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Three decades ago, the United States imported about a third of its oil. Now the percentage is approaching 60 percent, and the U.S. Department of Energy predicts that it will increase in the next 20 years. If ever there were an opportunity for some bright bulb to shine, this is it.
But there remains an incredible amount of confusion about how best to proceed. Even though there's a general consensus on the need to develop alternative fuels, agreement breaks down when it comes to the specifics and setting priorities.
Maybe that's a reflection of a national propensity to leave for tomorrow what we don't want to deal with today. Every incoming U.S. president during the course of my adult life has promised to reduce America's reliance on oil and invest in new energy sources. So much for campaign pledges.
The Bush administration, which prefers encouraging oil exploration to reducing consumption, follows in that storied do-nothing tradition. But crude-oil prices hovering around $70 a barrel have a remarkable way of getting even the most pro-oil politicians to deal with the problem. (Gasoline is already more than $3 a gallon on both coasts of the country--and many places in between.) So it is that the administration has now come out in favor of increased use of alternative fuels.
Wonderful. I'd like to believe our government is sincere about curbing the national appetite for oil. Still, the cynical journalist in me wonders whether our ardor for developing fuel alternatives will wane if the price of crude falls to 40 bucks a barrel (as unlikely as that may be).
Still, the conversation has been engaged, and corn ethanol is the one idea that even political polar opposites like George Bush and Hillary Clinton can rally around. In fact, a new poll out shows that 78 percent of Americans support increased use of ethanol. Indeed, ethanol production is growing so quickly that farmers in this country expect to sell as much corn this year to ethanol plants as they do overseas.
But in the trenches, where the investments and the engineering work get done, the enthusiasm for corn ethanol doesn't match the hype.
Worthy alternatives?
Earlier this week, I hosted a panel sponsored by Silicom Ventures that brought together some very smart entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. These folks had very different ideas about taking the next step, but they were quite uniform in shooting down the idea of corn ethanol as a panacea.
Corn ethanol undoubtedly has the potential to become a good alternative fuel. First, we don't depend on other countries for the resource. Automakers--General Motors, in particular--are pushing the idea of E85, a blend of ethanol created from corn and gasoline. A recent University of California at Berkeley study concluded that ethanol is about 10 percent to 15 percent better than gasoline when it comes to greenhouse gas production. The current technology involves the use of bacteria to convert plants into starches that get fermented into ethanol. It's a relatively costly process, but prices will fall as more efficient methods get invented.
The pro-corn ethanol lobby is so loud that it's drowning out other voices. And there are better ways to go about it.
Sugar cane and sugar beet offer a better carbohydrate source than corn, when you consider how much less energy is required to do the conversion. Now comes the politics: The United States doesn't cultivate much sugar cane, while Brazil does. Our government years ago imposed a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on ethanol imports from outside the Caribbean basin to appease big farm interests and corn-growing states.
The president says he plans to work with Congress to drop the tariff. That won't be easy. Just this week, lawmakers from five farm states--Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Tom Harkin of Iowa, and Barack Obama and Dick Durbin of Illinois--sent a letter to Bush opposing any loosening of the tariff. Their argument: Any such move would pull the rug out from under the domestic renewable-fuels industry.
Yeah, sure.
With Brazil already closing in on generating nearly half of its power from renewable-energy sources, like sugar ethanol, the U.S. can tap the expertise of a friendly country ready to sell more to us. I hope somebody in Congress has the guts to ask why we're making it more expensive to buy a product that can immediately help cut our reliance on autocratic sheikhdoms.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
See more CNET content tagged:
alternative fuel, gasoline, U.S., idea
When the US decided they were going to land a man on the moon we made it happen. It's time to put the same effort and resources into reducing our reliance on foreign sources of energy.
You may be in less luck with the rest of it. The automotive and fuel industry's campain money is going to demand that the solution providing them bigest profit margins wins. Yet again, the best solution will loose out over the political solution.
Now, as for Brazil; the solution may be cheaper fuel from a relatively US friendly country. Hm.. pay a ransom to a hostil nation for crude oil or pay a fair price to a freindly nation for better fuel.
Your energy independance comes from paying a cheaper price for fuel leaving more money for research and learning from the expertise already gaining experience in brazil.
Of course, this is assuming that the corporate shareholders don't get the greater profit margin from cheaper fuel. And assuming that mighty America could humble itself enough to learn from a nation it's generally thumbed it's nose at.
I'm still of the delusion that there are better alternatives to burnt fuel and that one ore more of these alternatives may make it into the market place against the odds of the political heavyweights that have already planned there prefered solution.
