Buying biofuel for your car could be more devastating to the planet than traditional fossil fuels.

[Zep 0]

Fabricar biocombustibles con colza y maíz puede tener un efecto contraproducente en la
lucha contra el cambio climático porque aumenta en gran medida la producción de oxido de nitrógeno, un gas con efecto invernadero 296 veces mayor que el dioxido de carbono, según demuestra un estudio que publica la revista Atmospheric Chemestry and Physics. Los autores, entre ellos el premio Nobel Paul Crutzen, han comprobado que el efecto invernadero generado es superior en un 50%-70% al de los propios combustibles fósiles (petróleo, carbón,y gas natural)

An article in the magazine Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

excuse the translation, my English isn't as good as it should be

To make biocombustibles with colza and maize can have a counter-productive effect in the fight against the climatic change because to a great extent increases the production of oxido of nitrogen, a gas with conservative effect 296 times greater than carbon dioxide, according to demonstrates a study that publishes the magazine Atmospheric Chemestry and Physics. The authors, among them the Nobel prize Paul Crutzen, who have verified the global warming effect is superior 50%-70% to the one of own fossil fuels (petroleum, coal, and natural gas)

So en essence Biofuels will reduce carbon dioxide at the expense of putting more nitrogen in the atmosphere, and help reduce the worlds population by starvation.
On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"

Nice one Greenies

Gone fishing

[rushmc 18]

Quote

Fabricar biocombustibles con colza y maíz puede tener un efecto contraproducente en la
lucha contra el cambio climático porque aumenta en gran medida la producción de oxido de nitrógeno, un gas con efecto invernadero 296 veces mayor que el dioxido de carbono, según demuestra un estudio que publica la revista Atmospheric Chemestry and Physics. Los autores, entre ellos el premio Nobel Paul Crutzen, han comprobado que el efecto invernadero generado es superior en un 50%-70% al de los propios combustibles fósiles (petróleo, carbón,y gas natural)

An article in the magazine Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

excuse the translation, my English isn't as good as it should be

To make biocombustibles with colza and maize can have a counter-productive effect in the fight against the climatic change because to a great extent increases the production of oxido of nitrogen, a gas with conservative effect 296 times greater than carbon dioxide, according to demonstrates a study that publishes the magazine Atmospheric Chemestry and Physics. The authors, among them the Nobel prize Paul Crutzen, who have verified the global warming effect is superior 50%-70% to the one of own fossil fuels (petroleum, coal, and natural gas)

So en essence Biofuels will reduce carbon dioxide at the expense of putting more nitrogen in the atmosphere, and help reduce the worlds population by starvation.
On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Nice one Greenies

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[nerdgirl 0]

Quote

On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Folks on the lefts who might self-identify as "Greenies" are also concerned about the potential redistribution of power, sovereignty issues, and who will benefit from biofuels. E.g., see: "Biofuels: a danger for Latin America" from ZNet Commentaries http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-05/24trigona.cfm.

--------------

At the same time, a superficially unexpected (perhaps?) 'group' has been sponsoring significant investigations into biofuels and alternative energy. For example, the DoD Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) and the (now former) Office of Force Transformation (OFT) started a monthly series on "Energy: A Conversation About Our National Addiction" in January 2006. If one thinks about it, the military is critically dependent on sources of energy to move things and people.

Ken Kreig (formerly the Under Secretary) regularly participated in these, as did the head of PA&E. This is not just some nerdy, tree-huggers in northern California.

Old website (via NPS): www.nps.edu/cebrowski/conversation.html.
New website (contractor maintained): http://www.energyconversation.org/cms/ (Click "About Us" tab for mention of sponsors).

"Why is the DoD hosting this series? Just as the Defense Department played a critical role in forging the information revolution [e.g., ARPANET] in past decades, so can the Department play a similar critical role in fueling the energy revolution in coming decades? Why are you invited? Because there are positive and negative outcomes of decisions you make dependent upon your understanding of energy. We are all stakeholders in addressing the efficiency, conservation, secure sourcing, and cost reduction of energy. It is complicated with no easy answers. There are NO SILVER BULLETS. Come learn with us."

