Coal Barons Buy Dems

(Obama seems to have gotten off the liquid coal train. October 15, 2007)
Obama, Pelosi, and now Bingaman have boarded the liquid coal train. Sickening. Everyone knows this heats the globe, but did you know it will not make you any more independent? What do think happens when OPEC spikes the price of gas to $5.00 in say 2112, and we're using liquid coal? The coal barons will force us to pay $5.00 for their sinfuel, just like Exxon makes us pay the same for domestic gasoline as for OPEC gasoline.

This is not a guess. I make my living with energy economics, and this is as simple as it gets. That's just what markets do. If we won't pay the $5.00, they can sell it anywhere in the world for that price, because OPEC has jacked up the world price.

Back to global warming. Even if they capture the CO2 from making sinfuel, the sinfuel they make will emit the same CO2 as gasoline when we use it. On top of that, anytime more oil or sinfuel is produced, the world market makes sure more is used. That means more warming even with the most optimistic assumption. What are those Democrats been smokin'?
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Ethanol vs Dependence?

Can we do it with corn? Using 20% of our corn crop, we are 98.5% as energy dependent as ever. And it costs a fortune. This is straight from the pro-ethanol US Dept. of Agriculture, Jan. 2007. On top of that, they forgot that ethanol uses up natural gas--and causes more energy imports. The fact is we're only 1.1% more independent. The real purpose is just to buy farm votes. The USDA doesn't think we can even go 5% independent on corn.

They project ethanol production will grow from 5 billion to 12 billion gallons by Bush's target date of 2017. That will make us only 96.5% as energy dependent. But, by that point, they don't think corn can support much more ethanol. Is this an energy policy, or just a way to win votes in the corn states? Here's what the USDA's chief economist said to Congress in Jan 2007.

In 2006, ethanol production on an energy content basis was equivalent to only 1.5 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. —USDA

Taking into account that corn uses lots of nitrogen fertilizer, and that is made with natural gas, and any additional natural gas must be imported, the net result is that in 2006 we saved only 1.1% of energy imports, not 1.5%. Read more!

Ethanol vs Greenhouse Gases

In 2006, ethanol saved 0.054% of US greenhouse gas emissions. A 100 fold increase would bring us to 5.4%, still not enough. But 20% of the 2006 corn crop was used for ethanol, so a 100 times increase would require 20 times the entire corn crop, and cost a fortune. These numbers are 50% more optimistic than those from UC Berkeley's Sustainable Energy Lab. They are not difficult to check.

To calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) savings for ethanol we need to know how much GHG emission are reduced when 1 gallon of gasoline is replaced with ethanol. This key value has been reported recently in Science magazine (Jan '06) and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (July '06). The Science article is a survey (of all previous ethanol studies) done by a pro-biofuels group of professors in UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources group and its Sustainable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. Their published value is a 13% reduction in GHG, but they corrected this value to 7.4% in May, 2006. The National Academy study found a 12% GHG reduction, and zFacts has used this more optimistic value.

The simple calculation of the 0.054% GHG reduction for the US is presented here: ethanol GHG, along with simple one-click documentation of all input values. The calculation takes into account the following factors.

1. Gasoline production and delivery uses fossil fuel, so saving a gallon of gas in the tank saves as much GHG as from burning 1.23 galllons of gasoline.

2. 8228 grams of CO2 are produced by burning a gallon of gasoline.

3. 1.53 gallons of ethanol has the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline.

4. 4.885 billion gallons of ethanol were produced in 2006.

5. 7.122 trillion grams of CO2e GHG emissions in 2004 (most recent value).

That's all it takes to prove corn-ethanol is a hopeless approach to fighting climate change. In the next two days, zFacts will show that corn ethanol does little for energy independence and is enormously expensive.

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Ethanol energy balance?

Forget it! You hear a lot about the energy it takes to make ethanol. Is it more than you get from the ethanol produced, or is it less. Is the energy balance positive or is it negative. Enough! It doesn't matter. It's not energy we care about. What matters is (1) energy imported from dangerous places, and (2) greenhouse gases. Here' why neither matches the energy balance.

Suppose ethanol production used tons of coal and had a terrible energy balance. Since coal is not imported, ethanol would still reduce energy imports (oil) from dangerous places. Bad on energy, but good on energy independence.

Again suppose the heat for ethanol comes from coal, but less is used, so its energy balance is nicely positive. But the nitrogen fertilizer used for corn releases N₂O, a potent greenhouse gas. Depending on how much coal and how much N₂O, ethanol could be: Good on energy, and bad on greenhouse gas emission.

Energy balance is useless. It's not what we care about and it cannot be used to calculate what we care about which is only (1) Energy imports, and (2) Greenhouse gases. Tomorrow—the shocking saga of ethanol's gases. (from Chp. 3.3 Ethanol)
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Austin's Electric Car Folly

Turning Cars into Power Stations. Austin's mayor Duncan has spent $1 million promoting his scheme to have cars suck up electricity at night so they can act as electric power stations by day.
Works great, except for the $10,000 battery cost. It seems Austin forgot that batteries wear out. They figure just the cars have batteries anyway, so they are free.

In reality, hybrid batteries are long lasting only because they are not heavily used. They are rarely fully discharged and normally charged only to 60% so they have room for regenerative breaking energy. Here's a rough cost analysis. The new Prius batteries hold 1.8 kWh of electricity. Bought at night and sold in daytime this might save 7¢. These batteries are pretty much the same as in your laptop and are pretty well kaput after 1200 full cycles. That's an electricity saving value of $84. The Prius batter costs over $3000.

The problem is that once cars are used as power stations every day, their batteries will no longer last the life of the car and will have to be replaced at huge cost to the car owner. Excerpts from Wall St. Journal ♦ Battery life
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