Ethanol Nightmare

Posted by onetwothree on January 07, 2008, 05:46 PM | #

Well, it’s truly a vast post. I remember doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many acres of corn it would take to meet our gasoline needs (just gasoline, not everything else) and it was almost equal to the amount already in production for food. I mean, how obvious can it be?

Here’s the most important graph:

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/food_vs_fuel1.png

...clearly, food prices will increase 10 fold before you can even think of replace oil with corn. We could have the modern equivilent of an Irish famine though, where poor countries export biodiesel (etc) as a cash crop to the US, China, etc, while the population starves.

Posted by Alex on January 07, 2008, 07:55 PM | #

...I remember doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many acres of corn it would take to meet our gasoline needs (just gasoline, not everything else) and it was almost equal to the amount already in production for food.

Ethanol is remindful somewhat of ‘producer gas’.

During WWII over a million vehicles worldwide were converted from gasoline to ‘producer gas’...ie wood burning.  Sweden was particularly notable, having converted 40% of its entire motor vehicle fleet over to wood as they had little access to oil.

Some have suggested giving the producer gas a try in a major way, but my suspicion would be that as anything but a supplimental fuel supply, something else being the primary fuel, it just wouldn’t be sustainable. 

The Earth might well be stripped of all its vegetation otherwise. 

Australian ‘producer gas’ automobile - WWII

Posted by GT on January 07, 2008, 09:51 PM | #

Producer gas from the burning of inedible biomass (usually waste products and ideally in pelletized form) would be a supplemental energy resource, intended for rural electrification projects and small scale manufacturing facilities. 

----------

The following was written by Maguire

18. Energy Independence: Nationalize all nuclear power plants under the operation of the Department of the Navy. Begin immediate construction of new nuclear power plants, to a common proven standard design, to provide for immediate national electric energy security. These plants are to be started at the minimum rate of 10 installations per year, to be of a minimum power rating of 600 megawatts each and having a total time of construction not to exceed five years. Subsidize the construction of synthetic fuel plants to produce gas, gasoline and other fuel oils from coal. Subsidize the research, development and manufacture of solar electric power. These subsidies are to be provided by the following system of National Prizes for achieving demonstrated specific performance goals in the production of electricity and other fuels. Congress shall not appropriate any other subsidies for energy research and development for these sources.

Congress shall pay $10 billion dollars to the first American owned entity to sell inside the United States of America twenty billion gallons of no-lead gasoline of at least 89 octane rating, and which was 100% synthesized from native North American coal. This award shall be free of all federal taxes.

Congress shall pay $20 billion dollars to the first American owned entity to sell the energy equivalent in hydrogen of one hundred twenty (120) billion gallons of liquid hydrogen inside the United States of America. This hydrogen shall have been produced within the territory of the United States of America or on board U.S. flagged vessels in territorial or international waters. This award shall be free of all federal taxes.

Congress shall pay $40 billion dollars to the first American owned entity to manufacture ten million solar photovoltaic cells with a minimum 5 watt rating and able to generate electricity for an adjusted average price of $0.04 (four cents) per kilowatt hour. This award shall be free of all federal taxes.

19. Space Policy: Congress will establish the following national space goals and incentive awards for specific accomplishments in Space. Congress will not appropriate any other funds for the pursuit of these goals.

Congress shall pay $80 billion dollars to the first American owned entity to transmit the energy equivalent of one thousand (1,000) Megawatts of usable electric power from Low Earth Orbit to a single point inside the continental United States for a continuous 30 day period. This award shall be free of all federal taxes.

Congress shall pay $100 billion dollars to the first American owned entity that delivers one million pounds of containerized liquid oxygen and one million pounds of containerized liquid hydrogen, exclusively collected and gathered from non-Earth sources, to a single point within 50 miles of the International Space Station, and in the same stable orbit. This award shall be free of all federal taxes.

Posted by James Bowery on January 07, 2008, 11:50 PM | #

Except for the militarization and standardization of all nuclear power plants, the prize-for-objective policy approach is very similar to the one I pursued in the early 1990s with the late Robert W. Bussard, Asst. Dir. of the AEC’s Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division which was, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest legislative initiative of its type to be submitted to Congress’s energy committees.

I can assure you from hard experience, the Federal system is virtually dead-set against the fair contest approach for the reasons I pointed out in my prior response to Maguire about “peak oil”, rendering the peak oil Cassandras far more credible.

Posted by A Casual Observer on January 08, 2008, 02:20 AM | #

GT,

Where did you find that? It’s very much along the lines of my own thinking. Do you have a link to Maguire’s site? Thanks.

Posted by Red Baron on January 09, 2008, 03:22 AM | #

Energy resource depletion and pollution are real issues, yet

after looking over this oil drum site, where this report links from, I’m convinced many of those interested in this subject, especially the supposed apocalyptic dimensions of it, have merely substituted a new religion for the old one, worse you’re playing right into the hands of the globalists. BTW, Al Gore is insane.

Posted by Guessedworker on January 10, 2008, 12:59 AM | #

From the New Scientist, 8th January, 2008:-

Prairie grass revives hopes for biofuels

The future of biofuels just got brighter. Yields from farm-scale plantings of the switchgrass Panicum virgatum suggest that producing ethanol from the cellulose in these crops will be about twice as energy-efficient as previously estimated.

About 12 million hectares, or around 1% of the world’s fields, are already devoted to growing biofuels, and this figure is set to grow.

But a host of new studies question the logic behind expanding biofuel production. For a start, they can use up land normally used to grow the crops for food production and increase demands on water supplies. Worse, it is debatable how much of a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions a switch to biofuels would produce.

But research led by Ken Vogel of the US Agricultural Research Service in Lincoln, Nebraska, might swing the debate back in favour of biofuels.

The team paid farmers in Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota to grow switchgrass – a tall prairie grass native to North America – for five years in plots ranging from 3 to 9 hectares.

They measured the energy needed to grow the crops, including that used to make fertilisers and the diesel consumed by farmers’ vehicles.

From the biomass of grasses harvested, they calculated that ethanol derived from them should yield 5.4 times as much energy as all these inputs combined.

