October 11, 2007
New research by a University of California petroleum engineering professor suggests that worldwide crude oil supplies will start to run so low over the next nine years that resource-blessed countries like Saudi Arabia will begin to hoard them for domestic use instead of exporting -- and places with large reservoirs of natural gas will seek ways to avoid sharing with less-advantaged neighbors.
The process of sowing, fertilizing, reaping, distributing and refining corn and grasses for ethanol feedstock uses up nearly as much carbon energy as fuel farmers claim to save, and it generates so much soil degradation and toxic byproducts that widespread use will leave the Earth denuded and hostile to human life within decades, according to the professor's data.
How inefficient is the ethanol solution? When you break the "agrofuels" system down scientifically, you can see that 99.9% of the energy in sunlight is lost in the process, with the greatest waste coming in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer from natural gas, and in the refinery. That is, for every unit of energy that is put into creating agriculture-based fuel, almost three-quarters of it is dissipated before it actually does any work. The greatest amount of energy lost is not in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer, as many believe, but in the refinery.
Of course, an even bigger problem is that the 6.6 billion people on Earth need all the food they can get, so every acre taken out of wheat, rice and soybean production to feed our 1 billion cars is an acre that won't feed starving kids. As Patzek notes pungently in his paper, after a lot of math to prove the point, "Our planet has zero excess biomass at her disposal."
One better solution is solar energy created at the municipal level by massive photovoltaic cell facilities, at the street level by home-based grids and at the transportation level at lots where electric vehicles' batteries can be charged. Photovoltaic cells lose only about 80% of the sun's energy to dissipation, making them at least 100 times more efficient than ethanol after the fuel cost of growing and refining the biomass feedstock is accounted for.
For transportation, most energy experts agree that compressed natural gas, or CNG, is an ideal long-term choice. It is not only much more plentiful in North America than oil -- negating the need to depend on unstable regimes in Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia -- but also many times more efficient. CNG only loses 5% of its power in the transportation and refinement process, and has two other benefits: Its emissions are much less toxic than gasoline or diesel, and when a CNG tank is hit in a crash it is much less likely to explode than a gasoline tank.
To learn more about Patzek, visit his Cal Berkeley Web site and read his paper "How Can We Outlive Our Way Of Life?"
Read More: http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca:80/investing/stocks/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5562292.