may be here to stay, I believe that it is important -- vital -- to realise that we cannot sustain the size of the fleet of personal automobiles that we have, used as intensively as we use them. Other considerations than fuel -- or energy -- to move the automobiles enter into this. The use of land and resources to create and operate these vehicles and the road system is itself unsustainable.
It is better to see the personal automobile as a technology which we must use less and less while creating healthier, more efficient ways of organising human settlement and transportation within the context of today's understanding of our relationship to the planet as our habitat. Resource depletion and the effects of pollution on human health and planetary health will demand visionary thinking and action which goes beyond the paradigm of "the personal automobile" as the central motif in organising human settelement and transportation.
Please consider funding efforts to develop rail and also walk-able, bike-able living patterns and the use of HPVs (Human Powered Vehicles) within this context.
Attention to diversification of the transportaion paradigm wil actually strengthen the efforts to use liquid fuels in an economically sustainable fashion.
The most sustainable technologies we currently have fully available need far more investment and support than does the "personal automobile" which has already devoured so much of our time, energy, and attention.
Mr Khosla, please spend some partof your time, energy, and/or wealth encouraging the development of rail and HPVs along the way.
-- regards -- Gary Hoover ("Beggar" on TOD)
The thing about ethanol (and Khosla's argument for it) is that the only way the argument is viable is if you make all sorts of assumptions, like the assumption that we'll have fossil fuel inputs to grow crops, that we'll have water to irrigate the crops, that we'll have topsoil on which to grow the crops, and that there will be enough people left to buy personal vehicles that run on ethanol after mass starvation ensues due to the lack of cropland dedicated to growing crops for people to eat!
Let's spend our collective energy on palatable solutions that use less energy.
Perhaps only for the very wealth, if they are lucky. It would take every available acre of farmland in the US just to produce 7% of the US domestic transportation fuels. Approximately 18% of all consumed fuel is used to transport goods using rail and trucks. Where does personal transportation fit in? Answer: it doesn't. In addition, I haven't even accounted for food production and fertializer inputs required to keep the fields fertial.
The reason why so many people believe that personal transportation vehicles will remain is because they wish it to. They have blinded themselves into believing there is a a technical solution just like thirsty refuge sees a mirage just a bit further into the desert. Like the refuge they continue to follow a path that leads them deeper into the desert to the point that death in inevetiable.
I think the only incentive that will get us to really restructure the amount of redundant movement, overshipping, overcommuting, overshopping etc, will be cost of fuel and subsequent inconveniences. I know we've seen reports all summer that seem to conclude that the $3 gas hasn't changed anyone's habits, but we're talking about a small rudder on a big ship at full speed. Debt is up, Credit is maxed.. it's just that the last thing people can afford to do is to stop moving around. People will buy cheaper foods, not take essential medicines.. at some point will cut back to basic Cable or slower Internet, babysitting.. but it's really hard for people to admit that they can't afford to 'show up' this time..
This Crazy Redundancy reminds me of the scene in Terry Gilliam's -at the Armory, where a worker walks across the room every time he needs another rivet. So our visiting guy tries to help by bringing the rivet box closer, and within moments, the whole room has crumbled into chaos. This question of a non-negotiable lifestyle is not just a flippant objection by us 'spoiled, addicted babies'. These habits and assumptions are fully entwined in how we get through life right now, and the transition(s) must be handled right, if we are to avoid tripping up badly.
Unfortunately, I'm unconvinced about Ethanol's role at this point. I'm glad VK states that it won't be more than a small fraction, but his assurances about 'Excess Production' and the Energy Balances must bear some heavy scrutiny. How do he and RR come out with such different returns?
The other Pitfalls not really addressed above that I think will be the dealbreakers ultimately, are the massive, but out-of-sight issues of Water and Topsoil, and of course Climate. At least the Corn crop can serve a double-duty of being consumable by people as well as cars, but the imbalanced emphasis on corn in our croplands is already an achille's heel, for dietary and soil quality concerns. He does point out how much of that Corn Crop is dedicated to feeding the Meat Crop, another cultural habit that won't break apart on it's own accord, unless the price just gets completely too high.
I don't doubt that Khosla is aware that the 'Car Culture' is less than healthy, and even generally unsustainable. He just seems to be taking the tack that we have to make changes 'within the model' and not 'with the model'. That is politically and financially pragmatic, whether or not Ethanol turns out to also be as economically feasible as he is betting that it will be. This approach also depends on a number of systems/infrastructures that we generally take for granted not falling apart as the oil supply plateaus or dips, systems which are required to allow his numbers to come out as well as they seem to do.
Bob Fiske
It was Terry Gilliam's movie, JABBERWOCKY.
Bob
Then China starts to buy our grains and it becomes Americans who starve because there is "a scarcity of income" for them to buy it, but of course they'll take great comfort that there's "no scarcity of food."
"There is no scarcity of food but rather a scarcity of income to buy it for the poorest of the poor"
-Vinod Khosla
I urge you to spread you bets. Invest in a wide range of energy technology ideas. I admire your efforts and your intent to be pragmatic, but the number of assumptions for ethanol to work out just seem a bit disconnected with that pragmatism.
Trajectory means nothing if it falls off a cliff. What was the growth trajectory of every fad before the fad ended? The tragectory must be sustainable over the long run. There are physicial limits to our world and it's resources. People who ignore them do so at their own peril.
How many did you count?
The strategy here is different:
http://www.fas.usda.gov/pecad/imagery_archive/highlights/2005/01/btl0104/syntheticdiesel.htm
When the article was published, biodiesel was still tax free as well, but this has changed by now.
I guess our bet is BTL-fuel.
In North America the focus rests on ethanol for gasoline powered vehicles.
European and Japanese car makers have been focussing on diesel for many years now. One must also note that taxes on diesel are much lower than taxes on gasoline in Europe. As a result, gasoline is 0,2€/l more expensive than diesel.
The mileage of diesel cars is higher than that of gasoline cars. Extra-fine particle filters have been introduced recently, so that now, emissions from diesel cars are lower than those from gasoline cars as well, except for NOx.
Do you know any EROEI figures for these things? Or someplace were I can find it?
His is the "status quo" world. Oil, ethanol, whatever - to him there is no principal difference, only an opportunity to be in on the ground floor of some next big thing. And, he may be right.
By arrogantly warning off those who, quite reasonably and legitimately, would question why 4% of the worlds population are swallowing 25% of the planet's available energy, Khosla demonstrates that he's firmly in the camp of other followers of 'realism', that same branch of philosophical thinking that believes its ok to export our domestic policy around the world using a gun as the principal tool of foreign policy implementation.
His realism-inspired world view casually dismisses the fundamental problems that energy-intensive so-called advanced societies have. Change? Not important to a venture capitalist.
Realism-inspired politicians are the same ones that have continued to deny global warming as a threat for many years. They are the ones that use words like "strategic need" in conjunction with military efforts in the middle east. Preserve the "status quo" is the political mantra. Close to full employment, low inflation = electoral success. Weapons manufacture is good for the economy; using weapons, on far off shores, is good for our energy supply. That's 'realism' in action. Change? No ambitious domestic politician will ever tread that path.
The 'status quo' view in itself wouldn't be a problem, if energy can be forecast as always available by contract or force, always plentiful, always cheap, and always benign to our local and global environment and climate.
Yet there are compelling reasons to believe that energy will fall into the "none of the above" category, particularly if peak oil is a) real and b) near.
In such a case its easy to envision a future where business, science, technology and warfare will be unable to deliver the necessary goods to fuel the 'status quo'.
Personally, I believe Khosla's brand of 'realism' and future-gazing is dangerous, but its all too common for its the status quo that most of us live by and accept, whether we concern ourselves with it or not. Its a form of myopia based on the premise that growth is a god to be worshipped above all else.
http://plan99.net/~mike/blog/
"Modest changes?" You gotta be kidding. Here's exactly what the report assumes to get 1.3 billion tons of biomass:
- 55 million acres additional cultivation
- 50% increase in yields of corn, soy, wheat and other grains
- 75% removal of crop residues
- Use of all animal manures except those allowed for field use
- Removal of all other residues
This is not modest. Especially not increasing yields by another 50% and putting another 55 million acres into cultivation.The document was appallingly one-sided. It had exactly ONE reference to the nutrient/fertility issue of removing so much biomass from nature, and it was buried in a bullet on p. 54:
"A particular concern has been raised regarding the effect of removing the nutrients embodied in residues. At a minimum, there is a cost associated with supplying the lost nutrients through fertilizer applications. If residue removal results in larger fertilizer applications, then the environmental and economic costs associated with producing and acquiring those fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium as well as micro-nutrients) must be considered. Production of nitrogen from natural gas is becoming more expensive..."
I would strongly suspect that Mr. Khosla does not have a garden for him to be such a proponent of mining our soils like this. Again, we will just be replacing Middle East oil imports with Middle East fertilizer imports.
I always like your comments
"55 million acres additional cultivation"
consider the water requirements. If you are looking for a 50% increase in yield these will not be dry-land crops. one acre of land requires 27,000 gallons of water per week. assume a six month growing season.702,000 gallons per acre. 55,000,000 x 702,000=38,610,000,000,000
I'm not great with math but I think this is right.
In a literal sense that's a contradiction, because free markets do not include CAFÉ, playing field assurances, or the environmental and safety standards we all take for granted.
What's really interesting to me though is the way the mental image of a "free market" is projected in American politics. It's some sort of line in the sand, but I'm not sure if it means "market interventions we all like" or if it is just a name slapped on the status quo?
... that's what I see on conservative sites anyway, that we can't change the way things are, because we like "free markets."
I recognize that there are corporations and investors who are not intent on maximizing profit and externalizing costs. IMO, until such time as the underlying "free market" system changes dramatically, or collapses, they are swimming against the tide.
At 10 tons per acre of biomass (modest) that's 1000 gallons per.
Using these parameters, please calculate how many acres are needed to produce 140 million gallons.
Please understand, I'd love to see it happen, but right now you are making me a promise. You are telling me the cellulosic ethanol is in the mail.
California is facing a "Peak Landfill" problem simultaneously with Peak Oil. My BioConversion Blog is about efforts to solve both with conversion technologies.
He is welcome to help fight for new waste related legislation that would permit the rapid deployment of waste-to-ethanol solutions - like the already passed RENEW L.A. plan for Los Angeles. He should contact Sen. David Roberti (ret.) of the BioEnergy Producers Assn. for how he can help.
They could also talk about the efficacy of Prop. 87.
There are many nits to pick but the basic premise of this article is that we need to find a transition path that creates enough profit incentive to make Wall Street jump on board.
I was pleased to note that he does not consider ethanol and endall beall but rather a transitional phase to other biohols such as butanol. Mr. Rapier has made favorable comments about butanol as an oil substitute.
Overall I think this article is on a par with the best and raises the general level of discourse on TOD.
FWIW, I think Wall Street is used to competing plans and ideas, and betting across the board. It strikes me as a contradiction actually, to suggest that the market needs to be told a specific trajectory.
The market is blind as a bat too sometimes. That's why we get those big cliffs and other neat stuff on those graphs. Godz I love those graphs... the Longer Term the Better.
Alas, it won't be. Because I'd be asking "What about them useless eaters on the dole just up the street." And I'm talking about the brother-in-law's wife.
Does anyone think the poor on assistance will go quietly into the good night?
The poor WILL be effected. The question becomes "What will be their reaction" It doesn't HAVE to be ALL the poor who have a 'bad' reaction. Just a few is all that's needed to have a nice clap-down.
In powering down, shouldn't we look at the big energy users first? They are the ones that drag the per-capita averages higher, not the poor.
I think you are talking about a power down "clap-down" that would affect the poor ... maybe I'm thinking that the most effective power down strategies would protect them?
This only makes sense if you are using electricity to generate heat and are comparing it with a 100% percent efficient burner of the ethanol. If you are using it for mechanical power you need to factor in the conversion efficiency of the ethanol to mechanical energy compared with the efficiency of conversion of electricity to mechanical power.
According to Wiki a battery electric vehicle uses 0.3-0.5 kWhr per mile against the US fleet average gasoline vehicle of 1.58 kWhr per mile. This claims back the 4:1 advantage. Half of the energy consumption of the electric vehicle is accounted for by the losses in charging and discharging the battery. If you were to compare grid powered vehicles (trains, trams, trolley buses) most of that loss will disappear and you would be well ahead. Furthermore a large part of the fossil fuel input to present corn ethanol is natural gas whereas a large part of the fossil fuel input for electricity generation is coal. The thermal efficiency of coal plants is 35% to 40% but the thermal efficiency of combined cycle natural gas plants is 60% to 65%.
Compare the number of miles you can get out of a vehicle from a quantity of the typical fossil fuel mix that goes into corn ethanol on the two routes fossil fuel - ethanol - internal combustion engine and fossil fuel - electricity - battery vehicle and you will be comparing like with like and I expect the electrical route with come out top.
Broadly, Solar Panels will produce enough power in 2-6 years to 'replace' their materials (embodied energy) and direct energy inputs, yet they will still produce at healthy levels for around 20-30 years, before they start really falling off. That offers an EROEI of over 3:1, before you count the panel's 'Senior Years', which still produce, if only 1/3-2/3 of it's rated power. After that, the components are available to be reprocessed, making the energy profile of it's 'children' that much more attractive.
http://www.homepower.com/files/pvpayback.pdf
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
http://www.energybulletin.net/14745.html
EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) for Various Fuels
Biodiesel- 3:1
Coal- 1:1 to 10:1
Ethanol- 1.2:1
Natural Gas- 1:1 to 10:1
Hydropower- 10:1
Hydrogen- 0.5:1
Nuclear- 4:1
Oil- 1:1 to 100:1
Oil Sands- 2:1
Solar PV (2) - 1:1 to 10:1
Wind (2) - 3:1 to 20:1
(Financial Payback for a PV consumer is still considered to be 12+ years. That will change as it is a comparison against your local Electricity rates, however, which are clearly not set in stone.)
Bob Fiske
Free piston stirling engines are simple linear oscillators and have no crank, or any lubrication other than their working gas. They have been developed by NASA for space isotope power in applications requiring long life and high efficiency- making them quite promising for solar use. The space power requirement per unit is small- on the order of hundreds of watts to a few kilowatts, but there is no intrinsic barrier to much higher power.
However, as far as I know, there is no work being done on solar free piston engines, for reasons I have not found. They seem ideally suited for this purpose, as well as for cogeneration, biomass and many similar applications.
BTW- Stirlings do not require any exotic metals or processes, and should not be any more expensive than other heat engines requiring a hot heat exchanger.
I think your premise is given enough money and people working on a problem all things can be solved, I counter not all things can be solved, we can not cheat the underlying laws of the universe, we can not go faster than light, we might be able to get where we want using something like wormholes to warp space but we can not cheat laws of physics and go faster than light.
So the questions are:
Can we get a net energy from ethanol without any hydrocarbon additions without cheating the laws of physics?
Can the land actually sustain such a use, is there that much renewable energy in the land, or will we have peak soil?
On both of these I find it highly questionable that they are true, and if they are it's cutting it very fine. Because all the math done by everybody else says it's a looser or not a very good net energy producer, the way you increase net energy is to increase the yield at what point in time does that not become feasible?
Basically you're advocating using vast amounts of land/food to keep us driving.
Plus with the ever increasing population we either have to increase energy production or efficiency so that energy demands of the population is meant, either that or the life style of the world is going to change.
Oh and I don't believe for a moment any serious energy investor doesn't know about peak oil, or about the energy crunch coming. So to say "We have a number of different ways to do it except that no investor is willing to bet on these price points being viable. " must tell us that the bet is that we can't change things to make it happen.
Personally I like the nanotubes that use sunlight that produces hydrogen and of course getting of planet earth as are best pipe dreams.
As for the rest, I'm interested in what we CAN do, but I'm more interested in what we WILL do. Or really what we ARE doing. Which includes wars and droughts and tuna and manatees. And collapses and extinctions and "conspiracies".
So, Vinod, enjoy making your money. I'll bet ya some morning you'll wake up and say "uh oh"...
He has found a junkie that is desperate for a fix and while he doesn't have the preferred juice, he is pushing something that will make him money.
If Mr Khosla is an indicator of the direction our leadership is taking our country, we are as a society , screwed.
Dismissive of EROEI, dismissive of the potential negative impacts of harvesting fuel from our topsoil, unwilling to negotiate our currently obscene obsession with the automobile.
Before I read his letter, I honestly hoped, he would present a view that would give me reason for optimism.
Instead , he reinforced my opinion that there will be no solution that originates from the top of the mountain.
<><><>
"When the American people, through their Congress, voted a little while ago for a $26 billion highway program, the most charitable thing to assume about this action is that they hadn't the faintest notion of what they were doing."
He (Mumford) was concerned that soon it would be "too late to correct the damage to our cities and our countryside, not least to the efficient organization of industry and transportation, that this ill-conceived and preposterously unbalanced program will have wrought."
