Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
In past posts I have suggested that coal derived synfuels would likely play a major part in our transportation future. A couple of recent interviews with a couple of executives at Dakota Gasification, Inc. have caused me to reconsider.
Dakota Gasification operates one of the few commercial coal gasification facilities in the United States, perhaps the only one. And that gives them unique experience and insights.
Before I relate what was told to me, a little background is in order. Coal gasification has gotten a considerable degree of attention of late. The coal industry sees it as a technology to advocate if not to adopt because it has the potential to make “clean coal” a reality rather than just a slogan. Certain energy pundits like coal gasification because proven processes exist for converting coal derived syngas into various liquid fuels including diesel fuel, kerosene, gasoline, methanol, ethanol, and DME, and because coal resources are fairly immense. Parties dependent upon natural gas as a feedstock for chemical manufacturing, such as the ammonia and methanol industries, are very interested as well. And obviously folks making gasifiers and other conversion equipment are pretty bullish on the technology. And, just as obviously, the fact that U.S. coal reserves are so immense argues strongly for coal gasification as way to reduce or eliminate dependence upon foreign oil. The further fact that cheap, low grade lignite coal works splendidly in gasifiers is a bonus.
So why, I have repeatedly wondered, isn’t it happening? Why is there only one small commercial plant operating in the U.S. and few anywhere else? Now I think I know.
First a brief explanation of what gasification is in terms of the basic chemistry. A number of coal gasification technologies are extant today but the usual process, called partial oxidation, involves heating pulverized coal in the presence of oxygen or air to the point where the coal forms a gas but prior to combustion. The resulting gas, which is known as synthesis gas or syngas, contains hydrogen, carbon monoxide, a little carbon dioxide, and various contaminants whose presence will depend upon the composition of the individual coal feedstock.
Syngas may be used as an intermediate feedstock to make all sorts of chemicals including methane, methanol, ethanol, and analogs of petroleum fuels. Syngas can also be used directly as a fuel in turbines for generating electricity. Incidentally, syngas can also be produced from biomass, but that’s another story and the economics for that are questionable today.
Syngas happens to be the same stuff used in gaslights back in the Victorian era and a bit beyond. At one time it was used for cooking, heating, and even for fueling early internal combustion engines. Now it’s poised to make a comeback.
Or so it would seem.
Anyway, I asked the folks at Dakota if they had any plans to produce any kind of liquid fuel, either alcohol or petroleum-like synfuels, from coal derived syngas. No, was the answer. How about anyone else in North America? The answer there was more ambiguous.
As is well known today, Sasol in South Africa has been profitably operating coal-to- liquids plants for decades, although most of the liquid fuels used South Africa are still petroleum products. And Dakota management, as it turns out, are in almost constant communication with Sasol. They don’t think the Sasol model is necessarily very relevant in the U.S., however, because the Sasol experiment was initially government subsidized. Dakota officials believe that the private sector simply won’t assume the risk of building coal to liquids plants in the U.S. because the probable capital investment will be in the billions of dollars per plant installation for commercial scale production facilities capable of competing with conventional refineries on the basis of cost.
The other question, of course, is could such a plant operate profitably today if investment were forthcoming, and could a multitude of such plants reduce are reliance on foreign oil?
Given the importance of this question, one might assume that there have been many rigorous studies on the subject, but that turns out not to be the case. I have found only two studies, one performed by Princeton University, and the other by Mitretek, a heavyweight scientific and engineering research corporation that does a lot of work for the Defense Department.
Both studies are based almost entirely upon models and projections. Apart from the Sasol plants, there just aren’t enough gasification facilities in operation to provide the basis for an empirical study.
So what are the findings? When we’re somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 a barrel for crude—and that’s basement rather than the ceiling price—gasification starts to look good.
So gasification, here we go. Or do we? I keep thinking back on the remarks made by the Dakota guys. Princeton and Mitretek didn’t study their plant, but they’re in business and they’re making money. The thing is that they own their own coal mine, but they don’t think they can sell liquid fuels profitably, only methane produced from coal plus a few syngas derivatives which essentially are petrochemicals.
