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.
Showing posts with label biofuels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biofuels. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Energy change subsidies that work......
Today’s post: Wednesday, 12-31-2008
The Obama administration will do a good deal more than previous ones on installing more renewable energy generation.
Candidate Obama already said he would do so and has said so even more emphatically now that he is President-elect.
And, he has already suggested adding a massive energy conservation and weather stripping campaign for homes as a way to get people involved and to provide needed jobs right away.
Further, the Congress finally passed and President Bush signed an extension of the solar and wind energy incentives.
These steps will help us build more renewable energy sources. And, there is already some support for building large scale wind, solar thermal, and solar photovoltaic electricity generating plants in good locations and adding the new transmission lines needed to get this new electricity to the business and homes that will use it.
However, some thought needs to be given to making further subsidies help create self-sustaining renewable energy and energy efficiency businesses that do not need subsidies.
We close today’s post with some ideas on how to do that.
And, it is very important NOT to give subsidies to renewable energy methods that cause clearing of forests or taking over agricultural land or which require as much fossil fuel input as the renewable energy output achieved.
The subsidies for corn derived ethanol seem to have done all of the above—most unfortunately.
Subsidies WOULD make sense for research into biofuels that do the reverse of these things by using cellulosic ethanol from existing agricultural waste etc or by using algae tanks that can be located on land NOT used for farms & NOT on land which now has forest. And, funding for venture capital firms to help commercialize such efforts that turn out to work and be cost competitive.
(There ARE already companies and researchers working on such biofuels.)
By adding the biofuels from the successful efforts of this kind to some petroleum based fuels and some fuels made with pollution free conversion from coal while learning how to substitute electricity and/or energy efficiency for some fuel, we can continue having liquid fuels as needed while dramatically decreasing our oil use and eliminating the burning of coal to generate electricity.
Here’s how we can get to a renewable energy economy that is self-sustaining without the need for further subsidies.:
A. Renewable energy is already almost cost competitive or is so IF the capital cost of installing it can be covered and there are some current incentives in place we can make progress toward the massive installations of renewable energy we need.
We have the incentives in place. And, where needed they can be extended in the short term.
But some kind of Renewable Energy Funding group that could be set up (similar to that set up for FHA Real Estate financing to allow more people to become homeowners or like the SBA loan guarantees we have now that help businesses start or expand) that would act as a catalyst to homeowners, businesses, and utility companies installing new renewable energy sources.
This kind of financial entity for building the new transmission lines and for helping utilities add large scale renewable energy sources will be very important to do. Many states are already asking utilities to add such renewable energy generation and should require more. BUT, without the financing available, it won’t happen and cannot happen. So this government funding source is one kind of subsidy I think is critically important.
Also, a very critical policy is to require that all utility companies in the United States buy back renewable energy in excess of current demand by homeowners or businesses that are on its grid at market rates. In many areas now, you can zero out your utility bill in many months of the year if you have wind or solar generation; but your utility gets any excess renewable energy you produce beyond that free. This is a DIS-incentive to build and install renewable energy sources that should be immediately and permanently halted everywhere.
B. Then once we get started building more renewable energy it will gradually become clear how to incentivize the continued expansion of the renewable energy we need even more in ways that make sense. Providing capital to venture firms to expand renewable energy companies that are cost competitive with fossil fuels and profitable while continuing to catalyze the building of renewable energy with a federal financing arm for it will probably make sense.
C. We should begin to lightly tax all fossil fuels while their cost is temporarily low AND to give back the people and businesses taxed most of those funds to enable them to use less fossil fuels by taking energy efficiency steps or by building renewable energy sources as substitutes.
D. THEN, once all this is in place and there is an expanding base of energy efficiency actions and renewable energy sources, we should start adding restrictions and taxes on fossil fuels until their market cost is at least equal to the true overall lifetime cost of using them.
Roughly speaking that means that the delivered cost for natural gas would at least double; the delivered cost of fuels based on petroleum would go up four times; and the delivered cost of coal to be burned directly would go up ten times; and it would be gradually discontinued to be allowed at all.
The good news is that even in the initial stages, as the taxes increase the cost of fossil fuels and the new technologies and economies of scale begin to make renewable energy cheaper to use than fossil fuels, we will begin to get the massive expansion of renewable sources we need. The renewable sources will cost less and make the providers profits with no further subsidies needed.
Since we now rely on these fossil fuel sources for a huge amount of our transport, heating, and electricity generation and a huge part of our economy and existing jobs is connected to them, it’s also important that we may a huge and growing start with renewable sources and energy efficiency FIRST-- AND make these tax increases and restriction gradually to protect our economy.
That said, I think the process should be set up to be done in no more than 30 years. The taxes can be light until renewable energy costs less; and then moved gradually to very high as renewable replacements are brought online.
If all of the above steps or something very like them are taken, I think we can not only transition to an energy efficient and renewable energy economy and phase out of most use of fossil fuels but also do it with little harm our economy at first and a MUCH stronger and sustainable economy later.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 12-31-2008
The Obama administration will do a good deal more than previous ones on installing more renewable energy generation.
Candidate Obama already said he would do so and has said so even more emphatically now that he is President-elect.
And, he has already suggested adding a massive energy conservation and weather stripping campaign for homes as a way to get people involved and to provide needed jobs right away.
Further, the Congress finally passed and President Bush signed an extension of the solar and wind energy incentives.
These steps will help us build more renewable energy sources. And, there is already some support for building large scale wind, solar thermal, and solar photovoltaic electricity generating plants in good locations and adding the new transmission lines needed to get this new electricity to the business and homes that will use it.
However, some thought needs to be given to making further subsidies help create self-sustaining renewable energy and energy efficiency businesses that do not need subsidies.
We close today’s post with some ideas on how to do that.
And, it is very important NOT to give subsidies to renewable energy methods that cause clearing of forests or taking over agricultural land or which require as much fossil fuel input as the renewable energy output achieved.
The subsidies for corn derived ethanol seem to have done all of the above—most unfortunately.
Subsidies WOULD make sense for research into biofuels that do the reverse of these things by using cellulosic ethanol from existing agricultural waste etc or by using algae tanks that can be located on land NOT used for farms & NOT on land which now has forest. And, funding for venture capital firms to help commercialize such efforts that turn out to work and be cost competitive.