VR/Marg

p.s. full list of speakers and topics: http://www.energyconversation.org/cms/?q=node/113.

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[kallend 1,623]

Quote

On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Nice one Greenies

Heaven forbid that anyone should actually PAY for the energy they use and the damage to the environment they cause. Just BORROW the money, like your fearless leader.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 2,400]

>Faster moving vehicles increases space between vehicle, and dilutes the
>exhaust over any given measurement.

Faster moving vehicles result in MORE exhaust per mile.

A better analogy would be that reducing the number of cars on the road reduces delays, fuel consumption and road wear. Thus a smaller, cheaper road will last longer, get people where they are going faster and result in less pollution.

>The green movement money, control and socialism.

Which is as accurate as saying that people who support the Iraq war are all about killing Iraqi kids and imposing a US empire on the Middle East.

[rushmc 18]

Quote

Quote

On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Nice one Greenies

Heaven forbid that anyone should actually PAY for the energy they use and the damage to the environment they cause. Just BORROW the money, like your fearless leader.

And you expect a response to an off topic, Bush bash self endulging thread highjack I suppose

Got an elephant in your garage today?

...byt the way the elephant comment is as relavant (maybe more so) as yours

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[kallend 1,623]

Quote

Quote

Quote

On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Nice one Greenies

Heaven forbid that anyone should actually PAY for the energy they use and the damage to the environment they cause. Just BORROW the money, like your fearless leader.

And you expect a response to an off topic, Bush bash self endulging thread highjack I suppose



YOU responded

But you couldn't deny the accuracy of my post, so you just attack the messenger.
And now you've told us who your leader is, here's a nice picture of him.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[rushmc 18]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Nice one Greenies

Heaven forbid that anyone should actually PAY for the energy they use and the damage to the environment they cause. Just BORROW the money, like your fearless leader.

And you expect a response to an off topic, Bush bash self endulging thread highjack I suppose

YOU responded

But you couldn't deny the accuracy of my post, so you just attack the messenger.

Ah, there is nothing of any consequense you YOUR post to respond to.....

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 2,400]

>No biofuels will never even come close to being a substanteal
>replacement for fossil fuels.

The alternative is the end of our civilization. I have faith that we WILL find alternatives for fossil fuels, because there's really no other choice.

Heck, all that oil IS biofuel; it's just biofuel that's been stored for a long, long time and allowed to break down. (Hence the name 'fossil fuel.') The issue is not how to never use carbon based fuel again. The issue is using carbon-based fuel in a sustainable fashion.

>Most of the biofuels produced in north america require more fossil fuel
>energy to produce than energy that they yield.

I think you've been reading some very old reports! Ethanol yields more energy than is used to create it. Biodiesel yields WAY more energy than is used to create it.

[kallend 1,623]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

On the plus side Governments will get richer from the imposed "green taxes"..and in the end, this is what it is all about, redistrubution of money. And who decides where is goes? Politions and gov leaders. This is all about power, and not the kind that lights a bulb

Nice one Greenies

Heaven forbid that anyone should actually PAY for the energy they use and the damage to the environment they cause. Just BORROW the money, like your fearless leader.

And you expect a response to an off topic, Bush bash self endulging thread highjack I suppose

YOU responded

But you couldn't deny the accuracy of my post, so you just attack the messenger.

Ah, there is nothing of any consequense you YOUR post to respond to.....

Why are you responding, then?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 2,400]

>So en essence Biofuels will reduce carbon dioxide at the expense of
>putting more nitrogen in the atmosphere, and help reduce the worlds
>population by starvation.

Nitrogen makes up 78% of our atmosphere. That's about 4 quadrillion tons. We're not going to make much of a dent in that. Nor does it matter - nitrogen is an inert gas that does a lot of good things for us.

