Alternative Energy

[A's Fever]

Also it's kinda obvious that the ethanol fuel boone is a dead end technology since it's already robbing corn from cattle feed crops and will soon start robbing human feed and will substantially raise corn and other food prices.

Good for corn farmers I guess.
(Carnut)

I culled the above post from Carnut from another thread to start a discussion here.

I ran across an article - a column actually - from the 2/12/07 issue of Forbes that says, in part: "What about the economics? Drivers put up with alcohol only because it seems to be competitive in price (after the benefit of a federal subsidy) with gasoline.  But this volume-for-volume comparison is an illusion.  A gallon of ethanol has only two-thirds as much chemical energy as a gallon of gas.  You have to burn 1.5 gallons of ethanol to go as far as the gasoline will take you."

The column also states that "David Pimentel of Cornell and Tad Patzek of UC Berkeley calculate that producing a gallon of corn ethanol consumes 29% more fossil fuel energy than the ethanol displace.  The federal government has a study with the opposite conclusion:  The ethanol costs, in fossil fuel terms, 26% less than it is worth."

Perhaps there is hope for other types of ethanol.  Yahoo ran this article today:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070414/ap_on_sc/food_vs__fuel
Looks like there is a lot of venture capital money betting on biofuels.

My ex brother-in-law is on faculty of a major Midwestern university and his group received funding to genetically modify poplar trees so they can be used as a biofuel crop.

Any thoughts on viability of biofuel generation?

[Carnut]

Actually all forms of 'alternate' energy for automobiles are more costly and inefficient.

Even electrical cars generate more carbon or use more energy in use than traditional gasoline. It takes more carbon/fossil fuel energy to produce the electicity for charging a car than the actual gasoline use it replaces.

All that electicity does is move the actual carbon emissions from the car tailpipe location to a more centralized electical generation site.

Using anything other than solar/nuclear energy to generate electricity is a still a fossil fuel/carbon generating process that is less efficient than petrol fuel use.

Any of the biofuel energy production methods is also a net loss or more expensive method of avoiding the use of petrol fuel. Bio fuel is essentially using vegetation to convert solar energy to create a carbon producing fuel which is just a petrol avoidance method.

Hydrogen fuel use is also a loser because it uses more energy to produce the hydrogen than the energy produced by the hydrogen as a car fuel to replace petrol.

If there was a more efficient/cost effective method of replacing petro fuel it would been done a long time ago for profit.

Seems there are certain laws of physics that are just hard to get around.

Other than solar or nuclear all forms of energy on the planet earth produce carbon. Each living creature on the planet uses energy to exist and thus generates carbon. As long as the population of energy producing creatures increases the volume of carbon produced will increase.