Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Energy & Nuclear

Waste to Diesel: How Soon?

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A Washington-based company called Green Power claims it can turn household waste and medical waste into diesel for US$0.52-0.58/gallon.

According to FarmOnline the company thrilled spectators with a demonstration in Washington on 26th July witnessed by government officials, oil refinery, corporate and other representatives using a process called catalytic depolymerization.

Is this a new or improved technology or just a variation of what is already happening in Philadelphia where Changing World Technologies (CWT) have a pilot plant?

What are the limitations and opportunties from this technology?

An ‘Advertisement’ for ‘Dipetane’

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I’ve been sent links to www.dipetane.net.. According to the website you add dipetane to your petrol or diesel and you get a 10-17percent efficiency increase and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Wikipedia* it’s a fuel enhancer that improves the quality of combustion of any liquid fuel and it reduces emissions of CO2 up to 25%, CO up to 9.5%, NOx from 28.8% and SOx from 19.9%.

So why aren’t we all using it?

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update 9am, next day
* Apparently this link was to a Wiki user page rather than the Wiki proper and the information was ‘commercial content’ and so John Quiggin has had the information removed, so the link no longer works, see comments from John below. And I’m wondering whether the ‘commercial content’, as repeated in this blog post, is factually correct or not?

The Economics of Ethanol: New American Study

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Last year the United States produced 3.9 billion gallons of ethanol from corn. Brazil produced 4.2 billion gallons over the same period all from sugar and mollasses.

The United States Department of Agriculture has just published a report entitled ‘The Economic Feasibility of Ethanol Production from Sugar in the United States’ concluding that at the moment it’s not economical to produce ethanol from sugarcane and sugar beet given the price of the two crops, the costs of conversion and the price of gasoline.

The following table from the report shows that the Brazilians are clearly the most efficient produces of ethanol from sugarcane.

Estimated Ethanol Production Costs Tble Blog Gif.GIF

Of course, in a study published last year Cornell University Professors Pimentel and Patzel have argued that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy following an analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants (Natural Resources Research Vol. 14:1, 65-76). I don’t think they included sugarcane in their study.

Bicycle Beats Peak Oil: Ian Mott

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“At $2/litre I will fix my bicycle, I will get more exercise, I will lose weight, I will get fitter, I will live longer, I will get more things done, I will sleep better, I will notice more things as I pass them by, I will meet more people, I will be more relaxed and less grumpy, I will take more pleasure in my family as we ride together and, who knows, I may even get lucky.”

…commented Ian Mott at yesterday’s blog post on peak oil.
And he continued,

“When I set out in 1979 to ride a bicycle from Singapore to Bangkok, bicycles had played only minor roles in my life before then. It took me three days to get up to 150km each day and a week for it to become routine. But the key to the adjustment was not fitness, but rather, all in the mind.

At some point I stopped focussing on how big the task was and simply headed off to the local store for breakfast. And instead of going back home I went the same distance further on. I did the same at morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner and I did the same the next day and the next.

I ate at roadside stalls and was welcomed into humble shacks, I slept on moonlit beaches and rubber plantations, I washed in creeks and rewarded myself with hot showers and a comfy bed from time to time. In the heat of tropical day and outrageous humidity, I provided my very own 15km/hour breeze to caress my temples. My lips were chaffed, my neck was sunburnt and my ass felt every single pothole.

But there was never a single moment when I did not feel 100% alive.

Now what, exactly, is all this about peak oil?“

What Will Power Tomorrow?

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Last night Australian current affairs program Four Corners ran a story titled ‘Peak oil?’.

It began with the proposition that we might run out of oil soon and that this could be catastrophic, but then went on to outline a range of alternatives. The program reminded me of all the useful comments in the thread following my blog post of March 8 ‘We will never run out of oil: Philip Burgess’.

Four Corners even quoted Brian Fisher from ABARE suggesting that we could liquefy coal at US$40 a barrel which is cheaper than oil from the ground now at US$70 a barrel. Of course, while it might be affordable, liquefying coal will generate lots of greenhouse gases.