What the article is talking about are nitrous oxides, NOx. Intensive agriculture, not biofuels, causes NOx emissions. Some (corn) cause a lot; others (grasses) produce less. This would tend to argue against what you are claiming above. Thus, using cellulosic ethanol as a fuel will not significantly increase NOx emissions - but using corn to feed people will.

Since we will be feeding people for the foreseeable future, research into reducing NOx emissions would be a good idea.

[kallend 1,623]

Quote

>

Since we will be feeding people for the foreseeable future, research into reducing NOx emissions would be a good idea.

What? Let them eat cake!

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Misternatural 0]

>>Nitrogen makes up 78% of our atmosphere.

Cheers, There are also a wide variety of nitrogen fixing agricultural plants on which we and most of our cow eating populations feed such as soybeans. Speaking of cows, the methane they produce is significantly more effective as a greenhouse gas, but this too can be sequestered.

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[jumpinfarmer 0]

No biofuels will never even come close to being a substanteal replacement for fossil fuels. Most of the biofuels produced in north america require more fossil fuel energy to produce than energy that they yield. The only thing that ethanol is accomplishing is raising the price of corn.

Ethanol has about a 35% net gain of energy over the fossil fuel used to produce it. I love how everyone likes to bash this point but never says anything about how much energy is used to produce fossil fuels, they don't just come out of the ground ready for your gas tank. Furthermore what is wrong with the price of corn, or any other grain crop going up? True corn is almost double the price it was two years ago but, untill then it was about the same price as in the late 60's. What other business do you know of that produces for 40 years without a price increase. part of the ethanol boom is brought on by farmers themselves. 15-20 years ago when the price of corn was in the toilet and we were basicly living off government payments some forward thinking farmers in the corn belt got an idea to market there corn as ethanol. Whit lots of perservation they were able to get financing and then develope a market for there corn crop. After 9-11 when it became clear that our fossil fuel source wasn't as secure as we thought things really took off. Today about half of the ethanol in the US is produced by farmer owned Co Op's, not mega corporations. So in my opinion any increase in the price of grain was caused by the years of low prices and unwillingness of the population to give a shit about it.

[Misternatural 0]

Always good to get the working farmers perspective-
I think most of us are concerned from a consumer point of view- not realizing that the price of food is actually rediculously cheap.
Most people don't grow their own crops or hunt and fish for their chow..it's time consuming, energy intensive, hard work.

However overall i think the perception is that food scarcity and higher prices at the counter may result from a switch to more fuel crop farming.

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[jumpinfarmer 0]

It may but the real cause of higher prices at the store right now is because of higher costs of production. True some of this has been brought on by higher grain prices since seed and fertilizer companies have been looking for a way to raise prices for as long as farmers. When it all settles out I don't think we (farmers that is) will be any better off than before, just changing more dollers to make the same money. When someone sees the price of corn flakes going up and blames it on bio-fuel that is not all true. In a box of cerial there is about 6 cents of corn double that and it is only going to raise the cost by 6 cents. We all know that isn't the case and someone needs to be made the scape goat, farmers are less than 2% of the population so we are easy targets.

it should also be noted that we are now in the middle of harvesting a 13+ billion bushel corn crop in the US the largest in history. There will be no shortage of corn in the next year even with the increases in ethanol production. Corn is just a small part of your food bill, wheat is the crop that is now pushing prices higher and that has nothing to do with bio-fuels. The US had an increase in wheat production this year but, the rest of the world has had troubles of all sorts and came up short. The US is right now the only country in the world that has a reliable supply of food quality wheat to export and the market has gone nuts in the last few months. Production will go up next year but untill then prices will be high. When production goes up the price farmers recieve will likely fall but your food cost will probably stay the same Most people will complain about it but little will be done about it.