<><><>
I just really hope that none of my tax dollars go to this destructive endeavor. Although it probably will.
http://www.governing.com/articles/8trans.htm
"Mumford goes on to detail all the ways that traditional urban planners and engineers had mistaken the simple application of more concrete for a well-balanced transportation program. At one point, he calls it a "fatal mistake" to sacrifice all other forms of transportation to the automobile -- the only exception being the airplane. "There is no one ideal mode or speed," he wrote. "Human purpose should govern the choice of the means of transportation. That is why we need a better transportation system, not just more highways."
src: sourceShould we be worried about the following charts:
src: Ethanol Reshapes the Corn Market
I am sure corn is used in all of these processes, but part of the reason for that is its subsidized low cost. Big Corporate corn has lobbys and pays big research grants to those that find new uses for it (like ethanol). My organic chem teacher told me you can make anything out of any carbohydrate, save straw to gold.
I think the key is to get lean. More insulation less AC smaller cars and not a bit of chemical potential wasted. Yard debris industrial waste whatever all utilized, and simultaneously put solar panels on every roof and windmills on every ridge. We have the tech NOW, we just need to commit.
matt
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9065-2302045,00.html
It talks about some issues in the UK with the competition between food and fuel.
I recently read that if every ethanol plant now being proposed for Iowa is actually built, that they will use more than 100% of the corn in Iowa. (Sorry, I can't find that reference right now.)
Also, the price of corn has gone up enough that it is cutting into the profits of hog producers. (Des Moines Register, June 10, 2006)
If population growth continues unabated in the USA and the world then you are shooting at a moving target as to how much liquid energy and total energy we will need to produce.
I would encourage you to add population growth projections and their effect upon the required needs for both food, fuel and total energy.
I suspect those population stats might change some of your projections significantly.
Thanks
Yes, that's right. When gasoline is $6 or more, the question becomes
My sense is that neither Ford nor GM will make it. Those companies are an integral part of the trajectory proposed.
In fact... they are the foundation of that trajectory , are they not?
I wouldn't lay my chips on the domestic auto industry. Think hard TOD'ers... Are any of you visiting GM/Ford dealers? Are they part of your transportation thoughts?
- If you are one of the people who think modern civilization is on the verge of collapse, stop reading.
- If you think all rich people are bad or everyone has evil or self-interest as their only goal, stop reading.
- People do care and while there are many people, and especially large corporations, who only care about their self-interest, there are people and corporations (large and small) who care about what happens on this planet.
- Also stop reading if you believe in massive conspiracies,
- [Stop reading if you] want to revolutionize the world with rebellion,
- [Stop reading if you want to] change the consumption pattern (4% of world population consuming 25% of its resources- I hate it too but don't count on it changing) overnight,
- [Stop reading if you want to] dramatically change behavior like getting Americans to drive less(lots of idealized solutions I can think of but it won't happen except through legislation like higher CAFÉ or higher gasoline prices, and most such legislation is politically infeasible).
O.K. Well, if this list was a test then I would certainly get at least a passing grade, so I guess I should stop reading. Causes me to ask though why Khosla is directing folks who agree with some of these points not to read his post, or maybe he just dosen't want them to read and then comment on it.We do generally agree that this is a "pitch" from a VC right? i.e. a selective presetation of "information" by, and in support of, declared financial interests. But we are being encouraged by RR to treat it with more "respect" than the ones that my email client helpfully sweeps into my junk mail folder every day touting the latest "stock not to miss".
Well then as a courtesy to Robert lets select a point for examination:
"Cellulosic will make all these issues much less critical - Miscanthus will use a lot less water and almost no fertilizer...
At the best of three sites in the best of two years, a yield of 25 dry tons per acre per year was realized. We assume this best yield will become the average yield after twenty five years, across 40-60 million acres of good cropland that is currently used for export oriented crops
...We personally believe that it is likely we will use dedicated energy crops (cocktails of C4 photosynthetic grasses like Miscanthus) on lands that are currently used to produce export crops and 40-60 million acres of this land will be sufficient to meet most of our gasoline needs."
That works out to a range of between 1 and 1.5 billion tons dry weight of biomass per year. If we allow for the invested energy in the production cycle, as surly we must and it seems that the eere paper does not, and we were to pull a wild ass guess of 3:1 out of the air as a ratio (which I suspect is high but I'm trying to be kind) then we wind up with more like 5 billion tons required.
Would someone who is not financially invested in the matter care to opine in an informed way about what the gross and trace nutirnt amounts contained in that 5 billion tons might be, and how it could be "sustainably" extracted from the soil?
That's when I stopped reading.
I was curious as to how an optimist would promote revolution with peace.
I was let down... The topic of this essay could have easily been the stop reading points alone.
think small,think fast ...peace
"If you are one of the people who think modern civilization is on the verge of collapse, stop reading."
Now, civilization is always evolving and changing. I think that in the next 100 or so years the change will be at least as rapid as in the last 100 years, just in a very different direction. Whether you consider it a collapse will depend on your perspective I think.
The other two are very similar:
"[Stop reading if you want to] change the consumption pattern (4% of world population consuming 25% of its resources"
and
"[Stop reading if you want to] dramatically change behavior like getting Americans to drive less"
I simply think these things will happen, we don't need to make them happen or help them happen. We should be preparing for when they do happen.
So, I think with these clarifications I passed his gates and therefore was (according to him) legitimately able to continue reading.
Well said. Now, regarding "If you are one of the people who think modern civilization is on the verge of collapse, stop reading".
Many of us are accused of being doomers. If one stops to think about it, why would any of us be writing about peak oil and related subjects if we didn't think modern civilization was in serious trouble? Why would we bother?
... it would be sad to miss the turn-off to a happy, sustainable, powered down, tech'd up, future.
http://www.energybulletin.net/news.php
Most TOD readers do.
He also seems to rely quite a bit on the false analogy of improvements in electronics. Moving electrons around doesn't take the amount of energy it takes to move cars around. There may continue to be ways to make a faster processor, but the minimum amount of energy required to accelerate a car is set by "non-negotiable" physical laws.
While there are technical solutions that still need to be found, such as improved electricity storage, by far the greatest gains will be cultural - by simply adjusting to using less energy. I suggest reading Energy and Equity by Ivan Illich (there are free copies on the internet that are easy to find using Google). He proposed that we are at a point where all of the available energy we have actually diminishes contentment. I think a lower energy lifestyle could be a good thing if its done right.
In practice, the laws of physics regarding processor speed were "bent" through the use of clever tricks like speculative execution, branch prediction, transparent caches ....
How many roads must a man drive down
Before he admits he is lost
Why when a man becomes married is he
unable to find his own socks.
How many times will it take 'til he knows
he has seen the three stooges enough
The answer my friend, I cannot comprehend
The answer, I cannot comprehend
How many shows can a man surf through
before the remote burns out
Why does he think that an intimate gift
is a Dustbuster Plus for the house
How many sounds can a man's body make
before he sleeps on the couch
The answer my friend, is take two aspirin
The answer is take two aspirin
Why when we go for a romantic drive
do we wind up at Builder's Square again
How many nights will he leave the seat up
so I land on cold porcelain
How men really feel is mystery to me
and probably a mystery to them
The answer girlfriend is driving me to gin
The answer is driving me to gin.
On the electronics revolution and laws of physics:
I think it's plainly obvious to say that the macroscopic trajectory in electronics from, e.g. 1960 to now has been of tremendous improvements.
That's because in 1960 we weren't at all hitting immutable, fundamental, limits of physics. The size of the devices were much larger than the sizes of atoms so there was room for many orders of magnitude improvement.
Feynman understood this back then: "There's a lot of room down there"
That's the underlying physics behind Vinod Kholsa's life.
Things are profoundly different, and more pessimistic, with energy engineering. We already know where the fundamental limits are (thermodynamics) and present processes do not have orders of magnitude spare headroom in them.
The Ford model-T got about 25 miles per gallon fuel efficiency. Cars now are about the same, and probably 2x the mass. So in 80 years and titanic investment, a factor of two. That's thermodynamics.
No, that's the Carnot cycle. And friction brakes. Batteries and regenerative braking do have the potential to double or triple fuel economy, and its not practical to have one without the other, so internal combustion engines have to go.
I happen to think ethanol is a good stop-gap. It uses existing fuel distribution infrastructure, and much of the technology developed for "biohols" will also be useful for feedstocks and polymers long after the market for ICE ethanol fuel collapses (it will, when a practical fuel cell comes along).
I think Feynman's essay was titled "There's lots of room at the bottom". A look at a thermodynamics text would convince you there's lots of delta-G too.
Thank you for sharing your thought process and where you are headed in this vital field. I think that you are doing an awful lot of things very well (the diversified investments, building outwards from corn, working within the existing ICE infrastructure, the e3 integrated system approach, land "spent" on meat production, etc.).
I have a question and a comment. Water availability and consumption is a problem for ethanol plants already here in Minnesota. Won't this be an issue for most any plant west of the Mississippi?
And the comment. You make a very compelling case that we will be able to transition away from fossil fuel for mobile energy usage. Electricity is similarly resolvable. The energy constraint that worries me the most is for home heating. If reliance on LNG from the Middle East/Africa isn't wise for many of the same reasons that relaince on petroleum from the Middle East/Africa isn't wise, how will we heat our homes and buildings? Besides passive and active solar energy, biomass is our best bet. This may result in a competition for the fuel supply.
Thanks again.
The most efficient white light LED I could find with sufficient output to be considered for lighting is the LUMILEDS LXK2 PW14-V00 which gives 113.6 lumens for 3.72W electrical input. That's 30.5 lumens/watt. It has a life of 50,000 hrs down to 70% of output provided you heatsink it enough to keep the junction temperature down to 120°C
An Osram 4ft T5 fluorescent tube type FH28850 gives 2600 lumens for 28W electrical input. That's 92.8 lumens/watt, over three times the efficiency of the LED. It has a lifetime of 20,000 hours down to 90% of output. It is also 30 times cheaper per lumen.
Looking at it from the farm level for biomass production to be feasable it will have to attract a better price than alternative crops. If you could show a farmer that he will net more money per acre growing hay for biofuel than he will growing cotton, corn or soybeans then I have no doubt the land will become available.
I would be interested in the author's estimate for the farm gate price of the biomass that is to be supplied to the cellulose ethanol plants. What fraction of the final price of the ethanol will the farmer receive?
Mr K got a pantry full of food and a back up generator to his back up generator... good and hired hands to carry him down the street. what ever floats yur log.
Now with all due respect... stop tryin!
you got a family? Are they all alone and on there own?
Funny how anyone thinks they are going to figure it out.
because I'm tellin you its just the way it is.
Don't need the verb or and adjective... get over it. How old are you anyway? Got your health? STOP the humanitarian crap. Take care of yourself in a humble sorta quiet way, and remember "You can't change the world because you can't change yourself."
Not Doom or Gloom ... just another day in the life!!!
Boo !!!
Oh after preview how about going back in time ? say 150 years or so an sluggin it out on a homestead ... anywhere.
No thanks , but mankind will do what it has to do.
Kind of sad that something always ends up dead. Maybe if you could convince the world not to be so mean (evil) things would improve? Oh no... not another religous zealot...
sheeesh.... fanatics can't live with them, Can't get away from them. And don't it just get your goat when somebody chews your ass and then calmly tells you to "Have a nice Day!"
"Teacher, you saved its life, but it stung you." Remarked a student.
"Yes, that is what they do."
Later on, the Scorpion managed to fall in once again, and again, the Enlightened one reached in and rescued it.. and got another sting.
"Master, you saved the Scorpion again, knowing it would try to sting you. Why?"
"Because that is what I do."
------
Sure it's survival, but one of the things we do to survive is to help others survive, too. I think it not only puts people onto our team, but it also has to do with the encouragement of knowing that there are people out there who help each other, sometimes at great peril to themselves.
"Boddhisattva, won't you take me by the hand?"
(Another religious fanatic..)
Bob Fiske
My momma bought em.
He then goes on to state that the 1.3 to 1.8 ratio for ethanol is far better than the 0.8 ratio for gasoline and cites a study done by Argonne National Laboratories.
I have seen this sort of sleight-of-hand before. It rests on an innocent or (more likely) intentional confusion of the EROEI of primary energy production with the energy conversion efficiency of downstream energy uses.
As best I can tell, the 0.8 number for gasoline comes from the refinery's conversion efficiency in making gasoline from crude oil. This is downstream production efficiency, not EROEI. The fallacy lies in the fact that the oil company did NOT have to expend 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to get 0.8 units of gasoline.
For example, if in today's oil industry it takes roughly (give or take) 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to extract and deliver 7 units of fossil fuel energy to the front end of the refinery, the EROEI of 'producing' crude oil is 7. Then if we apply 0.8 conversion efficiency to the refinery's gasoline production process, the overall EROEI from drilling the well to the gasoline leaving the refinery is 7 x 0.8 or 5.6.
That is quite a bit different than Mr. Khosla's 0.8. As I said early, this sort of sleight-of-hand seems to have a way of popping up in a variety of stuff being written by ethanol proponents.
As The last Sasquatch so elegantly and entertainingly demonstrated in his recent little parable, EROEI DOES matter, and it matters immensely. Any energy strategy that is based on a marginal EROEI is eventually headed for death spiral.
For all the hype, ethanol is just another means of using a variety of fossil fuels to make liquid fuel usable in an IC engine and can in no way be portrayed as a primary energy source. Arguably, there are other more effective ways of turning natural gas and coal into liquid fuels.
Though I don't claim to be an agricultural expert, I also think that Mr. Khosla is just a bit too cavalier in his presumption that crop yields are going to continue to increase, that there will be no serious competition between food and fuel, and that massive biofuel production will be sustainable.
If you use straight dino fuels, that means for volume of fuel burned, you needed to extract 1.25 times that volume from the earth. The extra .25 (1/.8) goes into extraction and refining.
On the other hand, if you use ethanol, even if you assume ethanol has an EROEI of only 1:1, and even if you further neglect his argument that most of that comes from less desireable natural gas instead of more desireable petroleum, you still only use 1 volume of fuel for that same distance. This is because when calculating EROEI you don't discount for refining losses of turning the oil into useable diesel fuel, you only consider the energy value of the oil itself.
Thus, ethanol with an EROEI of 1 is already somewhat better than using straight fossil fuels. Even a slight negative balance is in theory OK, as long as it doesn't go too far negative. Clearly at .8 you're better off burning the oil directly.
If your energy inputs for ethanol comes from the sun, or from biomass, or from human or animal labor, then in every real sense those inputs are "free" and don't really matter in the peak oil picture. What does matter is what volume of rock oil was extracted to produce an energetically equivalent amount of ethanol.
EROEI is a red herring, and an extremely complicated one at that.
In the case of gasoline, 0.8 is the efficiency of turning 1 BTU of oil into gasoline. In this case, you burned 0.2 BTUs to produce 0.8 BTUs.
Which is better: Burning 1 BTU to make 0.2, or burning 0.2 to make 0.8? That is why EROEI is relevant. The people who don't seem to think it is seem to be the people who don't understand it very well.
EROEI is energy returned over energy invested. The EROEI of "doing nothing" should be 1.0 - that is, if you start with a barrel of oil and do nothing to it, you get one barrel out for one barrel in.
A 1.2 EROEI means that you get 1.2 barrels out with 1.0 barrels in. I don't think this is well expressed by saying that "you had to consume 1 BTU to produce 0.2 BTUs". This makes it sound like you start with 1 BTU and end with 0.2 BTU. Actually you end with 1.2 BTU.
So what happens with gasoline? You start with 1 BTU of oil and end up with 0.8 BTUs of gas, right? The EROEI is 0.8, which makes sense because no one thinks that turning oil into gasoline is an energy producing process. Whereas turning oil+natural gas into ethanol is (supposedly, slightly) energy producing.
Is this really correct? With ethanol you walk in with 1 BTU of oil and natural gas, and walk out with only 0.2 BTUs of ethanol? While with gasoline you walk in with 0.2 BTUs of oil and walk out with 0.8 BTUs of gasoline? Surely both of these are completely wrong!
I recognized that as soon as I posted it, but hoped it wouldn't be too confusing. What I meant to write was "you had to consume 1 BTU to NET 0.2 BTUs." For gasoline, you consume 0.2 BTUs to net 0.8 BTUs.
The EROEI is 0.8...
No, that is the efficiency. You didn't "invest" 1 BTU of oil. What is invested is what was consumed in the process. The investment is only the 0.2 that was consumed. In the case of ethanol, you actually consumed 1.0 to earn 1.2.
That's not the full story.
When you finally burn your 1.2 BTU's of ethanol you will have polluted the atmosphere with "roughly" 2.2 BTU's of fossil fuel burn and you will have depleted the soil of some finite amount of minerals and you will have depleted the aquifer of some finite amount of water.