I wonder how many greenhouse gases the other potential options will generate including solar, biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel including from algae), hydrogen fuel cells, CNG (natural gas/methane), oil from tar sands, oil from shale … What else could be used to power cars, trucks and tractors?

Give Sweden is confident it’s economy can become ‘independent of oil’ by 2020 I am confident the rest of the world will also manage beyond peak oil. The Swedes propose to run their cars on ethanol and generate electricity from ‘rivers and nuclear’.

Just today new environment group the Australian Environment Foundation [1] put out a media release stating that our energy future will be “volatile and unpredictable” and called for a “significant expansion of the federal government’s inquiry into nuclear energy, as the current review will not produce a sufficiently accurate or useful comparison between the various energy generating options.”

It’s fair to conclude that there will be a worldwide transition from oil to something else, but we don’t know how rough or smooth that transition might be, nor how imminent.
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[1] I’m a director of the AEF.

Europe Cheats on Kyoto

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Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are thought to be responsible for the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are thought to be driving global warming. The Kyoto Protocol has been considered an important first step in reducing emissions with European nations agreeing to cap emissions under a trading scheme that kicked off in January last year.

But with Germany wanting to exempt coal (!) and the United Kingdom probably emitting about 92 percent more methane than it declares on top of the price tumble of late April, Kyoto doesn’t seem to be working.

This is how the Herald Tribune in a piece titled ‘Germany to Reduce Carbon Curbs’ reports Germany’s intentions to exempt coal:

“The conservative leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and her Social Democratic coalition partners agreed to cut the emissions limit by nearly 3.4 percent, but at the same time the cabinet has given an exemption to all new power plants, including coal, one of the worst industrial pollutants.

By allowing the power industry to opt out until 2022 before joining a program in which companies are given permits for emitting up to a certain amount of carbon dioxide and giving the permits free of charge, critics said the Merkel government was undermining EU efforts to combat climate change.”

Surely whoever is setting the rules for carbon trading in Europe won’t let the German’s get away with this?

A couple of weeks ago there was an article in New Scientist title ‘Kyoto promises are nothing but hot air’ in which Fred Pearce explained how Britain was not being honest with its emissions accounting:

“Under Kyoto, each government calculates how much carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide its country emits by adding together estimated emissions from individual sources. These so-called “bottom-up” estimates have long been accepted by atmospheric scientists, even though they have never been independently audited.

Now two teams that have monitored concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere say they have convincing evidence that the figures reported by many countries are wrong, especially for methane. Among the worst offenders are the UK, which may be emitting 92 per cent more methane than it declares under the Kyoto protocol, and France, which may be emitting 47 per cent more.”

It would seem the UK and Germany are treating Kyoto as something of a game in which it is OK to bend the rules and even cheat a bit?

But there are implications and not only for the environment. Robert Watts explained in an article title ‘Carbon Trading Leaves a Nasty Smell’ in the UK Telegraph last Sunday that Kyoto is costing hospitals:

“Open Europe’s report highlights the little-known fact that almost 150 schools, universities, military bases and even some prisons have also been obliged to sign up to the [carbon trading] scheme because they have a power station or boiler with a capacity of 20MW or more.

Whereas most private sector organisations have surpluses [of carbon credits], the opposite is true of organisations in the public sector. As a result, many hospitals, universities and army bases have been forced to buy carbon credits from businesses to meet their allocation targets.

Our tables show that, while some companies are making millions of pounds, a huge amount of taxpayers’ money is being spent buying carbon credits from the private sector. Open Europe estimates that this astonishing situation will cost the NHS [National Health System] about £1.3m a year between 2005 and 2008.”

While Kyoto hasn’t delivered much for hospitals or the environment in Europe, according to ABC Online Greenpeace is trying to force the concepts on South Australia and New South Wales.

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This is the second blog piece in which I have suggested Kyoto is turning into a game for cheats, click here for the piece written a month or so ago.