Fossil fuels still in use....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-22-2009

Happy Earth Day!

There are a number of things that can begin to minimize the use of fossil fuels we still use & the damage their use causes.

Since we do not yet have 100 % coverage from renewable sources (or renewables plus nuclear ); and we do still have this huge installed infrastructure that is almost entirely based on fossil fuels, we need to minimize the harm from those fossil fuels we continue to use.

We can capture CO2 that is from large stationary plants that burn fossil fuels such as existing coal burning plants and store it.

We can make that much more practical by feeding the CO2 from such plants to algae that make biofuels and release oxygen so that we get multiple uses from the same carbon but less net increase in CO2. That also results in less CO2 to store.

We can make some coal into hydrocarbons such as gasoline which helps because they can replace petroleum which can help countries like the US, the UK, Germany, China, & India that have coal reduce their dependence on oil from the Middle East if nothing else.

And, we can combine that with locating some biofuel production from algae that use the CO2 from the coal that is still burned near the plants that make coal into liquid fuels. The fuels created from coal can then be added to the fuel from the algae and increase the production of fuels that can be used instead of petroleum. That way we can cut our petroleum use more while giving the coal mining industry more of a productive role and a more gradual reduction to give the companies and people more time to do something else as coal use declines.

We can begin to charge the cost of damage done by coal mining to the coal that is sold or begin to simply ban these short term less expensive, long term much more expensive methods of mining it.

We can simply stop allowing most new coal burning plants from being built or only allow those that reprocess or sequester 100 percent of the C02 generated as we’ve described here.

And, we can enact regulations that gradually phase out the fossil fuels or biofuels that are less helpful in fighting excess CO2 by rating the different ones and including their total real costs, not just their initial cost of production.

The state of California is in the process of doing just that according to a story published today, Weds, 4-22-2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was on page A – 1 in the newspaper and also online at www.sfgate.com . (I found it online through Yahoo news.)

David R. Baker, their Chronicle Staff Writer who authors most of their energy related news, wrote the story.

The California Air Resources Board is expected to approve the “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” regulation tomorrow.

Beginning in 2011, this standard would steadily lower the allowable "carbon intensity" of fuels, or the amount of greenhouse gases released per unit of energy produced. Then by 2020, the overall carbon intensity of fuels by in California will be reduced by 10 percent.

To be sure, this is a tiny step. But we’re are clearly in a situation where we quite literally need every effective and doable step we can take. Even better, this regulation is “being studied by officials from other states, the federal government, and … the European Union.”

Best of all, this plan rates the different fuels in a way that DOES includes their real costs in CO2 production, not just by their upfront dollar cost.

But the most potentially valuable aspect is that this has touched off a fierce lobbying battle by the ethanol producers, and oil companies which each dislike having the true costs of their product being disclosed and penalized.

Given what’s at stake here and the apparent accuracy of the data used by the California Air Resources Board, these lobbying efforts are a grave mistake. This makes as much sense as throwing money at a tidal wave and imagining it will not run over them.

These companies would make a far better business decision to invest those funds into more productive efforts to lower the real costs of their products or move their people, resources, and technologies into a growing part of the economy as fast as possible to avoid ruin.

Corn ethanol producers dislike having the deforestation effects of forested land being switched to corn production be included as a real cost. The recent events seem to show that it is a real cost. So that’s money down the drain. Why not invest the money into facilities that combine corn ethanol from existing fields with ethanol from algae that has less environmental costs and switching to renewable energy sources to use for distillation instead of the coal generated power they use now to lower their real costs?

The Canadian government, meanwhile, fears it will hurt sales of oil from their tar sands as do the companies involved. But though the politics of oil will likely keep their industry viable for a while, the real costs involved in extracting oil from oil shale using current technology are so severe that they had better get used to it or invent a better extraction technology. For example, rather than massive mining operations and energy thirsty extraction methods, it might work to drill holes into the deposits and inject a catalyst and algae & thus use the algae to create biofuels from the oil shale.

The Western States Petroleum Association lobbying group for the oil industry is unhappy with the regulation since some kinds of ethanol and biofuels rate more highly than their petroleum does. They point out that we depend enough on their petroleum now that we might mess up the economy if we disrupt our use of it too much and too fast.

They are actually correct. But this is more a smoke screen for their real problem than a valid reason to not enact this regulation. We DO have a pressing need to move away from using their fuel and to begin to charge its total real costs into decisions about how much of it to use. In addition, the regulation IS already taking this point into account. It’s designed to do some good and get the process started while only changing the status quo by 10 % over a 9 year time period. That sounds safe to me and to be a reasonably soft landing for the oil companies. Their point would only be valid if the regulations called for something like 20% in 5 years. Something like that might cause the problem the oil companies are raising. The regulations the Chronicle reports are being considered would not.

Interestingly, one of the good guys, Bob Walsh, CEO of Aurora Biofuels, would prefer a delay that would rate the biofuels companies like his will produce from algae. (Such fuels ARE a valuable advance and will have lower real costs.) But, this ignores the fact that we are quite literally in a race for our collective lives and a race to prevent economic collapse from the costs of global warming or from running out of energy we can use safely. Even worse, we are getting a real start at least 35 years too late.

We need to follow the strategy of General George Patton who was perhaps the most effective military commander in history. He realized and used the fact that to get rapid results when time pressure is extreme, it is critically important to find something clearly useful even if not perfect and then to put it into action at the earliest possible moment and to execute it in a way likely to do the most good with the greatest focus and effort you can manage.

I think this Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulation meets that test and hope that it is enacted.
Of course if fuels now rated as superior begin to have increased real costs and as better fuels with lower costs, such as algae derived biofuels, begin to be rated, that new data can be used by this regulation or its successor in 2020.

So, I encourage Aurora Biofuels and Solazyme and other biofuel companies that use algae to generate the data to give to the California Air Resources Board rather than asking them to wait until the data is available.

(The regulation rates fuels by the number of grams of carbon dioxide released for every megajoule of energy produced. The regulation includes the indirect land-use effects of the biofuels they rate, which is a real and accurate cost in my view. As a result, corn ethanol from the Midwest rates worse than gasoline.)

In the table from the Chronicle article below, the first number is the cost without adding land-use effects while the second number the regulation will use includes it.

California gasoline 95.85 95.85 (with 10% ethanol)
Midwest ethanol 75.10 105.10 (with some of the plant's power coming from coal)
California ethanol 50.70 80.70 (with the plant's power coming from natural gas)
Brazilian ethanol 27.40 73.40 (made from sugarcane and shipped here)
Landfill bio-methane 11.26 11.26 (derived from landfills in California)

This overall set of things to begin to use fossil fuels more safely and less often is not perfect. But the more of such things we try, the sooner we begin, and the faster we adopt the ones that work best, the better off we will be.