Comments on: Silicon Valley's Mr. Green

Vinod Khosla made a fortune as an Internet and IT venture capitalist. Now he's setting his sights on clean technology--and national energy policy.

[Blito]

"Even worst ethanol plant has about a 90 percent reduction in petroleum"

People are saying that we dont have enough crop in the world to fuel ethonol and it will cut into food but I hear that there are efforts to grow non-food type stuff for it too that are possibly genetically enhanced for it. There is a ton of stuff being talked about.

Plus, fuel cells are the future. Electric and Hydrogen is becoming more of a reality.

Also don't forget that you can create hydrogen fuel in a solar powered fueling station from water. No energy plant needed.

[markapp]

ethanol worst possible fuel on several reasons

Grain ethanol is one of the worst possible fuels we could use for several reasons.
1. cost at best we get 1 gallon ethanol from 1 bushel corn=3 dollar a gallon whosale cost not even adding the cost of processing the corn or distilling the ethanol.
2. competition with food using grain as an ethanol source has pushed the price of corn from 2 dollars a bushel to 3 dollars a bushel over the year from 3/06 to 3/07. Theis has not yet shown in the price of groceries since they use price hedging forward contracts to produce our food but in the near future expect soaring prices for any grain based products including soda pop breads corn chips etc. The 1/2 again price increase will contribute greatly to starvation in poverty stricken parts of the world who had trouble buying enough food before taking the price to 1/2 again or possibly double in the near future.
3. green fuel hardly. to produce a gallon of grain ethanol requires about 70% of the btu's it can produce when burnt. Guess what we burn to produce it? Natural gas or coal so we pollute even more with ethanol than just burning the petroleum. By the time you add the internal combustion engines involved in planting pumping water and harvesting and drying the corn you are really deep in the negative column.
4. Efficiency even the ford manual admits that at best e-85 will provide about 70% as many miles per gallon as petroleum in the flex fuel vehicles so it's true value is 70% of petroleum yet it's production cost is about twice the petroleum at 3 dollar a bushel corn.
Our current most valuable fuel reserves are coal The best current technology is coal slurry firs with stack scrubbers. We would be wise to focus local short trip vehicles to electric supplied by very large coal burning generators located at the reserves or mines.

[rrapier]

Silly Question?

Regarding the energy balance issue, it was Mr. Khosla who was claiming that it is twice as efficient to produce ethanol as to produce gasoline. When he was shown to be incorrect on this point by me and others, suddenly it becomes a silly question. Coincidence?

I agree with him that petroleum reduction is important. But the energy balance issue is also important. If you take 1 BTU of natural gas to make 1 BTU of ethanol, you have displaced petroleum. But you would have displaced the same amount of petroleum had you merely used the natural gas directly as a transportation fuel, and you wouldn?t have paid a bunch of subsidies to do so, nor would you have eroded your topsoil in the process. So, no, energy balance is not a silly question. It is a key question.

Cheers,

Robert Rapier
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com

[rrapier]

I Should Also Mention...

That I am the source of the articles at The Oil Drum, mentioned in this story. There are a number of essays there, including one by Mr. Khosla, that can be viewed at:

http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/Vinod%20Khosla

My objectives in these essays were to remove the hype element, rebut the mythology, and have some serious discussions on the science involved.

Cheers,

Robert Rapier

[Blito]

Hirearchy resource list

I agree, the energy balance question is vital to the discussion because a perpetual machine can't be created, just perpetuity for the whole system using many resources for their respective outlets. Basically what can run what most efficiently. That's what is so great about renewable energy is that it is a perpetual machine if used on the whole correctly. The plant can use less petroleum in but if the car can run natural gas and cause less pollution plus not use petroleum then why use natural gas to make the ethanol and just put it in the car? Because it might also be better to use both as it's easier to grow ethanol then mine for natural gas as with ethanol you can create non-food supercrops etc probably and natural gas is just one thing.

I think it should be placed in a hierarchy of renewable resources hardest to easiest:
Natural Gas - Hardest to mine and extract (less of it)
Ethanol ? Easier to grow and more of it same BTU use as natural gas though
Wind ? Powerful and plentiful probably best option when all else fails or for middle ground
Solar. Weakest energy but extremely easy to use, smallest foot print, and dependable less impact on environment.
Fuel cell tech. Very easy and cheap to create using other top resources properly (Hydrogen can be created from water with a local filling station).
I think Fuel cell is the best option overall.

An article in the Audubon society magazine states that Wind power makes up about 1 percent of US energy and they are pushing to become maybe 20 percent in the next 10 years. It's a matter of placing them properly so they don't hit birds and bats which seems to work out.