The older I get, the more pessimistic I seem to be getting about some of the sensibilities of renewable energy. Of course, ethanol from corn was always a dumb deal, and after more than two decades of railing against this option, the world now sides with me.
The problems, though, with the Farm Lobby being so influential in bringing about this ridiculous national policy, are at least two-fold: first, the USA is so dominant that other countries merely copied our plan, and, second, there is a lingering effect that ethanol must be still good for ground transport, just don't use grains.
So Congress penned the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act seeking 1 billion gallons of ethanol by this year from cellulose. $1.5 billion later, ZERO cellulosic ethanol has been "commercially" produced. I stumbled across an August 2012 article reporting that while in April 20,000 gallons were sold (0.004% of the half a billion gallons for 2012), there was ZERO production in May or June of that year.
What about the year 2013? According to Wikipedia, there are twelve firms in the game, and the only company, Coskata, is supposedly producing up to 40,000 gallons/year (0.0002% of the billion gallons projected for 2013). Coskata has another plant scheduled to begin operation this year, but the feedstock will be natural gas. First, Coskata estimated that they would be producing ethanol for $1/gallon (this kind of speculation always throws up huge red flags for me). Second, they were quoted:
As of March 2013, the company's web site stated "While our technology platform is capable of producing multiple fuels and chemicals from a diverse array of feedstocks, we are initially focused on commercializing our natural gas conversion process."[7]
As of March 2013, the company's web site stated "While our technology platform is capable of producing multiple fuels and chemicals from a diverse array of feedstocks, we are initially focused on commercializing our natural gas conversion process."[7]
Can ethanol be produced from natural gas for $1/gallon? Maybe, actually. But do you get the idea that cellulosic ethanol might not be cost-competitive? Well, there are four more companies hopefully producing cellulosic ethanol by this year, so I look forward to more positive results.
Continuing the effort, the U.S. Department of Energy just announced a $13 million (hope this is not bad luck) investment in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin to overcome three big barriers for drop-in biofuels:
If you want to see the details, just click on that flow chart, which focuses on the preparation and conversion hurdles.
I'm okay with this, for biofuels are a long-term effort to wean us off petroleum. BUT FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME, I can't help but wonder how much further along society would be if there were no Farm Lobby, with biomethanol and the direct methanol fuel cell having been selected as the chosen pathway for our transport future. The USDOE hopes to get bioethanol costs down to less than $3 ($126/barrel, then you need to add other costs and profits) someday. Fine goal, but here is the only comment to this article by Jim Lane (left), editor and publisher of the Biofuels Digest from:
Continuing the effort, the U.S. Department of Energy just announced a $13 million (hope this is not bad luck) investment in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin to overcome three big barriers for drop-in biofuels:
If you want to see the details, just click on that flow chart, which focuses on the preparation and conversion hurdles.
I'm okay with this, for biofuels are a long-term effort to wean us off petroleum. BUT FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME, I can't help but wonder how much further along society would be if there were no Farm Lobby, with biomethanol and the direct methanol fuel cell having been selected as the chosen pathway for our transport future. The USDOE hopes to get bioethanol costs down to less than $3 ($126/barrel, then you need to add other costs and profits) someday. Fine goal, but here is the only comment to this article by Jim Lane (left), editor and publisher of the Biofuels Digest from:
I had hoped Dr. Moniz would put science ahead of politics as DOE director, but he is proving to be a political lap dog and master of "Washington speak" and political backscratching. $3 a gallon is a fantasy for cellulosic ethanol let alone any form of "drop-in" true hydrocarbon fuel that must be hydrogenated, deoxygenated, cracked, isomerized, and fractionated (aka "hydrotreated") to become compatible with airline jet engines and military tactical vehicles. The most cursory investigation of the lifecycle and processes required to make liquid hydrocarbons from any of the feedstocks including soy, rape, camelina, tallow, oil palm, jatropha, lignocellulose, microalgae, etc., would reveal the negative energy balance that kills these efforts right out of the gates. It is impossible to become energy independent with negative energy balance fuels. As an example, consider KiOR, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in pursuit of renewable gasoline, but their product is actually only the BTX components of gasoline that make up 25% of its content (the carcinogenic fraction), and they have sold a grand total of 3,500 gallons of product commercially since commissioning their plant last October, and it was at a loss in a single token sale right before a quarterly shareholder meeting Barring another wave of funding from science and economics-challenged investors or taxpayer money from the likes of Moniz, KiOR is going the way of Cello and Range Fuels and Choren by the end of summer. This ongoing giveaway of millions upon millions of dollars from a fiscally insolvent government that is furloughing air traffic controllers and meat inspectors is unconscionable. It is a shame for someone with MIT credentials to lend credence to this vain pursuit.