The other thing that makes me nervous is the whole idea of models. Frankly, I don’t trust them. A few years ago I saw innumerable models and projections for the hydrogen transition coming out of various think tanks and industry groups and government agencies and it was all smoke and wishful thinking. And of course we’re seeing the same thing in other areas of alternative fuels—oil shale, cellulosic ethanol, and coal bed methane. If one is to believe the proponents of any of the above, $30 per barrel is achievable now and our energy problems are on the verge being solved.
Projections made by proponents of any given fuel feedstock or processing technology must be assumed to be wildly optimistic until proven otherwise. My guess is that few if any of the alternative liquid fuels prove out until oil nears $100 per barrel. Which is probably coming, but when?
And when it does, one faces the further question of what alternative fuel is the most favorably placed, and, remember, cheaper always trumps cleaner. If shale oil comes to $30 a barrel, which I’m not saying it necessarily will, and everything else is a lot more, then what happens to everything else?
Of course any petroleum-like synfuel, and that’s really what shale oil is, will simply be dumped into the world petroleum market, and unless the oil shale fields suddenly come into full bore production that cheaply produced substitute won’t make much difference. Oil shale producers will sell at the world price and make more profit than the conventional oil guy, but the price of gasoline won’t come down by very much if at all. Only an alternative fuel which is truly alternative, i.e. is not part of the current petroleum distribution network can undersell oil, and course the petroleum producers would attempt to protect their markets in any way they could and keep that alternative from becoming mainstream.
If oil prices can be maintained at extremely elevated levels, synfuels from oil shale, unconventional natural gas, and from coal could probably all survive in the market, with the different producers experiencing varying profit margins according to the cost effectiveness of their feedstocks and their manufacturing processes. But investors will tend to gravitate toward the alternative fuel with the highest profit margin. If that proves to be oil shale, oil shale will get most of the money. If it’s synfuel from coal, then coal gets the outside investment.
At any rate, I am extremely doubtful that any of the alternative fuel manufacturers including the ethanol guys will ever be able to flood the market with cheap product and bring the per BTU prices crashing down. The oil manufacturers could do that in the old days because they could modulate the production of the oil fields very quickly. You can’t do that with a synfuel plant or an ethanol plant, at least not very easily. They usually operate at near peak capacity and they’re not pulling the feedstock out of the ground with a pump.
We may be able to gain a measure of energy security through crash alt fuels programs, but we need to stop telling ourselves that cheap fuel is coming back. Maybe someday decades from now that will happen, but it’s almost inconceivable with current technology or any conceivable enhancements thereof. From now on every drop of refined fuel is precious.
* * *
We note with regret the untimely passing of Steve Irwin, whom we think was the most effective voice the environmental movement ever had. Combining irrepressible enthusiasm, an endearing stage presence, endless amusing antics, and almost ironically, an encyclopedic knowledge of zoology, he did much to communicate his passions to the world at large and to educate millions on the wonder and fragility of our natural realm.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
ELECTORAL FRAUD -2006
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
Electoral Fraud - 2006
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of blogs is that one is free to say whatever one wishes—to rhapsodize if one has the talent or inspiration for it or to make a complete and utter ass of oneself. Obviously, the latter outcome is far, far more prevalent, but no matter. There’s no ferment without unappetizing byproducts.
That said, I am departing from the editorial “we” and doing something I generally abhor, making an overtly political statement in a journal devoted primarily to science and technology.
One may glean from scattered comments over months of postings that I am less than enamored with the current Administration, a disposition which currently puts me in a two thirds majority, so nothing remarkable there. I am, I should mention, a registered Democrat of rather conservative economic views. I like free markets and I distrust managed economies. Incidentally, I see no such devotion to a rigorous market based approach to economic problems in the Bush administration. And I see no fiscal responsibility whatsoever.
So to the point.
An election is in the offing which is of great moment to the future of the United States. Practically all major polls show the Republican party losing Congress if voter distaste for the party remains at current levels. This opposition poses a pervasive hazard to the leadership of the Republican Right on many levels and extending far beyond the simple loss of seats.