[skinnyflyer 0]

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Most of the machinery used is diesel powered- Tractors and Semi trucks are diesel powered, they can run on biodiesel, which closes that loop, lubricants can be made out of plant oils. Now- if you are talking about fertilizer production, yes that is petroleum intensive but there are ways to fertilize crops using waste material such as processed sludge- another problem solved.

You completely missed my point. If it takes 2 barrels of energy(regardless if they're biofuels or not) to produce 1 barrel of energy then you're wasting your time.

Quote

>No biofuels will never even come close to being a substanteal
>replacement for fossil fuels.

The alternative is the end of our civilization. I have faith that we WILL find alternatives for fossil fuels, because there's really no other choice.>

Other alternatives do exist. If you believe that converting large portions of our food producing land into energy losing ethanol producing land is our sole hope then you must have a lot of faith.

Quote

>Most of the biofuels produced in north america require more fossil fuel
>energy to produce than energy that they yield.

I think you've been reading some very old reports! Ethanol yields more energy than is used to create it. Biodiesel yields WAY more energy than is used to create it.

Really? it produces WAY more. WOW, that's so convincing.

It's very difficult to calculate exact numbers because there is a lot of choice as to what to include in the calculations. Therefor there is a range of different conclusions depending on the calculator's agenda. So far, all the reports from people without an obvious vested interest that I've seen, come up with negative to very dismal 1.1-1.3 energy returns for corn ethanol.



http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2874

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2615
We are currently using 20% of the corn produced in the United States to produce ethanol. Under the most optimistic scenarios, this amount could be tripled, to the equivalent of 60% of our 2006 corn production. At this production level, corn-based ethanol would replace about 10% of the volume (or about 7.2% of the energy content) of the US gasoline supply. This is still not very much, and there are serious questions whether this optimistic production level can in fact be reached.


http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2585
According to the EIA, gasoline demand in 2000 averaged 8.4 million barrels per day. In 2006, gasoline demand averaged 9.3 million barrels per day. That is an increase in demand of 0.9 million barrels per day. This is 329 million barrels per year, or an overall demand increase of 13.8 BILLION GALLONS OF GASOLINE!

So, the next time someone tells you that ethanol production is going to reduce our fossil fuel usage, tell them that in the last 7 years annual ethanol production grew by 3 billion gallons, while annual gasoline demand grew by 14 billion gallons. This, despite steadily rising oil prices and record high gasoline prices.

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
A. Sachs

[jumpinfarmer 0]

By your thinking we shouldn't even use gasoline sice there is way less energy in a barrle of gasoline than was in the barrel of crude. When ever you refine any energy source you have a net energy loss. The exception is hydo or wind produced electric.

If ethanol or bio diesel was a real net losser of energy then there would be no monitary incentive to produce it. As I stated before ethanol has a net gain of energy of 30-35% by most studies, some less and some much more I've seen as high as 60%. Bio diesel is far more efficiant to produce than ethanol since it is offten from a waste source and soybean oil is sort of a by product of feed and food production. Basic crude oil is also being produced from other agricultural waste such as animal by products and manure. Soon ethanol will also be produced from many other sources than grain. I know of one company that is just going on line to use beet pulp and has perfected making it from manure and corn stalks. Also one needs to remember that ethanol made from grain still leaves 25% of the grain for animal feed. Companies are also serching for other uses of distillers grain. Much of the energy used in the production of ethanol is either natural gas or coal which makes it a form of energy conversion just like refining gasoline from crude. How many coal powered cars do you see on the road? As for the energy used to produce the grain there is no way more is used than what is being created. I have seen some studies and compared them to what we use on our farm and the ney sayers figures are way off, some by as much as 2000%

Last year I used 6,000 gal of diesel 1,800 of gasoline and 5,000 propane on our 1,000 acres. That was total use for all crops corn, wheat, dry beans, peas, hay, and soybeans. It also includes the gasoline we burned in our vehicles and for other things such as mowing the lawn and the snowmobile in the winter. Use thouse figures against the 47,000bu of corn we produced. If that had bean used to make ethanol it would have produced over 135,000 gallons of ethanol and over 400 tons of distilers grain feed. This is just from the corn not rest of the crops. I know I didn't take fertilizer or transportation after we hauled our crops to market into consideration but still there wasn't that much energy used.

