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July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
Oil is near $120 a barrel, and OPEC expresses reluctance to increase output so as to help lower prices.
But Popular Science reports on new ways to turn biomass into - not ethanol - but into actual gasoline (via Instapundit):
Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware-anything, essentially, that's normally refined from petroleum.
..."If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon," Huber says. "Right now we're at 50 percent. Can we get 100 percent? I don't know. Hopefully we'll bump those numbers up."
This process can use biomass other than corn or food products, leaving the world's food 100% available for people and other living things to eat:
Huber's work stands out as likely the first direct conversion from cellulose, opening up as potential fuel sources virtually anything that grows. Commercialization of the technology may take another five to 10 years, the researchers predict.
Developments in so-called "green hydrocarbons" arrive as ethanol continues to come under attack as expensive, inefficient and a contributor to rising food prices around the world. (More than a billion bushels of corn are diverted to ethanol production each year.) "There's certainly a lot of historical inertia for ethanol. It's gotten us off to a great start, but I can't see the country transitioning to flex-fuel," says John Regalbuto, director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation. "I almost think, long term, that we will go to plug-in hybrids. But we're still going to need diesel and jet fuel-you can't run trains or fly planes with ethanol or hydrogen."
"We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels," Huber says. "We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years. And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.
So the hubris of OPEC appears to be driving us to unexpected success in the development of alternative fuel sources.
And here's the kicker: what's one thing the OPEC states can never produce? Biomass. Their land is a desert. They can't grow anything there. Their old-fashioned oil deposits could become too expensive to use. It's the ultimate irony: rather than running out of oil, the oil of the OPEC states would be left in the ground, replaced by ultra-cheap gasoline produced from waste biomass.
They'd be buying their fuel from us.
From the Wall Street Journal (via Instapundit):
Coal's Doubters Block New Wave Of Power Plants
From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.
If significant numbers of new coal plants don't get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation's electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8% this year. In a time of rising energy costs, officials also worry about the long-term consequences of their decisions, including higher prices or the potential for shortages.
As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, which currently supplies about half the nation's electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low.
But as plans for this fleet of new coal-powered plants move forward, an increasing number are being canceled or development slowed. Coal plants have come under fire because coal is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.
Coal plants generate energy we desperately need so as to be free of price-gouging, terrorist-sponsoring nations. And plans for new coal plants are being discarded due to fears of so-called global warming. But proof of the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming is evaporating.
From Canadian Climatologist Timothy Ball:
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.
What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.
From Investors.com:
Global Warming: A private firm's downgrade of its hurricane forecast raises an obvious question: If scientists can't get near-future projections in a limited area right, how can they predict the climate decades from now?
A reasonable response is: They can't. But the global warming climate of fear did not blow in on the soft breezes of reason, but by the storm winds of emotion.
Forecaster WSI Corp. said Tuesday that the season ending Nov. 30 will bring 14 named storms, six of which will grow into hurricanes, three of them major. WSI's initial forecast was for 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four majors.
Why the change? "Because," said WSI forecaster Todd Crawford, "ocean temperatures have not yet rebounded from the significant drop in late spring."
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
...Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame." [Update 8-2-07: see this comment.]
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."
...Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."
...Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.
From Australian scientist David Evans:
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened that case. I am now skeptical.
...There is now no observational evidence that global warming is caused by carbon emissions. You would think that in over 20 years of intense investigation we would have found something. For example, greenhouse warming due to carbon emissions should warm the upper atmosphere faster than the lower atmosphere - but until 2006 the data showed the opposite, and thus that the greenhouse effect was not occurring! In 2006 better data allowed that the effect might be occurring, except in the tropics.
The only current "evidence" for blaming carbon emissions are scientific models (and the fact that there are few contradictory observations). Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations. Some theories held by science authorities have turned out to be spectacularly wrong: heavier-than-air flight is impossible, the sun orbits the earth, etc. For excellent reasons, we have much more confidence in observations by several independent parties than in models produced by a small set of related parties!
From England's Channel 4:
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Earth's 4.5 billion year history is one long story of climate change. This fact is pretty much accepted by those who think global warming is a natural process, and those who think it's caused by man.
