Ed Ring

An arcane but instructive way to evaluate corn ethanol, along with all biofuels, may not just be to audit their "net energy balance," but also their "net water balance."  Evaluating whether or not a biofuel crop could be "water positive" is even more subjective to calculate than whether or not that crop is energy positive, but here goes: Corn is one of the better temperate crops to use as a primary biofuel feedstock, since cellulosic extraction isn't here yet and sugar cane doesn't grow in Iowa.  Using corn as an example, a good ethanol yield is about 480 gallons per acre per year, which is based on 160 bushels per acre, and 3.0 gallons of ethanol per bushel.  How much water corn needs varies greatly, and the range we've arrived at for this analysis is between 300 and 900 cubic meters per ton.  Our source for 900 m3/ton is from a reference to UNESCO's "The Water Footprint of...

When looking at energy sources, fossil fuel is a good place to start - over 80% of the world's energy production is from fossil fuel, coal, oil and natural gas.  All in all, a conversion chart to normalize primary energy volume would have BTU's, which economists love, expressed in quadrillions, along with "million ton oil equivalents" or MTOEs, then billion cubic meter quantities of natural gas, followed by gigawatt-years of electric power, million ton quantities of coal, and anchored by million barrel quantities of oil. It's interesting to note that one quadrillion BTU's, or British Thermal Units (one BTU is the theoretical amount of energy necessary to heat one pound of water...

Following this brief commentary is a “letter for publication” entitled “CLEAN, SAFE SOURCES OF ELECTRICITY” received from www.mng.org.uk/gh/ and if you can find out what M, N, and G mean you are more observant than I. In this “letter for publication” we are provided a list of alternative energy technologies that may power the planet without combustion - photovoltaic and solar concentrator 35%, wave and tidal 31%, combined heat and power and reduced wastage 26%, and wind 26%. The perspicacious reader will note this is overkill, by 18%. This smorgasbord of alternative energy compares to our current worldwide energy production as follows: oil 34.3%, coal 25.1%, gas 20.9%, “combustible renewables” (mostly wood) 10.6%, nuclear 6.5%, and hydro-electric power 2.2%. None of the alternatives make this list, which totals 99% of all energy produced in the world.  And today, 80% of the...

Sacramento is the capital of California, a state that is world-renowned for its concern for the environment.  As such, the Sacramento region is attracting businesses and investors from around the world, eager to capitalize on Sacramento's enthusiastic embrace of green industry.  But sometimes green is brown. At the Port of Sacramento, a start-up company based in Long Beach has already gotten its first go-ahead from the governing board of the Port of Sacramento to build a biodiesel plant, that, according to the Sacramento Bee, "will make 60 million gallons a year of the alternative fuel."  Can you smell the rainforests burning? Situated on 14 acres of land in the middle of this deep water port, this refinery will receive cargos of biofuel feedstock from all over the world.  But let's put this into perspective - Californian's consume 700 million barrels of petroleum each...

At last there is a bit of a chorus developing to call attention to the biofueled destruction of tropical rainforests at a time when rainforest restoration might actually curb global warming better and faster than drastically curtailing use of fossil fuel.  The Global Canopy Programme (GCP), to quote their own website, is "a global alliance linking studies of forest canopies worldwide into a collaborative programme of research, education and conservation addressing biodiversity, climate change and poverty alleviation." Whatever the IPCC may say about CO2 as a first order anthropogenic climate forcing mechanism, the GCP may say that tropical deforestation is bigger first order forcing than CO2.  And if they do, we most emphatically agree.  We need to reforest the tropics right now.  Industry should burn clean, worry about their CO2 later. How we discovered the Global Canopy Programme was through...

If you ever drive up to Echo Summit in California's majestic Sierra Nevada range, or up any extended steep grade, for that matter, sooner or later you are going to see one of those hybrids limping along in the slow lane.  It is common knowledge that hybrids get better mileage in the city than on the freeway, and their poor performance on extended inclines is part of the same problem. With a standard hybrid, if the power requirements of the vehicle exceed what the gasoline engine can offer, the electric motors provide assistance.  When a standard hybrid goes up a hill, or into a headwind, or pulls a load, or drives at the speed limit, the electric motors are helping to turn the wheels, and the on-board batteries are draining.  Eventually, the batteries run out of charge, and the vehicle limps along until the duty cycle changes. This is why the "two-mode hybrid" is a...

We have just posted a feature story by Avilash Roul entitled "India's Solar Power" on our home page, where the reader will find an in-depth survey of the current state of solar power in India and the efforts of India's government to develop solar power.  In our introduction to that story, we point out the dauntingly small base from which non-hydro, non-nuclear, non-combustible renewables have to climb.  In the world in 2006, for example, according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel accounts for 80.3% of the world's energy production - oil (34.3%), coal (25.1%), and gas (20.9%).  Add to this "combustible renewables," mostly wood (10.6%), and you have 90.9% of the world's energy coming from combustion.  Add to that nuclear power (6.5%), and hydro-electric power (2.2%), and you have accounted for 99.5% of the world's energy.  Of the remaining one-half of one percent, 80% of that is, surprisingly, geothermal...

We have discovered the weblog "Climate Science" authored by Dr. Roger A. Pielke, someone whose positions on global warming and climate change very closely mirror our own.  Dr. Pielke, a climatologist currently with the University of Colorado at Ft. Collins, is organizing a conference this August in Boulder, Colorado, on "Land Cover / Land Use Change" and its impact on climate. Here are two recent posts from Dr. Pielke's weblog that we find illuminating: Another Unbalanced News Report on a research paper on predicted heat waves - May 14, 2007 After pointing out in detail the problems with the research paper, Pielke writes "These are remarkably serious shortcomings of the model study, yet the news media chose to headline the predictions from it as news without these caveats, and the authors did not correct the media’s misstatement of what their paper actually said (in fact they reinforced them!). Equally disturbing (or it should be to anyone who values scientific credibility) is...

Today the BBC ran a story entitled "UN Warns on Hazards of Biofuels" where they conclude "Current research concludes that using biomass for combined heat and power (CHP), rather than for transport fuels or other uses, is the best option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade - and also one of the cheapest."  The report also correctly points out that "demand for biofuels has accelerated the clearing of primary forest for palm plantations, particularly in southeast Asia." There's more:  The report notes water is a concern, stating "The expanding world population and the on-going switch towards consumption of meat and dairy produce as incomes rise are already putting pressure on freshwater supplies, which increased growing of biofuel crops could exacerbate." These problems with biofuels, which we have explored in-depth in several posts, including "Ethanol & Water," "Deforestation & Global Warming," and literally dozens of others...

Quietly making its way through California's legislature, passing committee review and headed for a floor vote, is a law that is going to make incandescent lights illegal.  Appalled by this draconian approach, and in-turn ridiculed by the radicals who support it, I have attempted to learn more about these lights that apparently I am going to be forced to use. First of all, let's price our alternatives:  On the website www.bulbs.com I found standard 100 watt incandescent light bulbs for the whopping price of $.49 each.  On the website www.homedepot.com, I found the 23 watt (equivalent in lumens to a 100 watt incandescent) bulbs for $7.99 each.  And on the website www.ecoleds.com, I found the 10 watt (equivalent in lumens to a 100 watt incandescent) bulbs, on sale, for $99.00 each. The first thing these price differentials calls to mind is the hideous arrogance of our legislators and the special interests who support...