The Bush Administration has been aggrandizing power with signing statements indicative of a fundamental rejection of system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution, and also by the institutionalized repudiation of due process in the form of the PATRIOT act. Obviously, a multitude of actions on the part of this Administration are of highly questionable legality, and a Democratic majority would be sure to act to check the Administration sharply.
If this were to occur, it would likely lead to a Constitutional crisis. George Bush, to all indications, is a remarkably stubborn, obdurate, and imperious individual, one who would respond to legal obstacles with actions of yet more questionable legality. And with many of his supporters facing investigations by Congressional committees should the Democrats take the House, the Republican Party would probably close ranks behind him. Some sort of muted coup is not out of the question.
I do not envision a banana republic storming of the Capitol. The military would be likely to abstain from such a course, though they might be ultimately summoned to “restore order” should mass opposition materialize. Rather, increasingly arbitrary actions would be undertaken by the Administration, and dissenters might be harassed, threatened, or even arrested. Indeed, threats have already been made against the New York Times already. They could be carried out. Similar threats have been made good elsewhere in scores of other countries.
I do not believe, however, that any sizable contingent on the Right wants a coup. A coup, however limited, would be a sally into uncharted territory and the consequences of a failure could be terrible. They could be literally fatal.
A more likely course has been suggested by reporters in the employ of Salon and Rolling Stone in recently published articles—a massive campaign of electoral fraud that could deliver a Republican miracle in November. Simultaneously, the Administration could initiate a military action that could be used to justify a crackdown on dissent, and the two course of action are highly synergistic in fact.
Rolling Stone is what it is, but regardless of its air of frivolity, it makes a practice of hiring highly skilled, aggressive journalists. Salon is centrist, nonconfrontational, and much more concerned with picking up life style and cultural trends than in attacking the Administration. That Salon would front page accusations of this nature is, to say the least, disquieting.
Alas, Salon’s accusations are not unfounded. There is little question that Republican operatives were guilty of grave electoral misconduct in the past, particularly in Florida and Ohio. Salon identifies six states where similar abuses are likely to occur in the next election. Whether such irregularities tipped either election to Bush, I’m not prepared to say, but I continue to harbor suspicions, and those suspicions have grown. I believe that voting fraud, a full bore smear campaign utilizing to the fullest the media outlets sympathetic to the Administration, and an October Surprise of some sort or other may very well be adequate to ensure the permanent majority envisioned by the disgraced Tom DeLay.
In the event of such an outcome, expect major media networks to insist fraud is nonexistent or else perpetrated by the Democratic Party. Those who object will be dismissed as “tinfoil hat types” or accused of treasonous disloyalty in a time of war. The violence of the rhetoric will exceed anything seen previously.
The United States in the aftermath of such an event would not suddenly transform itself into some semblance of the Third Reich. A better model would be the flawed quasi-democracy of Mexico where accusations of pervasive electoral fraud have been extant for decades.
Under such a system we could go on with our lives, pursue happiness, and continue to enjoy an elevated if endangered standard of living.
The problem with such an outcome is that it could not be hidden, however. If the Republicans enter the races ten points down and that shows up in the exit poles, and yet they still win by two or three or five points, the two thirds majority of Bush rejectionists will remain suspicious, and building a society on the permanent suppression of a majority is dangerous and probably ultimately untenable. Network anchors could insist that all is well or simply ignore objections altogether, but ultimately their own credibility is at stake. I am not suggesting that Web based journalists in any way constitute a counterpoise—their cavils will only reach their own dedicated readerships, but a deep and abiding cynicism will begin to overtake the American polity. And it will be exacerbated by the corruption that inevitably accompanies the ascent of unaccountable governments.
What to do?
If this dire outcome occurs, everyone who as an ounce respect for the venerable political tradition of this place must converge on Washington on the days after the election. You will have this chance once in your life and there is no excuse including the death of a loved one or your own job security not to attend. Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter can’t ignore accusations of fraud if three million visitors converge on Washington. And no, the Armed Forces won’t fire on peaceful demonstrators even if Bush gives the order.