In more recent history there has been: a mini ice age in the seventeenth century when the Thames froze so solidly that fairs could regularly be held on the ice; a Medieval Warm Period, even balmier than today; and sunnier still was the so-called Holocene Maximum, which was the warmest period in the last 10,000 years.
...For some people, the final nail in the coffin of human-produced greenhouse gas theories is the fact that carbon dioxide is produced in far larger quantities by many natural means: human emissions are miniscule in comparison. Volcanic emissions and carbon dioxide from animals, bacteria, decaying vegetation and the ocean outweigh our own production several times over.
...New evidence shows that that as the radiation coming from the sun varies (and sun-spot activity is one way of monitoring this) the earth seems to heat up or cool down. Solar activity very precisely matches the plot of temperature change over the last 100 years. It correlates well with the anomalous post-war temperature dip, when global carbon dioxide levels were rising.
...In fact, what is known of solar activity over the last several hundred years correlates very well with temperature. This is what some scientists are beginning to believe causes climate change.
The global warming campaign is wrong on the facts, and is doing great harm to our nation's energy supply, at a time when that energy supply is key to national security.
Washington, DC – Automakers kicked off National Alternative Fuel Autos Week by announcing that there are 10.5 million Alternative Fuel Autos on the nation’s roads today, according to 2006 sales data from R.L. Polk and Co.
The Polk sales figures also reveal that an unprecedented 1.5 million Alternative Fuel Autos were sold in 2006, surpassing automakers’ sales expectations by 50 percent. Currently manufacturers are offering 60 models of Alternative Fuel Automobiles for sale including hybrid electric, ethanol-capable E-85, and clean diesel, up from just 12 models for sale in 2000. A complete list of available autos can be found at www.DiscoverAlternatives.com.
Progress towards a hydrogen car engine.
"Fossil fuels are to blame, world scientists conclude:"
A major international analysis of climate change due Friday will conclude that humankind's reliance on fossil fuels — coal, fuel oil and natural gas — is to blame for global warming, according to three scientists familiar with the research on which it is based.
So concerns about global warming could help build a consensus for a move toward nuclear power and ethanol-fueled cars. Using methods such as these to achieve U.S. energy independence would defund nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia that are financing radical jihadists around the world, and provide a tremendous benefit in increased U.S. security.
A new product lets you generate your own heat and power for your home.
From UPI:
A U.S. Department of Energy project has demonstrated the viability of a new technology that might unlock the nation's largest potential source of oil.
Government scientists say the United States holds more than three-fourths of the world's estimated 2.6 trillion barrels of oil-in-place of oil shale, with 1.1 trillion barrels of oil equivalent believed recoverable in the richest single deposit -- the Green River formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming -- a volume nearly 50 percent greater than the conventional oil reserves of the entire Middle East.
...[The new] technology could slash recovery costs by half or more while minimizing disturbance of the land, researchers said.
Last week I went to the alternative-fuel car expo in Santa Monica, California. There were a lot of fun cars there like this:
There were also cars that are already on the road, like this:
I got the chance to speak to Jon Van Bogart, a Director of Sales & Marketing for CleanFuel USA.
Jon Van Bogart of CleanFuel USA. CleanFuel USA is a Member of the CEVC, which is Working on Providing Alternative, Domestic Fuels for California.
Here's info about his company, from it's web site:
Originally named Clean Fueling Technologies, company president Curtis Donaldson founded CleanFUEL USA in 1993, with a mission to build a company that would supply and support the propane motor fuel industry with quality refueling infrastructure. Since then Georgetown, Texas based CleanFUEL USA has established itself as the leading global manufacturer of certified and approved alternative fuel dispensing equipment for both propane (LPG) and E85 and has expanded its role as an industry leader by providing comprehensive alternative motor fuel programs for fleet managers throughout the world.
Jon stated that there are already 300,000 ethanol-capable vehicles on the road in California, and 5 million such vehicles on the road in the U.S. These vehicles can use any combination of traditional gasoline and ethanol.