(There ARE already companies and researchers working on such biofuels.)
By adding the biofuels from the successful efforts of this kind to some petroleum based fuels and some fuels made with pollution free conversion from coal while learning how to substitute electricity and/or energy efficiency for some fuel, we can continue having liquid fuels as needed while dramatically decreasing our oil use and eliminating the burning of coal to generate electricity.
Here’s how we can get to a renewable energy economy that is self-sustaining without the need for further subsidies.:
A. Renewable energy is already almost cost competitive or is so IF the capital cost of installing it can be covered and there are some current incentives in place we can make progress toward the massive installations of renewable energy we need.
We have the incentives in place. And, where needed they can be extended in the short term.
But some kind of Renewable Energy Funding group that could be set up (similar to that set up for FHA Real Estate financing to allow more people to become homeowners or like the SBA loan guarantees we have now that help businesses start or expand) that would act as a catalyst to homeowners, businesses, and utility companies installing new renewable energy sources.
This kind of financial entity for building the new transmission lines and for helping utilities add large scale renewable energy sources will be very important to do. Many states are already asking utilities to add such renewable energy generation and should require more. BUT, without the financing available, it won’t happen and cannot happen. So this government funding source is one kind of subsidy I think is critically important.
Also, a very critical policy is to require that all utility companies in the United States buy back renewable energy in excess of current demand by homeowners or businesses that are on its grid at market rates. In many areas now, you can zero out your utility bill in many months of the year if you have wind or solar generation; but your utility gets any excess renewable energy you produce beyond that free. This is a DIS-incentive to build and install renewable energy sources that should be immediately and permanently halted everywhere.
B. Then once we get started building more renewable energy it will gradually become clear how to incentivize the continued expansion of the renewable energy we need even more in ways that make sense. Providing capital to venture firms to expand renewable energy companies that are cost competitive with fossil fuels and profitable while continuing to catalyze the building of renewable energy with a federal financing arm for it will probably make sense.
C. We should begin to lightly tax all fossil fuels while their cost is temporarily low AND to give back the people and businesses taxed most of those funds to enable them to use less fossil fuels by taking energy efficiency steps or by building renewable energy sources as substitutes.
D. THEN, once all this is in place and there is an expanding base of energy efficiency actions and renewable energy sources, we should start adding restrictions and taxes on fossil fuels until their market cost is at least equal to the true overall lifetime cost of using them.
Roughly speaking that means that the delivered cost for natural gas would at least double; the delivered cost of fuels based on petroleum would go up four times; and the delivered cost of coal to be burned directly would go up ten times; and it would be gradually discontinued to be allowed at all.
The good news is that even in the initial stages, as the taxes increase the cost of fossil fuels and the new technologies and economies of scale begin to make renewable energy cheaper to use than fossil fuels, we will begin to get the massive expansion of renewable sources we need. The renewable sources will cost less and make the providers profits with no further subsidies needed.
Since we now rely on these fossil fuel sources for a huge amount of our transport, heating, and electricity generation and a huge part of our economy and existing jobs is connected to them, it’s also important that we may a huge and growing start with renewable sources and energy efficiency FIRST-- AND make these tax increases and restriction gradually to protect our economy.
That said, I think the process should be set up to be done in no more than 30 years. The taxes can be light until renewable energy costs less; and then moved gradually to very high as renewable replacements are brought online.
If all of the above steps or something very like them are taken, I think we can not only transition to an energy efficient and renewable energy economy and phase out of most use of fossil fuels but also do it with little harm our economy at first and a MUCH stronger and sustainable economy later.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Potential Good News on biofuels....
Today’s post: Weds, 3-12-2008
Using arable land to grow biofuels is beginning to look increasingly like an undesirable idea for many reasons.
It competes with growing food & growing food in a health-supporting & sustainable way. And, it tends to lead to chopping down trees & rainforests that now remove CO2 for free & releasing CO2 when this & tilling that land are done. (Using agricultural & cooking wastes & maybe growing things like switch grass in less arable land or using switch grass or soybeans for biodiesel in a crop rotation system may still be good ideas though.)
The good news is that we may soon have a way to grow biofuels on rocky, arid/or nonarable land.
I live in the Silicon Valley as does my colleague Brad. So I see our San Jose Mercury newspaper.
Recently their columnist who writes a variety of commentary of interest to people here, Vindu Goel, reported on the many startups now exploring the use of algae many of which are located here.
The ones that can be easily installed on rocky, arid/or nonarable land look the most promising to me. They will have the least environmental impact. Many of these areas, as we have recently done a post on, also get abundant solar energy, so the electricity to power converting algae to biofuels will be available onsite as well. Further, today, NPR online news had a story pointing out that crops grown for biofuels are potentially likely to disruption from drought. Growing algae is NOT.
Here is Vindu Goel’s article. I found it extremely well done.:
“Grow algae for biofuel
Vindu's View: Algae startups chase green slime dreams
By Vindu Goel
Mercury News
Article Launched: 03/07/2008 01:00:00 AM PST
At Solazyme, a company based in South San Francisco, various forms of Algae... ( Pauline Lubens )«12345»
Related Sections
Green Energy: All about alternative energy
Green Living: Consumer oriented news you can use for a greener lifestyle
There's a certain poetry in the notion of jet planes shooting across the sky, powered by pond scum.
Throw in the prospect that fuels made from algae could slow global warming, replace petroleum and make a fortune for their creators, and the vision becomes irresistible. Dozens of start-ups, in Silicon Valley and around the world, are chasing green-slime dreams.
It's a daunting but important quest. With oil prices topping $100 a barrel and rising concern about manmade climate change, we need to find renewable fuels that reduce our dependence on petroleum and cut our carbon emissions.
"Algae has a chance to save the planet," said Michael Fertik, who is quietly working on a startup, Mighty Algae Biofuels, in addition to his main job as chief executive of ReputationDefender in Menlo Park. "It's not a category killer. It's category Armageddon."
Well, hopefully not Armageddon. But you get the picture.
Microscopic, single-celled algae have been around for billions of years. The simplest of plants, they are quite efficient at converting light, water and carbon into oily compounds called lipids that can be extracted and processed into diesel fuel, gasoline, crude oil, even salad dressings and skin creams.