I've wrote enough for now.

[billvon 2,400]

>If it takes 2 barrels of energy(regardless if they're biofuels or not) to
>produce 1 barrel of energy then you're wasting your time.

Correct. However, it does not take 2 barrels of energy to produce 1 barrel of energy using ethanol. It takes .7 barrels of energy to produce 1 barrel of energy. So it's not as efficient as it might be, but it produces energy that you can use. In addition, the process results in cattle feed as a byproduct, which would otherwise need to be grown, increasing the energy balance further.

In addition, this ratio is steadily increasing, and will take a big leap once cellulosic ethanol begins to take off. So it works to produce energy right now, and it will get better with time.

A research project for you - how many units of crude does it take to make a unit of gasoline?

> Other alternatives do exist.

Correct!

>If you believe that converting large portions of our food producing land
>into energy losing ethanol producing land is our sole hope then you must
>have a lot of faith.

We have already done so; no faith required. Ethanol will not be the sole solution to our energy needs, just one of several.

>Really? it produces WAY more. WOW, that's so convincing.

Doing your own research will likely convince you. With biodiesel, you can use nitrogen-fixing crops (less fertilizer needed) and use the product almost directly. Diesel engines will run on SVO, straight vegetable oil. No processing, refining, fermenting or distilling required. Energy in to energy out is 1 to 3.2. So for every gallon of fuel you use to create biodiesel you get 3.2 gallons out at the end.

>So, the next time someone tells you that ethanol production is going
>to reduce our fossil fuel usage, tell them that in the last 7 years annual
>ethanol production grew by 3 billion gallons, while annual gasoline
>demand grew by 14 billion gallons. This, despite steadily rising oil
>prices and record high gasoline prices.

And the next time someone tells you we can keep increasing gasoline demand by 2 billion gallons a year forever with an ever more rapidly decreasing reserve of crude oil, tell them they're nuts. It would take a math illiterate to believe that we don't need an alternative.

[Misternatural 0]

<

I went to Ag school to learn how to grow vegetables and livestock, but when I started a market garden, and tried to sell to the consumer and restaurant trade I discovered how little money could be made verses the amount of work involved. Fortunately most farmers grow food because they enjoy farm life. But the disparity between the the incomes of corporate executives -many of whom provide the world with bullshit commodities, verses the people who grow food that everyone needs most - is ridiculous.

Now that agricultural fuel crop production is becoming popular it will be interesting to see how this effects overall farm income for those crops.

My question to you is how can farmers be more in control of crop pricing besides the old supply and demand model? Is the co-op effective?

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[skinnyflyer 0]

Quote

By your thinking we shouldn't even use gasoline sice there is way less energy in a barrle of gasoline than was in the barrel of crude. When ever you refine any energy source you have a net energy loss.

We're not talking about just refining. If the overall production; discovery, extraction, refining, transporting takes more energy than the energy it yields it isn't worth doing. If you start out with 100 barrels of energy and your new oil well discovery in iraq allows you to produce 30 barrels of energy for each 1 then your 300 barrels will turn into 9000 barrels. that's a 2900% return on the investment. this is the type of return that our western way of life is built on. Using large portions of farm land to produce corn for ethanol with an arguable yield of 0.3% which ultimately will replace a miniscule, irrelevant portion of gasoline consumption is a friggin massive waste. In the end we're just keeping the unsunstainable dillusion of increased motoring going for a few more days and in return millions will starve.

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If ethanol or bio diesel was a real net losser of energy then there would be no monitary incentive to produce it.

unfortunately this is not true. subsidies, undervalued ressources and market ineffieciencies make it possible. Real value isn't necissarily related to economic value.