Because so many such vehicles are already on the road, ethanol-capable fuel stations are currently being built in California. The US government is supporting this move with financing. From printed material handed to me by Jon:
The federal Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it has selected a strong collaborative team comprised of CALSTART, General Motors, Pacific Ethanol, CleanFUEL USA, Community Environmental Council and others to receive grant funding to jump start a major new alternative fuel network in the state. The grant would provide partial funding to build 15 publicly accessible E85 ethanol stations in California.
E85 ethanol is largely a renewable and domestic fuel. It consists of 85 percent ethanol and only 15 percent gasoline. However, there is currently only one public station that sells E85 ethanol (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) in California, despite the fact the state has more than 300,000 flex-fuel cars capable of running on the fuel. This project will create the fundamental building blocks of an E85 refueling network and provide new fueling choices for the owners of those cars.
The California proposal scored high in a national competition largely as a result of the strength of the team. Among those on the full team are CALSTART, General Motors, CleanFuel USA, Pacific Ethanol, United Oil Company, Community Environmental Council, City of Tulare, the California Energy Commission, the California State Automobile Association, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the San Joaquin Valley Clean Cities Coalition, and the Southern California Regional Clean Cities Coalition.
"I'm very pleased that the DOE has made this award to this very strong and impressive team from California" said Jim Boyd, Vice Chairman of the California Energy Commission. "Working together, we can build upon this initial DOE grant and will construct a major E85 network in California," said Boyd.
With this initial round of funding, ten E85 will be constructed at existing gas stations owned by United Oil in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. With four pumps going to stations along the highway 10 1 route from Ventura to San Luis Obispo County, motorists will be able to conveniently refill in that region. A final E85 pump will be installed in the San Joaquin Valley alongside Highway 99 in Tulare.
...There are approximately 1,000 E85 ethanol stations throughout the country. Most of the stations are based in the Midwest.
Ethanol for this project will be produced in California and supplied by Pacific Ethanol, a company headquartered in Madera, California. There are three existing ethanol plants in California and efforts underway to build four more by the end of 2007. Within the next two years, California ethanol production should reach 400 million gallons per year, an amount that would be significant enough to cover the demand from the E85 ethanol stations.
CALSTART and its fellow team members will begin work immediately and plan to have the first station operational within five to six months.
Jon stated that this activity was made possible by GWB's support for alternative fuels, in his 2006 State of the Union speech. While to many of us it has seemed that there has been little follow-up on GWB's part to that initiative, per Jon, the inclusion of this in the President's speech made this initiative official US government policy, and enabled the car industry to invest in an ethanol-capable vehicle strategy.
The goal of the California coalition working on providing ethanol fuel stations, is to have 200-500 new stations in California in the next 3-5 years.
WIRED magazine has a surprisingly encouraging look at the future of biofuel:
A company called E3 Biofuels is about to fire up the most energy-efficient corn ethanol facility in the country: a $75 million state-of the-art biorefinery and feedlot capable of producing 25 million gallons of ethanol a year. What’s more, it will run on methane gas produced from cow manure. The super-efficient operation capitalizes on a closed loop of resources available here on the prairie – cattle (fed on corn), manure (from the cows), and corn (fed into the ethanol distiller). The output: a potential gusher of renewable, energy-efficient transportation fuel.
Of course, 25 million gallons of ethanol is a drop in the tanker when it comes to our 140 billion-a-year oil habit. And ethanol itself is a subject of controversy for all sorts of reasons. Many of the criticisms, while true in some small ways, are aggressively promoted by the oil lobby and other interested parties in an effort to forestall change. Most are myths. Challenges certainly exist with ethanol, but none are insurmountable, and – with apologies to Al Gore – the convenient truth is that corn ethanol is a crucial first step toward kicking our oil addiction. I believe we can replace most of our gasoline needs in 25 years with biomass from our farmlands and municipal waste, while creating a huge economic boom cycle and a cheaper, cleaner fuel for consumers.