"Algae are the original oil producers," said Jonathan Wolfson, chief executive of Solazyme, a South San Francisco company that is trying to grow algae in giant fermentation tanks more typically used for beer. "The last time you filled up your car, the gas came from oil that very likely originated with an algal bloom 100 million years ago."
The challenge for entrepreneurs like Wolfson: How do you convert algae into usable oil on a massive scale at a price comparable to pumping petroleum out of the ground?
It is, as the techies like to say, a non-trivial problem.
First, you have to find the right species of algae. Then you have to figure out the best way to make it grow. Then you have to devise a method for getting the oil out. Then you have to refine it into something that can run your car or an airplane. To top it all off, volume needs to be high enough to drive the cost down to $2 or $3 a gallon from about $20 now.
"People think all we have to do is grow this stuff, extract the oil and here we go," said Al Darzins, a group manager at the National Bioenergy Center, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL spent two decades researching algal oils before federal policy makers decided ethanol had more commercial promise. Just recently, the lab resumed its algae work.
NREL studied algae in open ponds, an industrial farming approach used by some companies, including LiveFuels of Menlo Park. While ponds have the advantage of being relatively cheap, it's hard to control temperature and water loss. Unwanted algae species can also take over the pools.
Another strategy, advocated by companies like Mighty Algae and GreenFuel Technologies of Cambridge, Mass., is to grow algae in special containers, or bioreactors, which can be manipulated to optimize the plants' exposure to sunlight and nutrients.
High capital costs are the biggest problem with bioreactors, said Rich Hilt, a LiveFuels co-founder who left the company but still follows the industry. GreenFuel ran into financing trouble last year, forcing the company to slash its staff and bring on Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet technology, as CEO. (Fertik claims his small team has licked the cost problem through a "galactically cheaper" design.)
Solazyme is pursuing a third path, one I find especially fascinating: growing algae in the dark in large tanks and feeding them sugar to supercharge their growth. "It's a thousand times more productive than the natural process," said Harrison Dillon, a geneticist and patent lawyer who serves as the company's president and chief technology officer.
Solazyme says it has already made thousands of gallons of high-grade biodiesel and even light sweet "biocrude" with its processes, which can use anything from chemical waste to wood chips as a source of carbon.
The company, which raised $10 million in equity financing and $5 million in debt last year, is still experimenting with different feedstocks, algae species and oil extraction methods. Scores of containers with telltale green scrawls dot the lab and computers are constantly measuring conditions in the fermentation tanks.
Dillon said he hopes to reach commercial-scale biodiesel production in two or three years. Refiner Imperium Renewables of Seattle and petroleum giant Chevron of San Ramon have already signed partnership agreements with the company.
To help pay the bills, Solazyme is using its technology to make specialty oils for the cosmetics industry, including one ingredient that could fetch more than $20,000 a liter.
Darzins and other experts caution that economical algal oil production is at least five years away and could take up to a decade. Rival biofuel technologies, such as the bacterial oil generation being explored by Bay Area startups LS9 and Amyris Biotechnologies, could prove to be more successful.
Still, the algae efforts are well worth pursuing. Recent research suggests that existing biofuels like ethanol and diesels made from soybeans and oil palms cause more environmental harm than they're worth.
Scientists estimate that a commercial algae farm could probably produce 5,000 gallons of oil per acre of land, compared to around 50 gallons an acre from soybeans and 600 gallons an acre from palm oil. Depending on the species and the manufacturing process, the algae could also be grown in the desert or other inhospitable places so they wouldn't tie up valuable land that could be used for food crops.
The potential of algae has certainly seduced investors, from the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists to the poor suckers conned into giving money to De Beers Fuels, a South African company that collapsed last year in a web of deception.
"There's a lot of overpromising, and there's going to be a heck of a lot of people underdelivering," said Wolfson.
He doesn't plan to be one of them."
Of particular interest to me also is that Solazyme may be able to increase production&/or locate its algae biofuel producing tanks in the shade of photovoltaic panels or trees or in areas with very little to no sunshine.
X * X* X* X* X*
There is also significant progress being made in Spain in this area.:
(The links in these listings from Yahoo won’t show on my blog; but cutting & posting the exact word on Yahoo (or Google) should dredge them up for you.)
Green Car Congress: Repsol YPF Leads Biodiesel Research Project
Robert Bosch Spain—suppliers of automotive components including diesel ... And their algae can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel at the same time. ...www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/repsol_ypf_lead.html - 37k
Green Car Congress: Repsol YPF Leads Biodiesel Research Project
Robert Bosch Spain—suppliers of automotive components including diesel ... And their algae can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel at the same time. ...www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/repsol_ypf_lead.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages[ More results from www.greencarcongress.com ]
Green Car Congress: Repsol YPF and Acciona Energía to Invest $365 ...
However, all of southern Spain would be an ideal place for photovoltaic solar ... see link for new ethanol feedstock from algae... it uses CO2 to grow... ...www.greencarcongress.com/2006/03/repsol_ypf_and_.html - 23k -
Portugal & Spain are understandably interested in alternative energy & have the kind of sunny land that works for this kind of biofuel & solar energy.
Of the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, Portugal, Spain, & Israel have the most going on now in renewable energy efforts from what I’ve read. But all of the other countries around the Mediterranean & many of the countries in the Middle East have similar land.
X * X* X* X* X*
Brad & I believe the switch from fossil fuels & an energy wasteful economy to an economy that is based almost 100 % on renewable energy that is very efficiently used is the new phase of the "industrial revolution" as much as the development of the internet -- perhaps much more so in fact.
This blog is dedicated to helping speed this conversion.
Today’s post: Weds, 3-12-2008
Using arable land to grow biofuels is beginning to look increasingly like an undesirable idea for many reasons.
It competes with growing food & growing food in a health-supporting & sustainable way. And, it tends to lead to chopping down trees & rainforests that now remove CO2 for free & releasing CO2 when this & tilling that land are done. (Using agricultural & cooking wastes & maybe growing things like switch grass in less arable land or using switch grass or soybeans for biodiesel in a crop rotation system may still be good ideas though.)
The good news is that we may soon have a way to grow biofuels on rocky, arid/or nonarable land.
I live in the Silicon Valley as does my colleague Brad. So I see our San Jose Mercury newspaper.
Recently their columnist who writes a variety of commentary of interest to people here, Vindu Goel, reported on the many startups now exploring the use of algae many of which are located here.
