In August last year when the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, announced a $1.576 billion funding package over eight-years to promote alternative fuels in particular ethanol I received an email from Ray Wilson with the comment that:
“Ethanol is not a good fuel because a standard petrol engine needs to be extensively modified to use 100% ethanol as it has only half the energy density of petrol.
However, just as one can produce petrol and diesel from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch process, one can use cellulosic (Wood, leaves, grass, grains, etc) matter too to make petrol and diesel by this method. This can be done profitably and the process is well-known…
“The Fischer-Tropsch process is normally used to convert coal to fuels, but it works equally well with cellulosic matter as a feedstock.
So instead of just using the sugar cane juice to make ethanol and discarding the residue, one can convert the entire plant into diesel and petrol and discard very little. Any plant material will do too.
The subsides are available for anyone who wants to proceed with this R&D and the project itself, provided one has the collateral to cover 50% of the Federal loan. I do not have this, so it is very difficult for me to do anything myself. I actually looked into this in some detail recently.
Plant oils are suitable for use as a diesel fuel, but the rest of the plant is discarded as waste. For example, oil-palm nuts are crushed to yield their oil, but the pulp is discarded. Not very efficient.” [end of quote]
Today I received another email from Ray Wilson, this time with comment, “the Germans are using FT [Fischer-Tropsch process] to produce diesel from wood commercially; precisely what I was trying to get going here in Queensland.”
You can read about it at Times Online:
“Ken Fisher, vice-president for strategy at Shell, expects full-scale production on a commercial basis by the middle of the next decade.
“We would like to be the leading provider of second-generation biofuels,” Mr Fisher said. …
All the technologies are based on the Fischer-Tropsch process, invented in Germany in the 1930s to synthesise liquid fuels from coal. The process was initially uneconomic, but was used in Nazi Germany and in South Africa under apartheid when the country lacked access to crude oil.
“The discovery of better catalysts and the rising price of crude is improving the commercial equation…
“Shell has a second BTL [biomass to liquids] investment in Iogen, a Canadian company that this week secured an $80 million (£41 million) grant from the US Government to build a plant in Idaho, which will produce cellulosic ethanol from plant waste and straw. [end of quote]
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
What a hypocrit! Howard lives in a big house and drives and flies around a lot. He also uses his position to benefit his powerful mates. He\’s Goring us!!
Shell and its partner, Choren, have been actively pursuing this option for some time now. Another major player is Volkswagon.
The advantages of synthetic diesels over other alternative forms of fuel include a pre-existing distribution network, customer acteptance and low to zero emissions of other (non-CO2) substances common with current diesel fuels.
What this does is provide the timber industry with another use for low value products such as mill waste and wood chips. As with any competition for resources the likely scenario is that wood chip prices may rise.
Most of th eresearch has been carried out using northern hemisphere softwood species and a ssuch the methods devised perform most economically using other softwood species such as plantation grown P.radiata. Hardwood species, such as eucalypts, will in all probability require a modified approach to processing, in comparison with softwoods, due to the differences in cell structure and composition.
However it is good to see another form of recycling being promoted.
I note a significant silence from those concerned that combustion of this sort of stuff in ghastly automobiles, etc. releases CO2. Perhaps it is that some CO2 is politically correct, while other CO2 is not.
After all, it’s completely settled that coal is biomass–but coal is “evil” and requires a penance of investing in the stocks of companies that supply insurance, office products and software.
Isn’t our job to just lock up carbon wherever we can find it and make sure it never gets back into circulation? Fully 96 percent of atmospheric CO2 is not from fossil fuels, so shouldn’t we take this biomass and send it into the sun or wrap it in cellophane or something?
Schiller are you really that stupid. Consumption of fossil fuels is clearly increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere despite much being absorbed into the oceans and biosphere. Your imbecilic line about 96% is irrelevant. Many of our technologies have side effects – so we modify them – e.g. vast improvements in motor vehicle safety, substitution of other compounds for CFCs.
CO2 isn’t evil. Coal isn’t evil. It’s an issue we need to deal with.
The problem for the AGW debate is that the political debate has now been hijacked by both right wing idiots and left wing greenie idiots. Add the Gore side-show too.
“Global warming is a Christmas tree on which each of us can hang virtually everything we want.”
It’s more about both sides hijacking the debate as a way of telling us how to run our lives.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2026124,00.html
Luke,
Yes, I am really that stupid. The most recent research shows that only four percent of atmospheric CO2 is from fossil fuels.
Come on back with *your* figures. And I don’t mean estimates from power generation, but figures from *testing the air*. Is that so difficult? *Test the air.*
And if the CO2 gets absorbed by “the oceans and biosphere,” as you point out, is that terrible or do we have to bioremediate the Marianas trench? Pull the nasty carbon out of there?