(Understood that CO2 output rate for ethanol is less than for crude. That's why I said "roughly".)
No, the C in the ethanol started as CO2 in the atmosphere. The plants converted it to starch then the yeast converted into ethanol.
What does it mean to say you "consume" only 0.2 BTUs of oil in making gasoline? That almost seems to say that you start with 1.0 BTUs of oil, and end up with 0.8 BTUs of oil (because you only "consumed" 0.2 BTUs), plus also the 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. This would mean you get 1.6 BTUs out with 1.0 BTUs in! But that is thermodynamically impossible.
Can you please describe it in the following terms: You start out with 1.0 BTU of source material (oil + natural gas). You end up with X BTUs of product (gasoline or ethanol). Isn't that simple and straightforward?
With ethanol, you end up with 1.2 BTUs of ethanol; with gasoline, you end up with 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. Isn't that how it works? In each case you fully consume your input (oil or natural gas).
You aren't looking at ethanol in the same way. You are considering the BTUs of oil as input, but when you calculated the EROI for ethanol you didn't treat the corn as a BTU input. You calculate the BTUs that it takes to process the corn and produce the ethanol. In this way, you actually consume 1 BTU of energy to produce 1.2 BTUs of ethanol. You aren't counting the corn as consumed BTUs. The consumed BTUs are the fossil fuels that were burned in manufacturing the ethanol.
However, processing 1 BTU of oil only consumes 0.2 BTUs of energy. The EROI of oil is then 5/1, and for gasoline it is 1.2 to 1.
You say that we don't consume the oil, but it's gone, isn't it? We started with 1 BTU of oil and at the end we have 0 BTUs of oil, and 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. If the oil is gone, it seems to me merely a matter of semantics whether we say it is "consumed", "processed", or whatever. The bottom line is that the input to the process is 1 BTU of oil and the output is 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. Is that correct?
We don't count the BTUs of the corn as input, because they (mostly) come from sunlight, which is our energy source. They are the resource we are exploiting. To count the BTUs of the corn as an input would be as misleading as counting the BTUs of oil in the ground as an input in evaluating the EROEI of oil production. And indeed, I don't think you are counting corn BTUs in any of your statements about the EROEI of ethanol production.For EROEI purposes, in making ethanol we start with 1 BTU of fossil energy (mostly natural gas, maybe some oil), and end with 1.2 BTU of ethanol.
It's true that in the ethanol case, the fossil fuels were burned, while in the gasoline case, they were chemically transformed. But I don't see why that is important. If we think of the process as a black box, we can just look at inputs and outputs. In the case of ethanol, we put in 1 BTU of fossil fuel and some hardened sunlight in the form of corn, and get out 1.2 BTUs of ethanol. In the case of gasoline, we put in 1 BTU of fossil fuel and get 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. That seems to be a fair, apples to apples comparison.
I am totally lost here. Rather than my trying to guess, please just tell me exactly what "processing" means here? And when you speak of "the EROI of oil" are you referring to the process of getting oil out of the ground, which is indeed often quoted as having an EROEI of about 5 to 1? Or are you still talking about processing oil to make gasoline, which surely no one would claim is a process that has a net production of energy, let alone an EROEI of 5!
OK, I see now. You are saying that you can start with 0.2 BTU of energy and use it to get 1 BTU of oil out of the ground (assuming oil production has a 5:1 EROEI), then convert that to gasoline and have 0.8 BTUs of gasoline (because the conversion has an EROEI of 0.8). This gives a net EROEI of 5 * 0.8 = 4.0.Actually, I have a better way. Start with your 0.2 BTUs and get 1 BTU of oil out of the ground, convert it to gasoline for 0.8 BTUs, but don't stop there. Use that gasoline to get more oil out of the ground - at 5:1 that gives us 4 BTUs of oil, which produces 3.2 BTUs of gasoline. But keep going, with that 3.2 BTUs you can get 5*3.2 or 16 BTUs of oil, and turn that into 12.8 BTUs of gasoline! And it can keep going as long as you like. Enough cycles and you can make your EROEI be as big as you want.
Is this cheating? Well, no more than the original proposal IMO. If we're going to calculate the EROEI of gasoline by saying, first get some more oil out of the ground and then turn it to gasoline, why can't we do the same for ethanol? Rather than just using our energy directly as input to the ethanol process, we could use it to produce some extra oil first via the process above, and then use that as the input to the ethanol factory. We can get far more ethanol out that way.
I guess the lesson is that it is difficult to do a truly fair "apples to apples" comparison between ethanol and gasoline. For one thing, the inputs are really quite different - ethanol mostly uses natural gas and gasoline uses mostly crude oil.
Even if we could imagine an ethanol plant and production process that was somehow powered solely by crude oil, we still have the question highlighted above: what exactly should we compare between the two processes? In the ethanol case, we start with our crude oil and pour it into the fields and factory and out comes ethanol. For gasoline, should we compare just to the refinery, crude oil in and gasoline out? Or do we include the extra step of using the crude oil to produce even more crude oil out of the ground first, and then turning that into gasoline? (And if so, why not as I suggested repeat the process a few times?)
But really this is misleading because raw crude oil is not an input to either an ethanol factory or to an oil drilling and production operation. In the end I don't think EROEI is all that useful to compare such different processes. We need to fall back on old fashioned economics and look at which one makes financial sense. Turning things into dollars and cents produces a much more reliable apples to apples comparison.
You say that we don't consume the oil, but it's gone, isn't it? We started with 1 BTU of oil and at the end we have 0 BTUs of oil, and 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. If the oil is gone, it seems to me merely a matter of semantics whether we say it is "consumed", "processed", or whatever.
No. That's your misunderstanding here. The oil isn't "gone". Oil is made up of all of those various cuts: gasoline, diesel, etc. The processing involves, for example, distilling off the gasoline in a distillation column. This is where energy is actually consumed. You can put in 1 BTU of oil, and out comes 1 BTU of gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, etc. However, you have input 0.2 BTUs of fuel gas, to produce the steam to distill off the fractions. Your energy "invested" is only the 0.2 BTUs that were consumed. The oil is not "invested" because it still exists as fuel to power your vehicle.
The situation with ethanol is quite different. You actually have to burn 1 BTUs to produce 1.2 BTUs. Those BTUs are gone - no longer available as vehicle fuel, just as was the case of the 0.2 BTUs of fuel gas when you processed the oil.
We don't count the BTUs of the corn as input, because they (mostly) come from sunlight, which is our energy source.
That's not correct. Photosynthetic efficiency is very low. The corn BTUs come mostly from the natural gas that went into making the fertilizer. If you want to do the calculations for ethanol just like you did for gasoline, then you can either factor in the contained BTUs of corn (1 BTU of corn may net 0.2 BTUs of ethanol) or factor in the contained BTUs in a barrel of crude ethanol, and then the net after processing.
It's true that in the ethanol case, the fossil fuels were burned, while in the gasoline case, they were chemically transformed. But I don't see why that is important.
What are we after at the end of the day? We want a liquid fuel. In the case of ethanol, since the fossil fuels were burned, they are only available as liquid fuel after the ethanol is produced. In the case of oil, the oil is the liquid fuel, it's just mixed up with other things.
In the case of ethanol, we put in 1 BTU of fossil fuel and some hardened sunlight in the form of corn, and get out 1.2 BTUs of ethanol. In the case of gasoline, we put in 1 BTU of fossil fuel and get 0.8 BTUs of gasoline. That seems to be a fair, apples to apples comparison.
It's not apples to apples. Here is the easiest way to get past your confusion. I guarantee you that if you work this problem out, you will no longer be confused. Let's say I have 1 BTU of energy that I am willing to invest in order to produce a liquid fuel. This BTU is energy that will be consumed in the process of producing the fuel. Typically this will involve some combination of electricity and natural gas. How much will I end up with if I invest in ethanol, versus investing in gasoline?
I am totally lost here. Rather than my trying to guess, please just tell me exactly what "processing" means here? And when you speak of "the EROI of oil" are you referring to the process of getting oil out of the ground, which is indeed often quoted as having an EROEI of about 5 to 1?
The 5/1 is from oil in the ground to gasoline in your tank. I assume oil extraction of 10/1 (the world average is actually 17/1) and the refining step is also 10/1. Then the entire process is 5/1 (or 8.5/1 if we use the world average oil production value). By processing, I mean the same kind of steps you use to make ethanol from crude ethanol. The first processing step is distillation. In the case of ethanol, it removes the water from the ethanol. In the case of oil, the various fractions (gasoline, diesel, etc.) are removed.
Maybe this will make things a little more clear. In the case of the efficiency of gasoline (0.8) you are using 1 BTU of unprocessed fossil fuel (crude oil) from the ground to produce 0.8 BTU of gasoline. For the EROEI of ethanol (1.2) you are using 1 BTU of processed fossil fuels (gasoline, diesel, and natural gas) to produce 1.2 BTU of ethanol.
To determine the efficiency of ethanol so you can compare the fossil fuels destroyed after you have burned both the gasoline and the ethanol in your car you need to include the efficincy of producing the inputs for ethanol. If the inputs were all gasoline you would divide the 1 BTU by 0.8 to get a total of 1.25 BTU of crude oil. The resulting efficiency is 0.96 which you can compare to the 0.8 of gasoline.
This doesn't make ethanol a better energy source than gasoline, it just means its getting slighlty more energy out of the fossil fuels allowing them to last a little longer or reducing the CO2 produced per mile driven.
I find his logic hard to argue. If his numbers are correct, and he putting his money where his mouth is, what is the real objection?
Just Asking
(no objection to him betting his, or other investors' money, it's the lobbying to get the US to adopte ethanol as "the" solution, based on the cellulosic promise, that gets me.)
You know, justasking, it might just be that there is no "perfect solution" (if, by that, you mean a continuation of our growth centred societies). Have you ever thought of that?
VK said (roughly) 'Let's not make the Perfect the enemy of the good'.. but I don't see any problem with making the 'not very good at all' the enemy of the good. (Meaning the plan, not the Man, of course, and I appreciate the willingness of Mr. Khosla to put this very involved article before us today.)
If the final economies give us a fuel with much less than 2:1 EROEI, then we must see the seriousness in this shortfall and find something better. To me, a 2:1 EROEI means you make $400 a week, but your commute costs you $200. Or how about an ATM that charges you 50% of the withdrawal amount? You've still got money in your pocket, but is it worth the cost?
In answer to your initial question, the point many here attest to is that there may not BE a truly viable Alternative to our Liquid Transp fuels, as we use them today. The alternatives, accept it or not, point to a massive shift in the energy we consume, be it more effective transportation, (Carpools/Buses) different means of moving around (Bike, Walk, Electric Trolley/Rail), reducing our liquids and Gases from other demands (Solar Home Heating, Electric Freight) -
"If his numbers are correct"..>> $64,000 question..
Bob Fiske
did the four posts above answer your question?
--
Well he's certainly very verbose.
He explicitly separates transportation from stationary applications, and I agree that biomass cannot be justified for stationary uses. Of course if one is most interested in climate change rather than peak oil then the lowest hanging fruit is our coal use, not oil use. The Wang publications claim a 1.3:1 ethanol energy return on fossil fuel input ratio. That implies roughly that ethanol still produces 75 % of the greenhouse gases as oil.
I don't like his analogy to internet protocols. Software is a conceptual beast and not really constrained by any physics. If he had made an argument about photonics progressing along a certain pathway (or 'trajectory') that would have been a more solid argument. It is clear that he still does not understand the scale issues. Khosla states, "we must move [ethanol] from a blend of only fifteen billion gallons a year US market to a primary fuel 200 billion gallons a year market..." Physically possible?
He still not appear to understand the difference between the energy return ratio and 1st or 2nd law thermodynamic efficiency. Again, the physics are misunderstood. He's willing to use software such as GREET but not dig into the actual model that it uses. Take for example this claim: "Later they will replace the rest of the natural gas by utilizing the manure from local cattle feedlots (they are mostly building plants near cattle feedlots)." Is the scale of cow crap really large enough to provide all those Joules needed to provide ethanol? In addition, Wang is not a good researcher to be quoting -- NREL white papers are generally not peer reviewed.
On the issue of cellulosic ethanol I find the claims fairly specious. I don't believe that marginal cropland that isn't economical to farm now will produce massive quantities of cellulose for us in the future. In the end he counters one of his earlier claims. Regarding Peak Oil, Khosla says that "Also stop reading if ... want to ... change the consumption pattern (4% of world population consuming 25% of its resources- I hate it too but don't count on it changing) overnight, dramatically change behavior like getting Americans to drive less(lots of idealized solutions I can think of but it won't happen except through legislation like higher CAFÉ or higher gasoline prices, and most such legislation is politically infeasible)." But then he goes on to conclude that our meat diet will have to change if we want to drive ethanol powered cars. It's a strange argument.
A study of the New Zealand grid stated that they could accept up to 35% wind energy without further study or grid modification. The only proviso was that the WTs need to be distributed and not concentrated in a couple of locations.
As Wind Turbines approached 35%, they recommended more study based upon experience. Link provided when I get home (typing at PDX ATM).
The intergration of wind with hydro & pumped storage was a "hot topic" at the just concluded Hyropower conference here in Portland.
No breakthrough is required in storage technology; pumped storage (hydro for days & weeks; air for seasonal shifting) can do the job. In theory (real world, see plans for Big Island of Hawaii) one could have a 115% wind turbine grid balanced by pumped storage. (Some turbines would need to be spinning in air for reactive power at times).
IMHO, the US could get ~60% of our electrical power from wind with large investments in pumped storage (many sites available; Raccoon Mountain ridge could accept 8 GW, Bath can be enlarged to 3 GW + nearby sites, etc.) and a HV DC grid accross the continent.
HV DC could provide links from Texas to the Ozarks (some limited potential in state) and South Florida to NW Georgia in two difficult cases.
BTW, I had a detailed converation with Alberta utility exec about the possibilities of pumped air storage for high % wind and seasonal shifting from winter to summer. (Air pumped storage has cycle efficiency of only 60% due to adiabatic cooling. However, injecting very cold air in winter and releasing it on a hot summer day would improve efficiency. Bath Hydro Pumped Storage has a 80+% cycle efficiency).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage
Between that and pumping (water, air, whatever), I see absolutely no excuse for solar / wind providing less than 35-40% of our energy needs.
SMES also have the advantage of less powerloss/hr (including refrigeration) than most other methods of energy storage. SMES can also be placed in locations that other "peak shaving" devices such as pumping may not be able to be placed. Not an issue in the current grid system, but with less of the power being provided in fossil fired generation plants in the future(understand, the grid has been designed around the current plants to an extent) this is something that needs to be considered as currently our transmission lines are maxed out.
Additionally, their energy density may be better than batteries (have not had to look into that yet). I do know they are being looked into as a possible portion of a true diurnal system.
I don't know if they are the best method, but they are being looked at in the untility market, and are meant to be charged fast and discharged fast (within minutes or hours depending on the design)... unlike batteries they don't have "known" limited numbers of cycles before they are junk, they don't have the concern of charge / discharge rates associated with battery banks, and unlike water pumping stations they are slightly more efficient than 70-85% (depending on where you get your sources).
Not trying to get into a pissing match, just trying to perhaps provide that "nugget of info" in the event it becomes useful to someone reading this.
I agree that perhaps wikipedia made me look stupid, but try these sources and maybe I'll look a bit less dumb:
"However, some researchers believe SMES can potentially store up to 2000 MW. Theoretically, a coil of around 150-500 m radius would be able to support a load of 5000 MWh, at 1000 MW; depending on the peak field and ratio of the coil's height and diameter."
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mpj01/ise2grp/energystorage_report/node8.html#SECTION00830000000000000000
"Also, Japan's river system, highly dense settlement, and expensive real estate do not favor construction of additional pumped-storage facilities. The Japanese have thus been exploring alternative storage technologies, including SMES and flywheels. As discussed earlier, SMES research in Japan has been underway since the early 1970s, with many prototypes built and tested under actual "utility" conditions."
"The design approach for the 100 kWh/20 MW system, shown in Fig. 2.5, is a toroidal magnet with an outside diameter for the cryostat of ~12 m (Kamiyama 1994)."
http://www.wtec.org/loyola/scpa/02_06.htm
Different places will have different capacities. Similar studies suggest that the UK, with more consistent/reliable coastal winds, could tolerate a significantly greater fraction than France or Germany. It is interesting to note that ERCOT — the reliability authority for Texas — recently reduced the rating for wind power for purposes of calculating system capacity for scheduling maintenance downtime from 10% of nameplate to 2.9%.
I believe these calculations have the basic form of providing an estimate of how much power can be expected on any particular day with probability greater than X, where X is 0.9, or higher. Clearly, there are times when Texas runs fairly close to the edge in terms of generating capacity; they had rolling blackouts earlier this year because of heavy demands while "too much" capacity was offline for maintenance. Such scheduling is probably a hefty constrained optimization problem, incorporating not just generating capacity but transmission limitations as well.
