Biofuels Digest Readers for Energy Independence

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Comment by Melissa Furtwengler on November 1, 2008 at 7:33am

Thousands of new GREEN JOBS are now posted on GREEN JOBS NOW! group page. Join the group today and we will keep you informed. http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnowcom
Tell your friends looking for a job to sign up on the PickensPlan and upload their resume FREE at: www.green-jobs-now.com
Melissa
coordinator@green-jobs-now.com

Comment by Brian Oram on October 1, 2008 at 9:51am

Working on biofuels projects in Northeast Pennsylvania - swithch grass, cellulosic ethanol, potentially biodiesal, and the use of small scale wind/solar for homes and agricultural facilities
Our website - http://www.pnercd.org

Looking to make contacts.

Comment by R.S. Brooks on August 27, 2008 at 1:48pm

I'm inviting everyone on the list to keep tabs of my test plot of Jatropha trees I am planting on my farm here in Texas. Jatropha produces a high-grade biofuel that runs in diesel engines without any modifications.

My test plot should determine if the Jatropha is durable enough to survive Winter in my region of Texas. I might be too far north, but Spring 2009 should give me a better idea if this plant is suited for my soil type (amended with organic matter) water from my well here on the farm and the Winter climate.

I've started a group "Jatropha" if you would like to monitor or join.

Comment by John D. Cochran on August 7, 2008 at 12:37pm

Kevin and all:

I'm going out of the country on a refinery consulting engagement next week. When I finish that, I'll be able to give everyone some fascinating background.

Comment by Kevin Adams on July 21, 2008 at 9:47am

Ed Wallace - and most of our news media

J. Cochran has Ed Wallace pegged. Most of the rest of our main stream media is the same as Ed - they do not seem to bother to ask themselves if what they are saying is even rational.

The week of 7/14/2008, a reporter on CNBC reported that less than .1% of all gas stations in the USA have the infrustructure in place to handle E85 fuel. The fact is that just about 100% have the infrustructure in place to handle E85. All they need is the stickers and optionally, a yellow hadle jacket for the pump handle.

Claims of the inefficiency of ethanol assume no use for byproducts or energy used to distill ethanol, yet nothing is mentioned about ineficiencies and waste from refining gasoline. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons. Depending on the quality of the oil, 19 to 26 gallons of gasoline is refined from the 42 gallon barrel of crude oil. Tack on the transportation costs, which are typically higher than ethanol due to distances, and gasoline doesnt look so efficient either.

While electric vehicles look like a promising answer, this is a very long term solution. We really dont seem to have much of a definition of what is short, mid, and long term, but both ethanol and offshore drilling sem to be fairly short term solutions.

Wind power may be expensive now, but may prove to be very inexpensive in the long run. Solar energy is starting to get to the point where it is "break even" depending on geographic area. Our government has been working on cleaner nuclear energy for many years. Electron accelerators are small, yet can steadily produce electricity very efficiently without the volume of waste associated with more conventional nuclear reactors.

With all the misinformation and debate over all of our alternatives, my concern is that our government will fail to make any decisions. One thing I learned while working for GE in the days of Jack Welch, is that not making any decision is far worse than making a decision which may not be the best decision.

Comment by Mike McCarthy on July 17, 2008 at 11:20am

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Comment by John D. Cochran on July 16, 2008 at 1:29pm

Ungawd, here we go again. Ed Wallace must be in bed with the guy who wrote the anti-ethanol crap in Time Magazine last April.

Wallace’s first few paragraphs are fine examples of the art of rhetoric, but not much else. The suggestion that T. Boone Pickens might like to make some money out of this is not exactly epiphany.

Wallace says, “Pickens’ plan is slightly complicated…” No, Ed, it is highly and extraordinarily complicated, and we haven’t even seen all of it, yet. This topic is too complex to be reasonably treated solely in your article, this response, or anywhere else; save for the PickensPlan.com website itself – maybe.

“For one thing, refueling stations for natural gas vehicles are nearly as scarce as those for E85 ethanol.” Wallace says, but ignores a plethora of salient points, e.g.

○ a compressor and storage tank at your neighborhood station is mostly the entire “infrastructure” required to fuel natural gas powered vehicles,
○ E10 stations are E85 stations, whenever the right truck shows up,
○ Methane (that’s natural gas, to you, Wallace) is convertible to ethanol or other alcohols, so esoteric engine setups can be taken out of consideration.
○ The Honda Civic GX is currently an exercise; as a component of a complete natural gas transportation system. The reason it’s 10-grand more than the regular Civic is because absorption advantages haven’t taken hold at small volumes, and Honda is likely price-skimming. A business writer should understand this.

The rest of the article seems to slam the idea of wind turbine supplies as being unreliable and not cost-efficient.

The reliability angle is addressed by Boone’s concept of a complete grid of turbines, where the wind will always be blowing – somewhere – enough to push sufficient current into the grid. And, Boone places turbines in the “red” zones of the map for optimum performance.

Finally, Wallace says, “… the cost of installing a land-based wind generator … now pushing $2.6 million per megawatt hour.” Where did this number come from? The paragraph makes no technical sense, without supportive background. This is like saying the cost of your car is $100,000 per horsepower hour, or some dumbass thing, without costing out all the inputs, outputs, hours of effective operation, freezing and defining relevant variables, and so-forth.

I wish liberal arts mentalities would not try to write about technical things, because they continue to screw it up and promulgate biased misinformation to other lay persons; who compound putrefaction of the topic.