Four Percent, Luke. And that’s Four Percent of a trace gas. In the big picture, we’re talking parts per Million.
P.S. I guess calling me “stupid” makes you feel really smart. Revel in it.
Cellulosic ethanol. We all better pray this one works since it is really the only viable renewable liquid fuel. Viable because it utilises a wastestream from agriculture and forestry fairly immune from inflationary pressures but it will almost certainly consume in its path all the ‘spare’ carbon in the world whittling any chances of a carbon based trading scheme. Carbon trading is a pipe dream because at the end of the day carbon is going to be increasingly valuable as an energy source. We are living in a carbon constrained world after all. http://www.cellulosicethanol.com.au – any buyers?
Yep 4%. You see you are trying the “oh it’s so widdle widdle teensy weensy argument”. I mean it’s a good sophistry try-on but silly. I can also say – but how can a speck of botulism kill you – it’s soooo small. How can a kg of plutonium make an atomic bomb – it’s too teensy weensy.
The radiative physics is well known. The effects at this level of concentration make a difference in the overall radiation balance. That’s about it.
Actually measuring it gets very close to the modelled numbers.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L03202, doi:10.1029/2003GL018765, 2004
Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect
Rolf Philipona
Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos, World Radiation Center, Davos Dorf, Switzerland
Bruno Dürr
Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos, World Radiation Center, Davos Dorf, Switzerland
Christoph Marty
Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos, World Radiation Center, Davos Dorf, Switzerland
Atsumu Ohmura
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland
Martin Wild
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland
Abstract
The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and radiative forcing to increase as a result of human activities. Nevertheless, changes in radiative forcing related to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations could not be experimentally detected at Earth’s surface so far. Here we show that atmospheric longwave downward radiation significantly increased (+5.2(2.2) Wm−2) partly due to increased cloud amount (+1.0(2.8) Wm−2) over eight years of measurements at eight radiation stations distributed over the central Alps. Model calculations show the cloud-free longwave flux increase (+4.2(1.9) Wm−2) to be in due proportion with temperature (+0.82(0.41) °C) and absolute humidity (+0.21(0.10) g m−3) increases, but three times larger than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gases. However, after subtracting for two thirds of temperature and humidity rises, the increase of cloud-free longwave downward radiation (+1.8(0.8) Wm−2) remains statistically significant and demonstrates radiative forcing due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
Luke, I have to disagree that both sides of the debate are trying to tell us how to run our lives. I don’t see too many sceptics arguing for mandatory fossil fuel targets, or for households to be forced to use more energy. All of that sort regulatory control is being promoted by AGW proponents.
Everyone who really believes that individual power consumption reductions will improve our climate is free to reduce their energy consumption as much as they like. I doubt if any sceptics will try to stop them.
I think I’ve got a handle on the greenie idiots, but who are you referring to as “right wing idiots”?
Luke – it’s a good link and a balanced view of extremism.
Pity it wasn’t produced in response to ” An Inconvenient Truth “.
No but they are pushing government on controlling research agendas and serious evaluation of options.
Is AGW mitigation through technological innovation a cost or an opportunity?
Am I being denied innovative technology by old world vested interests slowing down the economics, politics and perception of change. I reckon yes !
Right wing idiots – well I wouldn’t want to embarrass any fellow bloggers.
Luke – ” I (am ) being denied innovative technology by old world vested interests slowing down the economics, politics and perception of change.”
Like opponents of nuclear energy?
Posted by Luke!
“Global warming is a Christmas tree on which each of us can hang virtually everything we want.”
Like I said before, you do not have an original idea of your own, all you do is trawl the internet and pick up the leavings of others, which is fine, but at least give credit where it’s due, when you quote someone.
Like this:
“Myles Allen, of Oxford’s climate dynamics group. ‘It is a Christmas tree on which each of us can hang virtually everything we want.”
Cheers
Oh for heavens sake Mark – I apologise for omitting Myle’s name – he said it was OK – gee I wonder why it’s in quotes and I have quoted the link. I thought it was pertinent to the discussion and Jim seemed to think so. Perhaps whirlwinds blowing through junkyards make 747s too – oh gee who said that. Do you press flowers too Mark? Tosser.
New standard guys & gals – full Harvard quotations from here on.
Jim – on nuclear – yep indeed. I’m up for nuclear and nukes.
Schiller
I want to go back to your point about good and bad CO2 that was obscured by a school of red herrings. We’ve discussed this before.