Wind has lots of good things going for it. Being able to guarantee, with high probability, that this particular 200 MW wind farm will be able to generate a sizeable fraction of that nameplate value on any given day is not one of them.
http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentTOC____4368.aspx
Four keys will drive where we go the next few decades...
1.) Cost. Which energy sources can best meet our needs.
2.) Infrastructure. How easily can they be implented.
3.) Technology. Progress in dozens of competing options.
4.) Validation/Invalidation of Key Assumptions.
The first three he presented his case toward viability.
The success will be how accurate his key assumptions are.
I commend him for submitting his views. Vigorous monitoring
of the key assumptions are the success of any program or
project. The data of his projects and involvement in associated
projects regarding his key assumptions will determine his success.
An encouraging sign is his seeking other views which benefits all.
I do believe we are at the cusp of an Energy Revolution.
My experiences indicate we probably don't yet fully grasp the
magnitute and implications for all of us.
Good Luck
sarcasm is angers ugly cousin.
Actually I found it amusing and the blind fold thing
had me thinking firing squad initially, until i
thunk it out loud and see the reference to being blind.
Ever heard of the blind leading the blind?
What kind of profeesor do you profess to be?
Perhaps censorship is to your liking, layed any Golden eggs lately? Where's your cense of femor?
regardless I would buy you a drink (alcohol) after your stand up routine.
;- )
hugh unemployment = hugh alcohol consumption = no need for extended travel = demand/supply/demand/supply ...
.Maybe this community could get Burt Reynolds to post and everyone would behave.
Seriously,
Skipper - S.S Minnow ---- down but, not out !
Hugh = some dude's name
Huge = large size
Triff ..
I also don't believe in blue sky dreams and 1000 year solutions. To me, cellulose ethanol is an intermediate step towards a more sustainable future. One that regains some American independence and cuts off the supply of huge amounts of money to petty theocracies. It mitigates the need to have oil men in charge of our country, and gives us time to shape our future. It gives us the legs we need to approach a post peak oil reality that is coming whether we do something about it or not.
I think if you believe in the reality of peak oil at all, and what it will undoubtedly do to America and the world if all we manage to do is argue about building more trains and bike paths, then I think you should get behind Mr. Khosla and his efforts. Lend him the helpful critiques and support he needs to make this a national debate.
Don't blame the messenger. The anticipated changes to our lifestyle may not be driven by some autocratic social engineers, but by nature. If the energy return is as poor as the 1.3 that some critics quote, then it does not give America any new legs to stand on, while we approach Peak Oil, and that infrastructure is going to be additionally vulnerable to the Soil, Weather and Water Supply hazards that are threatening us already.
Ethanol has been subsidised and researched intensely for 20+ years, and if it has a hope of being this stepping stone, it has to offer the numbers to prove it. Show me the money. It still costs more than Gas. It works in Brazil because they have the Oil and Natural Gas to back it up, and a population with far lighter energy habits than ours.
I am all for this to be a national Debate, as opposed to a Fait Accompli, though I think there is enough of a challenge out there to keep people poring over the details and insisting on seeing a workable program before we are all too far into this technology with moneys that could have been put elsewhere.
Bob Fiske
This nation likes to move, and it likes to move on the cheap. That's been our trajectory. Peak oil wants to ruin that and will ruin that, unless we use our noggins and come up with alternatives. Does ethanol have a sustainable trajectory or just a political one through subsidy? That's the gamble, I suppose. Certainly doesn't need an army to protect it, as you mentioned. Yet, in these times, is it really possible to lose on energy...population growth, debt based consumption, the need to move, peak oil production, etc..? My guess, you won't lose a thing.
Then tell me where were going to store all this great ethanol ?
How do we deal with crop failure.
How many days inventory are going to be on hand for the winter ?
Soil quality and competition for food is real give me real answers you claim the third world will produce its own food well where will it produce its own biofuels ?
Simple questions I find that there not being answered that bothers me a lot.
Perhaps no one is addressing your question because no one sees why it is an issue.
just a shot in the dark
They can also store the sugar or molasses quite easily before its fermented. And surgar cane is grown year around.
I suspect they are looking at orders of magnitude less storage requirements. I would think the need to store about 3 months supply at most this is much smaller then the basically 10 month storage we would need for a corn based solution.
With corn its one harvest a year thats it.
This just says petrobas covers storage.
http://www.renewables2004.de/ppt/Presentation4-SessionIVB(11-12.30h)-LaRovere.pdf
This artical implies that storage is and important problem
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/31249/story.htm
Just in googling storage is a big issue for them.
I never got a sense for how many days supply is in storage.
Agian it seems Petrobas is underwriting storage costs so its not discussed a whole lot.
Barrels. Cheaper than storing gas from some bioreactor making methane
How do we deal with crop failure.
How does YOUR bioreactor idea deal with it?
How many days inventory are going to be on hand for the winter
How does YOUR bioreactor idea deal with it?
Soil quality and competition for food is real give me real answers you claim the third world will produce its own food well where will it produce its own biofuels ?
And, well How does YOUR bioreactor idea deal with it?
My EROEI arguments are neither dogma nor one-sided. They are a counter to the arguments that the energy balance for corn ethanol is better than for gasoline. That is a positively ludicrous assertion, and I have backed it up my position again and again. On the other hand, when I have challenged you to rebut my arguments, you have failed to do so. Therefore, I will once again give you the opportunity. Here is a problem:
I am interested in producing a liquid fuel. Let's say that my objective is to produce 10 BTUs of this liquid fuel. Calculate how many BTUs of energy are actually consumed if 1). You produce ethanol; and 2). You produce gasoline. Please show your work.
This is probably the single biggest area of disagreement between Mr. Khosla and me, and I reiterated my argument on the telephone earlier this week. There may be some good arguments for favoring ethanol over gasoline, but production efficiency is not one of them. Reread thelastsasquatch's post on why EROEI matters. You just can't transition from running society on something that is 5 to 1, like gasoline, to something that is under 2 to 1, like ethanol, without major consequences. That's why EROEI matters.
- Even a poor EROEI could be justified if it transforms a less useful energy source into a more useful one. We do exactly that when we refine crude into diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. CTL technology is even worse, yet I expect we will see it implemented. Although I disagree that natural gas is less useful than oil (I think it's more useful), this is essentially his argument regarding the energy balance for corn ethanol.
- Khosla is looking to better processes that have the best possible EROEI for corn, and dramatically better EROEIs with a switch in feedstock.
In response to some of the other issues in the foregoing:- Nothing about this vision for the future is incompatible with more efficient vehicles, up to and including plug-in hybrids. Those measures alone won't "solve" the problem as one poster claimed, since some liquid fuel is still needed. If those measures could pare consumption down to size, it could meet up nicely with Mr. Khosla's plans, at a lower scale where dramatically less land need be devoted to fuel production. I did not see Mr. Khosla argue for continuing to field gas-guzzlers, in fact he suggests the opposite.
- Personal automobiles are going to remain fixtures of industrialized countries because they are far more time-efficient in most situations than public transportation. Even the fuel efficiency and cost can be argued - a family of 4 travelling in a 40 mpg car is competitive with other means of transport. There are plenty of ways to keep operating them - we have a choice between dirty and limited ways of doing so (CTL) or cleaner ways (plug-in hybrids burning biofuels). I think it's clear which way Mr. Khosla thinks we should go.
My issues with Mr. Khosla's argument:There is certainly slack in our current agricultural production, especially if you look at end consumption and the inefficiency of meat consumption. Still, Mr. Khosla appears to be anticipating that a food-versus-fuel tradeoff will drive out the inefficiency through higher prices. A lot of people won't be happy about that. Worse, world population is projected to go to 9 billion by 2050 - if we cut US food exports in half, that seems like trouble, even if you factor that a lot of the exports are for animal feed abroad.
Mr. Khosla was too quick to dismiss stationary power generation as unrelated. In fact the entire energy system is intimately bound together, along with environmental factors. If biofuels are going to work, we are going to have to shift as much of the transportation burden as possible to the electric grid. In fact, it could be a more efficient way to deliver some forms of energy to vehicles. For example, delivering coal energy via electricity is competitive from an energy balance perspective with CTL. Production of liquid fuels from biomass should be compared with using the biomass to produce electricity, just to make sure it's the most energy-efficient means of delivering the benefit.
The ICE is an inefficient means of converting the chemical energy in liquid fuels to motive power. Since we have an existing fleet that will be replaced only slowly, and existing delivery infrastructure that will be replaced even more slowly, it's reasonable to look towards fuels that are compatible with it. That said, it would be helpful to understand what might replace the ICE part of a plug-in vehicle, in order to understand what sort of fuel it might need. This is missing from Mr. Khosla's vision.
Finally, I share the concerns of several other posters regarding soil and water resource depletion as a result of fuel crop production. It's not clear that these concerns are addressed by the closed-loop production systems Mr. Khosla mentioned; they're clearly problematic for corn-based ethanol.
RR, thanks for engaging Mr. Khosla here. Mr. Khosla, thank you for taking the time to articulate your vision.
I didn't read it that way. He is claiming that by producing ethanol you get more energy out of the fossil fuels used than if you used them to produce gasoline. I see that as similar to claiming twice as much out of your fossil fuels if you share a ride. You wouldn't claim this had an EROEI of 2:1, instead you would call it a more efficient use of fossil fuels.
I am interested in producing a liquid fuel. Let's say that my objective is to produce 10 BTUs of this liquid fuel. Calculate how many BTUs of energy are actually consumed if 1). You produce ethanol; and 2). You produce gasoline.
I'm amazed how often I see this arguement come up at The Oil Drum. Whenever anyone claims ethanol could be part of the solution to a liquid fuel shortage by getting more energy out of fossil fuels used the counter claim always seems to be "no, getting more energy out of fossil fuels used via ethanol isn't the answer because we could get more energy by using up fossil fuels faster to produce gasoline" You would think The Oil Drum readers would know better.
The problem, you see, is that this only becomes a valid argument if there aren't still a lot of fossil fuels around to be extracted at an EROEI of 5/1. By switching to an EROEI of 1.2 to 1, you have gone from consuming 20% of your energy in producing the fuel, to consuming 90% of your energy in producing the fuel. It might be acceptable to consume 90% if you don't have any better options, but right now we still have better options.
Regardless of the EROEI of ethanol, my main problem with it is that it is being used as a tool by the Bush administration to create a sense of complacency. Bush is enthusiastic about ethanol because it seemingly requires no difficult decisions, not very much investment, no sacrifices, and an ostensible win/win for everyone, especially the ADMs of the world. This is confirmed by the article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday which didn't even mention any of the issues we have been discussing on this site.
Ethanol will prosper regardless of its efficacy because it represents the perfect marriage between politics and profit.
I agree that we have better options than this now. But then again, IMO we also have worse options. Coal is the elephant in the room in any discussion of oil depletion and the (IMO not-so-)imminent collapse of civilisation. CTL is going to be implemented because there's plenty of coal in the most energy-hungry countries, the US, China, and India. That's a shame because if we must use coal, we should at least compare coal-powered options for efficiency and environmental impact, rather than selecting the one that props up the existing ICE-based infrastructure.
First of all, let me make it clear that I don't favor drilling in ANWR.
Would it not be more correct to look at the entire production chain? You burn 1 boe to produce 5, then the 5 are burned to produce 6. Net net it's 1 boe in, 6 out, a sort of "hamburger helper" approach. So long as the carbon content in the 6 came from the air, it seems helpful. Did I miss something?
Yes, I think you missed something. If you burn 1 to produce 5, why are you then willing to burn 5 to produce 6? It is far more efficient to take the 5 and produce 25. That's the point. This ethanol scheme is unworkable unless the EROEI improves tremendously (which is one thing cellulosic ethanol offers), or we convince society that they must power down. If you read Nate's excellent essay on why EROEI is important, it should become clear that moving from something with an EROEI of 5 to something with an EROEI of 1.2 has tremendous implications for society.
Another way to look at it, is that it is like asking investors to put their money into an investment that returns 20%, when they could be (and have been) getting 500%. If their lifestyle is based on 500%, 20% is going to be a shock to the system.
Efficient from what perspective? Not from a fossil depletion or carbon emissions perspective. To make the comparison correct, I believe you should either hold the starting and ending states of the system constant and solve for the amount of useful energy produced, or hold the useful energy constant and solve for the ending state of the system. Here's the way I see it:
Fossil-only approach:
Burn 1 to produce 5, burn 0.25 of the 5 to produce 1.25, yielding 6 net. Total above-ground boe's used: 1. Total fossil resources depleted: 6.25. Total carbon emissions after consuming the energy yielded: 7.25.
Fossil+ethanol approach:
Burn 1 to produce 5, burn 5 to produce 6. Total above-ground boe's used: 1. Total fossil resources depleted: 5.00. Total carbon emissions after consuming the energy yielded: 6.00. Net savings versus the fossil-only approach: 1.25 boe of depletion and 1.25 boe of CO2 emitted.
I am looking at it as an (admittedly expensive) "efficiency" improvement on the consumption of fossil energy.
That's the problem. It is admittedly expensive, so people are not going to willingly do it without propping up the scheme with mandates and subsidies. You will end up with less energy as a result, so people will be forced to power down. Who is going to do this willingly?
As far as externalities like CO2 emissions, you also have to look at things on the ethanol side like topsoil mining and herbicide and pesticide runoff. The inputs and outputs are so complex that I don't think anyone can calculate a true EROEI in either case. Once externalities are factored in, the 1.2 for corn ethanol may actually end up being less than 1, while the 5 for gasoline may be something like 3.5 or 4.
Yeah, I agree. I was using your 1.2 figure but since the system's not closed, it's very hard to accurately tally the inputs, not to mention allocate those inputs to the various outputs (ethanol + coproducts). It's more like 1.2 +/- 0.4. It would be much easier to buy the strategy if the EROEI were comfortably above 1.0.
I know you have already taken on these points of Khosla's, probably a number of times. Still, I would hope you might just point us to your response, (or your previous responses) in light of this Essay today. I don't always catch when numbers are being used in an unusual context, or if the science is contentious on a certain point.
I took issue earlier in the thread with Solar PV's '.15 efficiency' being used during the talk of EROEI and net energy, as it only loosely applies to getting your inputs back from Solar Panel mfg., but I can't usually make such distinctions around the liquid processes.
Thanks for introducing Mr. Khosla to us, and vice versa. I hope he has found this exchange to be a useful and mainly positive dialog.
Yours,
Bob Fiske
Energy Balance For Ethanol Better Than For Gasoline?
We have access to various energy stocks (coal, oil, nat gas, etc). In order to access the stocks (S), we need to find, extract, harvest, and distribute them at a cost (s). (S-s) is the net energy left for society of our Stocks. A barrel of oil has a certain amount of BTUs but is 'free' to us (because apes, salamanders and future generations are currently making no claims on it)
We also have access to various energy flows: (sun, wind, tidal, etc.) In order to harness the flows (F), we need technology and built capital (windmills, silicon, etc) at a cost (f). (F-f) is the net energy society recieves from 'renewable' flows.
Once we extract/harness the stocks and flows of energy, society uses the energy using various consumptive practices, (C). The energy is then dissipated under the second law of thermodynamics at a rate (c). If society runs a tight ship, C-c is large and we 'use' most of the energy. If society is profligate and wasteful, C-c is small and we use our energy bounty inefficiently.
C=(S-s)+(F-f)
c comes later, after all energy Stocks and Flows have been counted
Society therefore has three areas where efficiency can be measured:
Efficiency of energy Stock extraction = (S-s)(S)
Efficiency of energy Flow production = (F-f)(F)
Efficiency of energy Consumption = (C-c)/(C)
EROI and energy quality matter when we look at what is 'free' to society. High quality fossil stocks (S) at some cost (s) inherently have more energy than the net energy Flow (F-f). So to say that ethanol is more efficient than gasoline is not only erroneous, but ignores the fact that (S) is much higher than (F) in this example, irrespectively of how efficiently we 'produce' either of them.
Mr Khosla is confusing efficiency and energy quality, though he is probably doing so because he has been misled by the WANG GREET model, which makes the same mistake (intentionally or not I have no idea)
Society needs to maximize the efficiency of all 3 of the above processes. It also needs to recognize that to replace high quality (S) with lower quality (F-f) has important implications. (S) needs to be used not just to create (F), but to create the highest quality, longest lasting (F-f) as possible.
A whole different discussion is maximizing (C-c). It can be shown that USING energy more efficiently moderates the declining quality and quantity of (S).
Essentially my point is that many people are confusing efficiency and EROI, and still others are confusing EROI and quality corrected EROI.
We are measuring TWO things in an energy technology, the energy quality of the original energy source, and how efficiently we refine it. EROI captures both these things. Efficiency only captures efficiency.