Vogel’s results will not please ecologists who want to restore prairie ecosystems by growing mixtures of grasses without fertilisers, thought they support using the cellulose they produce to make ethanol. “It just takes too much land,” argues Vogel, who has calculated that fertilised switchgrass monocultures will give higher yields per hectare.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0704767105)

Posted by Red Baron on January 10, 2008, 03:17 AM | #

The “catastrophists” needs to give Michael Crichton a listen:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/video-charlierose-2-17-07.html

The entire interview is fascinating, the global warming discussion starts at
22:02 til the end.

Posted by GT on January 10, 2008, 05:12 PM | #

Biofuels, hydropower, solar, etc., are about energy independence for White rural communities, not “saving the planet.” I don’t give a damn about leftist motivations.

Posted by rustymason on January 10, 2008, 07:43 PM | #

Biofuels are step backward, at least with current technology.  There is about a 1-1 energy input-output ratio; meaning: it takes as much energy to produce it as can be extracted from it.  Any country that turns over its food production countryside to bio-fuels production will very quickly become dependent upon foreigners for food.  It’s really, really, stupid, ‘specially from a, like, you know, eating perspective.

But then, the lizard-people in control of our media, government, schools, and banks have plenty of experience with this sort of thing, don’t they, starving the host population to death?  For the “greater good,” doncha know.  So don’t worry, go back to watching TV and playing on the Internet, they know what they are doing.  In no time, our food-production will be in the same unbelievable shape as the Ukrainian food-production of the early 1900’s, and so will our people.  Just look what they’ve done to food costs already. 

Ahh, the more things change ...

Posted by GT on January 11, 2008, 03:39 PM | #

Biofuels are step backward, at least with current technology.  There is about a 1-1 energy input-output ratio

Comparative conversion units and cost:
http://www.woodgas.com/energyrosetta.htm

Any country that turns over its food production countryside to bio-fuels production will very quickly become dependent upon foreigners for food.  It’s really, really, stupid, ‘specially from a, like, you know, eating perspective.

That’s why I wrote “inedible biomass,” above, and GW posted the excerpt about prairie grass.

Woodgas
http://www.woodgas.com/
Comparative conversion units and cost
http://www.woodgas.com/energyrosetta.htm
Biomass Energy Foundation
http://www.biomassenergyfoundation.org/
Community Power Corporation – The Modular Biopower Corporation
http://www.gocpc.com/
CPC Products
http://www.gocpc.com/Products/our_products.htm

Posted by Maguire on January 11, 2008, 04:31 PM | #

“Biofuels are step backward...”

I am no supporter of food to ethanol proceses.  I am an enemy of it.  That said, the extraction rates you’ve cited are not correct.  Present net gain is an abysmal +35%.  The ‘good news’ is that incremental process improvements are coming that will raise this just enough to keep the producers interested.  BP’s ‘bio-butanol’ is an example process that can be retrofitted to existing ethanol distilleries.

“But then, the lizard-people in control of our media”

...are working overtime to keep you in the dark about *inedible* biomass to fuel conversion methods. 

Here are three ready to run biomass to fuel processes that don’t use fuel:

1.  Waste and inedible biomass to methanol.  The pathway is gasifying the biomass to synthesis gas, and then converting the syn-gas to methanol via Fischer Tropsch synthesis.  You can make other fuels and even petroleum wax (duct into existing refinery) this way depending on what catalyst is used.

2.  Ablative fast pyrolysis to make heavier “bio-oils”.  Both ‘bio-crude’ and a heavy distillate equivalent that runs in some diesels as is.

3.  Fast algae culture to make bio-diesel.  This uses coal/natural gas power plant waste heat and CO2 to culture the algae. 

Of course #1 can also be done with c-c-c-c-c-c-COAL!  There.  Finally got it spit out. 

Well, let us put on our hooded Druids’ robes and close with a Gregorian chant to invoke our modern religion:

“Ahhhh-ummmmm”
“Peak Oil There Is No Substitute”
“Ahhhh-ummmmm”

“Global Warming Will Destroy All Life On Earth Don’t Use Coal”
“Ahhhh-ummmmm”

It’s just a sheer coincidence these ideas are so central in the mass media, the schools, government officials and everywhere else.  Clearly it would never, ever, occur to the richest corporations and interests on Earth to knowinlgy perpetuate falsehoods as way of stifling potential competition and maximizing profit margins.

Posted by GT on January 11, 2008, 04:42 PM | #

GW writes: From the biomass of grasses harvested, they calculated that ethanol derived from them should yield 5.4 times as much energy as all these inputs combined.

Did Vogel include the cost of bringing new land into production when calculating the yield?  I suspect that he didn’t.

Switchgrass is used as fodder and fill for hay bales.  Unless new land is brought into production the use of switchgrass will increase the cost of beef production.

Biofuels like “woodgas” must come from inedible biomass, preferably waste products.  This would limit its use to rural areas.

Posted by rustymason on January 11, 2008, 08:57 PM | #

It doesn’t matter what the precise energy input-output ratio is right now, because it is so abysmally low compared to coal, nookular, and oil.  Even with some biomass ration estimates as high as 1-4 or 1-5 (I’m skeptical about such claims), they are still way less than the others, which run anywhere from 1-10 to 1-30.  The widespread use of land for biofuels, edible or no, will be in quickly come into competition with land used for grains, produce, and livestock.  Land and food costs will skyrocket, and alternative sources for food will be found outside the home country.  It’s incredibly short-sighted.

Posted by rustymason on January 11, 2008, 09:00 PM | #

Not only would biofuels be unable to help much as a replacement for our current energy needs, it would create a brand new dependency—much more of our food would have to come from other countries.

Posted by GT on January 12, 2008, 05:10 PM | #

Rusty,

Real engineers talk about btus per lb and co$t per million btu. So far we have been able to determine that only 20% of total USA oil consumption is used by “Industrial Agriculture,” including transporting the little piggies to market.  Ratios are a Jewish-minded Peak Oil argument and a favorite of Harvard armchair physicists.  That is because ‘ratios’ are relativistic and help to conceal the first intellectual cheat, which is to state everything in terms of “oil barrel equivalents.” This is done despite the fact that 70% to 80% of the energy used in the “Industrial Agriculture” cycle is not from oil. Some oil is used to fuel tractors and trucks.  The balance is natural gas to fuel pumps and process heat, and electricity which can come from any source (coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, biomass, solar p.e., natural gas).