There is good CO2 – it’s the CO2 you take from the atmosphere now, fix it into biomass as cellulose and lignin etc, then burn it in one of many different ways, produce oxides of carbon, and use the energy so released (which was the solar energy used in photosynthesis at the beginning of the cycle) to do productive work. With the right process, you can capture about 80% of the input solar energy for work and only about 20% is used to grow and process the biomass. The biomass is an energy storage device. Ethanol from corn is not an energy storage device; it is a way of turning coal into ethanol; put one joule in via fertiliser and you get about one joule out in the ethanol.
The difference between good and bad CO2 is determined by when the CO2 was originally captured from the atmosphere. If you reject AGW as a serious issue, biofuels could release us from our dependence upon the finite reserves of fossil oil that lie under the areas of greatest political instability on the planet. This is a definite plus, not subject to models of unknown validity about complex atmospheric processes we don’t fully understand.
Carbon sequestration – different subject.
So I reckon Shell and their partners deserve recognition for putting a lot of money on the line to prove up a source of liquid transport fuel that doesn’t require a complete re-jigging of the fuel distribution infrastructure. This infrastructure issue will exclude hydrogen and the other less conventional fuels from the market indefinitely.
Few people realise that the IPCC has effectively closed off one of the most contributive carbon management tools of all. Wood based biofuels do not need to be consumed when the tree is cut. Wood waste can be stored very cheaply in a paddock for decades and then be used as biofuels.
This delayed emission can ensure that the forest has already regrown and absorbed all the carbon that has been cut before the first volume has been used as fuel.
It is nothing new to farmers who have grazed paddocks for decades with the ringbarked original trees still standing or laying in situ. This is the normal source of firewood in this country and this slow drying ensures lowest moisture content of firewood and maximum burning efficiency.
So there is no reason why wood for biofuel should not be stored for long periods before being used. The dryer the wood the better the feedstock so the market should also value this wood more highly than fresh cut feedstock.
But as usual the IPCC’s accounting conventions rule out this option because they assume that all firewood is freshly cut and there is no ageing of product. It is all recorded as an emission in the year the tree is cut.
So on one hand we have a traditional farming practice that ensures that the CO2 that is released by firewood or biofuel has already been re-absorbed by the landscape before the emission takes place.
And on the other hand we have this arrogant, ignorant bunch of green scumbags in the IPCC who, in their ponderous wisdom, have managed to preclude that practice as part of any carbon management strategy. Awesome.
There will be ramifications for food markets. Biomass crops such as oats, miscanthus (amazing stuff), weedy perennials that grow like the clappers with low or no inputs may indeed be planted where food crops were once grown. The eastern wheatbelt of WA is an example where oil mallees are being planted in fairly large numbers displacing cereals. Rising fertilizer prices are retiring this land anyway as production risks moves to intolerable levels.
Utilization of crop residues also means that the energy calculations for energy returned on energy invested are much more attractive. Of course this is no good for soil carbon levels. Building organic matter will mean wearing a large opportunity cost.
I guess we’re all agreed, then.
If the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from “renewable resources,” that will be way better than CO2 from fossil fuels.
If we could replace all the fossil-fuel CO2 with renewable CO2, that would fix things.
Way cool! I didn’t know you could fix global warming by getting CO2 from a different source!
Huh? The CO2 increase mainly comes from non-renewable resources i.e. coal, gas and oil. Once it’s up there it hangs around for a long long time. Need to change to a steady state ethanol economy soon then. Do we have enough agricultural land to do all this – nope !
Luke, further to your comment that both sides of the debate are trying to tell people how to live their lives, certainly vested interests on both sides are lobbying government, as they have a right to.
That’s quite different to telling the population how to live their lives. There’s only one side doing that. And while the warmers are said to be winning the public debate, in that most people say they believe global warming is real and caused by humans, they are actually losing because few of us are reducing our energy use.
I predict this current public frenzy will die down and eventually be forgotten when the promised catastrophes fail to appear.
Luke,
I am glad you clarified how CO2 from non-renewable resources hangs around a lot longer.
Is this like, homeopathic, like, how water has “a memory?”
We’re trying to replace fossil fuels with renewable fuels, so it’s good to learn that our automobiles will soon spout CO2 with a shorter half-life or whatever.
Aaron, provided we don’t till the soil the amount of root mass should at least maintain soil carbon levels. Your idea of harnessing prolific weeds for fuel production is an excellent one. I have some legumous ones here that I’ll look into a little further.
EROI, energy return on energy invested(or sometimes called EROEI) suggests that ethanol on a 1.67:1 return will not be as attractive as biodiesel with a 3:1 return.
Luke do you have 1 example of anyone from the AGW skepticism side of the debate trying to force you to acheive any targets or limiting your access to any technology?