TOD asked Mr. Khosla to defend his position and defend it he did.
IMHO this is one of the very best discussion pieces concerning ethanol production (present/future) that I have ever read and sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Khosla is invested in not 1 but 10! ethanol projects.
Q: How many Drummers accused Vinod of investing solely in corn-ethanol again?
Mr. Khosla is right - trajectory is key.
The investments, technologies and innovation that made gasoline production what it is today, did not occur overnight and it's ridiculous to think that the ethanol industry would be different. And yet despite this assertion, USA ethanol production has doubled and doubled again since 2000.
Pick up a copy of Ethanol Producer and one will find pages and pages of innovation and technology being applied to the problems at hand, discussions on best practices or increasing efficiency; the translation of which equates to a host of new, good paying, highly skilled jobs for countless rural communities.
Another example of trajectory in motion is Mr Khosla's comment re: cellulosic 'add-ons' to existing fermentation plants - a topic we at Syntec discuss on a daily basis with ethanol producers from around the world. This strategy will very much become apparent as 2nd generation ethanol production paths come online.
Lastly, in regards to investment, I agree with Mr. Khosla 1000% but I'll take it one step further. Biofuel interest is everywhere, however, investment is not, at least not in the scale that it demands to offset Peak Oil decline. Why?
Because the general public is not aware of, nor do they fully understand what the ramifications of Peak Oil are(which in and of itself) is a giant learning curve that must be overcome before we introduce what truly viable options exist to mitigate it.
Only if one is an investor. What's more important (which hopefully also benefits the investor class) than trajectory is doing the right things.
The dirty little secret of Wall Street is that early investors can be successful even if ultimately what they are investing in makes no sense in the long run.
That may or may not be the case with bio fuels of any sort; my point is that such talk should induce some healthy skepticsm and critical thinking.
"Imagining the Future of Gasoline: Reality or Blue-sky Dreaming?"
Imagination is one of the many gifts that humans have. Mr. Khosla posits that it should be be directed toward imagining the future of ... gasoline.
Regadless of what one thinks of gasoline, it has had a pretty short past and already we must get hard at work with our imaginations, imagining gasoline's future. Pretty lame.
Don't us humans have anything better to direct our imaginations to? Or, is our health and happiness dependant on... gasoline?
I think he a smart guy and probably realizes that not only is our health and happiness dependant on gasoline, but so is the survival of a large proportion of the population. Isn't this kind of scary ?
Instead of deploying public and private capital to make our world more whole and a more beautiful place, we have to expend our resources to create gasoline. That sucks IMHO.
Mr Khosla
Thank you for your time to present your argument. It was an interesting way to begin, alienating 50%(guess) of the readers, I felt you were just trying to get blood pressure up so I continued reading. Although not nearly as learned as you and many who post here, I was struck by many of the obtuse statements that you made. Since many have voiced my arguments, to be somewhat beneficial I will posit the following FWIW,
1)"The oil industry spends hundreds of billions in investments in oil every year"
We know they don't spend it on maintenance, could you provide your source(s) for this statement?
2)"There is no scarcity of food but rather a scarcity of income to buy it for the poorest of the poor."
Could it be possible that if we were not spending so many "billions" on sustaining a vile way of life the above might not be true?
"Today, even if ethanol prices were cut in half or more to $1.40 a gallon wholesale, corn ethanol producers would make adequate margins of profit."
I am sorry; this one does not make sense to me.
Perhaps in the future you could avoid all the alienation, and flesh out some of these and other, vague, obscure statements.
Having said that, as a piñata you held up pretty well. I guess we just wait for all the goodies to fall.
No. This is just basic economics.
Say you are a farmer and one year you grow 2000 bushels of corn, but you only eat 1000. So you have 1000 spare.
You can sell 500 of that 1000 to the guys down the road who don't grow their own food, leaving you 500 bushels of corn. But now the guys down the road can't take any more. They have enough for this year.
So what do you do with the other 500? Well, the starving people in Africa might want them, but they don't have anything you want. They have no dollars, their own currency is worthless to you. So you keep the 500 bushels and put it in storage, so next year you can sell that 500 to the guys down the road again for something valuable. Except now you have another 1000 to get rid of ...
OK this is a grossly oversimplified explanation, but the basic problem is people don't like to give away the fruits of their labour for zilch, and that's about how much the poor have to offer the over-producing rich farmers.
I understand the concept of having something for sale and not giving it away(as a taxpayer I work hard and seem to give it away to places I would rather not, ah, thats another post)
What about this
V.K.:
"TODAY(my emphasis), even if ethanol prices were cut in half or more to $1.40 a gallon wholesale, corn ethanol producers would make adequate margins of profit."
now a bushel of corn is going for 2.30+- it takes 2.something bushels to make 1 gallon. In this situation somebody, somewhere is getting something for nothing.
This link has alot of jargon I am not too familiar, but perhaps it might interest you.
http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/cont_detail/0,3206,1213+28195,00.html
Thank you for replying.
I should have read closer. evidently you get 2.6 gallons ethanol per bushel. I am sorry. I humbly regress back to my corner
out
PS about that tax thing... :)
This statement and the paragraph it's in, says it all. It's such a complete capitulation to the political defeatism of establishment environmentalism, it shows Mr. Khosla has spent too much time with the NRDC and Ralph Cavanagh.
No vision, lets protect our career, let's profit, it's all rather tragic. US over consumption hasn't much time left and what Mr. Khosla has bought himself is a two month TV mini-series funded by the oil companies, hope he enjoys it.
The key word here is "overnight," and with it, it's a pretty reasonable statement: I bet very few TOD readers think anything except a catastrophic collapse will cause an overnight change in the US' energy consumption pattern. But the sentence is badly written. "[A]n overnight change of the consumption pattern" would have been much clearer.
As for the overall article: I found it, well, inspiring but unconvincing. On the one hand, I'm very glad that someone in his position is sincerely concerned with such issues as renewable energy and global warming; on the other hand, I can't share his optimism that the market will provide. Of course, I'd be very glad to be proven wrong!
So, how do you like this:
All you need is some commitment in the government.
In my point of view, the results speak for themselves. The only burden are some extra 0,0044€ct/kwh everybody has to pay on top of the electricity bill.
Countries such as France, Japan and some Chinese provinces have passed similar laws.
Full story here:
http://www.energybulletin.net/5000.html
I know the environmentalists who have put this together. I'm all for development of all alternative energies, spending money, government involvement....whatever it takes. But the idea we're going to be able to change this economy all happy-happy does no one any good. It's going to be challenging and hard, taxing the oil companies and saying consumers can do nothing is the decades failed strategy of the establishment enviros.
Most amusing, the oil companies started running ads today saying they would pass the cost through - hah. The next ads will be how Mr. Khosla is trying to take tax money to support his investments. If you'r going to try and fudge this, you won't win, and I don't find that optimistic.
I think the article needs some major editing. Many ideas presented are illogical, mutually exclusive or contradictory. The EROEI confusion is entirely with VK. He gets this part completely wrong, AGAIN! Other than that, I think it is a great leap forward in alt-energy discussion.
Specifically, as pointed out by others here, the message is contradictory when advocating both free markets AND CAFE standards, and ballot initiatives for more govt action in CA, and subsidies for public transit, etc.
Another big contradictory message is here:
The part in bold cannot be true if VK and others have already been pouring billions into cellulosic ethanol!!! He claims that cellulosic ethanol is currently available at $2/gal, if only someoone were willing to invest, then later claims to have invested heavily in cellulosic ethanol.
Logical problems
Major problem number 1:
Along with much discussion of why ethanol will solve our problems, but only after huge wads of cash are spent on R&D to enable economic use of cellulose, and improve yields far beyond any currently achieved, we have this quote:
This is a major logical contradiction. Why is it preferrable to assume that ethanol will someday achieve yields of 2-3000 gal/acre, and that biodiesel can never achieve the same yields? When biodiesel can ALREADY achieve those yields today?
Why is ethanol on a better "trajectory" if biodiesel has, today, a better energy balance? This is sounding too much like a Betamax/VHS issue. The better technology is getting pushed aside by the better marketing campaign (I hope VK is not too young to remember Betamax).
And why cannot these huge wads of cash spent on ethanol R&D achieve similar or better yield improvements for biodiesel?
I am speculating now, but I am afraid the answer comes down to plain ole ROI. That is, Return On Investment (of dollars, not energy). It is much harder for a capitalist like VK to invest big wads of cash in biodiesel improvements and reap any return from those investments. The benefits of biodiesel R&D are too diffuse, don't require a big refinery/distllery like ethanol, and are too easy for Joe Farmer in Backwoods America to implement on the back forty. Biodiesel doesn't have any thorny technical hurdles to solve like cellulosic ethanol, therefore no money to be made from R&D breakthroughs leading to patents. No big captial intensive distilleries, therefore no venture capitalist investors.
Major problem number 2:
EROEI.
VK still has basic, fundamental, gaping holes in his strawman arguments about EROEI.
He presents the "fossil energy ratio" - fossil energy in to total energy out as the better metric. But all the analyses of EROEI ALREADY use this metric. NOBOBY counts the "free" solar energy in an EROEI calculation. He is presenting a classic strawman to demolish.
A true accounting of the EROEI would easily demonstrate that it is simpler, cheaper, less environmentally destructive, and more energetically favorable to just use the natural gas as a transport fuel - CNG, instead of processing it through ethanol into a liquid.
VK is proposing to use 6 BTUs of natural gas, 4 BTUs of coal, and 1 BTU of petroleum to generate maybe 8 BTUs of ethanol (this is a rough guess, but the professional guesses are not any more accurate). So the liquid to liquid conversion ratio is quite good - 8:1, but the total transportation fuel ratio is less than 1 - 8:9 - (if you acknowledge that coal can be converted to liquid or gaseous fuels with about 50% efficiency).
That's not even counting the long term problems with water table depletion in the Midwest, soil erosion, carbon release from converting forests and stable grasslands into erodable cropland, etc. Ideally, these need to be included in an EROEI calcuation, but nobody but Pimental even attempts it.
Once again, VK can't get the homerun investment return from promoting CNG for transport. There are no breakthroughs, patents or proprietary IP to exploit.
Major problem number 3:
Agricultural ignorance.
VK doesn't have a clue what is feasible, possible, or realistic in growing plants for energy. This quote illustrates the problem:
CRP land is the marginal land, literally. The patch down at the bottom the hill that's usually too wet to make a corn crop. The top of the ridge were the soil is shallow and usually too dry. The steepest parts, the worst soils, worst drainage, highest salinity, etc. When the friendly man from the government offers to pay the farmer not to farm, that is the land he offers to fallow.
Expecting the WORST cropland in America to have yields 10 or 20 times higher than the BEST land makes today?
No way.
Technology will only save those that can afford it.
If we can grow so much corn then why is it that world supplies of basic foodstuffs are down from about 113 days to about 57 days?
On the other hand, if food prices go up, that will enable small farmers to live on what they produce, which is very difficult at present. Not only here, but in the third world as well. One of the reasons for the drift to huge third world megacities is that cheap, imported food undercut them.
I think if Mr. Khosla is willing to invest his own money in it, what the hell?
Firstly, all the people who think he should be promoting less car use, bicycles etc. need to get in the real world. People will use cars until they are ripped from their hands kicking and screaming. This will probably take either SERIOUS financial pain or suffering caused by some form of collapse. I came from a country where people would pay over $6.00 a gallon and would probably pay double that before car usage seriously slowed. I wish it weren't true but I am afraid its a fact of western life.
Secondly, I see comments about why doesn't he promote bio diesel. I'll tell you why, HARDLY anyone in the US drives diesel cars or trucks! On the whole, they hate them so good luck getting a mass change to diesel cars. Although there has to be a market for commercial trucks I would think.
Thirdly, suggesting wide scale adoption of CNG is dumber than bio fuels. Where are the cars and distribution/pumping infrastructure going to come from? Plus gas will peak soon as well and we need whats left for heating.
Regarding EROI, I agree that for long term sustainability it is very important. However, he appears to be coming mainly from the angle of reducing oil consumption. So as long as 1 barrel of ethanol doesn't require 1 barrel of oil bio fuels may buy us some more time.
To me some form of electric transportation appears to be the best long term solution given the wide choices we have for generating electricity. The problem as ever is that the storage mechanisms just aren't there yet. Plus any transformation to such approaches would take many decades. I am not sure we have this time but maybe bio fuels may help to bridge the gap.
But I disagree with him insofar as he seems to think that massively increased production and use of ethanol will and should be one of these changes. In general his arguments minimize the difficulties with ethanol and maximize the difficulties with alternatives.
As far as I can tell (and Khosla seems to agree), ethanol makes almost no sense except as a replacement for current liquid vehicle fuels. I don't see any reason to believe that it will be easier to multiply ethanol yields/acre by 3, using conversion technologies that don't yet exist at a commercial scale, and farmland that has other uses, than to improve electrical energy storage costs by a factor of 2, which is all that is needed to produce full-electric cars at a reasonable price. Such storage is claimed to already exist (EEStor) but even if it does not now, it probably will within the timeframes being discussed in Khosla's article.
Aside from providing transportation, cars with such storage could be used to buffer the grid to accept a much higher level of solar/wind production than is currently seen as acceptable. And of course the electric vehicles would be significantly more efficient.
Energy yields/acre are much higher for solar PV technologies because of their vastly greater efficiency (at least 6-7% conversion, 15% available in bulk quantities, current concentrating collectors up to 26% [PARC] and projected to get toward 50%) vs. photosynthetic conversion (1-2%). And of course there are other competing solar technologies as well. Unlike growing ethanol crops, none of them need to use large amounts of water or cropland and none leach nutrients from the soil. And of course wind can coexist with normal farm production.
Even if the storage problem proves insoluble, which I doubt, and you had to do a 25% efficient conversion of electricity to hydrogen, you would still be way ahead in terms of overall yield/acre. I just don't see how ethanol can be viable in the long run without the price distortions caused by the current subsidies and ethanol mandates, and I doubt that production could be maintained in the long run because of soil depletion.
Since I believe that electric vehicle technology is both superior and inevitable, I wouldn't much care whether people spend money on building ethanol capacity except for those subsidies, which are pure waste. Khosla says he would like to see them eliminated, but in the meantime his advocacy for ethanol makes that harder rather than easier. Even for applications where electric propulsion is not going to be feasible in the foreseeable future, such as commercial aviation, I doubt ethanol will end up being the best choice--probably better to produce hydrogen and convert it to whatever fuel seems appropriate.
Finally, I do applaud Mr. Khosla for his willingness to discuss his ideas, even if I don't agree with all of them.
Since ethanol production will be clearly physically unable to compete in total volume with gasoline taken from petroleum by enormous factors, and it is substitutable for gasoline, then elementary economics says that the price of ethanol will be as high as the marginal price of gasoline times the energy deficiency factor, i.e. 75%. Subsidies will improve this even more, and Kholsa is probably right that this political BS is going to stay.
So, as Peak Oil hits, the price of ethanol will go up and up and up, and he likes that.
Vinod Kholsa is not interested in solving the energy problem in terms of supplying enough quads, he is interested in making buttloads of money.
If you think about it this way, ethanol farms and plants are the economic equivalent of discovering new oil wells in the US---even at low production (like current US-48 oil wells)---they can be very profitable.
And discovering """oil""", but not enough of it to actually drive down the price, is a great way to get Rich while other people starve.
Except these """oil wells""" will take away food and despoil the soil much more than petroleum wells. We may have populist "bread versus cars" riots against the establishment: utterly poor people priced out of both food and transportation to jobs. I expect shantytowns, riots and police executions of "surplus people".
Another corollary is that with ever higher gasoline/ethanol prices, the motivation for plug-in hybrids and electrification of transportation will still be very desirable.
Toyota and their Nth generation Prius technology will make much more of a real improvement to people's lives than ethanol.
I should try to keep my brain better organized, I've made this argument at times myself (speak of tar sands and the projected prices per barrel).
Yes, definitely. In a constrained-energy market, all of these plans will be big money makers, especially if they don't overproduce and swamp the market.
The legislated usage of ethanol (in the U.S. alone) is double current domestic production. Double.
While globally, ethanol usage is being mandated by many countries -Japan for instance- where there isin't even an ethanol industry to begin with. This means imports and in all likelihood, a global shortage of ethanol irrespective of 2nd gen paths (like the Syntec process) being implemented.
And if Drummers were to heed Westexas' warnings as I do....
Scenario's 2 and 3 are from the rosier projections of where we might be headed, via CERA and the Ethanol Advocates themselves. The scenarios that need to be considered are the ones that will trip us up, not the ones that leave us sitting pretty.
Where would this projection go with No Corn Subsidies and No Trade restrictions, as Mr. Khosla talked about? And then the opposite of that, where frightened economies started acting MORE protective of their homefield industries? What about a 5 year drought? Stock Market Crash? Major Grid Failure?