The ones that can be easily installed on rocky, arid/or nonarable land look the most promising to me. They will have the least environmental impact. Many of these areas, as we have recently done a post on, also get abundant solar energy, so the electricity to power converting algae to biofuels will be available onsite as well. Further, today, NPR online news had a story pointing out that crops grown for biofuels are potentially likely to disruption from drought. Growing algae is NOT.
Here is Vindu Goel’s article. I found it extremely well done.:
“Grow algae for biofuel
Vindu's View: Algae startups chase green slime dreams
By Vindu Goel
Mercury News
Article Launched: 03/07/2008 01:00:00 AM PST
At Solazyme, a company based in South San Francisco, various forms of Algae... ( Pauline Lubens )«12345»
Related Sections
Green Energy: All about alternative energy
Green Living: Consumer oriented news you can use for a greener lifestyle
There's a certain poetry in the notion of jet planes shooting across the sky, powered by pond scum.
Throw in the prospect that fuels made from algae could slow global warming, replace petroleum and make a fortune for their creators, and the vision becomes irresistible. Dozens of start-ups, in Silicon Valley and around the world, are chasing green-slime dreams.
It's a daunting but important quest. With oil prices topping $100 a barrel and rising concern about manmade climate change, we need to find renewable fuels that reduce our dependence on petroleum and cut our carbon emissions.
"Algae has a chance to save the planet," said Michael Fertik, who is quietly working on a startup, Mighty Algae Biofuels, in addition to his main job as chief executive of ReputationDefender in Menlo Park. "It's not a category killer. It's category Armageddon."
Well, hopefully not Armageddon. But you get the picture.
Microscopic, single-celled algae have been around for billions of years. The simplest of plants, they are quite efficient at converting light, water and carbon into oily compounds called lipids that can be extracted and processed into diesel fuel, gasoline, crude oil, even salad dressings and skin creams.
"Algae are the original oil producers," said Jonathan Wolfson, chief executive of Solazyme, a South San Francisco company that is trying to grow algae in giant fermentation tanks more typically used for beer. "The last time you filled up your car, the gas came from oil that very likely originated with an algal bloom 100 million years ago."
The challenge for entrepreneurs like Wolfson: How do you convert algae into usable oil on a massive scale at a price comparable to pumping petroleum out of the ground?
It is, as the techies like to say, a non-trivial problem.
First, you have to find the right species of algae. Then you have to figure out the best way to make it grow. Then you have to devise a method for getting the oil out. Then you have to refine it into something that can run your car or an airplane. To top it all off, volume needs to be high enough to drive the cost down to $2 or $3 a gallon from about $20 now.
"People think all we have to do is grow this stuff, extract the oil and here we go," said Al Darzins, a group manager at the National Bioenergy Center, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL spent two decades researching algal oils before federal policy makers decided ethanol had more commercial promise. Just recently, the lab resumed its algae work.
NREL studied algae in open ponds, an industrial farming approach used by some companies, including LiveFuels of Menlo Park. While ponds have the advantage of being relatively cheap, it's hard to control temperature and water loss. Unwanted algae species can also take over the pools.
Another strategy, advocated by companies like Mighty Algae and GreenFuel Technologies of Cambridge, Mass., is to grow algae in special containers, or bioreactors, which can be manipulated to optimize the plants' exposure to sunlight and nutrients.
High capital costs are the biggest problem with bioreactors, said Rich Hilt, a LiveFuels co-founder who left the company but still follows the industry. GreenFuel ran into financing trouble last year, forcing the company to slash its staff and bring on Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet technology, as CEO. (Fertik claims his small team has licked the cost problem through a "galactically cheaper" design.)
Solazyme is pursuing a third path, one I find especially fascinating: growing algae in the dark in large tanks and feeding them sugar to supercharge their growth. "It's a thousand times more productive than the natural process," said Harrison Dillon, a geneticist and patent lawyer who serves as the company's president and chief technology officer.
Solazyme says it has already made thousands of gallons of high-grade biodiesel and even light sweet "biocrude" with its processes, which can use anything from chemical waste to wood chips as a source of carbon.
The company, which raised $10 million in equity financing and $5 million in debt last year, is still experimenting with different feedstocks, algae species and oil extraction methods. Scores of containers with telltale green scrawls dot the lab and computers are constantly measuring conditions in the fermentation tanks.
Dillon said he hopes to reach commercial-scale biodiesel production in two or three years. Refiner Imperium Renewables of Seattle and petroleum giant Chevron of San Ramon have already signed partnership agreements with the company.
To help pay the bills, Solazyme is using its technology to make specialty oils for the cosmetics industry, including one ingredient that could fetch more than $20,000 a liter.
Darzins and other experts caution that economical algal oil production is at least five years away and could take up to a decade. Rival biofuel technologies, such as the bacterial oil generation being explored by Bay Area startups LS9 and Amyris Biotechnologies, could prove to be more successful.
Still, the algae efforts are well worth pursuing. Recent research suggests that existing biofuels like ethanol and diesels made from soybeans and oil palms cause more environmental harm than they're worth.
Scientists estimate that a commercial algae farm could probably produce 5,000 gallons of oil per acre of land, compared to around 50 gallons an acre from soybeans and 600 gallons an acre from palm oil. Depending on the species and the manufacturing process, the algae could also be grown in the desert or other inhospitable places so they wouldn't tie up valuable land that could be used for food crops.
The potential of algae has certainly seduced investors, from the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists to the poor suckers conned into giving money to De Beers Fuels, a South African company that collapsed last year in a web of deception.
"There's a lot of overpromising, and there's going to be a heck of a lot of people underdelivering," said Wolfson.
He doesn't plan to be one of them."
Of particular interest to me also is that Solazyme may be able to increase production&/or locate its algae biofuel producing tanks in the shade of photovoltaic panels or trees or in areas with very little to no sunshine.
X * X* X* X* X*
There is also significant progress being made in Spain in this area.:
(The links in these listings from Yahoo won’t show on my blog; but cutting & posting the exact word on Yahoo (or Google) should dredge them up for you.)