Perhaps you can google someone like Myles Allen for a smartarse answer if you cant think of any…
Schiller – it’s not source it’s amount in the atmosphere. Source is relatively less important – nice try.
Paul W – but you don’t have to wait – you’re probably living through some of the catastrophes right now.
Argh – it’s the Borg – “resistance is futile” – oh phew it’s only Paul Borg – yep – John Howard and rog have definitely by their cumulative actions have limited investment and research in renewables by their combined policy and advocacy. This affects my access in the short and long term and affects my options. Is that smart and Google-free enough for you Borgy bum.
Rojo – Acacias, mesquite, tagasaste could be attractive perennial legumes. The irony being we classify anything that can grow on marginal land quite successfully as weedy. But this is exactly what we need – crops that grow without inputs or much labour in tending. EROI in relation to the common annual crops fails to account for the energy contained in the residues. Given ethanol production is also possible using cellulosic technology, this waste will also contribute to the energy gain.
Agreed roots will give us some organic matter gains. Certainly bind the soils better than under annual based systems.
And the Feds have also lent on Qld to stop land clearing to pseudo-meet their pseudo-Kyoto targets which has ruined my relationship with Motty. So personal tragedy too. So imposed a solution on landholders by not tackling the energy and transport emissions. Thanks farmers – enjoy the drought you had to have, thanks for the free carbon and you didn’t vote for us anyway. Suckers.
I’m living through a catastrophe? Please explain.
Luke Wrote:
“John Howard and rog have definitely by their cumulative actions have limited investment and research in renewables by their combined policy and advocacy. This affects my access in the short and long term and affects my options.”
So you wanting them to invest in the technologies that you want them to is your beef. Leaving aside the billions of taxpayer funds globally provided to develop such technologies, do you not see that you are actually trying to dictate where my taxes go while at the same time crying foul that others are trying to ‘run your life’?
I mean seriously are you really going to claim such a thing while campaigning to increase my power bills and financially punish the economy?
Oh just a few hundred million flow out the window in a bit of a drought across the nation that seems to have lingered for years .. .. SE Qld panicing now after record low catchment inflows for years. Probably nothing to worry about.
Luke, you could withdraw your comment about “both sides hijacking the debate as a way of telling us how to run our lives”. We’d respect you for it. Honest.
The drought can’t be pinned on AGW. Nice rabbit though. (As in your frequent comment “oh there’s a rabbit, let’s chase it”).
For most of us, the drought”s hardly a catastrophe. Probably something to do with the flexibility of a free-market capitalist society, and the ability to adapt. (And please don’t infer that I don’t care about the drought or those affected. That would be a stupid thing to say.)
Well I think there is good evidence on obs to blame some of the drought on AGW.
Tell some the producers out there how they’ve “adapted” so well and how the drought’s hardly a catastrophe. If droughts get severe enough you have a cash mountain to get through or serious off-farm income.
Howard and his govt have been very tardy (bullied by public opinion moreover) to step up the plate on climate change, very selective on options, crueled our opportunities in the short term. Effect on farmers is pretty obvious. Score 3/10
So you’ll have to disrespect me heaps. No repent sorry.
Luke
Land use changes, if you are really interested, see these two papers written by people who are not AGW skeptics.
Hoogwijk M, Faaij A, van den Broek R, Berndes G, Gielen D, Turkenburg WC. Exploration of the ranges of the global potential of biomass for energy. Biomass and Bioenergy 2003;25(2):119–133.
Hoogwijk M, Faaij A, Eickhoutb B, de Vriesb B, Turkenburg WC. Potential of biomass energy out to 2100, for four IPCC SRES land-use scenarios. Biomass and Bioenergy 2006;29:225-257.
These people argue that it is possible (maybe not desirable in my opinion) to supply the ALL world’s energy needs with biomass grown on surplus agric land without starving more people or clearing more forest. They estimated this using a global scale model with a pixel size of 10 km square. It’s only a model but it’s useful as a first pass.
In a nutshell, farmers have been experiencing a declining terms of trade for hundreds of years due to increasing agricultural productivity which has increased the availability of food and lowered its price in real terms. About 20% of ag land in Europe and North America has been withdrawn from production, and additional land is effectively only farmed with the support of subsidies to keep the landscape looking nice. Then there are the large areas of land that are under-utilised in the ex-USSR republics due to economic collapse in the late 80s.
Population growth rates are declining while ag productivity increases – suggests that Aus farmers will suffer further declines in terms of trade. One solution is for farmers to grow industrial products, because as wealth increases consumption of industrial commodities per person increases. The trends are the opposite of the trend for food.