The energy conversion ‘ratio’ you’re referring to is meaningless unless you plan to set up a Wood Fill station next to a BP convenience store.  Unfortunately, a lot of Peak Oilers have been conned into believing otherwise.  That is because the Jews among them fear that Whites will do what we’re suggesting – that is, use wood in ways that eliminate Federal Reserve paper money in part or whole from the fuel process stream.

Wood averages 6,500 btus per lb.  Each species is slightly different.  The amount of energy required to ‘process’ the wood depends on what is being done to it. Is it being chipped?  Or is it being chipped and hammered into presto logs or extruded pellets?  Process energy used can range from 3% to 10%.  Then there’s transportation and distribution. How far was the wood transported before processing and afterwards to the end user?  How many second-handling operations?

The total energy consumed in charcoal making is much higher.  That is why we don’t like it except for things for which there is no other substitute. Examples are foundry fuel, carbon black, activated carbon, terra preta.  Be advised we have ambitions to get away from charcoal even in foundry fuel applications.

All the above pertains to other forms of plant matter containing cellulose and lignin - grasses, seeds, pits and stalks.

The economic feasibility of alternate communities revolves around their ability to generate a net trade surplus starting at the lot line.  For energy and fuel it revolves around technological feasibility, resource availability (land, biomass and waste streams), required capital investments of work hours and the remaining cash requirements for Key Parts.

Any country that turns over its food production countryside to bio-fuels production will very quickly become dependent upon foreigners for food.  It’s really, really, stupid, ‘specially from a, like, you know, eating perspective.

We have LOTS of arable land left. The issue is working it, not just ‘eating.’

Posted by GT on January 12, 2008, 05:44 PM | #

We have LOTs of arable land left in the USA alone.  This doesn’t even begin to count what’s available in Canada.

Posted by James Bowery on January 12, 2008, 07:09 PM | #

We have LOTs of arable land left in the USA alone.  This doesn’t even begin to count what’s available in Canada.

The USA has little in the way of hard assets to pay its foreign creditors.  Its arable land is being forfeit.

The US is fast become Mexico to Canada’s US.  Migration to Canada is less and less an option for US citizens—particularly as their immigration policies favor an Asian “cognitive elite”.

Insofar as inedible biomass feedstocks are concerned, yes, of course.  But as I previously discussed, biofuels are fast becoming politically high profile which means real technical progress will come to a screeching halt in the judeoconomy’s capital intensive systems.  Corrupt capital is going to be driven from serious biofuels development by competing technosocialist programs seeking political credit for any and all advances.  Real technical progress is going to be relegated to localized production and consumption.  This is actually a good thing!  But it doesn’t mean “peak oil” beliefs are false in the sense of judeoconomics.  The judeoconomy may well collapse due to crises in “peak oil” due to corruption of capital and technosocialist malincentives.

Posted by Maguire on January 12, 2008, 07:26 PM | #

GT,

“We have LOTs of arable land left in the USA alone.  This doesn’t even begin to count what’s available in Canada.”

Or the annual inedible biomass available in Canada or in third countries.  And here is the true ‘problem’ from certain folks’ perspectives. 

http://www.tpub.com/content/altfuels10/methanol/methanol0001.htm

Estimates of the biomass resourceavailable for U.S. fuels productionaverage 2.45 billion metric tons peryear. One ton of feedstock can beconverted to 721 liters (186 gal-lons) of methanol. As a renewableresource, biomass represents apotentially inexhaustible feedstocksupply for methanol production."estimates of biomass resource (note they mean inedible) available for U.S. fuels production average 2.45 billion metric tons per year.  One ton of feedstock can be converted to 721 liters (186 gallons) of methanol.”

Stop

186 gallons x 2.45 billion tons = 455,700,000,000 (billion) gallons.  This is 10,850,000,000 (billion) 42 gallon oil drum size barrels.  Methanol and gasoline have different btu values per gallon, so let’s indulge in some equivalency and ratios to make things mentally easy for Peak Oilers.  The ‘btu ratio’ between methanol and gasoline is 55,000 btu/gal/125,000 btu/gal, or 0.44.  10.85 x 0.44 = 4.77 billion barrels of ‘gasoline equivalent’. 

In 2005 USA gasoline consumption averaged 320,500,000 gallons per day, or 2,800,000,000 - ahem - barrels per year.  Divided by 0.44 (the methanol factor) we get 6,300,000,000 billion barrels of methanol ‘equivalent’, at least in BTUs.  We have pretty well eliminated petroleum imports, including imports from Canada.  To completely eliminate black goo we would have to supplement with coal to liquid fuel technology.  Destroying the existing structure of the world petroleum industry and its financiers by taking the largest customer offline is not the policy of any regime in power in the USA for the last century. 

But what happens in places like Central/South America with a superabundance of ‘biomass’ and fast growth rates?  Or even Canada & Russia’s land mass?  Technology propagates.  It’s not going to remain confined to the USA.  And when it does propagate what happens is the end of the Semite dominated and central bankster lubricated ‘oil’ industry as we’ve known it.

This is the potential in just *one* of the processes I cited.  It’s not difficult to perceive why Hazel O’Leary shut down all US Department of Energy funding for methanol and other biomass to fuel thermochemical processes back in the first Clinton regime.

Maguire

Posted by Maguire on January 12, 2008, 07:43 PM | #

James,

“But as I previously discussed, biofuels are fast becoming politically high profile which means real technical progress will come to a screeching halt in the judeoconomy’s capital intensive systems.”

The capital intensive legislatures and courts must be included in these ‘systems’.  Once included this outcome has been a standing event for the last century. 

In coming centuries the question of modern Peak Oil, high fuel prices and supply failure destroying a civilization is not going to be studied by hard number scientists and engineers.  There is not much to study relative to these fields.

The question will be studied by sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, philosophers, evolutionary psychologists and theologians.  It will take its place alongside ‘Why Did Rome Fall?’ with all kinds of antiquarians.

Maguire

Posted by GT on January 12, 2008, 08:02 PM | #

Rusty,

Revolving around Alternate communities for working- and lower middle-class Whites is the Judeo-Federal Reserve System of paper money, usury interest, buy low - sell high profit margins, massive resource diversion to non-whites and anti-white race war, and the capacity to extract all possible surplus value.