Quote

As I stated before ethanol has a net gain of energy of 30-35% by most studies, some less and some much more I've seen as high as 60%. Bio diesel is far more efficiant to produce than ethanol since it is offten from a waste source and soybean oil is sort of a by product of feed and food production.

I think it's great when someone transforms their car to run on recycled oil from Mcdonalds and I'm sure he's getting a great return on his investment of time and whatever he needs but on large scale things like this are completely insignificant. They don't make the slightest difference.

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
A. Sachs

[billvon 2,400]

>to produce corn for ethanol with an arguable yield of 0.3% . . .

If that were true it would make no sense to produce ethanol. However, it is not true, as explained above.

>I think it's great when someone transforms their car to run on recycled
>oil from Mcdonalds and I'm sure he's getting a great return on his
>investment of time and whatever he needs but on large scale things
>like this are completely insignificant. They don't make the slightest difference.

One could have said exactly the same thing about the internal combustion engine circa 1905. The only people who owned the impractical and cranky gasoline engine powered cars were tinkerers who could fiddle about to keep them working - and who had access to the rare substance called gasoline. Most practical rich people had reliable electric cars or the less complex steam cars.

Would you claim that therefore internal combustion engines "don't make the slightest difference?"

[skinnyflyer 0]

Quote

to produce corn for ethanol with an arguable yield of 0.3% . . .

If that were true it would make no sense to produce ethanol. However, it is not true, as explained above.

sorry i meant 30% return. should be 1.3%. but you're absolutely right it makes no sense to produce.

Quote

>I think it's great when someone transforms their car to run on recycled
>oil from Mcdonalds and I'm sure he's getting a great return on his
>investment of time and whatever he needs but on large scale things
>like this are completely insignificant. They don't make the slightest difference.

One could have said exactly the same thing about the internal combustion engine circa 1905. The only people who owned the impractical and cranky gasoline engine powered cars were tinkerers who could fiddle about to keep them working - and who had access to the rare substance called gasoline. Most practical rich people had reliable electric cars or the less complex steam cars.

Would you claim that therefore internal combustion engines "don't make the slightest difference?"

what an awful comparison.

we were discussing the energy return on energy invested for various fuel sources. as mentioned you can't just calculate the refining process. you have to include everything; discovery, extraction,refining,storage, transport, etc.

so when a guy says he got a 500% eroei with his recycled vegetable oil he is not calculating all the energy costs that went into producing the oil in the first place, he's just referring to how much trouble it took him to find it and collect it. he's not wrong. but even if we recycled all of cooking oil we could, it wouldnt' make any meaningfull difference on the macro scale. In order to make a difference we would have to scale it up and so we can no longer use recycled cooking oil, we have to produce it. which brings us back to the same negative to 1.3% return. ttherefor to speak of large eroei in regards to biodiesel when talking about macro energy issues makes no sense.

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
A. Sachs

[billvon 2,400]

> sorry i meant 30% return.

Correct! And it's rising. Gasoline, once delivered to your local gas station, has a return of around 500%, and it's falling as oil becomes harder to extract and people go to greater lengths to find it.

So in terms of an investment - do you go with the industry that's showing greater and greater efficiencies, or the one that's dropping rapidly? For the quick buck, you might well go with the one that's still doing well. For the long term investor, he might well go with the one that's likely going to win in the long run.

But in any case that's sort of missing the point. We're not talking about industries that will make you a quick buck - if that's your game, internet porn or narcotics is is probably a much better investment. If you are looking for a fuel we can use RIGHT NOW to reduce our dependence on oil, ethanol fits the bill.

Which is a nice position to be in. We now have one possible solution to our problem, and it's here, and it's available and usable with cars we have right now. It is indeed more expensive - but that's a question of what we want to spend money on, not what's possible.