This may be a way to salvage Australian agriculture in the more marginal cropping areas, where food production will become increasingly uncompetitive on the global scale. Aaron Edmonds appears to be one of a growing number of cockies who have cottoned on to this.
Luke, so your argument boils down to, if we argue against AGW, that’s cutting down on political action to combat climate change, which is, in your bizarre world, the same as telling you how to lead your life?
And how would lack of a sceptical public viewpoint have stopped the drought?
Even though I don’t think the drought can be pinned on AGW, and I accept that it has been catastrophic for some, for arguments sake, tell us how you have been catastrophically affected by the drought. Lawn gone brown? Can’t use the swimming pool, so power bill has gone up from running the air conditioner?
Boxer thanks and interesting stuff. I’m a sucker for new crops and novel ways of improving rangeland management. So could we coppice crop woody species and make methanol? Would definitely help with balance of trade issues, probably good for some biodiversity, and other benefits. Issue if does it add up – is there enough land – cost of production & transport. How good is it. The Peak Oil guys usually reckon biofuels don’t add up but perhaps we should revisit the issue.
Paul – political decisions e.g. nuclear or solar choices definitely affect my world in terms of options.
Australians in the end are climate takers not climate makers in the sense that our emissions are very small compared to global numbers. So if we turned Aussie off at switch and AGW had a hand in the drought – turning us off would make little difference.
Of course I’m not saying “pinning the drought on AGW” but I think you can make a case for a “hand in it”.
Has it affected me personally – not really but it has affected quite a few people I know, and a lot more I don’t. If SEQ runs out of water I will definitely say that it has !
But we need to influence the rest of the world, be in the debate. We need access to the best science. Sell some innovative technology into the AGW technology space if we can. Our clean coal technology might be more useful in China than here.
Our agriculture and business needs to factor AGW into their risk management. Better make sure you don’t plant those olive orchards where the chill index will be overrun with changing tempersature boundaries. And we don’t want to get left with a dusty old carbon economy when the rest of the world (including Exxon !) has moved on.
Government policy response on AGW affects us our business environment and economically. Will international picky customers start to discriminate on carbon emitted in the production of food and products.
So doing nothing affects our/my choices as much as doing something. However I resent spurious contrarian debates indiscriminately taking out all options good and bad. Opportunities as well as threats.
Choose carefully grasshopper !
(and no Paul Borg or Mark – I’m not citing the reference as it was my original idea 🙂 )
Luke
Not sure about methanol, very toxic. I like the biomass to liquids (diesel) method (BTL), which was the start of this blog. By gasifying the biomass down to its CO and H2 constituents, it doesn’t matter as much what you feed in the front end. Ethanol has problems with high-lignin woody material. I think diesel has a lot more potential than the alcohols, better engines and fuel economy, higher energy density per volume, but in the end the most cost competitive will win out.
Transport a big issue of course, but there is flash pyrolysis which reduces the biomass to an oily char slurry, which has a high energy density per tonne and can be transported long distances. Flash pyrolysis can be done at a relatively small scale and so a large diesel synthesis factory could be fed from many smaller satellite pyrolysis factories. More speculative, but there are proposals being examined in Europe because they will have to import biomass to feed BTL.
Peak oil critics – I think biofuels will stand on their own feet with some development. Often biofuels comparisons are based upon corn ethanol and canola oil, and it isn’t hard to dismiss them for the long term. I feel some peak oil people will be disappointed if we side step the problem instead of crashing into an oil-starved crisis. Doom is addictive.
there is always the issue that internal combustion engines (ICE) are very inefficient. certainly in the short term, celluosic ethanol/diesel could be a viable option in terms of reducing GHG emissions and oil dependence. glad to hear that it looks like we’ll have enough land. hopefully we’ll have enough water.
ICE engines are about 20% efficient at best, so perhaps in the long term we should be looking less at what fuels to feed them with and should turn our attentions towards fuel-cell electric vehicles. certainly, you still need to run the fuel cell on something, and ethanol would be a better option than hydrogen because it is about 45% efficient compared to hydrogen which is only about 22%. hell, just having electric vehicles powered by coal electricity would still be a much better solution, they are up to 90% efficient!
so, it isn’t so much a matter of if we need bio-fuels (we do, even if you don’t support the theory of anthropogenic-ly forced climate change, we’ll still run out of crude one day), but should we waste them in inefficient internal combustion engines? i think not.