Many of you who feel as I do are affluent professionals, and in some cases, extremely wealthy. Wear your two thousand dollar suit, show respect, and behave as ladies and gentlemen, and don’t allow the lying shills that increasingly populate the mainstream media to marginalize you.
I’ll be there if I have to hitchhike. You be there too. You must be. And spread the word, make this viral.
Goodbye and God bless.
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
Electoral Fraud - 2006
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of blogs is that one is free to say whatever one wishes—to rhapsodize if one has the talent or inspiration for it or to make a complete and utter ass of oneself. Obviously, the latter outcome is far, far more prevalent, but no matter. There’s no ferment without unappetizing byproducts.
That said, I am departing from the editorial “we” and doing something I generally abhor, making an overtly political statement in a journal devoted primarily to science and technology.
One may glean from scattered comments over months of postings that I am less than enamored with the current Administration, a disposition which currently puts me in a two thirds majority, so nothing remarkable there. I am, I should mention, a registered Democrat of rather conservative economic views. I like free markets and I distrust managed economies. Incidentally, I see no such devotion to a rigorous market based approach to economic problems in the Bush administration. And I see no fiscal responsibility whatsoever.
So to the point.
An election is in the offing which is of great moment to the future of the United States. Practically all major polls show the Republican party losing Congress if voter distaste for the party remains at current levels. This opposition poses a pervasive hazard to the leadership of the Republican Right on many levels and extending far beyond the simple loss of seats.
The Bush Administration has been aggrandizing power with signing statements indicative of a fundamental rejection of system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution, and also by the institutionalized repudiation of due process in the form of the PATRIOT act. Obviously, a multitude of actions on the part of this Administration are of highly questionable legality, and a Democratic majority would be sure to act to check the Administration sharply.
If this were to occur, it would likely lead to a Constitutional crisis. George Bush, to all indications, is a remarkably stubborn, obdurate, and imperious individual, one who would respond to legal obstacles with actions of yet more questionable legality. And with many of his supporters facing investigations by Congressional committees should the Democrats take the House, the Republican Party would probably close ranks behind him. Some sort of muted coup is not out of the question.
I do not envision a banana republic storming of the Capitol. The military would be likely to abstain from such a course, though they might be ultimately summoned to “restore order” should mass opposition materialize. Rather, increasingly arbitrary actions would be undertaken by the Administration, and dissenters might be harassed, threatened, or even arrested. Indeed, threats have already been made against the New York Times already. They could be carried out. Similar threats have been made good elsewhere in scores of other countries.
I do not believe, however, that any sizable contingent on the Right wants a coup. A coup, however limited, would be a sally into uncharted territory and the consequences of a failure could be terrible. They could be literally fatal.
A more likely course has been suggested by reporters in the employ of Salon and Rolling Stone in recently published articles—a massive campaign of electoral fraud that could deliver a Republican miracle in November. Simultaneously, the Administration could initiate a military action that could be used to justify a crackdown on dissent, and the two course of action are highly synergistic in fact.
Rolling Stone is what it is, but regardless of its air of frivolity, it makes a practice of hiring highly skilled, aggressive journalists. Salon is centrist, nonconfrontational, and much more concerned with picking up life style and cultural trends than in attacking the Administration. That Salon would front page accusations of this nature is, to say the least, disquieting.
Alas, Salon’s accusations are not unfounded. There is little question that Republican operatives were guilty of grave electoral misconduct in the past, particularly in Florida and Ohio. Salon identifies six states where similar abuses are likely to occur in the next election. Whether such irregularities tipped either election to Bush, I’m not prepared to say, but I continue to harbor suspicions, and those suspicions have grown. I believe that voting fraud, a full bore smear campaign utilizing to the fullest the media outlets sympathetic to the Administration, and an October Surprise of some sort or other may very well be adequate to ensure the permanent majority envisioned by the disgraced Tom DeLay.
