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- Ramble, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Unfortunately a number of these still require land on which to grow. Frankly, the US, Europe, etc. cannot do that and still produce enough fuel without starving it's population.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates.
corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
The simple fact is that the calories it takes to run soiciety as we know it is far greater than the caolories that the world can make in any manner approaching renewable. We can either change our society or watch it and us die. History is full of societies and civiliaztions who faced a similar situation to what we are face. Unfortunatey the extreme majority chose to die instead of change. - aimlesstraveler, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3This is actually a pretty neat list of all kinds of things that science might make into alternative fuels. Who woulda thunk most of them.
- JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"The sustainable biofuel industry excites me quite a bit." Want to be less excited? Look up the expected ANNUAL yield from an acre of land in a biofuel farm. Here, I'll help. Most estimates say around 20 gallons of biofuel per acre is about the best ANNUAL yield you can expect. At that rate, the state of Texas converted into a biofuel farm might satisfy US gasoline consumption for about 10 days.
- MewTwo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I feel we should have an obligation to ASSIST the poor states, but we have to do it in a way that will allow them to save themselves and not depend on us forever.
- MewTwo, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3That's naive. What are we supposed to do? Grow food and ship it to other nations for free? We can't do that forever; we have to help the other states' economy so that they can sustain their own crops, or at least afford food. It's not our job to save starving nations, it's their own governments' responsibility. Although, some would argue that our government and multi-national corporations are preventing this.
- netburnr, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4Dugg only because it talks about Hemp fuel, which Henry Ford used before modern oil.
- IllBeBack, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Hooray for poop energy!
(what?) - JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Math error: Instead of 186, that should be 1860 million gallons per year from a Montana biofuel farm. Which is less than 1 weeks worth of consumption for the US.
- OsakaWilson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2OK. Is this guy full of crap? The arguments against Ethanol sound like they are created by right-wing spin machines, but I don't hear an opposing view. Are bio-fuels viable?
- ArchonSG, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3For a moment there I thought the title was going to refer to the Bush Administration cannibalizing its citizens to feed his personal economy.
Silly me. - hazelnoot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Yes it is our job to save starving nations.
- Ramble, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Actually what he says makes a lot of sense. To grow the ethanol you'd require huge amounts of land, more than any first world country has to spare, not even mentioning the third world countries. Forget this global warming crap, agriculture has affected the world far more than that, and these people want to grow more? Of all exactly the same crop?
- JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1 "If you can take an area like the picture below in eastern Montana that is already covered in grass..." Why stop with eastern Montana? Let's assume we take every square inch of the 93 million acres that is the whole state of Montana and cover it with nothing but switchgrass. How much fuel can be get from that? According to most estimates, the best you can expect is about 20 gallons of fully processed and ready to use biofuel per acre on an ANNUAL basis. To recap, the state of Montana converted into a biofuel farm might yield 186 million gallons of biofuel PER YEAR. That's kinda impressive until you consider that the US consumes about 320 million gallons of gasoline PER DAY. There you have it, biofuels debunked in a paragraph. Now can we please move on to something that might actually make sense.
- Bhima, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yes, this guy is mostly full of it. Australia does not have that much natural gas and It isn't all that useful to transport natural gas by boat.
Biofuels probably are viable... particularly if take into account the progress made with them in the last 10 years and project it forward. Now if the US continues to insist on using primarily ethanol from corn sugars then yes there will be problems. There are more solutions than ethanol from corn sugars and ethanol in general.
He is right on one count: By insisting on Ethanol from corn sugars Bush is forcing the use ADM's fermenting facilities (which is likely a result of heavy lobbying) and shafting the rest of us. - JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Biofuel is little more than an interesting diversion on the road to energy independence. It can never be a major energy source without some rather severe and unpleasant side effects.
- nitrojunky24, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I don't see the big deal there are many ways to make Ethanol just ask any old bootlegger its all it is or we could ask Brazil they have been using E85 for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil - tamckissick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It uneducated articles like this that have put us in position for the coming crisis we're headed for. Let's have a little clarification class, shall we?
Most of the listed sources are as widely available as harvesting honorable politicians for energy. That leaves out most of the list.
Then there's the logistically doable, but energy wasting group. You can put soy and corn ethanol and many others in there since most use natural gas to make their fertilizer, then use oil to run their farming equipment and after all that, they use arguably close to their energy yield in MORE natural gas to process them into ethanol. (Then you have to transport it) None mentioned so far account for the destruction of the fertile layer of soil. Whether it's arible or non-arible, the land has a recouperating process in which it needs a break from farming, especially dirt packing tractors and temporary yield fertilizers. The non-arible land is useful because it's not packed and can regain it's carbon content from decaying plant material and can absorb rainwater, etc. to refil our underground aquafers of which we highly rely on.