PS – sorry, had to weigh in on this one. Schiller, CO2 from bio-fuels is considered to be less ‘bad’ because you’re not adding any more CO2 to the atmosphere than is already there. it is part of the carbon cycle that keeps us all alive. however, pumping carbon into the atmosphere that hasn’t been part of the carbon cycle for millions of years puts that cycle out of balance. there is more going in to the system than can be processed by the system. hence, rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere. however, if the carbon you put into the atmosphere comes from a source that is part of the current carbon cycle, it is essentially carbon neutral because you’re putting back the carbon that was taken out when the plant was growing.
however, you can certainly debate the logic behind doing this. because if we want to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, we should probably leave the plants in the ground and remove that carbon from the cycle again.
Anna
Good points about which method should we use to propel our vehicles. Some thoughts to add to the mix.
The inertia of existing fuel distribution systems should not be underestimated. Example; LPG has taken decades to spread to the point where you can drive around Australia on LPG, and even then you can only do it if you stay on the main highways in many places. Retro-fitting hydrogen to fuel outlets by the oil/energy industry while simultaneously developing and marketing hydrogen fuelled vehicles by the automobile industry would be almost unachievable in a free market.
A nation’s vehicle fleet takes a long time to turn over. If you cut off an existing fuel source, you disadvantage the people lower down the socio-economic spectrum. Hence only moderately wealthy people and idealists drive hybrid cars today.
The transport system is much more than the vehicles. There is a massive infrastructure, probably bigger than the vehicle component, and we may find the most economical means to operate transport as a whole involves some form of internal combustion engine because of savings elsewhere in the system. The technical inertia within the non-vehicle parts of the whole transport system is probably greater than the consumer inertia within the vehicle market.
I think all the major car makers around the world are following the either ethanol or synthetic diesel route, and some are following two liquid fuel options.
How does heavy transport work with alternatives to diesel? Not many of us drive trucks, but supermarkets won’t work without road trains.
Carbon sequestration in plants – no problems with that. If you use a coppicing plant (see Luke’s comment yesterday), the root system stays in the ground and continues to grow while you skim the top off for use as fuel. Have cake and eat it too.
The first obligation of an ideology free carbon management system is to find a use for the 90 million tonnes of vegetation thickenning that takes place each year on Qld & NSW woodlands alone.
It is anthropogenic, and its continual growth degrades ecological values by reducing habitat of grassland species and reducing stream flows and river health.
Yet, Beattie’s mate, Aila Keto, was instrumental in ensuring that all wood from native forest, even very recent regrowth on previously cleared land, and harvest slash and thinnings, is prohibited from use as feed stock for co-generation etc.
So we have 60 million tonnes of Queensland wood waste that is left to slowly decay in the paddock instead of being substituted for coal. That 60 million tonnes has no value because it has no market. With the recent changes in energy prices this would be worth about $35/tonne at power station door so Beattie’s sleazy little back room deals have extinguished about $2.1 billion worth of annual value adding potential.
And for what? The clearing of regrowth still continues because farmers retain the right to maintain their pastures.
Just another day in the brave new green utopia.
Perhaps Ian may have his day in some future politico-administratianum universe. But is worth pondering in a new carbon interested world how we might think of new multiuse rangeland landscapes that balance out grazing, biodiversity, and woody maintenance by some sort of rotational biofuel harvesting. Also the better at this, one became the more you could attribute positive sequestration benefits which someone might pay for as an offset. Which would help bush terms of trade. Some of us may have had these ideas before the big bad tree clearing ban came in.
The other one is use of saltbush for below ground carbon storage and some drought reserve (perhaps).
So it still ain’t a brave new day in the yet-to-be discovered practically more serious green utopia – but it could happen if Ian’s blood pressure holds up. So does it stack up – how much biofuel could we make?
That’s a big question Luke. I’ve seen some estimates that suggest 10s of millions of tonnes of biomass from a proportion of the wheatbelt. About 10 million from the WA wheatbelt alone. Conversion from biomass to biofuel I don’t know. Woody biomass has about 20 GJ of primary energy per dry tonne. Coal about 25 GJ/t. Diesel about 46 GJ/t. Might get 1 tonne of diesel from 3 tonnes of dry biomass? Depends on the process.
A proportion of the wheatbelt because if you plant the whole paddock fence to fence, the productivity will be very poor, the cockies won’t be able to grow any wheat or pasture and so you are really talking about planting the farms back to bush and walking away. The native scrub was/is very unproductive. Not an option.
The best systems are a combination of conventional cropping agriculture and some small proportion of the land used for woody perennials because the two different vegetation types do not use all the same parts of the soil profile and they benefit differently from different rainfall events. They both compete with and complement one another so it’s a balancing act.