The vulnerabilities of an energy industry based on agriculture are all the way across the board, subject to Trade, Food, Climate, Commodities, State v. Fed Policies, Oil and Gas availability..
Respectfully,
Bob Fiske
Ethanol and Mr Vinod Khosla - Markets Work
The writer fairly presents both sides, but thinks "some basic economic reasoning" is needed. I especially liked his conclusion:
As long as this is a learning experience for people, I am happy. Discourse that leads to learning is my main objective.
Thats cool ....learning.
Don't worry... be Happy ...
But what a stroke.... when .9999 of the fine people in poverty are thrown over board to ride the wake and are laughing their asses off because the ship has lost its rudder and the smoke is so thick, because the crew is burning candles on the deck, and.... you .....sold the flare guns.
And concrete is not edible either.
DORKS knows this.
Ha, ha.....
Get real...
this is happening now.
Why does TOD discuss X amount of topics>???
When daily the evidence becomes more clear that man & woman can not live as previously entrenched.
Move on.... circle the wagons.... get er done !!!
Use your imagiNATION boy.................
You are a good writer.
yeah... but can he talk?
as always,
think small, think fast..... PEACE
To really get a measure of the technology, shouldn't you have a pilot program? Rather than just buy up the year's corn harvest from ADM, why not plant say 1,000 acres, carefully accounting for all fossil- and bio- energy inputs (including fertilizer / pesticides), and see how much you have at the end of the year? Better yet, run it for 5 years and attempt to be completely independent of all fossil carbon.
I don't see how you can claim to be reducing greenhouse gases otherwise — atmospheric carbon is atmospheric carbon regardless of what you burned or fermented to produce it.
That said, thank you, Mr Khosla, for visiting our little corner of the web.
Clearly, Mr. Khosla has no understanding of EROEI. He seems to be counting free sunlight as energy invested and then somehow relating that to the low EROEI of ethanol and concluding that all is right with the universe.
It's like comparing the efficiency of chlorophyll in making sucrose, to the cost of refined silicon on a commodity exchange or something.
Clearly, to determine whether ethanol is a viable alternative to gasoline, we need a pilot project. And it doesn't need mandates, subsidies, or other forms of support if it's a good idea.
In my opinion, we'll have (involuntary) conservation when shortages start showing up, accompanied by a variety of niche energy products — electric, biofuel, and rail. Eventually people will become accustomed to traveling about less; we here in the Hew Hess of Hay are rather poorly prepared for that, unfortunately.
Energy is such a broad catch-all for many unlike geophysical, chemical and mechanical processes. The confusion prompted Howard Odum to develop the concept of emergy "embodied energy". D.M.Scienceman further clarified Odum's concept by distinguishing both the use of different forms of energy and the process of using up some of those forms.
The emergy concept explicitly states that "while the sum of mass and energy in the universe remain constant forever, distributions of mass and energy in the universe do not remain constant forever" Some energy "you use, you lose."
Emergy does not treat the use of solar energy and natural gas as equal energy inputs.
http://videosift.com/story.php?id=6415
I know it's a crude analogy but let's just say as far as Energy Indepence goes, it's food for thought!
Thxs for your essay--obviously, you put much work in it and are looking for truly rational replies from us TODers. I profoundly agree that Trajectory is vital in determining our path forward. Resources are truly becoming too scarce for us to continue to fire blindly like a Katushka rocket.
It is your money [not mine], you are free to invest in the manner that you believe best maximizes it gain and societal transformation. But if you truly consider trajectory as key: I implore you to use your power as a key topdog to further juice your returns by leveraging societal transformation as much as you can.
I hope you can inform 1,000 billionaires and 1,000 political leaders that a relatively smooth transition is possible if we get started now to best mitigate the tragic forces of polarization and fragmentation from Overshoot & Dieoff. Since I am at the opposite end of the 'influence spectrum'--my emails begging for change go ignored at best, most likely auto-deleted by a cpu's filtering software.
Never underestimate your press visibility and contact network to push for change. Sadly, Richard Rainwater has purposely withdrawn from the scene, I hope you will not do the same, but will leverage your network to cooperatively steer our trajectory onto a course that is fully cognizant of inevitable detritus entropy and the possibilities of bio-solar powerup.
I am assuming you are familiar with Jay Hanson's Thermo-Gene Collision and it's long-run ramifications. Just as a Yellowstone wolfpack is required to optimize their habitat--I believe our leaders must do the same to optimize the coming [or is it already in force?] squeeze thru the Dieoff Bottleneck. Caught between Global Warming and Peakoil are 6.5 billion souls, and counting, that have no idea of what Nature and our genetic inner-nature have in store for us.
Global society is profoundly knee-jerk lizard brain based, we need to move past irrational responses to crisis as best we can. Virtually all upcoming conflicts can be anticipated to a reasonable degree if a worldwide, world-class data transparency and data collection effort commences soon using the best super-computers and simulation software attainable. I feel this effort, combined with all the helpful suggestions here on TOD and elsewhere, presents a possible solution for cooperative world change and trajectory optimization.
Matthew R. Simmons push for full oilfield audits should only be the start of what needs to be collected and analyzed. Every habitat globally needs to be carefully examined for the minimal contraints of Liebig's Law to determine the degree of Overshoot from acquifer depletion, topsoil decline, species loss and migration, pollution, ad infinitum. The extensive simulation of predictive collapse can be used to develop mitigation and transformational strategies to smooth the transition and minimize the inevitable social conflicts. In short, I believe Asimov's Foundation concepts are applicable if rigorously and humanistically applied worldwide. TODer Westexas's strategy of HELP needs to be supported by our global movers & shakers help for the optimization of the paradigm shift.
Predictive collapse and directed decline is merely the process to smooth and optimize the future trajectory--which is key. If the world's movers and shakers could agree to fund this worldwide effort; to exchange some short-term gain for a desire for long-term self-interest; it would be seen worldwide as in the best interest of everyone to encourage cooperation to slow political polarization.
Consider how Mexico's elite's refusal to forthrightly deal with it's internal processes is dividing its society and causing spillover into America. Lack of Nigerian leadership is another example of not preparing it's people for what is coming; they are letting problems fester to result in the worst possible outcome. Zimbabwe, the Israeli-Lebanese conflict,....on and on....the movers and shakers refusal to deal with Malthusian processes on a local and global scale will lead to ever-increasing wars and revolutions for resources.
We can easily expect these feedback forces to dramatically increase upheaval across the planet. Consider the Sinhalese-Tamil Tiger war over control of a mere water sluicegate; this is Liebig's Law at its most base human level. Yeast in a bottle do not choose sides--I hope we can do better than yeast!
Consider the Prudhoe Bay pipeline shutdown and the problems already arising from this oil loss. The Governor is confronted with a dramatic loss in oilfield royalty income and budgetary stresses that can only ripple throughtout Alaskan society polarizing into political division. Even if the oilflow is restored in a timely manner, the inevitable detritus ERoEI decrease over time will induce a 'Nigerian Polarity' in the social construct.
Consider the political difficulty of telling the typical Alaskan consumer not to expect their yearly cash check, and by the way, we have to impose high state income taxes too. A statewide educational program to bring everyone up to maximal Peakoil Awareness will transform the 'consumer' into a 'citizen' mentally-equipped to best deal and mutually cooperate with transitional change. If an Alaskan Foundation is up and running to provide instructive leadership across the entire societal spectrum: every citizen will feel invested in this beneficial effort, and will be dis-inclined to politically oppose it.
This essay merely scratches the surface of what is truly required for Foundation's success. TO VINOD KHOSLA: It requires leadership by you and your ever-growing global network to do more than merely invest in future products and profits--it is nothing short of: "Imagining the Future of Humanity: Reality or Blue-sky Dreaming?"
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
FYI, I was told that Jay read this essay today and was considering writing a response.
THAT'S TERRIFIC! The WWWeb's MAXIMUM-ALPHA returns!
The mere offspring cubs of TLS, AMPOD, RR, AngryChimp, Darwinian, Westexas, AlanfromBigEasy, et al should start scrapping for Beta-status immediately!
MuuuHaaaaHaaa hah, ROFLMAO! Just kidding guys & gals!
Cooperation is key. Jay is not to be trifled with, and justly so.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If Jay makes an appearance I will humbly accept my beta status once again.
But once he is back in retirement the battle for list dominance shall rage on.
To inclusive fitness!!!
P.S. Is the check in the mail for my earlier posting on the idea of computer-controlled cellphone-paging of bus-riders? That's okay--just donate the multi-million dollar profits from it's implementation worldwide to bootstrapping Foundation. =)
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Also, Civilizations come and go and there is nothing special about this one (except maybe that science stars as the godz this TimezUp). This civilization is already in the process of "collapsing", but there will still be at least "pockets of wealth" in the world where some people will continue to use ethanol to power some automobiles.
If you want investors Vinod, stay on wallstreet please. There are enough parasites at the Federal trough the way it is. Thank you.
==="The first principle," said Einstein's fellow physicist, Richard Feynman, "is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool."
There is also the quandary of mining untapped intuitive powers. When hiring, firing and investing, should we plug into our "right brain" premonitions? Or, with bright people so often believing demonstrably dumb things, do we instead need more "left brain" rationality?
Here, I present psychology's assessment of intuition's powers and perils. Consider the importance of intuition to a judge or juror determining the fates of individuals, an investor affecting fortunes or a clinician determining a client's suicidality. Intuitions shape our anxieties, impressions and relationships.
They influence the president's judgments, a gambler's bets and a personnel director's hiring decisions. Our gut level intuitions have helped us all avert--and sometimes enabled--misfortunes.
"Nobody can dictate my behavior," said Diana, Princess of Wales, in her last interview before her fatal accident. "I work through instinct, and instinct is my best counselor."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20021209-000001.html
Good luck ( as Gary Winnick would sing if he could sing, "you gotta know when to fold 'em" - ;)
I don't think anything has changed ...much...yet
I'm going to keep working on becoming a better being.....
for what its worth.... take a deep breath ... hug your children parents ...pets ...self and look around.
There is much to live for.... as for dieing I guess I'll know it when i see it.
Good Night... TODC ... The Oil Drum Community.
as always,
tired,
wigz
Since this may be the last post on this thread, I'll make it quick:
Right now food prices are low, obesity is high, and there are excess staples and cooking oil to be turned into motor fuel.
But as you yourself said, it's "Trajectory" that counts. And the trajectory is to shift the source of motor fuel from Middle East oilfields to the crops in the fields.
What happens when grain prices double or triple in South Asia? What happens when buyers buy up entire crops of cooking oil for biodiesel in places like Indonesia? What happens to people living on the economic margin?
Right now, when I drive I'm causing some pollution, some greenhouse emissions, and enriching corrupt autocrats. Soon, when I drive I'll be literally taking the food out of the mouths of babes in Bangladesh.
How far will you go on this trajectory?
How many starving people is acceptable and how many is the red line which you will not cross?
The "gates" to entry were amusing. In particular:
"[Stop reading if you] want to revolutionize the world with rebellion"...I don't just want to. I am to a very small degree. Gandhi said, "be the change you want to see in the world."
"[Stop reading if you want to] dramatically change behavior like getting Americans to drive less"....I REALLY would love to change this behavior!
I continued to read the entire article. I never was very good at taking commands, must be my rebellious nature. ; )
I'll leave EROI aside as I don't think it's the BIG issue. (Stop reading if you) don't want to see another paradigm-similar to some views already expressed by TODrs.
Our perspectives and therefore objectives differ. Mr. Khosla sees a Trajectory of what is most likely to occur in his view (short term), and what Wall Street will support based on the current political climate and public apathy for the planet. I see a perceived "non negotiable lifestyle" on a Trajectory that is being negotiated for us. I also see a possible though less likely (short term) and maybe more difficult, yet optimal direction of what the earth will support / sustain via the HELP model (as per Westexas I believe). HELP = Humanize, Economize, Localize, Produce.
The latter may look less likely right now, but who knows? I don't. Less likely things have happened. It's my opinion that at some point this will come about one way or the other regardless of what we do. The "Humanize" component is the only one really in question. The others (ELP) will either be done by us or to us.
So, if I were betting with only my wallet I'd consider the ethanol possibilities more seriously, at least short term, that is until we have more severe droughts, topsoil erosion, and lack of and/or sporadic oil supply and not the least lack of food.
Voting with my conscience and actions I have to support HELP and sustainable energy sources.
Best,
Brad
Localize the effort by federal statute aimed at county level governments. Determine historic footprint & track geometry using Thomas Bros. Maps of mid-twentieth century. Ascertain locations for victuals warehousing with good truck/rail interface. Probably see military bases, manufacturing plants, some shopping malls may situate to fit with rail branchline extension & rehab.
Expand fleet of perishibles railcars- interim solution will require sizeable number of refrigerated truck bodies fitted to flatcars, with eventual thermos design equipment & ice plants enroute as previous, 1960's & earlier.
The railway expansion scenario is incremental and can be accelerated or extended as events dictate. The access to rail connection is a requisite for any town or village as the country enters the Oil Interregnum. The efforts to assure a private vehicle for everyone at puberty can continue; again, events will rule- automobiles will dominate where there are good roads remaining and adequate propulsion. An equilibrium will eventually take hold, with larger jitney type highway vehicles, a carpooling methodology...
MTBE, easy to remember, new meaning: More Trains Before Extinction! Start with the Thomas Bros Maps, see ASPO article 374, help planners get rail savvy.
Electricity generation from several sources (Wind, Tidal), but a major one, Nuclear, it is a mature technology and non-carbon and scales quickly. It can also produce Hydrogen as a chemical feedstock.
I don't subscribe to the environmentalists view on Uranium supply and Thorium (x3 abundance 100% consumable) is another potential development. I do not see any show stopping technical, safety or waste problems.
As a hedge against early 'Peak Oil'
Investment in public transport (Electric - Proven technology). (I am with Alan from the Big Easy with regard to Rail).
In the US switch to smaller (compact and sub-compact) cars and scooters etc, as used in Europe/Japan.
No trajectory for electric cars ?
Hybrids like the Prius, Plug in Hybrids (Prius + Plug) Seriel Hybrids (Diesel-Electric like the trains), with electric motors in the wheels, Battery/Ultracapacitor/Fuel Cell cars.
The Electricity distribution system is already in place.
I am still sceptical of even Cellulose Biofuels (many of the reasons given above).
Scarcity would drive a change of behaviour in Peak Oil scenario, major changes in behaviour would be harder to achieve with the more abstract Global Warming, especially in the short term.
I am not an engineer, so try not to laugh too hard if this idea is totally unworkable from a technical 'energy storage' viewpoint. But please consider....
Since we will have several billion vehicles going nowhere without fuel soon: is it possible to convert this huge mass to several septillion ball bearings? Then any future non-peak biosolar power from wind, sun, tides, etc could gradually, over time, lift this mass with conveyors to a lofty height to imbue it with a lot of potential kinetic energy to be later used during peak hours, or when the biosolar sources are insufficient in a particular locale. In short, using the height reduction of ball bearings for generation purposes instead of the height reduction of water behind a dam to create electricity.
Imagine, if you will, approx. 100 billion marble-sized 'steelies' rolling out of a huge dam sluicegate on a mountaintop-- wouldn't they basically flow like water? In sufficient quantity: wouldn't the 'steelies' power a series of 'in-flow water wheels' that could be connected to electric dynamos? Additionally, from their movement-- wouldn't they generate huge amounts of frictional static electricity and magnetic-flux hysteresis energy [correct scientific term?] that could be somehow electrically harvested too?
I picture the sluicepath as having three drives to generate electricity: the water wheels on the bottom for the kinetic force collection, suspended coils above to harvest the changing magnetic flux lines, and in-flow metal rails to harvest the bi-polar charging forces from static electricity. Imagine this sluice gate descending into the Grand Canyon or some other suitably dry canyon to minimize the rusting of the 'steelies. Could GIGAWATT/hours be generated this way?
If this is technically possible for our postPeak future, then I could imagine certain heavy industry processes that require a huge and reliable electrical flow to be the primary users of this process. Let's say we need to smelt some metal using the Bessemer Electric Sytem-- we can't risk this process having an electrical blackout halfway-- could the deafening thunder of countless rolling 'steelies' be the postPeak answer? The energy could be sent over the grid to whichever locale can best justify its use.
OK, all you electro-mechanical engineers--you are now free to split your sides laughing hilariously-- or does my SWAG have any merit? I retain any legal patent rights, but I am willing to share with investors--Vinod, do you want in for a minimal venture capital risk of $1 million to get this idea off the ground?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Please, please do not promote ethanol. If you take off your sales man hat and examine the papers by Pimentel and Patzek, you can see that ethanol is really just a method of converting coal and natural gas into liquid fuel. But this conversion has a huge cost to the topsoil. And the low EROEI means that the global warming benefits are small (the closer to an EROEI of 1 the more of the energy comes from outside of the plant material).