Green Car Congress: Repsol YPF Leads Biodiesel Research Project
Robert Bosch Spain—suppliers of automotive components including diesel ... And their algae can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel at the same time. ...www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/repsol_ypf_lead.html - 37k
Green Car Congress: Repsol YPF Leads Biodiesel Research Project
Robert Bosch Spain—suppliers of automotive components including diesel ... And their algae can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel at the same time. ...www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/repsol_ypf_lead.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages[ More results from www.greencarcongress.com ]
Green Car Congress: Repsol YPF and Acciona Energía to Invest $365 ...
However, all of southern Spain would be an ideal place for photovoltaic solar ... see link for new ethanol feedstock from algae... it uses CO2 to grow... ...www.greencarcongress.com/2006/03/repsol_ypf_and_.html - 23k -
Portugal & Spain are understandably interested in alternative energy & have the kind of sunny land that works for this kind of biofuel & solar energy.
Of the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, Portugal, Spain, & Israel have the most going on now in renewable energy efforts from what I’ve read. But all of the other countries around the Mediterranean & many of the countries in the Middle East have similar land.
X * X* X* X* X*
Brad & I believe the switch from fossil fuels & an energy wasteful economy to an economy that is based almost 100 % on renewable energy that is very efficiently used is the new phase of the "industrial revolution" as much as the development of the internet -- perhaps much more so in fact.
This blog is dedicated to helping speed this conversion.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
New directions needed for biofuels….
Today’s post: Weds, 2-13-2008
I. First, here’s the news article that prompted this post.:
“Biofuels Study Heats Up Global-Warming Debate Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com
Mon Feb 11, 11:17 AM ET
A new study is heating up the global-warming debate. The report by The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota concludes that converting land for biofuel crops results in major carbon emissions that make global warming worse. The study will be published in Science later this month.
The researchers ask: Does the carbon you lose by converting forests, grasslands and peatlands outweigh the carbon you save by using biofuels instead of fossil fuels? They say no, but as with other environmental issues there are many who disagree.
Paying Back the Carbon Debt
The study found that land conversions for corn or sugarcane (ethanol), or palms or soybeans (biodiesel) release 17 to 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels.
The carbon, which is stored in the original plants and soil, is released as carbon dioxide, a process that may take decades. This "carbon debt" must be paid before the biofuels produced on the land can begin to lower greenhouse gas levels and ease global warming, the researchers said.
The conversion of peatlands into palm-oil plantations in Indonesia ran up the greatest carbon debt and would require 423 years to pay off. The next worst was the production of soybeans in the Amazon, which would not pay for itself in renewable soy biodiesel for 319 years.
"We don't have proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products, but not rewarded for carbon management," said Stephen Polasky, a University of Minnesota applied economics professor and an author of the study. "This creates incentives for excessive land clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions."
A Plausible Theory
As a researcher who has written several papers on biofuels, Kenneth Mulder, a professor and college farm director at Green Mountain College, views the findings as entirely plausible.
"We know that from strictly an energy perspective, the biofuels currently in heaviest production do not have a very high rate of return," Mulder said. "When environmental consequences are taken into consideration, they have been shown by several researchers to have a net negative impact on society."
In particular, Mulder said, many acres of marginally productive land that have been serving a vital function sequestering carbon are now being converted to intensive agriculture, resulting in a loss of soil carbon. There is more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere above it, he added, and the release of this soil carbon has strong implications for climate change.
Not Logical?
Wilfred Candler, author of Global Warming: The Answer, has a different view. Basically, he insisted, the notion that making ethanol will cause forest destruction is not logical. It could be that it would raise the price of corn or palm oil, he said, and people eat less chicken, or use less palm oil for cooking.
"It is probably right that cases can be found -- Malaysia comes to mind -- where serious amounts of forest are being cut down or burned to make way for palm-oil plantations, where the palm oil is intended to be used to make biofuels," Candler said. "They might even be building processing plants in the new plantations. This might appear to be pretty clear cause and effect, but if biofuel was prohibited, there is no assurance that the forest would not have been cut down. Would you believe coffee, coconut or even palm oil for soap?"
II. I see several implications of this study.
1. We need to minimize our reliance on biofuels while still eliminating fossil fuels & maximize other ways to power transport that use technologies such as battery power using solar generated electricity.
It also likely makes sense to use telecommuting & locally bought foods etc as much as we can to minimize the use of fuels for transport in those ways.
This makes all electric cars like the Tesla & plug-in hybrids with roof top solar cells an extremely good idea. It also puts a premium on improved battery technology.
It also may make electric powered mass transit more desirable.
2. We need to maximize our biofuels that are created from sources that do NOT require new fields to be planted & to create ways to grow crops for biofuels that do NOT create this problem.
We also need to be able to prevent the conversion of rain forests & other existing plants to uses that do not remove as much carbon dioxide from the air.
It also puts a premium on developing ways to generate biofuels from compost, agricultural waste, & harvesting already existing plants like grasses that can simply be mowed periodically.
One way to do this may pay double benefits.
a) Grain fed cattle & poultry are considerably more likely to promote disease than grass or pasture fed. Grain fed animals produce more fat than grass or pasture fed; their fat has MUCH less omega 3 oils & more omega 6 oils & saturated fat than grass or pasture fed; & they need more herbicides, pesticides, & antibiotics than grass or pasture fed.
It may make excellent sense to eat less meat; stopping eating it fro from grain fed cattle & poultry; & eat the meat we do eat from grass or pasture fed only.
That way, the grain that is now being fed to beef cattle & poultry can – or the switch grass, or biodiesel crops that could be grown on the same land can -- go to biofuels only.
b) Similarly, high fructose corn syrup is making people fat & sick with diseases like type II diabetes that it has been implicated as causing. That costs our economy to treat these diseases that could be prevented by eliminating high fructose corn syrup. And, that corn – or the switch grass, or biodiesel crops that could be grown on the same land – can go only to biofuels.
3. This also puts a premium on getting biofuels from algae that is grown in tanks on non-arable land.
It’s abundantly clear that ALL our liquid fuels need to come from biofuels as soon as possible.
But we also need to keep the near term carbon emissions from doing so as close to zero as we can possibly manage.
Here are some of the ideas & implications that have occurred to me.
Today’s post: Weds, 2-13-2008
I. First, here’s the news article that prompted this post.:
“Biofuels Study Heats Up Global-Warming Debate Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com
Mon Feb 11, 11:17 AM ET
A new study is heating up the global-warming debate. The report by The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota concludes that converting land for biofuel crops results in major carbon emissions that make global warming worse. The study will be published in Science later this month.