It is not surprising that many think the economic feasibility of Alternate communities depends on fuel conversion ratios based upon “oil barrel equivalents.” This stuff does require some knowledge and common sense in its application.  That is why the concept of “oil barrel equivalents” was introduced as a common denominator in the first place.  It makes it easy for the uninformed (and the intellectually lazy) to feel like they, too, can have useful opinions. 

Take coal, for example.  The fact that Powder River Basin coal may only cost $11 to $15 per ton is meaningless by itself.  That is the minehead price to Teco Energy and Georgia Power & Light for train load quantities.  But we can’t light a new coal burning furnace without installing sulfur dioxide scrubbers.  Therefore our cost for coal fuel, based on kilowatts/hours, is considerably higher than $11 to $15 per ton after the watts are converted to “BTU equivalents.”

Now consider the following:

BTUs/lb.

Steam Boiler Fuel

Wood; 6,500 - 7,000
Powder River Basin coal:  8,800

Metallurgical Fuel

Charcoal; 12,000 - 13,500
Coal coke:  14,500

BTUs/gallon

Liquid Fuels

Methanol 55,000
Ethanol 65,000
Gasoline 125,000

BTUs/cubic foot, Combustible Gasses

Propane:  2,000
Natural Gas (methane) 1,000
Woodgas: (CO & H2) 135 - 145.

At first glance this chart appears adverse to alternative biomass and thermodynamic processes. But this is a superficial view which lasts only until the delivered prices per million BTUs are examined.  Remember, our cost is much higher than the quoted minehead, coke battery, gas or refinery pipeline terminus prices used by the DoE’s Energy Information Adminstration. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that we, the consumers of long distance carbon fuels, can earn sufficient exchange in trade to pay those prices.  Nor is delivery of all long distance carbon fuels guaranteed.  Delivery, in fact, is less assured each day. This represents an additional export of wages, profit and capital beyond the higher ‘costs’ of assured delivery.  Against higher costs and less-than-timely delivery, our microcommunity-based biomass and thermodynamic projects are quite competitive.

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One other point:  Passive & Green self-powered house technologies are fine.  We are 100% in favor of them, provided they make sense.  These are things like green appliances, green design, solar home heating, grid-tied 5 Kw to 10 Kw wind turbines on 100’ poles, etc.  The latter is a good example of something we’ll be able to make and install – in large numbers.  All play an important role in White Independence. 

However, the problem with these house technologies is that they can’t provide engine fuel or surge power on demand for industrial applications.  We must look to biomass and thermodynamic processes.  These are viable substitutes with known conversion paths.

They are also cheaper and even more ‘efficient’ in the case of biomass producer gas fueled engines driving lineshaft factories and shops.  Much of the equipment Whites need expend mechanical energy which may be delivered by belts, compressed air, or hydraulics.  Electricity is not always needed.

Posted by Anon on January 13, 2008, 11:16 PM | #

Another reason why we have to keep using oil. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7065061.stm

God forbid the world’s “poor” starve!  Of course, it isn’t mentioned why they can’t/don’t grow their own food and rely on western food aid.  Places like Zimbabwe come to mind, but that can’t be brought up either.  Fucking ticks and leeches.

Posted by GT on January 14, 2008, 01:26 AM | #

God forbid the world’s “poor” starve!

The Left’s “green” objective is to increase dependency and extract money from Whites – always.  Environmental concerns are a smokescreen.

Western regimes will not allow Friends of Israel in the Third World to starve. You can take that to the bank.

We oppose the conversion of edible biomass to fuel only because of its adverse effect on food prices – prices urban Whites must pay which also includes the cost of feeding the Third World.

Our first objective is White Energy Independence in North America’s rural “flyover country.” To that end, we support the conversion of inedible biomass to fuel by utilizing existing organic waste streams: wood chips, agricultural waste, yard trimmings, etc. In time we may support the acquisition of arable land for this purpose but then again, maybe not.  There are many interstitial areas in towns and on farms, large and small, where trees can be planted and rotated.

Posted by Maguire on January 14, 2008, 02:50 AM | #

Anon,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6294133.stm

For a Jewz’ MSM piece this wasn’t too bad.  It did not of course specifically mention methanol (CH3OH) alcohol, a/k/a ‘wood alcohol’.  Methanol after all was a Nazi fuel.  The specific process of oxygen blown gasification to make synthesis gas is not dependent on ‘biomass’ feedstock.  Coal can also be used.

“Biofuels are any kind of fuel made from living things, or from the waste they produce.  This is a very long and diverse list, including:”

“wood, wood chippings and straw”
“pellets or liquids made from wood”
“biogas (methane) from animals’ excrement”
“ethanol, diesel or other liquid fuels made from processing plant material or waste oil”

Our focus is on the first three.  The governments’ & NGO subsidies and policies are naturally focused on #4, human food potlatch.

“But current technologies limit production, because only certain parts of specific plants can be used.”

For reasons explained below, this problem will persist even when the good ship Cellulosic Ethanol finally docks.

“The big hope is the so-called second-generation of biofuels”

This is the standard media plug for “cellulosic ethanol”.  The purpose is to get the suckers to come in and play in the casino.

“which will process the cellulose found in many plants. This should lead to far more efficient production using a much greater range of plants and plant waste.”

There’s another molecule that comes with ‘cellulose’ in plants.  This is lignin.  And no one has yet figured out how to economically separate it from cellulose or convert it at scale, at least using the enzymatic and acid hydrolysis focus of ‘cellulosic ethanol’.  And it didn’t start when Bush’s handlers stuck those words on his teleprompter.  The US Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory was switched to a near mono focus on cellulosics in the early 1990s.

Results = 0 after fifteen years.  Actually closer to 100 years since cellulosic ethanol has been around a lot longer than cold fusion (or hot fusion).  The US Army built the first pilot acid hydrolysis plant in 1918. 

There’s a simple way to know when any commercial scale ‘cellulosic’ process is ready.  They’ll start by using waste paper, which is nearly pure cellulose already.  The tax slaves will then be required to segregate ALL paper and cardboard in their trash and put it in bins for curbside collection.  After this cellulosic ethanol will join aluminum and white goods steel recycling as a focal point of local political payola.

Maguire

Posted by Maguire on January 14, 2008, 02:10 PM | #

p.s.

True believers in the political and media myth of “Cellulosic Ethanol” should watch the paper industry very closely.  A solid 80% of a paper mill’s process costs in electricity consists of pulping wood and separating the cellulose from lignin.