I agree with the idea that corn ethanol is not the total answer to our energy problems. Biomass ethanol however does have a much higher potential to offset some of our oil imports. Research and development of the biomass process needs to continue at the pace it has recently been accelerated to by the high demand for ethanol. May main point of contention with your article is the call for removal of the tariffs on foreign ethanol.
The US currently subsidizes our ethanol industry with a $0.54 tax rebate per gallon of ethanol at the pump. The Petroleum industry actually gets this subsidy but it in turn allows them to pay the ethanol producer more for the ethanol. The $0.54 tariff on ethanol was put in place so that the American people would not be subsidizing the ethanol production outside the US. There is currently a small exemption in place for a limited amount of imported ethanol to get around the tariffs. The petroleum industry still gets the $0.54 subsidy on this imported ethanol, but is only serves to increase their profits and does nothing to promote research and expansion of our own US ethanol industry. Removal of the ethanol tariff would circumvent the original intension of the state and federal subsidies and we would be back to subsidizing imported energy while making it even harder for our own ethanol industry to improve their processes, do research and compete.
Do we really want the American people to pay our petroleum industry $0.54 /gallon so they can import ethanol and keep our own ethanol industry from becoming a threat to their profits?
1. As some have commented on there are corrosivity issues that are not present in crude refined gasoline. This provides challenges for that impact seals and metals exposed to it. One must consider the distribution system as well as the vehicles burning it.
2. Ethanol self dilutes itself by picking up moisture that it comes in contact with. This also introduces interesting challenges in the distribution systems. Fuels are primarily distributed by pipeline and water condenses out of the fuels as the product is cooled in the pipeline. The ethanol will sweep this water up and cause quality issues. The less dry the ethanol burned, the more issues with corrosivity.
3. Ethanol's property as a solvent is not insignificant either. Again the quality of the product is impacted and special challenges have to be addressed in the distribution system.
4. The BTU content of ethanol is much less per volume than crude refined gasoline. This means that you will either drive less miles per fill-up or the fuel tanks have to get larger (more payload to move also). The MPG that you are used to referencing will be much lower and the comparison to current fuel technology is not trivial.
Brazil has made a significant push in using Ethanol as a primary fuel for vehicles. It is not uncharted territory and the lessons learned from their efforts should help to evaluate to what extent this would make sense from any perspective in the U.S.
I agree with what you said. But somehow I think there is a broader issue here that simply gets pushed under the carpet.
Yeah, we import a lot of oil. And, yeah, we will probably import more next year. But who cares! There?s X gazillion barrels of reserve crude in the world and that known amount has probably reached a peak so that new finds will not make the number higher. As a result we have a fixed amount out there and market demand (you know the old capitalist approach) will dictate the price and where it goes. If the good old boys in America cut back dramatically, say even 15%, that 15% is going to get sold elsewhere. Perhaps India, perhaps China maybe even Germany, who knows. Bottom line is anything we do here won?t change the picture.
Did anyone ever think that the percentage of imported televisions has gone up dramatically over the past 50 years? When U.S. production was shutting down and imported TV?s were going from 50 to 60% did anyone say, ?Stop buying TV?s ? reduce your TV consumption??
When U.S. cars were crap and Toyota and Honda started making decent cars the import rate went up dramatically. Did anyone say stop buying Toyota?s. No-sir-eee actually Uncle Sam now gives me a tax break if I buy that little eco-civic.
We shouldn?t even begin talking about computers. They?re all imported. I-pods, furniture, clothing. Can you imagine don?t buy any sneakers from the Far East we are trying to reduce our foreign dependency on sneakers by 10% this year.
Come on. Give me a break.
It is all baloney and we are all suckers for listening to this garbage.
CLK3RD
267 566 1970
If you want to get rid of dependancy issues then this looks great if we have enough water of course.
http://hytechapps.com
I wonder how energy efficient HHO is to produce. Anybody know???
www.waterfuelconverters.com
www.savefuel.ca
www.hydrogen-boost.com
This is just one of two situations:
1) intentional charlatonry to bilk investors
2) experimental error and good intentions
Stories of this kind appear from generation to generation and decade to decade. Generally, the inventor is someone without formal training who is working in a barn, garage, remote island, etc.
Usually, the invention or process is claimed to be simple and yet miraculous
Inevitably, something is wrong --either fraud {many, many perpetual motion machines {that is why the US Patent Office still requires a working model from someone who is claiming perpetual motion} that have attracted a lot of investor's money} or accidentally {e.g. the story of polywater ? after much theoretical and further experimental activity it turned out to be due to contamination in the measurement system}. Then we have the so far as yet unexplained anomalies such as Cold Fusion that defy the basic scientific understanding and yet seem to have some reality.