Not sure who Cliff Claven is, but I noticed he also commented to:
With the statement:
The price for the biofuel itself in this contract is actually $26 per gallon ($12M for 450K gal) and is more than 8 times the current rate for conventional JP-8 jet fuel and F-76 diesel oil (both less than $3 a gallon to the military in bulk). Even so, this price is a huge deception. DOE is separately subsidizing Solazyme for the algae fuel to the tune of $21 Million. USDA is also pumping in money via subsidies and loan guarantees. To get an idea of the real price, Honeywell UOP just won a DOE contract for $1.1M to produce 100 gallons of fuel-that's $11,000 a gallon. This is how the Administration and the Navy are spending our tax dollars while carrying a $15 Trillion debt and cutting defense.
I should stop here, but let me add one more article, which appeared a few weeks ago:
Yes, if you click on it, you will see a comment by Cliff Claven, who must be a pain in the neck of biofuels advocates. I would dismiss him out of principle, but what he says seems to be mostly accurate.
Nah, got to present one more, for Jim Lane is involved. This one is entitled:
Of course, Claven is right on top of this, and you can read his comments by clicking on that article. But I end with a riposte from Jim Lane:
Thanks, "Cliff", for the comments, although it is regrettable when people hide behind pseudonyms, and I have to wonder who peed in your corn flakes this morning.
An article in Sustainability, http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/12/2413/pdf is a good place to start for EROI on cellulosic biofuels.
The ranges seen in that peer-reviewed article (which discusses the differences between EROI calculation systems) gives a range of 0.78:1 to 17.8:1 for cellulosic ethanol. The 8 or 9 figure I generally use is roughly in the middle there.
Different authorities differ strongly on the exact numbers, however they all generally agree that there is a much stronger EROI for cellulosic biofuels. If "8 or 9" isn't your flavor, that's understood - but why be such a sourpuss about it?
And I really suggest that, if you are going to point to an article from Sustainability, you look at the Dale/Patzek article rather than just the Patzek data, which is an outlier on the low side. The former really goes through the assumption systems in an illuminating way - and credit to both Ted Patzek and Bruce Dale for undertaking the effort.
Having said that, I have no idea why anyone would take the view that simply looking at energy returns is a predictor of which systems should and will be scaled - biofuels or otherwise.
If EROI were the only consideration, I expect we would live in a world of 100% nuclear. Social factors, cost of capital, state of technical readiness, risk, distribution of resources and demand - all of these are important factors too. Consider the case, for instance of the much-maligned Solyndra - killed by market factors, rather than problems in the technology.
With respect to algae-based biofuels, I referred to passive algae farming - which does not include circulating water in a raceway.
I certainly wish to express that the format of this Q&A is not conducive to long recitations of data from peer-reviewed literature. If it comes off as "a collection of opinions completely unsupported by facts," I regret that, but that's the nature of the Q&A format which OilPrice.com uses here. I find myself a little dumbfounded by the hostile and belittling nature of the comment and its author.
Observations such as the size of the corn crop, the timing of biofuels capacity deployment, the rise in interest in GTL/biomass hybrid fuels, the rotation attributes of feedstocks such as sweet sorghum - these are generally agreed data. There's no reason to get so hostile.
For those who want a more in-depth examination of the issues and the data,
they are discussed in far more depth each day in Biofuels Digest. And many thanks to oil price.com and James Stafford for posing a good series of questions that looked at a wide range of challenges and opportunities for this class of fuels.
Jim
Let me end with some frivolity by adding that Cliff Clavin is that character from Cheers portrayed by John Ratzenberger. I doubt very much that Ratzenberger is the above Cliff Claven, for the spelling is different.
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I finally conclude this posting with Hurricane Erick, now at 80 MPH and no doubt causing huge consternation for the cruise industry. However, Erick has already passed Acapulco, will skirt Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, turning towards Cabo San Lucas away from Mazatlan. My cruise ship ported in all those cities.
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