Before such processes become cheap enough to make ethanol fuel they’ll be swiftly adopted to make cellulose for paper, acetate, rayon and a range of plastic materials, using any available inedible plant waste.  If it’s cheap enough for ethanol it’ll be aggressively competitive in price with petro-chemical process based materials.

Putting a fuel refinery operating on local inedible plant matter, and a bio-chemical materials plant, in nearly every county in America is the very last thing the existing Federal Reserve regime intends to sponsor.  They’ll opt for civil war first.  If they wanted that kind of local economic independence they would have sponsored a methanol plant program seven to ten years ago.

Central banks and central governments do not want decentralized economics.  Figure it out.

Posted by rustymason on January 14, 2008, 10:21 PM | #

GT,

It makes it easy for the uninformed (and the intellectually lazy) to feel like they, too, can have useful opinions.

(Hey, I resemble that remark!)

I’m not sure I understand your first point, completely; you may be right, I don’t know.  I was simply looking at the situation as an total energy in vs. energy out problem.  Oil has the highest ratio, especially for transportation, coal lower, biofuels lower, and solar the lowest.  Is this not correct? 

Once land is used to grow fuel, land will go up in value and so will all things that depend on it.  So much land is unused now because it’s not economical for anything.  But once it does become economical, once lots of money can be made from it (for fuel), we will eventually use every square inch of it—food will come in direct competition with fuel, raising the price of both (as well as raising the cost of all buildings).  Do existing biofuel calculations take this supply-demand of land into effect?

Posted by GT on January 15, 2008, 07:52 PM | #

Rusty,

I was simply looking at the situation as an total energy in vs. energy out problem.  Oil has the highest ratio, especially for transportation, coal lower, biofuels lower, and solar the lowest.  Is this not correct?

Energy ratios based upon oil barrel equivalents are invalid because oil production includes energy from a variety of sources and these are chosen on the basis of supply, accessibility, and cost.

My first point was that the relativity of ratios are used to mask a deception. The second point was the deception itself – oil barrel equivalents (bboe). An ‘oil barrel equivalent’ is deceptive because it includes the development, production, and use of alternate sources such as coal, nuclear, hydropower, wind turbines, etc.  The same is done with natural gas, which is readily replaced by Blue Water gas made from coal or producer gas made from gasified biomass.  My third point (introduced by a link to http://www.woodgas.com) was that ratios based upon bboe are also red-herrings because the issue is fuel supply, accessibility, conversion feasibility, and cost.

“Peak Oil” is oil-centric, we are not.  We are not interested in supplying a ‘society’ comprised of jews, Africans, Hispanic Amerindians, sub-Cons, Arabs, etc.  Our focus is upon White rural communities in “flyover country.”

Once land is used to grow fuel, land will go up in value

Land commonly used for anything goes up in value.  So what?  The value will be set by the annual value of the ‘harvest,’ just like any other agricultural activity.

Posted by rustymason on January 15, 2008, 08:26 PM | #

GT,

“Energy ratios based upon oil barrel equivalents are invalid because oil production includes energy from a variety of sources and these are chosen on the basis of supply, accessibility, and cost.”

This seems counterintuitive to me.  Maybe I’m misunderstanding you.  Are you saying that the input-output ratios themselves have been miscalculated, or are you saying that the whole concept of measuring input-output energy ratios is incorrect or misleading? 

They seem to be correct to me, and a very useful way of looking at the overall energy situation and for deciding on future energy substitutes.  If so, I don’t see that it matters that much where the energy inputs come from for fossil fuels.  The markets are pretty good at valueing substitutions (natural gas for gasoline or coal), so the costs and availability of alternate inputs figures itself out. 

Land commonly used for anything goes up in value.  So what?  The value will be set by the annual value of the ‘harvest,’ just like any other agricultural activity.

Fuel is different.  Unlike demand for food, housing, livestock, living and working space, demand for energy is never *ever* satisfied.  Every square inch of the land would be worked to death to provide fuel, and the quantity and quality of all land would diminish considerably, making eating of good food, both plants and animals, nearly impossible.  Look at how expensive and poisoned food is becoming already.

Posted by rustymason on January 15, 2008, 08:29 PM | #

But I’m all for energy independence.  Get them lizards off my land and outa my wallet.

Posted by GT on January 16, 2008, 12:42 AM | #

Rusty,

Barrels of oil equivalent conversions are not based upon energy content at the source, but upon “industry benchmarks” established after processing. In natural gas and natural gas liquid conversions, for example, the energy equivalence factor used is derived at the burner tip rather than the wellhead. 

For renewable energy sources the input energy is difficult to establish and is usually treated as irrelevant.  Instead, a factor is assigned for conversion. This factor is “equivalentt” to a “nominal” efficiency “established” by various national and international energy agencies.  The result is an overestimation in the energy efficiency of some sources and an underestimation in the efficiency of other sources.

These are just two examples.  Maguire provided others.

Now I ask you, are conversion problems related to math, method, or data?  Answer: It depends upon what you’re dealing with.

Posted by bbgun on January 16, 2008, 01:01 AM | #

GT, there are no friends of Israel in the third world - it’s the white man’s leaders who defend Israel.

Posted by rustymason on January 16, 2008, 01:21 AM | #

In your estimation, what are the true energy-in vs energy-out ratios for oil, coal, nuclear, wind, biofuels, and solar, including all relevant costs of production, storage, and transportation?

Posted by GT on January 16, 2008, 08:16 PM | #

Something more to consider, Rusty:

With the conversion factor established at the burner-tip rather than the wellhead, the oil/gas industry is obviously using the higher-end output data derived from processed gas. Since the processing of gas requires energy, primary input energy requirements must be “adjusted” to retain favorably high conversion ratios. 

An important primary energy source to examine for “adjustment,” IMO, is electricity.  Why?  Electricity can be generated from a variety of sources, some of which are easily “pencil-whipped” into appearing more efficient than they actually are – like hydroelectric plants, for example, which use the force of falling water to turn turbine generators – or less efficient.

