Saturday, August 18, 2007
Politics and climate policy
This, I think, is true, however painful it may be to admit:
We in Europe are committed to that 10% [use of biofuels] ... and the US is going down the ethanol route. Both are plans supported by the entire political class, both are howlingly stupid and will make things worse, not better....
This is something of a burden to bear for those who are insisting upon a political solution to climate change. It doesn't surprise the cynics like myself, who are already insistent that the political process is so appalling that just about anything that comes out of it is bound to be worse than what would happen in its absence.
For, how can anyone argue, with a straight face, that we need to have lots of lovely international agreements to deal with this problem when, as with the EU and biofuels, the first international agreement to do something makes it worse, not better?
There are a lot of things that we might do that do not require politicians to choose particular technologies, which they are spectacularly ill-equipped to do. Unfortunately, politicians love to choose technologies, because for every technology there is a constituency in search of love.
MORE: For those of you too lazy to click through several layers of links, here is the New Scientist post that raises the argument that burning oil and planting forests on the land otherwise to be used for biofuels dumps less carbon than producing biofuel. Of course, money spent on biofuel substitutes for money sent to the House of Saud, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Hugo Chavez. This debate, it seems to me, is an example of how the goals of energy security and greenhouse gas reduction are not always compatible.
12 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Aug 19, 12:59:00 AM:
How about putting DUCT TAPE over the mouths of AL GORE,DAVID SUZUKI and all those enviromenatlists wackos
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 02:19:00 AM:
I've studied the biofuels/ethanol thing extensively (a couple of years,) and you'll be happy to learn that your fears are completely ungrounded.
It is going to be a Great thing for our country, and the world. We're way ahead of the game, financially, already, and we've just barely begun.
Just understand this; a whole lot of what you are reading right now is straight from the American Petroleum Institute. It's incredible how utterly wrong a lot of it is.
I won't write a book (I could) in your comments section; but, if you have any specific questions I'd be happy to answer them. And, no, I'm not a farmer, nor do I have any family members or close friends who are, nor am I in the Ethanol/biofuels business. I'm just an interested ex-insurance man with a desire to drive down to Houston to see his grandson every now and then.
By 
apex, at
Sun Aug 19, 03:12:00 AM:
Unfortunately, bio-fuels isn't the only idiocy. For example, my german government just launched a big program to abolish night storage heatings and replace them with natural gas heatings.
Which is incredibly stupid if you consider that night heating systems work at night, when the majority of electricity generated comes from base load plants, which over here are mostly nuclear and water with the balance going either to coal or combined cycle gas plants. So, we're launching a program that is going to cost either taxpayers or home owners (and indirectly renters, i.e. everyone) to put out more CO2 and call that a climate change control plan. Way to go, where do I sign up?
Or take air vs. train travel. Train travel on high speed trains takes about the equivalent of 3-4 liters of gasoline per passenger and 100km. Air travel is pretty much the same. However, trains run mostly during the day, so they use electricity from the whole mix (not the baseload mentioned above), which is 70% fossil fuels. The net effect is, that while the airplane burns hydrocarbons (kerosine) creating H20 and CO2, the train mostly uses about 50% coal, which is roughly three times the CO2 of hydrocarbons, 10-20% hydrocarbons (gas plants) and the balance emmission free nuclear and "regenerative" energy. It does not take an expert to calculate that the CO2 balance of the train is worse (by a factor of 1.7 according to my back-of-the-envelope-calculation) than the airplane, yet guess who gets the good and who the bad press.
Talk "climate change" all you want, I'll believe it is happening when the measures taken actually address the problem instead of someone's pet ideologies (nuclear power, air travel bad).
apex
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Aug 19, 03:26:00 AM:
Rufus, this one is not from the American Petroleum Institute.
From the BBC:
"Dr Righelato, chairman of the World Land Trust, added that the policy could actually lead to more deforestation as nations turned to countries outside of the EU to meet the growing demand for biofuels."
Link
BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6949861.stm
Some background info on the World Land Trust:
The noted environmentalist John Burton is a co-founder of the World Land Trust. He previously was CEO of Fauna and Flora International and chairman of the TRAFFIC unit of the World Conservation Union (then International Union for the Conservation of Nature).