My bet is that HHO will either turn out to be fraud or misunderstanding of the data. The temperatures that were quoted in the "scientific paper" that can be downloaded from their web site of 10,000 degrees are only achievable by atomic oxygen atomic hydrogen flames or else electric arcs or laser gas breakdown. If they are real then the gas that is produced by the HHO process -- must contain atomic hydrogen. However, extraction of hydrogen from water is an endothermic process. So even if you can make a gas that consists of a mixture of atomic Hydrogen and other stuff -- its creation will require at least as much energy as it delivers by combusting.
Moral of the story -- a brief tutorial in thermodynamics
Law 1 -- You can't win the game -- i.e. energy in is at least as much as energy out ? this appears to apply everywhere in the universe where we can look ? the only deviation occurs at the atomic-scale where quantum mechanics allows a ?borrowing of energy for a brief time?
Law 2 -- you can't even breakeven -- the quality of the energy is decreasing as disorder increases {technically something called entropy} -- aka heat flows from hot to cold ? life seems to temporarily violate this law
Law 3 -- like in baseball the rest of the games are rained-out -- really involved with attempts to cool things to temperatures near absolute zero and not too relevant to Brown's Gas and such
So ? perhaps it?s real?? ? but until some serious proof of it occurs ? I wouldn?t go around buying stock yet
In the mean-time --Let's get back to reality, fossil fuels, nuclear-electricity-derived-hydrogen and leave Brown's Gas to Brown
I suppose that no one told them that it will cost them more or the same in energy spent making the fuel for the return flight and air to breath?
I also know that it does not cost much to turn an alternator on a car, not even a big one or two big ones. I am a mechanic and I will tell you, there will not be an appreciable amount of fuel use running multiple alternators. I know I used to use 4 twelve volt batteries and two alternators in my jump truck and it had no problem starting cold frozen cars in the winter around here, sometimes getting down as low as -30f.
Now, there is also solor power and wind generators. Speaking of which, does it cost as much to run one of those big diesel generators as what you get back in power? My guess is that they may. And if they do not, how much more is it going to cost? Lets say we spend a little bit to keep this hydrogen generator running...it is a liability financially. Is it also a liability environmentally? We also have so called "free" power not only from nueclear plants, but also from hydroelectric sources as well as geothermal. There are lots of ways to generate so called "free" power. It is environmentally free in the most part, although hydroelectric does create damage to mother earth, at least if you were to ask a salmon about those dams.
I really am asking a question here. I will get to it now.
I have searched the internet for someone who says, I have one of these generators and it works great. I have also looked for someone saying they bought one, don't waste your money!
Where in the heck are all the people who spent their money, paid their dues and now have an opinion of whether these things work a little, a lot, or not at all. I know you are out there. I know you have bought or built it and I know you know how and if it works.
Most of the people on the internet, and I include myself here as well, have not tried it. I understand the naysayers, why should they buy or build something they feel will not work. Now how bought you folks that did spend the money or build one, does it work or are you all selling them now is that what happened?
Yup, I am another one of those folks that have low postings. I forgot I had an account until I tried to sign up for one and it said I already did. So, yes, look at me all you want. I do not remember what I posted before, but it was not about hydrogen I can tell you.
Thank you all,
motzy the REAL ONE
- misleading
- by motzythereal1 March 30, 2008 6:46 PM PDT
- It does not cost $1 in fosil fuel to make $1 in ethanol. The cost to produce a gallon is coming down everyday. It may have at one time cost about a buck to produce a bucks worth of ethanol, but that expense was in the purchase of corn, building the plant in which to produce it and other associated costs.
- Reply to this comment
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(21 Comments)In return, ethanol is a renueable resource that is environmentally friendly to our plannet. I live about 6 miles from an ethanol plant, I have nothing to do with it except that I am a neighbor to one. It is clean. The water that comes out of the plant is cleaner then my public drinking water supply. It does not let off a bunch of smoke, only a little steam and we need water in the air to grow corn for the ethanol crops.
If you know a better way, lets hear it. Right now, ethanol is one of the few things we have going for us, that and biodisel. If this hydrogen thing is going to work, somebody is going to have to fess up and tell us if they work.
I have heard all the arguments, but never seem to hear it from the people who actually bought one.
Using solor or wind power, I think it is possible. After all, Nasa is going to use water to make the fuel for the return home trip from Mars or Europa from the frozen water at the poles on Mars and all over europa.
Thank you,
Motzy