Speaking of electrical generation, here’s a “scenario” of how that industry could be providing favorable conversion ratios.  In the U.S. power at the generator is metered to provide high-end output data.  In Europe low-end data is metered by the end-user.  Thus U.S. plants ignore transmission line losses accounting for 30%-60% of the electrical energy generated.  Why would they do this?  Well, “tax credits” for “efficiency” could be one reason.  Another reason might be to stifle competition - from biomass-fueled electrical generating plants, perhaps?

Posted by Maguire on January 16, 2008, 09:53 PM | #

Rusty,

“The markets are pretty good at valueing substitutions (natural gas for gasoline or coal)”

I have to disagree, completely.  They are not good at all.  The markets are extremely inflexible because industrial, commercial and residential consumers have no real choices.  The “energy markets” are a series of government licensed and supported (via destructive regulation of potential competitors) energy and fuel oligarchies. 

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec3_3.pdf

These producer prices for coal, natural gas and crude oil deserve serious study.  All of them are stated as the “price per million btu”.  That is, “British Thermal Unit”, which is the amount of heat needed to raise one pound of water from 60 F to 61 F. 

Here at last we have different carbon fuels reduced to a common energy denominator.  Read’em and weep.

2006 Real Prices

Coal*:  $1.01 per million BTU
Natural Gas:  $5.01 per million BTU
Crude Oil:  $8.87 per million BTU

These prices are minehead, wellhead and ‘first US buyer’.  They’re not what you pay.  Assuming 125,000 btu per gallon and a current price of $3.15/gal, that is a nifty $25.20 per million btu.

“Market efficiency”?  It doesn’t exist in this field.  It doesn’t take anywhere close to 6 million btus to turn 1 million btus of coal into 1 million btus of diesel or methanol.  Yet crude oil still carries an 8.8 multiplier over coal. 

As for biomass, in most cases it’s not possible to assign any value right now.  The reason is it still has negative value in most US counties.  For example, here in coastal SW Florida tree cutting services pay a $40 to $60/ton tipping fee for wood chips.  If we use a figure of 6,500 btu/lb for wood, this yields a value of -$3 for a million btus.

There’s one other observation we can make from the Energy Information Administration table.  We currently have RECORD COMBINED CARBON PRICES (i.e. weighted for each fuel’s contribution to total energy supply), which are still rising.  Skim back in the tables to the 1980-1982 period and recall the stiff Carter Recession that occurred then along with the previous carbon price peak.

Whither the ‘economy’?  You tell me when we can expect these combined prices to decline.  Oh?  Still laughing?  Then the ‘economy’ still has lots of downside space underneath it.

Maguire

* The huge price disparity between coal and the next ‘fossil’ fuel should cause all Global Warming claims to be subjected to extensive due diligence.  The incentive for the natural gas/crude oil interests to spread false claims as a way of crippling a dangerous competitor is too obvious.

Posted by rustymason on January 17, 2008, 02:21 AM | #

Maguire and GT,

You guys keep talking about prices and market manipulations, but I’m asking about plain ole net energy output vs input (all the way to the end users) for each ready-to-burn product, regardless of prices and politics.  In your estimation, what are those ratios?

Maguire said:
Putting a fuel refinery operating on local inedible plant matter, and a bio-chemical materials plant, in nearly every county in America is the very last thing the existing Federal Reserve regime intends to sponsor.

I wouldn’t sponsor such a plant either; it makes no sense (with current technology, anyway), regardless of cost.

Energy input-output ratios are indeed good indicators of an energy source’s viability.  For, if you want energy, you should know the most efficient way to obtain it.  Biofuels are not efficient energy producers: the ratio of energy-in to energy-out is roughly 1:1.  It’s a waste and would therefore contribute very little to a community’s independence. 

GT said:
Biofuels, hydropower, solar, etc., are about energy independence for White rural communities, not “saving the planet.” I don’t give a damn about leftist motivations.

Biofuels and land are too closely connected to one another to just wave off environmental concerns like that.  Aside from the inefficiency of the fuel-making process, energy crops are a net loss to the society who grows and uses them because they are so hard on the soil and because land becomes hugley inflated in price, which makes everything else, especially food, go up in price.  It makes no difference if the biofuels are edible or not, food would compete directly with fuel.  Talk about a volatile socio-political situation!  Biofuels (at current technology levels) simply trade one evil—energy dependence—for even bigger ones.

Sure, we need independent sources of energy for independent communities, but they should produce much more than they consume and they cannot compete with basic necessities like food and living space.

Posted by GT on January 23, 2008, 12:46 AM | #

Rusty,

…but I’m asking about plain ole net energy output vs input (all the way to the end users) for each ready-to-burn product, regardless of prices and politics.

The discussion of fuel in terms of pricing is due to the fact that the phrase “barrel of oil equivalent” is a ratio used for accounting purposes. The term has been co-opted by jews, oil/gas industry sycophants, neo-conned and leftist dupes, and the generally uninformed to express energy relationships in a (non) “scientific” manner.  I’ll say it again, but with greater clarity: Real scientists and engineers discuss heat quantities in terms of btus per pound, power in terms of kilowatts and horsepower, and energy costs in terms of price per million btus or kilowatt-hours.  It’s that simple.  Real scientists and engineers do not use the term “barrels of oil equivalent.” So, when you originally asked me to express power in terms of an accounting ratio, barrels of oil equivalent, I had no idea of what you were talking about.  Neither did Maguire. 

Now I haven’t access to all the information you’ve requested, so perhaps you should contact the companies and industry experts involved for information on conversion factors and how they are derived.  They are not eager to publicize the use of high-end values in the United States.  I’m afraid they’ll be less eager to discuss the contribution of water vapor, specific gravity, additives, and several other factors to increased btu/gal

Energy input-output ratios are indeed good indicators of an energy source’s viability.

The overwhelming majority of Internet sites claim that a gallon of gasoline yields 125,000 btus, give or a take a few thousand.  This figure represents the upper boundary of high-end outputs and is disseminated in the United States – the largest gasoline consumer in the world – for propaganda purposes.  The following contradicts the propaganda:

“Through the course of a year, gasoline energy content can range from 108,500 British thermal units (btu) per gallon to 117,000 btu/gal.” - Changes in Gasoline & The Classic Auto (DAI Informational Document # 960501, May 1996)
http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/new-fuel/files/DAI960501classic.pdf

“The energy content of MTBE is approximately 93,500 British Thermal Units per gallon (Btu/gal) while that of gasoline is approximately 109,000 Btu/gal.” - Interagency Assessment of Oxygenated Fuels; National Science and Technology, Committee on Environment and Natural Resources; June, 1997.
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/regs/fuels/ostpfin.pdf

“…while that of gasoline is approximately 109,000 Btu/gal.” - Starkman, E.S., H.K. Newhall, and R.D. Sutton, “Comparative Performance of Alcohol and Hydrocarbon Fuels,” Society of Automotive Engineers Paper Number SP-254, p. 5.