John D. Cochran
July 16, 2008

Comment by Jim Lane on July 16, 2008 at 2:55am

An article of importance from Ed Wallace, a highly respected automotive journalist, who raises concerns that others are likely to point out. What are your thoughts? Are these points fair and balanced?

I’ve always found it tough to get too mad at T. Boone Pickens. Sure, just a few years ago he warned the world that we are at or close to Peak Oil — while simultaneously making billions of dollars betting on oil futures. Which led some to make specific comments during Congressional testimony, to the effect that his public doomsaying was a posture designed to drive the market for oil — and therefore his personal profits — higher.

At the same time, T. Boone gives away a sizable part of his earnings to charity. Besides that, he’s 80 years old and still out there speaking firmly, promoting big and fantastic energy ideas like a man half his age. Pickens’ demeanor shows that he doesn’t just love playing the game decades past the age when most retire; more than anything, he loves being the one making the rules by which everyone else has to play.

As of his last public pronouncements, the oil problem that concerned him most seemed to be the $800 billion we are currently sending out of the country to buy crude; fears for the end of the oil age apparently are now a lower priority. Yet now T. Boone wants America on wind-generated electricity — to solve "our oil problems."

Pickens’ plan is slightly complicated, but I’ll try my best to decipher it for you. What he envisions is building $1 trillion worth of wind generators across the American Midwest, from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border, known as America’s "Wind Alley." Pickens believes that these wind farms can provide enough electricity to reduce the amount of natural gas we need to run the more conventional power generation stations. In turn, we can use the natural gas that that move frees up for electricity to power automobiles — and that in turn would reduce our demand for foreign oil.

OK, that sounds great in theory, especially when Pickens notes that in 1970 we imported 24 percent of our oil and today that figure is nearly 70 percent. But Pickens also claims that investing $1 trillion in wind generators is far smarter than spending another $10 trillion on imported oil over the next decade.

Any radical plan to alter the equation for our energy needs involves pitfalls. Most of them are serious with this windy plan.

For one thing, refueling stations for natural gas vehicles are nearly as scarce as those for E85 ethanol. So you can’t consider just the $1 trillion it would cost to span the Midwest with wind generators — you also have to add in the infrastructure costs to make natural gas refilling stations convenient to the average consumer.

Bear in mind too the cost of all the new electric transmission lines that we’d have to build to get the wind power to major metropolitan areas from hundreds of miles away.

And then there’s the fact that Honda once offered its Civic GX natural-gas-powered automobile here in Texas: Demand was so poor that today you can only purchase them in certain regions of the country.

None of these disadvantages is a deal breaker, should it be proven that our best energy option is moving in this direction. Sure, maybe more than a few individuals will be put off because Honda has put a $25,000 list price on its Civic GX, particularly when the base model Civic sedan costs just over $15,000. Counterbalancing that, of course, is that the cost of natural gas for automobiles is still substantially less than the cost of gasoline.

The government’s figures show that someone driving 15,000 miles per year in a Civic is spending $1,875 for gasoline, compared to only $798 if the Civic uses natural gas. Still, even at that rate it would take 10 years of ownership to break even — probably longer, given how high the price of natural gas has soared this year.

But the deal-breaking disadvantage of wind-powered electricity is well known. Its most serious problem is the fact that the wind doesn’t always blow — and even when it does, it takes a 13-mile-an-hour wind to power a large-scale wind power generation farm.

Moreover, the peak months for electricity demand are during the summer, and that’s exactly when the wind will not cooperate. Ask anyone who works outdoors in Texas what they’d give to have any breeze at all on a 100-degree day; if they half-laugh, it’s because they know that just doesn’t happen here often, if ever.

Making matters worse, because wind farms are an unreliable source for electricity, users still need complete backup power generation, whether it runs on coal, natural gas or nuclear power. And these plants are never really offline; as Robert Bryce pointed out in Gusher of Lies, his exceptional book on America’s energy needs, these other plants are sitting in what is known as spinning reserve. Kept ready to take over from the fickle wind patterns around the world, they use energy themselves: The real net savings of using this alternative electricity source just keep shrinking.

Bryce also noted that in 2004, England’s Royal Academy of Engineering released a report concluding that when one factors in all of the costs for wind power — including keeping the more traditional generation sources online — the cost of electricity from wind is more than twice the cost of electricity from coal, natural gas or nuclear power.

Closer to home, last year the Electric Reliability Council of Texas reported that wind power could be counted on as being reliable just 8.7 percent of the time during periods of peak demand. Say that again: 8.7 percent reliability for a trillion-dollar investment? Yes. And we would still to have to build more conventional generation plants to cover our future electrical needs — to cover that 91.3 percent of the time when there isn’t enough wind to generate electricity.

I haven’t even mentioned that the cost of installing a land-based wind generator has risen 74 percent over the past three years; it’s now pushing $2.6 million per megawatt hour. And there’s no reason to believe that these associated costs won’t continue to rise if some Congressional Mandate forces wind-powered electricity on us.

http://www.star-telegram.com/104/story/761664.html

Comment by Jim Lane on July 15, 2008 at 6:41pm

This is an inspiring video blog from Boone Pickens!
http://www.pickensplan.com/news/

Comment by Nathan Campbell on July 12, 2008 at 12:29pm

Why are my comments so troubling? It means that petroleum based fuels are inferior to biofuels, and this is against the interests of big oil if more people come to understand that.

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