In the event of such an outcome, expect major media networks to insist fraud is nonexistent or else perpetrated by the Democratic Party. Those who object will be dismissed as “tinfoil hat types” or accused of treasonous disloyalty in a time of war. The violence of the rhetoric will exceed anything seen previously.
The United States in the aftermath of such an event would not suddenly transform itself into some semblance of the Third Reich. A better model would be the flawed quasi-democracy of Mexico where accusations of pervasive electoral fraud have been extant for decades.
Under such a system we could go on with our lives, pursue happiness, and continue to enjoy an elevated if endangered standard of living.
The problem with such an outcome is that it could not be hidden, however. If the Republicans enter the races ten points down and that shows up in the exit poles, and yet they still win by two or three or five points, the two thirds majority of Bush rejectionists will remain suspicious, and building a society on the permanent suppression of a majority is dangerous and probably ultimately untenable. Network anchors could insist that all is well or simply ignore objections altogether, but ultimately their own credibility is at stake. I am not suggesting that Web based journalists in any way constitute a counterpoise—their cavils will only reach their own dedicated readerships, but a deep and abiding cynicism will begin to overtake the American polity. And it will be exacerbated by the corruption that inevitably accompanies the ascent of unaccountable governments.
What to do?
If this dire outcome occurs, everyone who as an ounce respect for the venerable political tradition of this place must converge on Washington on the days after the election. You will have this chance once in your life and there is no excuse including the death of a loved one or your own job security not to attend. Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter can’t ignore accusations of fraud if three million visitors converge on Washington. And no, the Armed Forces won’t fire on peaceful demonstrators even if Bush gives the order.
Many of you who feel as I do are affluent professionals, and in some cases, extremely wealthy. Wear your two thousand dollar suit, show respect, and behave as ladies and gentlemen, and don’t allow the lying shills that increasingly populate the mainstream media to marginalize you.
I’ll be there if I have to hitchhike. You be there too. You must be. And spread the word, make this viral.
Goodbye and God bless.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
ALTERNATIVE FUELS AND TECHNOLOGY LOCK-Ins
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
ALTERNATIVE FUELS AND TECHNOLOGY LOCK-Ins
BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PhD
We’ve been here before. Back in the nineties when concerns about global warming and dependence on foreign oil first began to assume some urgency, much of the energy and transportation industries as well as the U.S. government and various policy consortia representing European governments made a collective decision to support hydrogen as the fuel of the future and fuel cells as the energy conversion device of the future. Now, after the billions of dollars spent in research that has borne startlingly little fruit, hydrogen appears to be receding to be replaced—it would seem—by ethanol. The power brokers, economic and political have spoken.
It’s easy to see why ethanol would have a strong constituency, or, rather constituencies because the support for this product is diverse. Lots of people are already making lots of money off ethanol, and its use as a fuel additive is already well established. Furthermore, the logistics of a transition to an all ethanol or largely ethanol future seem far less problematic than is the case for hydrogen. Existing internal combustion engines can be easily modified to run off pure ethanol mixtures—there’s no requirement to substitute fuel injectors or redesign cylinder heads as is the case with hydrogen—and storage presents far fewer problems, though ethanol cannot be transported through oil pipes nor stored in tanks intended for gasoline or crude oil. And, of course, the technology for producing ethanol is well established, while at the same time subject to continuing improvements in efficiencies and cost effectiveness.
There are other arguments, as well, some fairly persuasive, at least at first hearing. Ethanol will revitalize the farm belt, the American heartland, as it were, will create new jobs and will stimulate the atrophying hard manufacturing sector of the American economy. Then there’s the carbon neutral argument which is just a bit disingenuous in respect to current production techniques but which always sounds encouraging.
So why not ethanol?
The economics of ethanol are indisputably better than those for hydrogen which had zero emissions going for it and absolutely nothing else. The hydrogen economy was like human life extension. It was an idea everyone could warm too, but which couldn’t be implemented with current technology, and very possibly, not with any technology that would exist in the next quarter century. Ethanol is much less of a stretch, and indeed was extensively used as a fuel at the beginning of the automotive age in the early twentieth century when the extent of oil resources was largely unknown and automobile manufacturers, in many cases, were unwilling to predicate their businesses on the uncertainties of future oil supplies.