The researchers ask: Does the carbon you lose by converting forests, grasslands and peatlands outweigh the carbon you save by using biofuels instead of fossil fuels? They say no, but as with other environmental issues there are many who disagree.
Paying Back the Carbon Debt
The study found that land conversions for corn or sugarcane (ethanol), or palms or soybeans (biodiesel) release 17 to 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels.
The carbon, which is stored in the original plants and soil, is released as carbon dioxide, a process that may take decades. This "carbon debt" must be paid before the biofuels produced on the land can begin to lower greenhouse gas levels and ease global warming, the researchers said.
The conversion of peatlands into palm-oil plantations in Indonesia ran up the greatest carbon debt and would require 423 years to pay off. The next worst was the production of soybeans in the Amazon, which would not pay for itself in renewable soy biodiesel for 319 years.
"We don't have proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products, but not rewarded for carbon management," said Stephen Polasky, a University of Minnesota applied economics professor and an author of the study. "This creates incentives for excessive land clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions."
A Plausible Theory
As a researcher who has written several papers on biofuels, Kenneth Mulder, a professor and college farm director at Green Mountain College, views the findings as entirely plausible.
"We know that from strictly an energy perspective, the biofuels currently in heaviest production do not have a very high rate of return," Mulder said. "When environmental consequences are taken into consideration, they have been shown by several researchers to have a net negative impact on society."
In particular, Mulder said, many acres of marginally productive land that have been serving a vital function sequestering carbon are now being converted to intensive agriculture, resulting in a loss of soil carbon. There is more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere above it, he added, and the release of this soil carbon has strong implications for climate change.
Not Logical?
Wilfred Candler, author of Global Warming: The Answer, has a different view. Basically, he insisted, the notion that making ethanol will cause forest destruction is not logical. It could be that it would raise the price of corn or palm oil, he said, and people eat less chicken, or use less palm oil for cooking.
"It is probably right that cases can be found -- Malaysia comes to mind -- where serious amounts of forest are being cut down or burned to make way for palm-oil plantations, where the palm oil is intended to be used to make biofuels," Candler said. "They might even be building processing plants in the new plantations. This might appear to be pretty clear cause and effect, but if biofuel was prohibited, there is no assurance that the forest would not have been cut down. Would you believe coffee, coconut or even palm oil for soap?"
II. I see several implications of this study.
1. We need to minimize our reliance on biofuels while still eliminating fossil fuels & maximize other ways to power transport that use technologies such as battery power using solar generated electricity.
It also likely makes sense to use telecommuting & locally bought foods etc as much as we can to minimize the use of fuels for transport in those ways.
This makes all electric cars like the Tesla & plug-in hybrids with roof top solar cells an extremely good idea. It also puts a premium on improved battery technology.
It also may make electric powered mass transit more desirable.
2. We need to maximize our biofuels that are created from sources that do NOT require new fields to be planted & to create ways to grow crops for biofuels that do NOT create this problem.
We also need to be able to prevent the conversion of rain forests & other existing plants to uses that do not remove as much carbon dioxide from the air.
It also puts a premium on developing ways to generate biofuels from compost, agricultural waste, & harvesting already existing plants like grasses that can simply be mowed periodically.
One way to do this may pay double benefits.
a) Grain fed cattle & poultry are considerably more likely to promote disease than grass or pasture fed. Grain fed animals produce more fat than grass or pasture fed; their fat has MUCH less omega 3 oils & more omega 6 oils & saturated fat than grass or pasture fed; & they need more herbicides, pesticides, & antibiotics than grass or pasture fed.
It may make excellent sense to eat less meat; stopping eating it fro from grain fed cattle & poultry; & eat the meat we do eat from grass or pasture fed only.
That way, the grain that is now being fed to beef cattle & poultry can – or the switch grass, or biodiesel crops that could be grown on the same land can -- go to biofuels only.
b) Similarly, high fructose corn syrup is making people fat & sick with diseases like type II diabetes that it has been implicated as causing. That costs our economy to treat these diseases that could be prevented by eliminating high fructose corn syrup. And, that corn – or the switch grass, or biodiesel crops that could be grown on the same land – can go only to biofuels.
3. This also puts a premium on getting biofuels from algae that is grown in tanks on non-arable land.
It’s abundantly clear that ALL our liquid fuels need to come from biofuels as soon as possible.
But we also need to keep the near term carbon emissions from doing so as close to zero as we can possibly manage.
Here are some of the ideas & implications that have occurred to me.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Some Energy Policy ideas that might help….
Today’s post: Weds, 2-6-2008
The world's economy today is almost exclusively based on burning carbon based fuels. (At this time, nuclear and renewable energy are supplemental only although in some places, are a significant supplement.)
As we spoke of last time, our national security in the United States, the health of the economy, & possibly our survival, look to depend on switching to a 100 % renewable energy based economy.
I. Since we are already desperately late in doing this, it needs to be done very rapidly and on a large scale.
II. And, if the effort is to succeed, it needs to reward current businesses for doing the right things far more than it does penalize them for doing the wrong things. In my view this is essential to avoid slowing the process.
Businesses, particularly the stronger ones, tend to go much faster when thy have something to gain. And, if they will lose money now available to them, they often try to get out of it or delay as long as they can, or implement these changes as slowly as they can manage. And, we need maximum speed here. Yes we need to have businesses stop doing some things as fast as possible. But to get them to do it quickly, we need to also give them some strong incentives & help them to avoid losing too much money. To the maximum extent, we need to put them in a position to make MORE by replacing the things they should no longer do with those that they should do.
In addition, these businesses are where most of the developed talent, people, management, & capital now are available to get the job done. And, this is critical since we need speed, scale, and a gradually accelerating pace of change.
One way to do this is to create the new businesses & technologies we need. And, that process is well started. Both venture backed startups & some of the more visionary & informed large companies are doing this.
In the area where I live, Ausra, Nanosolar, & Applied Materials are good examples of this. Honda in Japan is another. General Electric is a bit slow & behind based on what I saw on their website. But they show signs of moving in the right direction now.
And, my examples are likely less than one percent of what is already happening.
The bad news is that we are at least 25 years behind & we are only about one percent of the way to an economy based on renewable energy.