In the long run it will not replace gasoline, mainly because there are much better fuels (like straight electricity) that can be phased in once we have vehicles that can use it. It's an interim step that will help in the next few decades, giving us some more time to make the transition.

>we were discussing the energy return on energy invested for various fuel sources.

Right. And energy invested in used cooking oil has already been invested. It's a waste product; no additional energy needed.

Currently it's a tiny market, and thus the guy willing to convert his car (and do the work to find the oil) does great. He is similar to that guy in 1905 who is willing to tinker with his cranky internal-combustion engine and nearly break his back trying to crank it to get it started.

Right now the SVO biodiesel market is pretty small, and has to grow significantly to make a dent in our fuel usage. But like that car in 1905, we're looking at the leading edge of alternate fuels. Problems with cars/fuels in year X does not mean they will be impractical in year X+20.

> In order to make a difference we would have to scale it up and so we
>can no longer use recycled cooking oil, we have to produce it. which brings
>us back to the same negative to 1.3% return.

I think you may be confusing ethanol and biodiesel.

The process for ethanol requires a farmer to grow a sugar-containing crop, ferment it and distill the result. That takes energy, which is why the energy return isn't very good. For SVO biodiesel, you grow the crop, press it and use the result. That's it. Thus the EROI on SVO is around 5 (which diesel cars can run on.) Processed SVO (B100 biodiesel) is around 3.2. (320% efficient or 220% return, however you want to do it.)

And that's for crop-based biodiesel. Algae-based biodiesel is higher still (on the order of 500%) but its energy source can be sewage, which right now we discard.

So the future will see a mix of these technologies as we start replacing oil with a variety of fuels. Crop-based fuels will serve as an important 'stepping stone' to take us from reliance on oil to reliance on more local and sustainable energy technologies.

[skinnyflyer 0]

Quote

If you are looking for a fuel we can use RIGHT NOW to reduce our dependence on oil, ethanol fits the bill.

as the numbers i posted earlier in this thread show ethanol is doing nothing to reduce our dependance on oil. it is however dilluding us into thinking that we are.

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Right. And energy invested in used cooking oil has already been invested. It's a waste product; no additional energy needed.

Currently it's a tiny market, and thus the guy willing to convert his car (and do the work to find the oil) does great. He is similar to that guy in 1905 who is willing to tinker with his cranky internal-combustion engine and nearly break his back trying to crank it to get it started.

Right now the SVO biodiesel market is pretty small, and has to grow significantly to make a dent in our fuel usage. But like that car in 1905, we're looking at the leading edge of alternate fuels. Problems with cars/fuels in year X does not mean they will be impractical in year X+20.

> In order to make a difference we would have to scale it up and so we
>can no longer use recycled cooking oil, we have to produce it. which brings
>us back to the same negative to 1.3% return.

I think you may be confusing ethanol and biodiesel.

The process for ethanol requires a farmer to grow a sugar-containing crop, ferment it and distill the result. That takes energy, which is why the energy return isn't very good. For SVO biodiesel, you grow the crop, press it and use the result. That's it. Thus the EROI on SVO is around 5 (which diesel cars can run on.) Processed SVO (B100 biodiesel) is around 3.2. (320% efficient or 220% return, however you want to do it.)

And that's for crop-based biodiesel. Algae-based biodiesel is higher still (on the order of 500%) but its energy source can be sewage, which right now we discard.

So the future will see a mix of these technologies as we start replacing oil with a variety of fuels. Crop-based fuels will serve as an important 'stepping stone' to take us from reliance on oil to reliance on more local and sustainable energy technologies.

the bottom line is that all these by-products used to make biofuels are great but can't be scaled up to make a significant dent in oil consumption. the only biofuel being scaled up to significant numbers in the us is corn based ethanol and with a negative to dismal 1.3% eroei it's an insignificant, unimportant dillusion rather than a stepping stone.
like a strung out crack head being denied his crack so he reaches for some glue instead of facing his problem.

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
A. Sachs