So why not ethanol? What are the obstacles and problems that could derail this latest world energy initiative.
As in the case of hydrogen, we find the degree to which energy incumbents and other industrial constituencies as well as governments themselves are committing to ethanol disquieting. As with the hydrogen, the whole idea is to preserve the economic status quo as much as possible. Let the major automobiles switch to flex fuel. Let the largest chemical companies finance ethanol plants. And let the oil companies distribute the product. All very sane, orderly, and rational, and all very contrary to the way in which energy revolutions have proceeded in the past. Maybe there’s no way that entrepreneurship and sheer market forces can make a revolution anymore, but we’re not quite ready to believe that yet.
We don’t think that bureaucracies, whether corporate or governmental, manage revolutions very well. And a major reason that they don’t is that they pursue a course of trials, pilots, and “rational planning” that results in technology lock-ins, that is, commitments to failed technologies long after their failures have become apparent—witness the case of automotive fuel cells which now, it appears, are never going to happen.
One thing we’re seeing in the many government and academic reports we’ve been reading on alternative fuels is an insistence that manufacturing processes can’t scale downward, that ethanol or other alternative plants have to be immense to be profitable. We’re not convinced that this is true, even at present, and we’re absolutely convinced that designing for immense production volumes is absolutely the wrong way to launch an industry. Those with a real faith in alternative fuels need to start small, need to identify niches, and need to forget pilots and proof of concept. After all, most of the early aviators never wore parachutes.
Ethanol may in fact be the best choice available to supplement refined petroleum products, but we’re not absolutely convinced of that. The only way to manufacture ethanol that is cost competitive with petroleum at present is to use cane juice, and the restriction of cane to tropical regions means that that method can never meet the needs of the global transportation industry. Ethanol can also be made from grains, coal, natural gas, and from forestry and agricultural wastes—so called cellulosic ethanol—but the economics for these other methods are unproven except for the case of grain. Cellulosic ethanol has been mightily hyped, but it is debatable as to whether any of the technologies for producing it are fully mature. Many studies indicate that cellulosic ethanol carries much higher capital and operational expenses than grain ethanol although the feedstock of course is cheaper.
Liquid fuels that are chemically very close to petroleum based gasoline and diesel and are based on unconventional fossil fuel feedstocks and/or biomass can be manufactured by many different processes, including pyrolysis, gasification, plasma treatment, steam reforming, hydro-thermal upgrading, anaerobic digestion, and other completely proprietary techniques and some of these rivals may offer better economics than cellulosic ethanol. But the money is going to ethanol, and we may be facing a technology lock-in if the investment continues without a serious debate.
Thank God, the lock-in never occurred with hydrogen. It eventually became obvious that the economics were unfavorable, and the stream of investment began to dwindle. What was left was a bunch of pilot hydrogen fueling stations but no extensive infrastructure. But with ethanol the cost of production today is sufficiently lower that a heavy reliance may be established, followed by a crisis as the economics fail to prove out.
While we hesitate to suggest policy initiatives, we believe that whatever liquid fuel proves most feasible, the usage of liquid fuel, especially in transportation must decline precipitately. More reliance has to be placed on stored electricity in personal vehicles, and innovative forms of rapid transit have to be initiated on a fairly wide scale. Such measures would give the industrial world a fighting chance while truly sustainable energy technologies are perfected—and, incidentally, we don’t believe that simply building a million wind turbine constitutes any permanent fix for our energy needs.
That sane measures will be taken cannot be assumed, however. They generally haven’t been in the past when societies have faced resource crises. Rather the tendency is to pursue ultimately destructive practices for short term gain until the society collapses. Clive Ponting’s brilliant “A Green History of the World” is a comprehensive historical examination of resource depletion in every region of the world, and it suggests that go-for-broke rather than save-for-the-future is norm for our species. Anyway, we anticipate an interesting decade ahead in the liquid fuels business.