The rest of the bios mentioned are said to be carbon neutral, which means they 'use' the same CO2 that they give off when burning. The problem with that is that right now we count on them using that CO2 and NOT giving it off. Change that and it becomes a net negative.
On to the bio fuel that they didn't mention. Anerobic digestion of human and animal waste is a very low energy use process that creates a fuel (methane, aka natural gas) from a source that would already have contributed to the greenhouse gas mix. No net gain at all. In addition to that, it's available on a scale that can make a very serious dent in our CO2 reduction, it's available in very distributed locations everywhere in the world, and it actually solves many current societal problems.
Combine battery powered cars, slot powered electric cars, plug hybrid cars, and highly efficient biofuel powered cars with the output of anerobic digestion methane and we actually have enough power to offset our full transportation fleet.
The rest of the biofuel 'research' is nothing but posturing for research grants and farm subsidies. Period-point-blank. - netburnr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You sir are an idiot.
//Can we deport this guy? - ZenFountain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Has it occurred to you that many of the proposed biofuel sources with the most research going into them (switchgrass and miscanthis, as I mentioned) can be grown on land that is not arable for food crops? It's not necessarily the case that these crops will gobble up all the best and most productive soil for staple crops. If you can take an area like the picture below in eastern Montana that is already covered in grass and use tracts to grow grass for fuel it's no loss. These kinds of crops, if they become economically viable, may actually lift a burden off areas that are draining their water supplies to grow corn and other crops. Of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but there has to be a solution somewhere as we slide into peak oil. I'd like to hear what all the nay sayers have to say about how we're even going to grow crops for food without oil.
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/2489/060806custercomt3cs6.jpg - ZenFountain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0The estimates I have read put the potential of switchgrass alone at 160 gallons an acre. Your calculation is coming from statistics for corn and soybeans which we know are unsuitable and inefficient for biofuel. Gasoline consumption in the US is 140 billion gallons a year. That would mean for 100% percent switchgrass, speaking puring in the hypothetical, you would need 875,000,000 acres (5,468,750 sq. miles) of grass at 100% efficiency. So, even in the ideal conditions you're still right about it being totally infeasible as a complete replacement for traditional fossil fuels.
But that's NOT the end of the story. Realistic production of biofuels will help alleviate the looming disaster known as peak oil. You must look at renewable energy as a puzzle of many different possibilities combined with conservation and greater efficiency. Clearly, we won't be able to sustain consumption of 140 billion gallons of gasoline a year, but there are possibilities to save us from returning to the days of horse drawn transportation as oil peaks and then runs out. There is plenty of hype and fiction going around about biofuels, but there is also some truth to their potential. Simply put, not the silver bullet but part of the answer. - waspbr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1using beer or wine as fuel is a horrible idea... they'd become to expensive...
- FERGLOR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0D is for Deforestation
- hazelnoot, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2People starve to death and meanwhile we feed our machines...
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Talking about creating greenhouse gasses. Creative accounting gone mad. Food is for eating not for burning. When you calculate the greenhouse costs, go out and buy the petroleum fuel. Better still the North West of Australia has enough natural gas to supply Europe for 200 years, plus an estimated 200 years in reserves. The LPG is exported to China. Bypass the Middle East oil and use Aussie LPG. Much cheaper and cleaner. George W is shafting you.
- ZenFountain, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0The sustainable biofuel industry excites me quite a bit. As I said in the corn based ethanol article, corn and soybeans are a terrible idea for biofuels, but plants such as switchgrass and miscanthus show a great deal of promise. To anyone concerned about land being gobbled up for fuel that we need for food crops, these plants grow on the plains where grasses where the native species and require very little fertilizer and chemicals. It would actually be restoring areas more to their original state. We already grow too much corn to feed cows anyway, why do you think the government had had to pay tens of billions of dollars in corn subsidies over the past few decades? Farmers have overgrown because the government subsidized it all. We're not going to starve if large areas of the great plains get used to grow grass for fuel...hell maybe we will stop eating so many cheap hamburgers and corn syrup in everything and get healthier. Wouldn't that be a miracle?
- Viriditas, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2A cute and interesting list, even if it does shatter my dreams of using urine as a biofuel.
- mrrm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Let's Rock n' Roll...
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0Inventor Turns Saltwater Into Fuel [Video]
http://www.linkinn.com/_Inventor_Turns_Saltwater_Into_Fuel_Video - otep, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1Smug Alert.
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