III. Here’s a partial to do list that would help.
1. A. We can dramatically expand the generation of solar energy to electricity. By doing that we can get close to 100 % of our electricity from renewable sources if we expand solar enough.
We can increasingly use electricity to power transportation, particularly by car with electric cars & plug-in hybrids.
This is clearly a very high priority item. So the development of thin film solar & other ways to drive the cost down; electric & plug-in hybrid cars; & improved battery technology are also imperative.
Germany has a special incentive program that is proven to sharply increase the deployment of solar electric generation. So, a logical policy would be to require every utility regulating entity in the United States to adopt that policy in whole or in part within a year.
A similar & related policy is to insist that when homes & businesses create more energy than they use, they be paid for it. In California now, you can pay for the grid electricity you use with solar electricity you generate, which can result in a zero utility bill.
But if you install a lot of solar & add energy conservation so well you generate MORE than you use, you get no money. Given the current energy & CO2 situation, that stupidity must be stopped everywhere as soon as is possible.
More money for venture capital in this area will help.
But one of the most important policies our government should adapt as soon as possible is to create a huge funding agency to finance the deployment of solar electricity generation & conversion costs for both industry & consumers.
As the dollar cost, let alone the real environmental impact cost, of fossil fuels rises, getting solar power instead will be cost effective within at least 20 years & increasingly much faster. But businesses & consumers need financing that allows them to pay for the installation & conversion now through the financing that also has at least half the interest cost paid by the government. It would also help if the payments could then become part of their utility bill & paid over a 30 year period. That way, the costs will be less than the savings very quickly and as many as ten times as many people will deploy solar soon.
Another policy area for government is the rapid installation of roofs with solar electricity generating cells in place over every parking lot in the United States. Such roofs will also provide shade in the summer & protection from the rain. Even better, they use land already available & paved over that is right next door to the potential users. That is a HUGE opportunity that government should boost in every way possible.
2. We will still need liquid fuels for air transport and for the transition period while most of our vehicles still use it. And, particularly at first, we will need a source of what is now called “natural” gas for heating.
We need gradually to develop sources like agricultural waste, switch grass & similar plants than can be grown on land not suitable to grow food, & algae as sources for hydrocarbons as this is powered by solar energy & removes CO2 from the air.
And, we will need to learn to use solar electric powered refinery & conversion sites that will enable us to replace, from this source, 100 % of the petroleum & natural gas we now use & cannot replace with solar electricity.
This will need venture capital, some of which it’s getting now. But of much greater importance it will need large amounts of expansion capital once the technology is in place.
The seed or starter funding for this is a good policy for our government to have.
3. Aggressive re-forestation & a slow down of the reverse is paramount, since we need the trees to continue to remove CO2 at no further charge.
So the development of effective & economically doable ways to do this is a priority.
4. The more energy efficient we are the faster we can reach 100 % of our energy from renewable sources.
Energy conservation is therefore paramount.
a) Conservation that involves doing without things requires sacrifice & constant attention to work. This can only be done successfully for a short time. So I think it should either be not done or done for a five year period only, when the extra energy will empower one of these other changes to get to 100 % faster.
b) Selling people on avoiding waste, however, & culling wasteful & unnecessary practices in part by taxing them, will work just fine.
That can be done by government policy & be a source of revenue besides.
c) The huge opportunity though, is in deploying energy conservation devices & infrastructure rapidly.
Those need not require sacrifice & can save money. Even better, they do not need continuous attention or effort once they are in place.
Examples, if homes & businesses become better insulated & are retrofitted to prevent summer heat from entering in other ways, we will need dramatically less energy for heating & cooling. And, that will free solar generated electricity for other uses & reduce the amount of heating oil & natural gas we burn.
Another example is LED light bulbs. They use even less energy than compact fluorescents; & they do not have mercury in them that is already causing dangerous mercury pollution problems from disposal of compact fluorescents.
Government must put incentives & financing in place to deploy the existing technologies & to deploy the better technologies as they come online.
Further, they need to partner with venture capital & large appropriate businesses like GE to get cost effective LED light bulbs & similar technologies developed & deployed.
5. We need to start taxing the use of fossil fuels.
Since doing it in huge amounts now will crash the economy & hurt innocent people & make enemies of businesses doing so is an absolutely horrible idea.
But in the same way that income tax started as a very small part of federal funding, I think we should begin to tax fossil fuels at least some immediately.
We can then fund the other programs from this tax. And, as the conversion process makes alternatives available, we can gradually increase the rate from the one % or so where we start to 500 % over the next 40 years.
Also, particularly in the early stages, vetting real & effective programs to offset CO2 emissions & allowing businesses to pay this tax or avoid it temporarily by buying carbon offsets is an excellent idea.
Since the places to put this carbon offset money have often NOT been vetted or been that effective now, a very important government priority needs to be putting that in place as soon as possible.
6. We need a President next time who makes this area a number one priority no matter what.
That even the candidates who say they understand this issue are not running as if this area is a priority, I am gravely concerned.
I’m also surprised & disappointed. In this I’m not alone. I’ve gotten an email from the Sierra Club requesting help in getting press coverage of this issue.
So, if you have the ear of a candidate or their campaign chairpeople, please put in good word for the idea.
I believe it will be a significant competitive advantage for the candidate who does it first & the one who does it best.
This is in part because the voters are quite concerned about the economy which will soon be in serious, serious trouble without these policies.
To re-phrase an old Bill Clinton slogan, “It’s the energy economy stupid.”
That’s my take on it.
Today’s post: Weds, 2-6-2008
The world's economy today is almost exclusively based on burning carbon based fuels. (At this time, nuclear and renewable energy are supplemental only although in some places, are a significant supplement.)
As we spoke of last time, our national security in the United States, the health of the economy, & possibly our survival, look to depend on switching to a 100 % renewable energy based economy.
I. Since we are already desperately late in doing this, it needs to be done very rapidly and on a large scale.
II. And, if the effort is to succeed, it needs to reward current businesses for doing the right things far more than it does penalize them for doing the wrong things. In my view this is essential to avoid slowing the process.
Businesses, particularly the stronger ones, tend to go much faster when thy have something to gain. And, if they will lose money now available to them, they often try to get out of it or delay as long as they can, or implement these changes as slowly as they can manage. And, we need maximum speed here. Yes we need to have businesses stop doing some things as fast as possible. But to get them to do it quickly, we need to also give them some strong incentives & help them to avoid losing too much money. To the maximum extent, we need to put them in a position to make MORE by replacing the things they should no longer do with those that they should do.
