Scam - A fraudulent business scheme; esp. for making a quick profit; swindle. To scam means to victimize; deprive of by deceit.

I am generally very cautious about calling any business proposition a scam, but when I read a recent article on the E-Fuel MicroFueler, described as "Earth's First Home Ethanol System" - that term immediately popped into my head.

The invention came to my attention about a year ago when a reader referred me to it and asked for my opinion. At that time the invention had been covered by the New York Times:

Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup

The MicroFueler will use sugar as its main fuel source, or feedstock, along with a specially packaged time-release yeast the company has developed. Depending on the cost of sugar, plus water and electricity, the company says it could cost as little as a dollar a gallon to make ethanol.

The Plenary

I covered Energy Secretary Steven Chu's comments in the previous post. Here, I will cover the rest of Day 1. This is not so much a comprehensive summary as it is a collection of observations and things I otherwise found to be interesting. My notes at times are spotty, so if someone was there and feels like this essay contains an error, please let me know.

Following Chu's talk, Professor William Nordhaus of Yale gave a talk entitled Energy and the Macroeconomy. I got called out during his talk, so I missed most of it. What I do remember him arguing is that oil embargoes are completely worthless, because oil is fungible. If Venezuela decided not to sell their oil to the U.S., they would end up selling it to someone else, which would displace some other seller, which at some point would end up with someone else selling it to the U.S. I missed the next point, but Gail the Actuary was there and said "a corollary of this is that there is no point in protecting the US oil and gas industry. We can just buy what we need elsewhere."

The Obama-Biden comprehensive a New Energy for America Plan is designed to:

1. Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
2. Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
3. Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
4. Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
5. Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050

The Obama energy agenda focuses on - and these are not mutually exclusive - efficiency, electrification, and the promotion of alternative energy resources. Its five main goals are set up in a way so that success in any one of the five individual areas will reinforce the other 4, helping the overall agenda achieve success. For example, creating 25% of the U.S. electricity production from renewable resources (goal #4) will aid in decreasing the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80% (goal #5).

The energy agenda is a welcomed change showing a future outlook that is based, at least to some [small] extent, on the physical realities of the natural resource world. However, from the perspective of net energy, some potential problems do exist. My goal here is to discuss some possible shortcomings of the new administrations energy agenda from the perspective of net energy.

Now is the time when everyone is writing letters to the new Obama administration. It seems like it might be worthwhile discussing a letter written by a group of organizations warning of the dangers of biofuels. The letter can be found at the site of the Global Justice Ecology Project. The statement on the website about this letter says:

Corn and sugar based agrofuels have already come under extreme scrutiny due to their documented contribution to the food crisis, with venture capital investment in these so-called 'first generation biofuels' dropping to zero. The open letter exposes the further problems that will result from the so-called 'second generation' of agrofuels. These problems range from wholesale destruction of the world's rainforests and other sensitive forests, to the forced displacement of entire communities to make way for agrofuel expansion, and the biosafety risks of gambling on novel technologies like Synthetic Biology and genetically engineered trees. The letter also makes clear that agrofuels made from inedible plant feedstocks (cellulosic fuels) will continue to exacerbate the food crisis by monopolizing additional agricultural lands for the growing of agrofuel crops such as grasses and trees, instead of food crops.