"If you are one of the people who think modern civilization is on the verge of collapse, stop reading."
But what you are proposing is a blue print for creating that collapse. Our society can survive peak oil (it won't be comfortable) but we cannot survive the destruction of our agricultural base via mining the topsoil.
In Jared Diamond's book "Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed" he documents society after society that lost its agricultural base and perished. Some destroyed their arable land through ignorance or poor planning. Some suffered environmental shifts. But the outcome is clear, when the agricultural base fails, so does the society. Please, help our society avoid the choice of failure. Please don't mine the topsoil for automotive fuel.
Global Warming
Peak Oil has already put a stop to increased carbon emissions from petroleum. Production is flat now and bound to decrease. The crude is getting heavier and that means that gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel will only get more expensive.
The place to stop further emissions growth is stopping coal. Wind, wave and solar are the best overall solutions, but as you point out, all are intermittent. We need engineering solutions to efficient energy storage. I am sure your investment team can think up a few, but here are some ideas to spark further discussion on the board:
A distributed network of small storage cells might be far more effective than huge pumped reservoirs. Lester Brown has already suggested using plug in hybrids as an energy store ("Plan B"). Smart electric meters than can turn off part of a houses power supply (the part feeing the storage cell) would allow a power company to implement "rolling blackouts" that the consumer never notices.
Energy storage devices would need to negotiate with the power company so that storage pools that are low are allowed to charge. Aside from plug in hybrids, the company Ice Energy sells a product that stores energy as blocks of ice for efficient off peak cooling. Perhaps a sky scraper sized version could be produced? Another system might have a huge thermal mass that can store a few days worth of building heat (during winter). Or city lights that don't switch on if they are told to conserve. These are just quick ideas of where a little distributed intelligence goes a long way.
my hat is off to you
the best I could come up with is
driving our topsoil is suicide
I just don't write well,but man you should see my carrots
thanks again
But one thing that Khosla raises that nobody else seems to have commented on yet is the ability to switch to high compression-ratio engines that can run off pure ethanol more efficiently:
If the general argument here is that we want to take an evolutionary path, going from flex-fuel engines to pure-ethanol engines (which won't run well on E-85 as far as I can tell) seems a major non-evolutionary step. Why is establishing an infrastructure for pure ethanol engines any different from establishing an infrastructure for hydrogen, or battery-charging, or whatever other major non-evolutionary infrastructure-dependent step is envisioned?
If major infrastructure investment is not going to be there for a factor-of-4 or more improvement in costs (electric cars), why would it be there for a mere 20-30% improvement in ICE efficiency?
Or can these new engines actually run acceptably with standard gasoline too?
http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id21.html
BTW there's an interesting secondary benefit to that approach. One of the reasons the EROEI is so bad for corn ethanol is that it must be distilled to very high purity for blending with gasoline. But you'll notice this "home brew" approach doesn't need to achive that level of purity, as a modified engine can run fine on 180-proof moonshine. I haven't seen a scientific evaluation of the EROEI of that approach, though.
This article mentions the possible higher-efficiency engine design that I think VK's on about:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/07/delphi_developi.html
Keeping the ICE as the basis for transforming liquid fuel energy in a vehicle may be barking up the wrong tree:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3539
Imagine a "hybrid" battery/liquid vehicle that is driven entirely by electric motors. The vehicle has enough battery or ultra-capacitor storage to run for 50 miles on a charge, at city speeds of 45 mph. The vehicle burns a liquid fuel for longer/faster trips, recharging the battery, and otherwise has all the other hybrid technologies e.g. regenerative braking etc. However, the vehicle "burns" the liquid fuel using a technology such as one of the ones mentioned in that article, instead of in an ICE.
When Khosla finally 'gets' EROEI, a shiver will go down his spine like Death whispered something nasty in his ear at bedtime.
Until then, sweet blue-sky dreams, Vinod.
Ever Asebius.
You maintain that the
automobile is essential,
that the auto industry must
be co-opted and the existing
hydrocarbon liquid fuel
distribution system must be
subverted to carbohydrate
liquid fuel. You will not
discuss larger issues, such
as the first assertion,
concerning the primacy of the
automobile.
Given that assertion, your
position is not, a priori,
implausible. Yet that very
first axiom snares us in a
devil's bargain.
But since we may not discuss
larger issues, let me speak
then to some smaller things
that perhaps fall beneath
notice. I have, this summer,
been tending a small garden,
now brutalized by heat. In
a tiny way I am utilizing
here some of NPP (Net Primary
Productivity) of the planet.
Six billion of me use up 40%
of NPP, of all the green and
growing things on this only
world we have. You now
propose to use perhaps 20%
more.
My little garden depends on
a complex web of insects and
water and mud and creatures
yet unnamed in every spoonful
of earth.I see it turn sun,
air and water into greenery.
I know that as I harvest the
fruit, that I shall have to
replenish the soil, and that
any hope of reaping magical
yeild of Miscanthus with no
loss to the ground beneath
is mirage.
Mr. Khosla, have you seen
a patch of virgin prairie
amidst farmland ? Have you
then ever wondered why the
prairie was a good fifteen
to twenty five feet higher ?
But more, I know that the
plants that I tend today
will not be the plants that
I might grow a decade hence,
for the climate is changing,
and with it, birds, insects
and all manner of other life.
So.
Where will you be, Mr. Khosla,
in ten years or so, when the
crops you tout today, wither
and die in climes outside
their design or your command?
Mr. Khosla, may I ask if you
have a garden that you attend
yourself ? It is of course,
not the 'most efficient use
of your time'. But, you may
find some pleasure, and, who
knows, you might even learn
something.
But enough. The facts are
plain. If we accept primacy
of the automobile, if we
insist upon dragging a couple
thousand pounds wherever we
go, we have no way out. The
coal-to-liquids process you
decry will be used in fullest
and bitterest measure. 550ppm
CO2 will be wistful memory in
the rear view mirror. Our
names will be a hissing and a
curse in the mouths of our
children.
You are not an old man. You
will live to see the results
of your work. I wish you well.
As for me, I must cultivate
my garden.
sidd
And all we talk about is fuel.
Secondly I must acknowledge the efforts of Mr. Khosla in trying to envision a future beyond oil, and especially by investing in several fields of research with money that he'll probably not see again. I think now that Mr. Khosla is not ill intended or serving vested interests, he's just a wrongly informed, wrongly advised person.
Some pearls:
So your counting on the rest of the world to offer you those resources.
LOL!
Great! You know that story: mail me 10€ and I'll mail you back 7€ ?
LOL! Comparing an energy vector with an energy source!
You can take it at our peril, don't count on me though!
LOL! What is mess is going in your head Mr. Khosla!
Unbelievable! How can someone write things like these?!?!? "Apples to apples"? You are comparing the efficiency of turning an energy source into a vector with the EROEI of another energy source! I've never seen something like this.
Well, not all is bad:
I agree. The LED research will probably have some good results too.
Mr Khosla fails to see the eminence of Peak Oil, and most strategies he proposes are mid/long term, in the hope that the financial system will work the same way till then.
Mr Khosla doesn't understand what EROEI is or its importance. It would be a good thing that he could study it like he probably did on alternatives to oil (although mislead)
All in all this is pretty much a business as usual post.
I don't understand why so many people insist that Khosla is treating ethanol as an energy source. It is clear to me from these statements that he is treating as an energy carrier with a better efficiency than petroleum -> gasoline.
And this insistance that he is not doing an apples to apples camparison. The way ethanol is done now the difference between the efficincy and EROEI is only 10 - 15 % The difference between the two is the amount of energy used to get the fossil fuels used out of the ground and process them. This is included in the USDA studies he got his numbers from.
Ethanol as it is done now combines liquid fuels with non-liquid fuels and some solar energy, hence the EROEI greater than 1:1, stretching the liquid fuels similarly to the way a "200 mpg" plug in hybrid combines gasoline and electricity to stretch the gasoline.
If you combined the two, put ethanol in a plug-in hybrid: you could be using 1 gallon of gasoline plus other non liquid fuels to produce the equivalent of 5 gallons of gasoline, if used in a 200 mpg plug in hybrid, someone could drive 1000 miles off the original 1 gallon of gasoline.
Now this only helps with a liquid fuel shortage, which is how I see peak oil. If peak oil=peak energy then the EROEI is the most important thing. In that case ethanol as it is done now doesn't help at all.
If he isn't he should be, that's what it is. Besides Khosla intentions are thowards an oil free motor-industry.
Peak Oil will be an Energy Peak, at least a local one. I hope it won't be the definite one.
Electric drive is 2:1 more efficient (well-to-wheel) and at least 3:1 less polluting than ICE (internal combustion engine) based platform. This efficiency can be further boosted by ultra light yet safe car platform such as the german Loremo or VW 1l car where you are consuming in the former case only 70Wh/km which is roughly 300mpg. Such a low consumption is also possible to be partly or fully recharged by affordable home appliance renewables be it small solar, wind, hydro, biomass.
Also, the beauty of electric drive is that you don't need expensive infrustructure since the best model is to recharge over night to utilize the off peak grid power on higher efficiency level. The range of contemporary battery technology in the consumer market (complete EV bellow 20k EUR) is cca 100-200km with battery operational cost around 0.04EUR/km incl. charging. Therefore the overall cost of operation&ownership is also lower or competetive with ICEs.
The technical aspects of electric propulsion are ready at least since mid 90s. You basically take a platform "glider" and install already perfected/manuf. electric propulsion components such as low/high voltage inverters, battery management system and battery pack, electric motor etc.
The only brake or make issue is price and comfort. From the PO perspective the price of gasoline/diesel will only rise. The comfort issue is mostly psychological one namely that you have "limited range" if you don't opportunity/fast charge during the day. Most of the commuters don't need more than 50-100miles daily..
Warning: this is very much disruptive technology since the traditional automanuf. can't make this turnaround without writing off giant sunken cost in their obsolete ICE based manuf. infrustructure. The japanese approach is to make a gradual transition via hybrids and plug-in hybrids. Both European and US auto industry are not and will be not be part of this model at least in the midterm. For instance by 2010 Toyota will produce 1.000.000 hybrids and VW no more than 10.000 copies yearly.
Efficiencywise the most sense makes only electric assisted bicycle which with modern battery technology can serve most of the year.
Also, don't forget the public transportation be it rail, light rail, trolley bus etc.
I'm afraid Mr. Koshla is pushing this biofuel plan only for some strange political and economing reasons. It seems to me his basic motivation is how to milk the current system as long as possible before full PO effects kick in and not interested so much in improving the system for the longrun.
--
The european combined driving cycle for Loremo is cca 5.5kWh/100km on the wheels at 90@km/h. This value will be due to efficiency losses in the electric drive train somewhere around 6.5-7kWh/100km in plug to wheel calculation.
Loremo has got cx=.2 and weight 450kg, low roll resistance tires. Another platform like any other ultra light and aerodynamic car such as kitcars might be close to this performance.
For comparison small (eurosized) car ICE to EV converison such as based on PSA (Peugot/Citroen) has plug to wheel efficiency around 170-200Wh/km.
There are issues such as battery life, cost, range, and embodied energy that need to be adequately addressed before it makes sense to commit to a predominantly electric transportation system but at least these issues seem addressable and will be resolved earlier if we seriously crank up the research, development, and production dollars available.
Yes, it is true that ethanol is eminently feasible politically, primarily because it promises all gain and no pain with profits and smiles for all, especially our politicians. But this doesn't mean that it is worth doing. Just because something is doable politically doesn't mean we should waste our resoures doing it.
I take your very valid point about how we get from "here" to "there", and that the best way of doing that is to make a path that is economically worthwhile for people.
I think the problem that most readers on this site have is whether the "there" of ethanol, or biofuels in general, is really a good idea. Many here would argue that:
- Ethanol doesn't really help, from an energy balance point of view since most of its required energy inputs are in the form of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, the very things we're trying to replace. Peak oil is not just an oil problem, it's a gas problem as well. Increasing gas (fertiliser) prices will screw with your economic and yield projections, so your dismissal of energy ratio arguments is a little premature.
- It isn't clear that the cost of biofuels will be substantially cheaper than fossil fuels or will ever become so (trajectory problem), precisely because the fossil energy ratio is fairly close to 1.
- Biofuels won't scale, ie the additional biomass harvesting for fuel on top of what we already do for food is not only not sustainable but probably not even possible. Cellulose, you see, does not come for free. It costs in terms of soil nutrients, soil structure, energy and water. Your comments about new biotech and yields seem awfully hopeful (depends on a lot of stuff that isn't here yet), for such a critical matter.
An alternative I'm in favour of is to offer alternative technologies like the air car - see http://www.theaircar.com. This thing can run off existing fuels or biofuels but uses substantially less fuel and can alternately run purely on stored compressed air for short trips. This will become substantially cheaper than current technology as the price of liquid fuels moves inexorably upwards. The trajectory is there - the market will take care of adoption of the technology as the price differential widens. All implementation takes is to convince your auto manufacturers that it's a good idea and for them to buy a license and start producing. The only other thing you may need to address is regulatory issues (design rules etc.).Big step changes will happen if the economic benefit is large enough - hybrid vehicles are a pretty big step change, and as a business I understand they are doing very well indeed. If that is not a big step change in automotive power plant, I don't know what is. And it's a fantastic incremental step towards using power plants other than ICE's.
I believe your heat is in the right place. I wish you good luck and wisdom.
Cheers.
First of all, thank you for addressing this forum and for sharing with us part of your vision for a post-petroleum future. While we may disagree as to what that future might look like, it is a positive development to see people of influence, such as yourself, acknowledge that we face huge challenges in the years ahead. Many citizens of this country haven't taken that step and we are getting little help from those who profess to be the country's leaders. So, thank you for taking this on.
Regarding the technical details of your presentation, I would like to say this:
Monocultures, in general, are problematic in that they require a high degree of management (read "inputs"), are ecologically unsound, and they tend to deplete the soil of nutrients. You refer to a "cocktail" (please "lose" that word by the way -- there are a number of less trendy-sounding agronomic terms available such as "polyculture," "multiple cropping," "intercropping," etc.) -- presumably meaning a mix of crops. But your emphasis in this paper was on Miscanthus, a non-native species that will, in practice, prove to be a lot less ideal than you make it out to be.
You are on the right track with a perennial grass system. Tillage leads to oxidation of soil carbon compounds and exposes the soil to wind and rainfall erosion. Any sustainable system must address erosion concerns. While "no-till" corn has reduced the need for tillage, the model still requires a "clean field" (i.e. bare soil) over a substantial portion of the field. Only a system which provides a continuous grass cover could purport to be sustainable.
Secondly, when you introduce multiple species species into a system, you inevitably get inter-species competition and that competition will likely reduce the maximum possible yield obtainable in a highly-managed (unsustainable) monoculture. But, over the long haul, a polyculture should prove more stable and thus yield more reliably. As Drolsom and Smith observed:
Given these considerations, I would encourage you not to focus on a "silver bullet" species like Miscanthus and instead, consider that there are many factors to consider in deciding upon the best grasses for any system. Emphasizing short-term yields isn't likely to lead to anything but mining of the soil.Thirdly, I would encourage you to consider that grazers -- cattle, buffalo, elk, etc. -- should be an integral part of any sustainable system. Grazers could be rotated in periodically to graze and manure the field. You simply cannot hope to remove tons of biomass per acre, year after year, from any field without reducing soil fertility. Again, you will sacrifice some short-term yield, but the animals could be harvested for protein. Grazers must be part of any sustainable grass system.
Many of us dislike the current Archer-Daniels-Midland agricultural model. It is highly reliant upon petroleum, it is an ecological disaster, and, it is undemocratic (it concentrates production in the hands of a few big players). The problems that have plaqued farmers, that have placed a heavy burden on our environment and that have reduced us to a population of soylent green consuming drones are all part and parcel of the same corporate agricultural model. Unfortunately, as I read your proposal, I hear more of the same.
Further, I would agree with many of the comments here that your proposal seems to seek to extend our wasteful car-centered culture without addressing the sheer destructiveness of that culture and the fact that it is, simply, unsustainable. My wife just returned from a family visit to the Midwest and one of her first comments to me was "there are no believers out there" -- meaning that none of her family were in the least aware or concerned that we were rapidly depleting our energy base and possibly cooking the planet in the process. Your proposal, with it's "free lunch" tone only feeds the notion that we can continue to live as we have been living and not bother to stop and assess the costs of this living arrangement. The American Dream needs to die and it needs to be stamped out before it spreads around the world. The planet can't sustain 4% of the population consuming %25 of the resources. It will never sustain 100% of the population trying to live that way.
But I wish you luck. I appreciate what you are saying about "trajectory" and if ethanol helps us to transition away from a petroleum-based economy to something that more closely approaches sustainability, that will be a good thing. I think the bottom line is that people such as yourself have the money and the motivation to study these problems. Until we thoroughly study them, we will not really know what the possibilities are. In the end, ethanol may prove to be a bust, but I applaud you for taking the risks necessary to further our knowledge.