Most likely narrow belts of trees/shrubs with conventional grazing and cropping in between, with the belts occupying perhaps 10% of the paddock. There are other models. Such as broad-scale fence to fence planting by direct seeding, grow for three to five years, harvest, clean out the stumps and return to cropping and grazing. Move the shrub crop on the next paddock and repeat the cycle, so instead of planting 10% of the paddock permanently, you plant the entire paddock for 10% of the time.
One farmer from the northern WA wheatbelt I spoke to a couple of months ago is thinking seriously about rows of mallees and then crop wheat between when the season was suitable, rather than be reliant on growing a wheat crop every year and having half of them fail and making a massive profit one year in ten. It would be a low productivity system but he can buy land pretty cheaply up there with the run of bad seasons lately.
Western NSW and Qld would probably be very different as land is managed differently and there is a greater reliance upon grazing systems? Could grow an acacia shrub, harvest the whole plant, process the leaf into high value fodder and sell the wood for industrial uses. Buy unfinished sheep and cattle and fatten them in open feedlots using the leaf fodder or sell the processed fodder to feedlots closer to the coast. There may be many options and many ways to skin the cat. Diversity of biology and markets.
Boxer – fascinating discussion about new agricultural futures and landscapes. Wish the blog would get here more often. The economics of using good agricultural land is an issue. I’m thinking about more marginal country being used.
Be interesting to know how much land we would need to be sufficient for mobile energy in Australia??
Pity methanol is toxic – dragsters seem to like it !
But issues of drought proofing – accessing different profiles of water, mixed cropping – opportunistic on the season’s rainfall, biodiversity surviving and moving in complex landscapes with varieties of cover and vegetation types, and supplying a high value product such as biofuels back to an urban populus is worth pondering at least.
Boxer, totally take your point about the inertia of current fuel supply systems. also the point that it takes a long time to change over a country’s vehicle fleet, i drive a 21 year old car myself. though i get about 7.5l/100km so i’m not to unhappy about that. but i certainly don’t have the cash to buy a prius or civic, so at the moment i simply drive as little as possible and buy offsets (not trees!) for what driving i do have to do.
as for hydrogen, well, seeing as it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you get from the hydrogen, i really don’t think it is an efficient option.
i reckon that bio-ethanol/diesel in a fuel cell electric vehicle would provide the best of both worlds. efficient mechanism and we can use the current fuel supply systems still. as far as heavy transport i must admit i’m less well versed. though aren’t trains more efficient per kilo of freight than trucks? unfortunately rail infrastructure is up the creek at the moment.
i’m not suggesting that any of this could happen quickly, i.e., in the next five – 10 years. these things take a lot of time, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be planning for change in the future. and not just in terms of *what* fuel we use, but also *how* we use it. 20% efficiency is pretty poor, for example if you spent $100 on marketing and only saw a $20 increase in business you’d fire your marketing people. so why should we accept this extreme inefficiency from technology?
Then again , maybe we’re not that close to running out of oil anyway….
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
All the technologies are based on the Fischer-Tropsch process, invented in Germany in the 1930s to synthesise liquid fuels from coal. The process was initially uneconomic, but was used in Nazi Germany and in South Africa under apartheid when the country lacked access to crude oil.
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My grandfather, Gordon Sizer, was a chemical engineer at the Sasol and Sasol II plants for 20 years, which converted coal to petrol and strategically gave South Africa energy-independence during the oil embargo of the 70s and 80s.
You are on the right track with sugarcane. Bargasse – the cellulose byproduct of sugarcane, and sugarbeet ethanol – is used to generate electricity for the ethanol conversion plants, and the excess electricity is sold. Best of all itis environmentally friendlier than many other energies.
“Presently, it is economically viable to extract about 288 MJ of electricity from the residues of one tonne of sugarcane, of which about 180 MJ are used in the plant itself. Thus a medium-size distillery processing 1 million tonnes of sugarcane per year could sell about 5 MW of surplus electricity. At current prices, it would earn US$ 18 million from sugar and ethanol sales, and about US$ 1 million from surplus electricity sales. With advanced boiler and turbine technology, the electricity yield could be increased to 648 MJ per tonne of sugarcane, but current electricity prices do not justify the necessary investment. (According to one report, the World bank would only finance investments in bagasse power generation if the price were at least US$19/GJ or US$0.068/kWh.)
Bagasse burning is environmentally friendly compared to other fuels like oil and coal. Its ash content is only 2.5% (against 30-50% of coal), and it contains no sulfur. Since it burns at relatively low temperatures, it produces little nitrous oxides. Moreover, bagasse is being sold for use as a fuel (replacing heavy fuel oil) in various industries, including citrus juice concentrate, vegetable oil, ceramics, and tyre recycling. The state of São Paulo alone used 2 million tonnes, saving about US$35 million in fuel oil imports.”