More info at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Land_Trust
The Web site of the World Land Trust:
http://www.worldlandtrust.org/
By Ray, at
Sun Aug 19, 04:31:00 AM:
It has probably not occurred to people enamored of governmentally managed solutions, that very high taxes on the principal CO2-producing energy generation methods (namely, coal, natural gas, and oil), will eventually (after many fruitless lobbying efforts, and other blunders) force our great industries to seek out the best environmentally sound energy generation method, where the competition will be done in the testing, and not, you know, the lobbying.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Aug 19, 07:28:00 AM:
rufus,
Do you like biofuels because they are a good substitute for petroleum, or because they reduce aggregate carbon dumped into the atmosphere? They might well be excellent from one perspective and not so much from the other. I admit to ignorance on the subject, only that calculating the carbon impact of these changes is devilishly difficult to do well.
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 08:36:00 AM:
Rufus:
You have studied this for a couple of years. It looks awfully like the information being spewed forh by the Gorebot training seminars.
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 01:25:00 PM:
Tiger, I'm very skeptical of the whole AGW thing. I'm strictly looking at how we will get stuff (us) from here to there, and continue to grow our economy.
Folks, a decent farm in Ia, or Mn, etc. will get about 170 bushels of corn with an investment of about 9 gallons of diesel (or, biodiesel,) for the planting, cultivation, harvesting, etc, and, maybe, 50 gallons oil equvalent of fossil fuels used for fertilizer, pesticides and so forth.
Refining that corn into final product can run anywhere from $10.00 to $125.00 (or 5 gallons of oil equiv. to 50 gal.) Right now, we're closer to the 50, but the new Poet/Voyager plant will be more like 5.
On the back end you're getting out something like 900 - 1,000 gallons of oil equiv. ethanol and biodiesel, PLUS 1/3 of a Bushel of Distillers Grains which are slightly superior to the original corn for feeding livestock (thus the higher price per pound..) You, also, get out 18 lbs of CO2 which can be used for re-charging old oil wells, or can be sold for other uses.
Bottom line, when all is said and done, we can produce ethanol for just a bit over a dollar a gallon, and we can produce a hell of a lot of it. This, WITHOUT starving anyone's cows. (Field Corn is 90% fed to livestock here, and in other developed countries. We EAT Sweet Corn - a whole nother animal.)
Oh, and as for the fuel, itself. It is less dense, and as a result, has a lower BTU content than gasoline, BUT, It has an Octane Rating of 105! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.! It means that in the proper engine it is much more efficient than gasoline, both from a standpoint of power, and fuel efficiency. ALL engines are, at present, "optimized" for gasoling, but the times they are a'changin, so take all talk obout btus, and mileage with a grain of salt for the time being.
I'll quit, here, but if you look around you'll get the feeling that $70.00/oil is probably just a stepping stone in a market for a product that is seeing greater, and greater demand, and not much growth in supplies. It's estimated that China, and India will push us to 130 million barrels/day demand in just 15 years, or so. I have seen absolutely no one who believes we can come up with anywhere near that number. Corn will help. Cellulose really is here. The big plants are starting construction as we speak. Using DOE's estimates for biomass I figure we can produce enough ethanol/biodiesel to make ourselves energy independent in a couple of decades. Corn is getting us started. It's all good. Let's go get a Beer. :)
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Aug 19, 01:45:00 PM:
"Let's go get a Beer"
Sorry, Rufus, the "trial close" of an insurance salesman doesn't work here.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Aug 19, 01:59:00 PM:
P.S. My comment was not a criticism of your field. Businesspeople, lawyers, politicians, professors--in the end, we are all salespeople.
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 02:01:00 PM:
DEC, if you'd followed my "career" you would know that I NEVER BLUFFED when it came to go'in and gettin a Beer.
Some things we just didn't "Play Around" with. :)
By , at
Sun Aug 19, 10:04:00 PM:
As someone who has a modicum of scientific training, and not a salesman at all, and actually has a moderate amount of knowledge regarding biofuels, let me say this.
The present drive to make ethanol from grain is just the first iteration of an embrionic industry. As this industry grows, the effectiveness of the "bio-" part of the equation will grow, perhaps exponentially. More effective strains of bacteria that can digest more complex molecules than corn sugar will make the yields of ethanol much higher than at present, and these are literally just a few years away. As this industry begins to assert itself, other agricultural products will be cultivated that are more effective in yielding "biofuel" than corn. Sorghum is one crop that comes to mind. It is not presently cultivated widely because for many agricultural food applications, it is not as valuable as soy beans, corn, etc. But it would yield much more ethanol per acre cultivated than corn.
In the long run, it is not yet possible from a strictly thermodynamic point of analysis, to grow enough "fuel" to supply all the US needs. Eventually, we will make methanol from coal, and use coal to make other fuel gases in more efficient ways that allow sequestration of excess CO2 in the process.
But we are only now seeing the beginning of a very steep and strong growth and learning curve in alternative fuels.
-David