In addition, these businesses are where most of the developed talent, people, management, & capital now are available to get the job done. And, this is critical since we need speed, scale, and a gradually accelerating pace of change.
One way to do this is to create the new businesses & technologies we need. And, that process is well started. Both venture backed startups & some of the more visionary & informed large companies are doing this.
In the area where I live, Ausra, Nanosolar, & Applied Materials are good examples of this. Honda in Japan is another. General Electric is a bit slow & behind based on what I saw on their website. But they show signs of moving in the right direction now.
And, my examples are likely less than one percent of what is already happening.
The bad news is that we are at least 25 years behind & we are only about one percent of the way to an economy based on renewable energy.
III. Here’s a partial to do list that would help.
1. A. We can dramatically expand the generation of solar energy to electricity. By doing that we can get close to 100 % of our electricity from renewable sources if we expand solar enough.
We can increasingly use electricity to power transportation, particularly by car with electric cars & plug-in hybrids.
This is clearly a very high priority item. So the development of thin film solar & other ways to drive the cost down; electric & plug-in hybrid cars; & improved battery technology are also imperative.
Germany has a special incentive program that is proven to sharply increase the deployment of solar electric generation. So, a logical policy would be to require every utility regulating entity in the United States to adopt that policy in whole or in part within a year.
A similar & related policy is to insist that when homes & businesses create more energy than they use, they be paid for it. In California now, you can pay for the grid electricity you use with solar electricity you generate, which can result in a zero utility bill.
But if you install a lot of solar & add energy conservation so well you generate MORE than you use, you get no money. Given the current energy & CO2 situation, that stupidity must be stopped everywhere as soon as is possible.
More money for venture capital in this area will help.
But one of the most important policies our government should adapt as soon as possible is to create a huge funding agency to finance the deployment of solar electricity generation & conversion costs for both industry & consumers.
As the dollar cost, let alone the real environmental impact cost, of fossil fuels rises, getting solar power instead will be cost effective within at least 20 years & increasingly much faster. But businesses & consumers need financing that allows them to pay for the installation & conversion now through the financing that also has at least half the interest cost paid by the government. It would also help if the payments could then become part of their utility bill & paid over a 30 year period. That way, the costs will be less than the savings very quickly and as many as ten times as many people will deploy solar soon.
Another policy area for government is the rapid installation of roofs with solar electricity generating cells in place over every parking lot in the United States. Such roofs will also provide shade in the summer & protection from the rain. Even better, they use land already available & paved over that is right next door to the potential users. That is a HUGE opportunity that government should boost in every way possible.
2. We will still need liquid fuels for air transport and for the transition period while most of our vehicles still use it. And, particularly at first, we will need a source of what is now called “natural” gas for heating.
We need gradually to develop sources like agricultural waste, switch grass & similar plants than can be grown on land not suitable to grow food, & algae as sources for hydrocarbons as this is powered by solar energy & removes CO2 from the air.
And, we will need to learn to use solar electric powered refinery & conversion sites that will enable us to replace, from this source, 100 % of the petroleum & natural gas we now use & cannot replace with solar electricity.
This will need venture capital, some of which it’s getting now. But of much greater importance it will need large amounts of expansion capital once the technology is in place.
The seed or starter funding for this is a good policy for our government to have.
3. Aggressive re-forestation & a slow down of the reverse is paramount, since we need the trees to continue to remove CO2 at no further charge.
So the development of effective & economically doable ways to do this is a priority.
4. The more energy efficient we are the faster we can reach 100 % of our energy from renewable sources.
Energy conservation is therefore paramount.
a) Conservation that involves doing without things requires sacrifice & constant attention to work. This can only be done successfully for a short time. So I think it should either be not done or done for a five year period only, when the extra energy will empower one of these other changes to get to 100 % faster.
b) Selling people on avoiding waste, however, & culling wasteful & unnecessary practices in part by taxing them, will work just fine.
That can be done by government policy & be a source of revenue besides.
c) The huge opportunity though, is in deploying energy conservation devices & infrastructure rapidly.
Those need not require sacrifice & can save money. Even better, they do not need continuous attention or effort once they are in place.
Examples, if homes & businesses become better insulated & are retrofitted to prevent summer heat from entering in other ways, we will need dramatically less energy for heating & cooling. And, that will free solar generated electricity for other uses & reduce the amount of heating oil & natural gas we burn.
Another example is LED light bulbs. They use even less energy than compact fluorescents; & they do not have mercury in them that is already causing dangerous mercury pollution problems from disposal of compact fluorescents.
Government must put incentives & financing in place to deploy the existing technologies & to deploy the better technologies as they come online.
Further, they need to partner with venture capital & large appropriate businesses like GE to get cost effective LED light bulbs & similar technologies developed & deployed.
5. We need to start taxing the use of fossil fuels.
Since doing it in huge amounts now will crash the economy & hurt innocent people & make enemies of businesses doing so is an absolutely horrible idea.
But in the same way that income tax started as a very small part of federal funding, I think we should begin to tax fossil fuels at least some immediately.
We can then fund the other programs from this tax. And, as the conversion process makes alternatives available, we can gradually increase the rate from the one % or so where we start to 500 % over the next 40 years.
Also, particularly in the early stages, vetting real & effective programs to offset CO2 emissions & allowing businesses to pay this tax or avoid it temporarily by buying carbon offsets is an excellent idea.
Since the places to put this carbon offset money have often NOT been vetted or been that effective now, a very important government priority needs to be putting that in place as soon as possible.
6. We need a President next time who makes this area a number one priority no matter what.
That even the candidates who say they understand this issue are not running as if this area is a priority, I am gravely concerned.
I’m also surprised & disappointed. In this I’m not alone. I’ve gotten an email from the Sierra Club requesting help in getting press coverage of this issue.
So, if you have the ear of a candidate or their campaign chairpeople, please put in good word for the idea.
I believe it will be a significant competitive advantage for the candidate who does it first & the one who does it best.
This is in part because the voters are quite concerned about the economy which will soon be in serious, serious trouble without these policies.
To re-phrase an old Bill Clinton slogan, “It’s the energy economy stupid.”
That’s my take on it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)