Link for above quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil#Electricity_from_bagasse
The “scientific consensus” on AGW also proves that there’s intelligent life on Neptune’s moon Triton, Jupiter, Pluto, and Mars. They show the same pattern of AGW as Earth. Quite conclusive evidence!
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/3434
Anna
20% efficiency is pretty ordinary and fuel cell/electric may be the way of the future. But some costs produce benefits indirectly. If you use long distance road transport and pay more for the diesel that it consumes compared to rail transport, you may more than make up for the transport costs by saving time.
Rail freight is good in its place but the infrastructure costs are very high and government funded, capital that is not paid for by the users. There are also high levels of inefficiency in other respects, particulalry time. It’s not the speed of the trains, it’s the amount of handling required to deliver and retrieve loads to and from the railheads. Rail infrastructure is in a hole because the taxpayer doesn’t want to close hospitals to maintain or expand it. Imagine the amount of aluminium cable it would take to electrify the Perth to Port Augusta rail line and the enormous losses in transmission of electricity over such huge distances. It may be better stay with diesel trains for energy efficiency reasons.
Energy efficiency is very important, but if the energy is renewable and its production and use has a low impact on the environment, then how much you use surely becomes a question of cost. It may be more efficient in economic terms to use a bit more energy and make savings in other ways. Then energy efficiency improves as a way of reducing operating costs, a process that happens naturally.
But fear not happy motorists, I heard anecdotally that there is a coal to liquid project under consideration for Victoria that could have the capacity to replace our nation’s petroleum fuel imports. And there are others. Sasol’s technological expertise will save us from having to fight over oil fields in the future. Now that will save a lot of lives and huge amounts of energy and cash, especially for the USA.
The interesting aspect of the above link to the NY Times article on new oil reserves is the use of CO2 as the gas being pumped into the ground to flush out more oil.
In this case, the resulting oil may have already have an off-setting carbon credit due to the sequestration. And note that this technology has increased the known recoverable resource from 3.3 trillion barrels to 4.8 trillion. And as 1.1 trillion of the original 3.3 trillion has already been used, it means that 1.5 trillion (40.5%) of the remaining 3.7 trillion may be a long way towards being carbon neutral.
But what about some of these other gases that are much more GH unfriendly than CO2? Given that methane, for example, is 20 times the CO2 equivalent, would the pumping of methane back into the well produce an oil product that is actually in carbon surplus?
Luke has suggested at another post that,
“Nitrous oxide has an atmospheric lifetime of 120 years and a GWP of 296 over 100 years.
CFC-12 has an atmospheric lifetime of 100 years and a GWP(100) of 10600.
HCFC-22 has an atmospheric lifetime of 12.1 years and a GWP(100) of 1700.
Tetrafluoromethane has an atmospheric lifetime of 50,000 years and a GWP(100) of 5700.
Sulfur hexafluoride has an atmospheric lifetime of 3,200 years and a GWP(100) of 22000”.
So if these gases were pumped into an old oil well the resulting oil could be sold as being completely carbon neutral with loads, and loads of change.
And this raises an interesting issue in respect of the IPCC climate projections. For if 40% of all future oil emissions are even anywhere near carbon neutral then the whole range of scenarios are off the planet. The IPCC has not even bothered to run a scenario with this sort of highly probable outcome.
So perhaps Motty, you are demonstrating is that doomsday scenarios are commonly based upon business as usual into the future. Many doomsday scenarios are avoided because we change our behaviour in response to the anticipated problem. If you jump out of the plane you will make a mess when you hit the ground, so you take a parachute.
But if we didn’t have doomsdayers, would we just jump out of the plane and think about the parachute idea on the way down?
Quick answer – (1) you have to “round up” the methane or other emissions – how easy is that ? can you capture the emissions easily (2) how much sulfur hexafluoride etc is there anyway ?
Indeed pumping CO2 into wells and aquifers is the subject of research. Long as it stays down there.
Ian
“The IPCC has not even bothered to run a scenario with this sort of highly probable outcome.”
Do you have any evidence of this claim?
Yes, SJT. The lowest emission scenario under the IPCC projections, and for Stern et al, don’t have any inbuilt efficiency gains.
So the “evidence” is the absence of any mention of efficiency gains. And assuming that the IPCC are all honorable men and women then they would certainly have made the results of such modelling public, if they had done any. To argue otherwise would be to imply that the IPCC are the kind of low life that would avoid publishing material that did not support their case.
So if I accept Luke and your own view on IPCC then I am bound to conclude that no such modelling has been done.
If, however, you were to advise us all that the IPCC are the kind of low life that is capable of withholding projections that don’t support the party line then I will gladly change my conclusions.