Which is why this Mead, Nebraska, farm is so exciting to me: The ethanol made here is not only clean but also cheap – this is perhaps the first ethanol plant to achieve both. More important, it is an early demonstration of the great potential of biohols – liquid fuels derived from biomass for internal combustion engines. The facility is the first data point in what I call the biohol trajectory. (See “March of the Biohols,” page 143.) Like Moore’s law, this trajectory tracks a steady increase in performance, affordability, and, importantly, yield per acre of farmland. A number of biohols appear along this performance curve, among them corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, higher-energy-content butanol, and other biomass-derived fuels that are even more energy-rich than butanol. We’ll see fuels with higher energy density and better environmental characteristics, and we’ll develop engines better optimized for biohols. Ethanol and the newer fuels will yield better fuel efficiency as innovations like higher compression-ratio engines make their way into vehicles. In addition, we can count on the emergence of complementary technologies like cheaper hybrid vehicles, better batteries, plug-in hybrids, and more efficient, lighter-weight cars.
But the single most critical variable in the biohol trajectory is the coming rise in the number of gallons of fuel produced per acre. As we migrate from biomass derived from corn to biomass from so-called energy crops like switchgrass and miscanthus, I estimate that biomass yield will reach 20 to 24 tons per acre, a fourfold increase. At the same time, new technologies will enable us to extract more biohols from every ton of biomass, potentially to 110 gallons per ton. The result: We’ll be extracting 2,000 to 2,700 gallons of fuel per acre (as opposed to about 400 gallons with today’s technology). With better fuels and more-efficient engines improving mileage by about 50 percent, we can safely predict a seven- to tenfold gain in miles driven per acre of land over the next 25 years. Given this biohol trajectory, a future of independence from gasoline becomes not only possible but probable.
From commenter Mike Sharpe:
Bio-diesal can actually be had for about .40 cents per gallon if you make it yourself. Mass production of bio-diesel should drive the price lower than that (in a perfect world). My father-in-law has a small trucking business and fuels his entire fleet with homemade bio-diesel.
...Bio-fuels are commercially viable, if people and the industry want them to be. The bio-fuel/bio-diesel technology isn't new. Again the issue is making the gov't change it's focus on how the US is going to power the nation and the car's on the road. For instance, I have 1977 Toyota Landcruiser FJ40, which was gas powered from the factory. In top formit got about 15 MPG, on average. Not great. In 2001, I found out about an inventer named Somender Singh, from India. Singh made a simple modification to the cylinder head of gasoline engines that allowed for 20% greater mpg, an 18% gain in HP and higher compression, and more complete burning of fuel. I made this mod. to my Landcruiser, motorcyle and car. I was amazed! It worked just as Singh said it would. The mods cost me all of $200, in time and money for all 3 vehicles. When gas prices went above $2.70 last year I decided to convert my FJ40 to diesel and run the bio-diesel my father-in-law makes. The engine and accesories to do the conversion cost about $2000. I've already recouped the cost of the conversion in just 6 months. It costs me about $.40-$.50 a gallon to run my Toyota.
RE: ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: There's a biofuel called E85, that's only 15% gasoline, costs under $2 a gallon, and can run in existing cars with little modification.
There's continued excitement 'mongst the automakers and farm state folks over E85, a fuel that blends 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline as an alternative technology. (Much cheaper than developing new engines, because this fuel requires little modification of existing cars.)
Advocates say it's cleaner and, at about $1.79 a gallon, much cheaper than regular gasoline. And it's made from plants in the U.S.A., not the Middle East. Remember the famous "switch grass" suggestion in President Bush 's State of the Union address?
Per automotive columnist Eric Peters:
The Department of Energy, in a recent series of reports that drew scant media attention, says advanced oil recovery technology and techniques can quadruple the amount of recoverable oil in the United States - eventually adding 430 billion new barrels to the nation’s reserves. Those projections don’t encompass hundreds of billions of barrels more that can be extracted from Canada’s vast tar sands and Colorado’s huge oil shale deposits.
A lot of things can change once the U.S. no longer has to rely on oil from the mid-east.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working on getting oil out of the Utah and Colorado oil-shale fields. It's believed that America's oil-shale would provide enough fuel to make America energy-independent for the next 100 years.
In recent news, the BLM has decided to exclude Exxon from the list of companies approved to do research and development leases on the Utah and Colorado land in the current test. Exxon wasn't ready to even start until 2014 -- that's why they're out.
The article states that "commercial operations ... could start as early as mid-2007."
AN ELECTRIC CAR THAT DOES 0-60 IN 3.6 SECONDS. The electric car technology is improving.