There is a noticeable difference between 108,500 and 125,000 btus.  The conversion factors and ratios are not as good as you’ve been led to believe.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on February 18, 2008, 07:04 PM | #

If anyone’s interested in oil whose recovery costs would make it that Bill Gates would be able to afford a thimbleful of crude by forking over his entire net worth, huge reserves of the stuff are claimed for Titan (Saturn’s moon), in addition to gas (partly in the form of abiotic methane constantly outgassed from Titan’s interior) and other hydrocarbon materials lying on the suface including liquid methane, liquid ethane, and “tholins” (some sort of hydrocarbon precursor).

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 08, 2008, 03:25 PM | #

Steve Sailer speculates very plausibly on one possible cause of oil price instability (one among many obviously, but nevertheless one I wouldn’t put past some of the sleazy government types we see nowadays).

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 08, 2008, 03:27 PM | #

In fact, it almost has to be happening.  It’s almost inconceivable for it not to be.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 24, 2008, 04:18 AM | #

Good News for Backyard Gardeners With Compost Heaps

Just buy a set of special perforated pipes or tubes to run through your compost heap for collecting the methane gas given off, buy a compressor to compress the collected methane so a car can run on it, trade in your car for one of these new rigs that run on the stuff, and you’re in business:

The Honda Civic GX runs on compressed natural gas (CNG), which supposedly only costs about the equivalent of $1.25 per gallon of gasoline.  Downsides include the tank only holds the equivalent of eight gallons of gasoline, so range is half of the gasoline version.  And if you run out between the rare CNG filling stations, you’ll need to be towed to one.  Plus, you only get 113 horsepower, instead of the 140 in the basic gasoline Civic.  And the MSRP is a hefty $24,590, a couple of thousand more than the 110 horsepower Civic Hybrid.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 25, 2008, 04:59 PM | #

Last night the TV was on as I happened to walk back and forth in front of it a couple of times half-listening, and I saw a few snippets of a current affairs documentary.  I was in the middle of something else so couldn’t sit down to watch, but it was about a giant land-fill, I didn’t get where (somewhere in either the U.S. or Canada), a huge thing, through which someone got the bright idea of running a latticework of pipes to collect the methane given off, piping it to an onsite power station for making electricity. 

This land-fill (a garbage dump, really) was big, I’d say as big as the one on Staten Island (one of the five boroughs of New York City) that you pass on your left as you drive from the Outerbridge Crossing from New Jersey headed toward the Verazzano Narrows Bridge, the sort of enormous seagull-infested affair they manage with giant steam shovels and bulldozers all over the place pushing it around, piling it up, shifting it, etc. 

Anyway, they didn’t originally think of getting methane out of it but apparently when someone came up with the bright idea to do that, they scooped out sections of the thing, sector by sector, and laid pipe networks of what looked like fifteen-inch-or-so heavy-duty plastic pipes that weren’t attached end to end but their ends loosely placed one into the other, adjoining pipes having deliberately mismatched diameters so the methane could enter through the gaps at each mismatched loose pipe “junction.”

Not attaching the ends of the pipes rigidly also allowed the pipes to move without breaking as the garbage piles settled. 

Why did the methane enter the pipe grid instead of just seeping up through the garbage into the atmosphere?  Because a very slight constant suction was maintained inside the pipes (a tenth of an atmosphere of negative pressure, I think it said) which sucked in all the methane as it was produced (how the suction was maintained given those loose-fitting pipe ends seems unclear). 

They piled all the garbage on top of the pipes which were hidden inside this enormous mountain of garbage.  The pipe grid with the slight vacuum inside sucked up all the methane produced non-stop and conveyed it to a pump house where its humidity was removed, then it was sent into an electric power station to be burned, producing what the program claimed was electricity enough for two hundred thousand nearby homes. 

At that rate, three of these landfills could meet all the State of Vermont’s electricity needs.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 25, 2008, 05:34 PM | #

A while back in another thread, I don’t have time at the moment to search for it, I mentioned a TV program I saw a few years ago, one of these National Geographic specials or something, in which a farmer in Switzerland obtained all the fuel for running his family’s vehicles, plus some of his farm vehicles, in the form of methane obtained from a large compost heap which they showed, a collection of small pipes or tubes running through it and sticking out on all sides, leading to a tiny adjacent shed in which was a compressor for compressing it for use by his cars.  They showed his family driving away in the brand-new family minivan powered by the stuff and it seemed to accelerate and ride exactly like a gasoline-fueled vehicle and looked outwardly exactly identical.  He had to pay for the conversion kit to switch his car and some farm equipment to running on compressed methane, as well as the special collection tubing and compressor.  His investment was quickly repaid, after which nothing but free fuel for his vehicles. 

If I recall right, “A Finn,” commenting here some time back, said someone he knew of in Finland — maybe it was a relative, if I remember right? — did the same thing as this Swiss farmer.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 26, 2008, 12:11 PM | #

Using cow manure pits and “a microturbine or reciprocating engine,” at one California State University campus, to produce electricity locally (the fuel to run the microturbine being the free methane given off by the manure, so the electricity produced must be dirt-cheap, once the overall set-up costs are amortized):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_lagoon

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 09, 2008, 12:28 AM | #

Boone Pickens, 80-year-old Texas oilman legend and multibillionaire, figures he can reduce U.S. oil imports by 38% in ten years, a $300 billion yearly savings at current rates, by putting up windmills in the windy swath that runs down the middle of the U.S. Great Plains from Canada to Texas.  Dense clusters of these gargantuan wind turbines have the potential, Pickens claims, to generate 22% of the country’s electricity.  This would free up the natural gas that currently generates that fraction of the country’s electricity (22%) for use in vehicular transportation as compressed natural gas.  That amount of natural gas devoted to running cars and trucks would reduce oil imports by almost almost 40%.