TALE OF THE TAPE:
BILLIOLAIRE #1
Richard Rainwater: networth of $2 billion plus. Made massive amounts of money by investing in oil, gas, and economic collapse type situations.
Believes economy is going to collapse, reads the ultimate peak oil doom site (LATOC) on a regular basis.
Lives in off-the-grid doomer retreat in undisclosed location. Is ex-drag racer and physical fitness fanatic.
(Source: Fortune Magazine December 13, 2005, Business Week Novermber 30, 1998)
BILLIIONAIRE #2
Vinond Khosla: net worth of $700 million. Made massive amounts of money by investing in technology companies such as Sun Microsystems.
Believes ethanol can help our situation, advises people who think society is going to collapse to bugger off.
Lives in Menlo Park.
(Source: Forbes 2003)
MY PREDICTION:
Rainwater in 2 rounds.
RATIONALE FOR PREDICTION:
Has three times the net worth plus a history of accurately predicting, reacting, and profiting from bad times and has "connections."
http://www.theoildrum.com/user/Jay%20Hanson
Jay is on his way back to Hawaii right now, and isn't sure he wants to come out of retirement. But it would be nice to hear Jay's views now and then.
As Bob said, Jay is not to be trifled with. Evolutionaryly speaking, it would be unwise for me to risk whatever status I have by attempting to challenge Jay for true alpha doom status. I think it would take a gang of betas to take him down but we don't have the organizational capacity to do that just yet.
As is well known here, my preferred options are, broadly, to electrify our freight railroads (and put back double tracks removed decades ago in order to increase speed and capacity) and build as much Urban Rail as cities and regions want with dramatically increased federal funding (raid the highways is one source) . A semi-high speed (max 110 mph pax, 100 mph freight) rail system between selected major cities is a Phase II option that I support.
Let me compare some differences in "trajectory" as I understand the term.
My proposals require no new technology, many of the specific sites and routes have been studied in detail, so they can be implemented as quickly as the civil works can be built. The technology, nearly universally used in Europe, Japan and elsewhere (India is electrifying it's railroads) is quite mature and available off large and detailed shelves.
His proposals require significant technological innovation, with all the lengthy delay involved in selecting the best options, debugging, optimizing and after that the issues of scaling and sourcing nearby raw materials. Easily more than a decade before a significant impact. If ethanol from cellulose fails, we will have spent valuable time, resources and HOPE on a dead end with corn ethanol.
There is a demonstrated desire by a large number of cities for more Urban Rail; at least $100 billion. The "market" is primed, hungry and frustrated with federal delays. Many would want to build as much as possible ASAP with proper funding ! (The Interstate highway system was built with 90% federal funding; Bush cut new Urban Rail federal funding from 80% to 50%).
Washington DC went from 4% commuting by bus in 1970 to over 40% today (a new ridership record every month), kept the feds from moving most of their offices out of DC and brought back middle class neighborhoods. The per capita gasoline use did not grow as it did in other cities due to changes in Urban form. And Washington Metro wants to build a 24 mile extension to Tyson's Corner and Dulles Airport but is struggling to find 50% local matching and meeting other new benchmarks from the Bush Administration.
Miami has a 1/2 cent sales tax in place to do exactly the same thing as DC. Build 103 miles of elevated "subway" with a station within 3 miles for 90% of the population, and within 2 miles for half of the population. It will take 25 years to build with current federal funding but will transform Miami when completed.
Denver and Salt Lake City are comparables as well. Many other cities also have excellent, but unfunded plans.
I ABSOLUTELY reject the assumption that Americans will do not less driving if given a better option, with DC as a clear example. Portland is another. New Orleans, pre-Katrina, was in a statistical tie with New York City for fewest miles driven by residents. Our superior Urban form allowed this to happen with minimal congestion in the central city (5 minute "rush hour" in the CBD).
Personally, I stumbled into the walkable "Old Urbanism" city that I live in. As I integrated into the neighborhood, my fuel use dropped to 6 gallons/month as my quality of life improved substantially.
We need to build the carrot ! The stick of Peak Oil will be large and brutal enough to force change regardless. But there needs to be a better quality alternative for people to escape to !
Russia and India are actively electrifying their railroads. Japan and Western Europe (except UK) have already largely done so. US railroads have looked seriously at electrification several times in the past, but (supposedly) the burden of property taxes on the additional infrastructure weighed against electrification.
The "other reason" may be the duopoly that North American railroads enjoy, where few areas have more than two large railroads to chose from. If they can both pass fuel charges on to the customers; why electrify ?
Sooner or later, US railroads will electrify; but sooner is FAR better !
Mr. Khosla's proposals will not have any indirect savings, there is a VERY minimal demand for ethanol per se, just 1:1 substitution (after EROEI). I question if we can build ethanol plants fast enough to keep up with the sprawl. Ethanol, even if it works, will just enable more sprawl, more farmland consumed and let US per capita energy use spiral upwards for a generation till a harder crash results. That is the trajectory of ethanol.
The Prop 87 monies could be spent to quickly build (w/o federal funding or minimal fed funding) the LA "Subway to the Sea", the "Interconnection" link between Blue & Gold Lines, BART extension to San Jose, eBart, a north spur and an Eastern extension in San Diego, and many more worthwhile projects beyond that. All highly desirable and with fuel savings that will grow with time.
The impact of these combined options raise them above a "silver BB" and to the "silver .22" level. Still not enough, but a major step in the right direction.
My trajectory leads to 10% less US oil use in ten to twelve years (while cellulose ethanol will be be struggling to make a major impact), roughly 20 to 1 gains in energy efficiency (1 BTU/joule of electricity for 20 BTUs/joule of oil) with an improved quality of life and two steps closer to sustainability. Scalable with eager customers (both for Urban Rail and freight RRs). And a strategic asset of a non-oil transportation backbone for intercity and in many major cities would be VERY useful if, say, the Islamic Republic of Arabia comes to pass. Electric rail can be quickly scaled up in an emergency; one cannot suddenly increase ethanol output by 50% to 100% in an emergency.
Mr. Kholsa's trajectory will lead to "more of same" and, at best, a crisis delayed for a generation.
I appreciate his efforts in writing this essay and have tried to respond in kind. I hope that he will broaden his concepts of what is possible and devote his efforts to profound changes and not uncertain palatives.
My perception is that yours and Mr. Khosla's ideas are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Why pose the issue in "either this" or "that" but not both?
Maybe your handfull of silver BBs is bigger than Khosla's, but if his premises are correct, his conclusions are sound.
As stated way above, I think we'll know in two or perhaps three years whether or not his assumptions are correct. I do recognize that your premises are much more solid than his, however. Indeed, that is what I like most about your proposals: Nothing pie in the sky, everything good conservative tried and true technology.
Below is a popular press take on a recent survey done by DC Metro. (I looked for direct link to original study and did not find it). The macro view of trends in gasoline consumption in the DC area support this poll.
Mr. Kholsa is a proponent and supporter of "what is" in the US; I am a supporter of "what can be" in the US (and what is in EU & Japan and what was in the US, so we know that it can work). A non-oil transportation system as an alternative.
I think the article below supports my position that Americans will change their transportation habits. Add the forces of Peak Oil and more streetcars feeding DC Metro (I have helped with the Anacostia Line plans in DC) and the %'s quoted in the article will rise significantly !
Alan
Mike Rupert, The Examiner
Aug 8, 2006 5:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Nearly 1 in 3 residents who live or work within a half-mile of a Metro station use the rail system daily, according to a new study that is likely to provide more fuel to efforts to develop around the region's 86 stations.
The study, released by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, also showed that more than half of residents who live and or work within one-quarter mile also choose public transportation over their cars.
Metro officials surveyed 1,950 people who lived, worked or visited other businesses within a half-mile of 13 rail stations.
In 1989, just 18 percent of those who worked near a station reported using the subway to get to work. And while the numbers are less dramatic for those who live near a station, which jumped from 45 percent in 1989 to 54 percent this year, the volume of customers has increased significantly. Ridership has jumped 43 percent since 1990, officials said, with the addition of just two new stations.
Nat Bottigheimer, Metro planning director, said when Metro or other transit services provide quality access to transit, the system appears to be working well.
Metro Interim General Manager Dan Tangherlini said with the recent ridership increases and several new large developments planned around stations in Virginia, Maryland and the District, Metro is finally fulfilling a promise its supporters made 30 years ago.
â€oeAt the time it was considered an extravagance by critics, Tangherlini said. Now it's becoming a necessity and we are just now beginning to see the full potential of what Metro can do for this region.
Tangherlini called the trend an "evolution" and said the transit agency needs to harness the momentum.
mrupert@...
Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/a-207389~Study_says_transit_friendly_development_is_working.html
I hope he is right about corn ethanol being mainly a transitional step to cellulosic, because only cellulosic might get a much better EROEI and yield than corn. Furthermore, done in the right way, cellulosic feedstocks have the potential to actually reduce erosion and dependence on fossil fuel derived fertilizers. They might actually help to preserve our soils.
Even so, I doubt if it will replace more than 30% of our oil dependence. Still, 30% is nothing to sneeze at, considering that cellulosic production will generate only 10 to 20% of CO2 emissions compared to oil. Does anyone around here think that global warming is not a big problem?
And with the knowledge that comes with experience, we may do better than 30%. But I will agree, that leaves plenty of room for conservation efforts, which are arguably even more essential than devoloping cellulosic ethanol.
Electric cars are probably the long term solution. But I like VK's idea that hybrids offer a nice trajectory to that solution.
Now, whether we can do this in the "right" way, or even whether we have enough time in not really the issue. We are human beings, and we should behave as if our species is worthy of survival.
The ethanol trajectory has been firmly established via fermentation of corn. Modernization and best practices will continue as cogen ethanol refineries leads to the implementation of 2nd gen ethanol production paths, leads to 3rd gen and so on.
DECs such as Switchgrass and Miscanthus can be grown almost anywhere on the continent and in rotation (this is key) of existing cash crops - think winter wheat but to the benefit of the soil. There's no need to raise the spector of 'monocrops' especially when you consider that the North American plains used to be switchgrass.
Meanwhile... according to the Brazilian Association of Agricultural Engineers, sugarcane features one of the lowest levels of soil erosion in the Americas and one of the best soil preservation levels in the world. Sugarcane can be grown in FL, LA, TX, CA and processed into ethanol using cogen facilities similar to those established in Brazil where surplus electricity is sold into the grid.
The Syntec process -a 2nd gen technology- will use syngas derived from virtually any carbonaceous material. That's landfill gas, natural gas, biogas, wood waste, agricultural waste and countless other feedstocks including coal. A limitless supply.
What I'm trying to say, is that for those of us who work in this industry, it is not hard to envision 1000s of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation ethanol production centers operating throughout North America - a moot point however without proper Funding, Legislation and Prioritization.
Which brings me back to the oreo cookie demostration posted above where one notes that current FLP rests figuratively on less than half of one oreo.
I think many people find this issue puzzling. We are led to believe that cellulosic ethanol will be dirt cheap to produce, that the energy balance will be great, the returns fantastic, etc. And oh, by the way, could we get some funding and legislation to spur us along?
I think there is a big disconnect as to where the technology actually is today, and where proponents claim the technology is today.
A loaded question: What do Switchgrass or Miscanthus do for the soil?
Wrong. Native prairie systems were much more diverse and included such species as big-bluestem, little bluestem, cord grass, milkweed, etc. Nature abhors monocultures. It's only corporate types with $$$ in their eyes that love them.
Perhaps a case of the lesser of evils: "The Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) was created in the 1940s when half of the 1.6 million ha Everglades ecoregion was drained for agricultural and urban development. Of the EAA's resulting 700,000 ha, 500,000 ha is planted to sugarcane. Soil subsidence caused by oxidization of soil organic matter directly threatens the sustainability of sugarcane production.
Folks with haybines stop by my front acreage of orchard grass and fescue and ask it I want them to 'clean that field up for me'. FOR FREE,they say.!!
I reply, "Why don't I just take $500.00 out of my billfold and throw it at your feet instead?"
They realize all too well the cost of replenishing what was removed. In the case of hay/forage it is very subtantial.
You cut hay off a field for a few years without replacing the N,P and K and you end up with a very bad stand of weeds , thistles, vines and johnson grass. There is the lime requirements..and at what? $32/ton? and sometimes 2-4 tons/ acre required.
Monsanto and Roundup become part of your lexicon next when the friendly weeds come take visit your fields. Round up is quite costly as well,,very much so, not to mention the spray coupe required to apply it.
Grassland management is not that easy. BTW there are NO 'cattlemen'. They are really 'grass farmers' who use bovines to carry it to market.
TANSTAAFL ..remember that hoary old admonition?
But are you trying to tell us that switchgrass and the other will implant nutrients into the soil despite harvesting it as well? Come on!.
I only know of several varieties of vetch that can come close to that and they are a bitch to deal with, especially hairy vetch(which our forefathers used) and still grows on my land when I let it.
We cannot trust the agriculture industry to give us the straight scoop on these matters because they are not farmers, they are miners, who are addicted to the magic of energy intensive chemical inputs. Mining our prairie and forest lands for cellulosic ethanol or any other fuel is a fool's mission.
No - Ethanol is not considered a possibilty only because it starts with energy intensive agriculture; Syntec is looking at capturing landfil gas and turning it into ethanol.
No - Mining our resource base for cellulosic ethanol is emphatically not a fool's mission and I'll give you but one tiny example: The millions of tons of timber that must be harvested to preclude forest fires each year can and should be turned into renewable transportation fuels.
It looks like too many commenters stopped reading past his EROEI statement and missed the diversity of energy options he is investing in. A stock broker I once knew said that 80% of the companies he invested in never paid off. It was that other 20% that made millions for him. There was no way to tell which ones were winners in advance. Venture capitalists invest in companies before they go public in the hope that they are rewarded when the IPO comes about. 4 out of 5 times there is no IPO. Which of the many BTL approaches will be the big winner. God only knows and He is keeping quiet about it.
I would think that the major process energy input would be the heat necessary to produce the CO + H2 syngas in a very high temperature state. Does this energy input exceed the ethanol energy output?
Concerning fertilizer inputs for the feedstock, I think that less nitrogen is needed because grasses have a permanent root system, and also because grasses would have a lower protein content than corn. Am I correct about this?
I can see where the feedstock might require just as much K and P as other crops. I also suspect that the some of the ash rich in K and P that remains from the high temperature generation might be able to be recycled. Is this correct?
Finally, it seems a possibilty to me that a final end product of methanol might be even more efficient than ethanol. I think that you mentioned that biodiesel can also be an output in your process. Any EROEI information on either of these?
The Syntec process is very efficient because it's specifically designed to operate in a low pressure, low temperature environment.
For feedstock gasification, the process is self-sustaining after an inital input which would most likely be nat gas. Ash is a byproduct of this process which can be sent back to the fields as a fertilizer complement or used in other apps.
You are 100% correct about the root systems of DECs. The speed and depth at which they grow is a key component of usage which is why herbicides and pesticides are not applied. DECs are carbon -> soil fixers and they will need fertilization to some degree but no where near the amount required by corn. These 3 petro-chem inputs alone, represent a significant contribution to the low EROEI calculations of corn ethanol.
As for Bio-methanol. It is a product of the Syntec process however it is more profitable to produce and market ethanol.
Good luck Mr. Khosla!
You are more of experts in the energy industry than I am. But I would like to post petite responses to some of your accusations against Mr. Khosla's ideas
1) Why not EROIE ?
Because we are running into a peak oil crisis. Beyond the peak, the fossil fuel prices are upto the whims of the oil barons. We are not investigating a better fuel than gasolene. We are investigating fuels which can replace gasolene. So try tuning into the other metric that Mr. Khosla mentions which makes lot more sense.
2) Food vs. Fuel
You guys do not have much idea about the current over-production of food grains that happens in the western countries. Due to this over-production, the western countries fail to realize that there is an enormous amount of land available throughout the world - which is a capital resource - and which is being highly under utilized currently.
Even if the energy crops produce underproduction of grain (which may not be true), none of you will ever starve. Simply, you will invest in the lands of Africa, India and South America. Or at worst, import the food grains (at no great increase to the price)
3) Research into Cellulosic Ethanol + Butanol
If you do not follow the current research trends in biotechnology and material sciences, at least trust a guy who can show up references and citations to published research.
If you cannot show any references which counter Mr. Khosla's predictions, it will be presumed that you are just spreading FUD against the ethanol transition.
Mr. Khosla's ethanol plan is not antagonistic to this. These plans not in conflict
So do your own job - whether convincing politicians for funding electrical cars and electrification of trams, or conducting research on your own. Trying to debate Mr. Khosla over a void issue is a waste of time.