Pickens, who originally started out as an oil geologist, says the era of cheap oil is permanently over and we are now going to have to seriously begin exploiting alternatives.  But when one considers all the alternatives, one feels there won’t be a catastrophic energy crisis — look what the alternatives include:  wind, surface solar, orbital solar (orbiting photoelectric beamed down as microwaves), hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and ocean current, landfill methane (garbage dumps, biomass compost, manure), ocean-floor methane, natural gas, coal, shale, tar sands, nuclear, ethanol, and others.  (Fusion’s not on the horizon; something’s wrong with it.  It may be we’ll never see it produce electricity.  It’s like Gödel’s incompleteness theorem or something — they’ll never get it under control.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 09, 2008, 12:54 PM | #

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:

“But when one considers all the alternatives, one feels there won’t be a catastrophic energy crisis” (—my comment just above)

That of course is wishful thinking, since we all know the BJFRRP( * ) will destroy any possibility of coping successfully with the looming energy crunch by 1) rapidly driving up the population of the continental U.S. to six billion, while simultaneously 2) changing it racially from white to varieties of human that are genetically incapable, in their aggregates, of exploiting these energy alternatives.  So we already know the BJFRRP will thwart any possiblity that populations of the North American continent will avert an energy catastrophe — they won’t, and we already know that.  I was being hypothetical above.  That was purely a theoretical excercise bearing no relation to reality whatsoever, none.  Just wanted to point that out with this important disclaimer. 

( * the Bush-and-the-Jews Federal Race-Replacement Plan)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on September 21, 2008, 07:28 PM | #

The Bubble-Fusion Bubble

Remember the excitement a few years back, out of Purdue University, about collapsing bubbles causing micro-nuclear-fusion reactions?  It turns out the bubblehead who made bubbly claims about bubble fusion was just blowing bubbles.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on September 21, 2008, 07:30 PM | #

Excuse me, he was at Oak Ridge at the time, not Purdue.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on May 07, 2009, 01:16 AM | #

Huge new natural gas deposits identified in Louisiana:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/013131.html

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 25, 2009, 12:46 PM | #

In the Negev Desert:  shining mirrors on a tower heats air enough to run a microturbine that generates electricity to run seventy households:

http://latteisland.blogspot.com/2009/06/off-grid.html .

Posted by Fred Scrooby on September 24, 2009, 01:35 AM | #

An expert who is a prominent oilman and consultant to MIT does not believe we are nearing “peak oil.” He is optimistic that given new extraction techniques and the prospect of discovering lots of exploitable new reserves there should be enough oil to last through this century:

On 20 dry, flat square miles of California’s Central Valley, more than 8,000 horseheads—as old-fashioned oilmen call them—slowly rise and fall as they suck oil from underground.  Glittering pipelines crossing the whole area reveal that the place is not merely a relic of the past.  But even to an expert’s eyes, Kern River Oil Field betrays no hint of the miracle that has enabled it to survive decades of dire predictions.

Kern River Oil Field was discovered in 1899, and initially it was thought that only 10 percent of its heavy, viscous crude could be recovered.  In 1942, after more than four decades of modest production, the field was estimated to still hold 54 million barrels of recoverable oil.  As pointed out in 1995 by Morris Adelman, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the few remaining energy gurus, “in the next forty-four years, it produced not 54 million barrels but 736 million barrels, and it had another 970 million barrels remaining.” But even this estimate was wrong.  In November 2007 U.S. oil giant Chevron announced that cumulative production had reached two billion barrels.  Today, Kern River still puts out more than 80,000 barrels per day, and Chevron reckons that the remaining reserves are about 480 million barrels.

Chevron began to achieve its miracle in the 1960s by injecting steam into the ground, a novel technology at the time.  Later, a new breed of exploration and drilling tools—along with steady steam injection—turned the field into a sort of oil cornucopia.  Yet, Kern River is not an isolated case.  Most of the world’s oilfields have revived over time.  New exploration methods have revealed more of the Earth’s secrets.  And leaps in extraction technology have led to tapping oil in once-inaccessible areas and in places where drilling was once uneconomic.  In a way, technology is the real cornucopia.

[…]

The world’s average oil recovery rate today is around 35 percent [of what’s in the ground].  That means that about two thirds of the original oil remains underground […].

[…]

I dare to make a prediction.  By 2030 more than 50 percent of the known oil will be recoverable.  Also, by that time the amount of known oil will have grown significantly, and a larger portion of unconventional oils will be commonly produced, bringing the total amount of recoverable reserves to something between 4,500 billion to 5,000 billion barrels of oil.  What’s more, a significant part of “new reserves” will not come from new discoveries, but from a new ability to better exploit what we already have.

To be sure, by 2030 we will have consumed another 650 billion to 700 billion barrels of our reserves, for a total of around 1,600 billion barrels used up from the 4,500 billion to 5,000 billion figure.  Yet, if my estimates are correct, we will have oil for the rest of the 21st Century.  The real problem will be how to use that oil without wasting it through unacceptable consumption habits […].

[ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=squeezing-more-oil-edit-this ]

Posted by Fred Scrooby on October 24, 2009, 06:18 PM | #

From the November 2009 Scientific American Magazine

A PLAN TO POWER 100 PERCENT OF THE PLANET WITH RENEWABLES:  Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here’s how

By Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi

-- Supplies of wind and solar energy on accessible land dwarf the energy consumed by people around the globe.

-- The authors’ plan calls for 3.8 million large wind turbines, 90,000 solar plants, and numerous geothermal, tidal and rooftop photovoltaic installations worldwide.

-- The cost of generating and transmitting power would be less than the projected cost per kilowatt-hour for fossil-fuel and nuclear power.

-- Shortages of a few specialty materials, along with lack of political will, loom as the greatest obstacles.

In December leaders from around the world will meet in Copenhagen to try to agree on cutting back greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. The most effective step to implement that goal would be a massive shift away from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources. If leaders can have confidence that such a transformation is possible, they might commit to an historic agreement. We think they can.

A year ago former vice president Al Gore threw down a gauntlet: to repower America with 100 percent carbon-free electricity within 10 years. As the two of us started to evaluate the feasibility of such a change, we took on an even larger challenge: to determine how 100 percent of the world’s energy, for all purposes, could be supplied by wind, water and solar resources, by as early as 2030. Our plan is presented here.

[ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030 ]