ALTERNATIVE FUELS AND TECHNOLOGY LOCK-Ins
BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PhD
We’ve been here before. Back in the nineties when concerns about global warming and dependence on foreign oil first began to assume some urgency, much of the energy and transportation industries as well as the U.S. government and various policy consortia representing European governments made a collective decision to support hydrogen as the fuel of the future and fuel cells as the energy conversion device of the future. Now, after the billions of dollars spent in research that has borne startlingly little fruit, hydrogen appears to be receding to be replaced—it would seem—by ethanol. The power brokers, economic and political have spoken.
It’s easy to see why ethanol would have a strong constituency, or, rather constituencies because the support for this product is diverse. Lots of people are already making lots of money off ethanol, and its use as a fuel additive is already well established. Furthermore, the logistics of a transition to an all ethanol or largely ethanol future seem far less problematic than is the case for hydrogen. Existing internal combustion engines can be easily modified to run off pure ethanol mixtures—there’s no requirement to substitute fuel injectors or redesign cylinder heads as is the case with hydrogen—and storage presents far fewer problems, though ethanol cannot be transported through oil pipes nor stored in tanks intended for gasoline or crude oil. And, of course, the technology for producing ethanol is well established, while at the same time subject to continuing improvements in efficiencies and cost effectiveness.
There are other arguments, as well, some fairly persuasive, at least at first hearing. Ethanol will revitalize the farm belt, the American heartland, as it were, will create new jobs and will stimulate the atrophying hard manufacturing sector of the American economy. Then there’s the carbon neutral argument which is just a bit disingenuous in respect to current production techniques but which always sounds encouraging.
So why not ethanol?
The economics of ethanol are indisputably better than those for hydrogen which had zero emissions going for it and absolutely nothing else. The hydrogen economy was like human life extension. It was an idea everyone could warm too, but which couldn’t be implemented with current technology, and very possibly, not with any technology that would exist in the next quarter century. Ethanol is much less of a stretch, and indeed was extensively used as a fuel at the beginning of the automotive age in the early twentieth century when the extent of oil resources was largely unknown and automobile manufacturers, in many cases, were unwilling to predicate their businesses on the uncertainties of future oil supplies.
So why not ethanol? What are the obstacles and problems that could derail this latest world energy initiative.
As in the case of hydrogen, we find the degree to which energy incumbents and other industrial constituencies as well as governments themselves are committing to ethanol disquieting. As with the hydrogen, the whole idea is to preserve the economic status quo as much as possible. Let the major automobiles switch to flex fuel. Let the largest chemical companies finance ethanol plants. And let the oil companies distribute the product. All very sane, orderly, and rational, and all very contrary to the way in which energy revolutions have proceeded in the past. Maybe there’s no way that entrepreneurship and sheer market forces can make a revolution anymore, but we’re not quite ready to believe that yet.
We don’t think that bureaucracies, whether corporate or governmental, manage revolutions very well. And a major reason that they don’t is that they pursue a course of trials, pilots, and “rational planning” that results in technology lock-ins, that is, commitments to failed technologies long after their failures have become apparent—witness the case of automotive fuel cells which now, it appears, are never going to happen.
One thing we’re seeing in the many government and academic reports we’ve been reading on alternative fuels is an insistence that manufacturing processes can’t scale downward, that ethanol or other alternative plants have to be immense to be profitable. We’re not convinced that this is true, even at present, and we’re absolutely convinced that designing for immense production volumes is absolutely the wrong way to launch an industry. Those with a real faith in alternative fuels need to start small, need to identify niches, and need to forget pilots and proof of concept. After all, most of the early aviators never wore parachutes.
Ethanol may in fact be the best choice available to supplement refined petroleum products, but we’re not absolutely convinced of that. The only way to manufacture ethanol that is cost competitive with petroleum at present is to use cane juice, and the restriction of cane to tropical regions means that that method can never meet the needs of the global transportation industry. Ethanol can also be made from grains, coal, natural gas, and from forestry and agricultural wastes—so called cellulosic ethanol—but the economics for these other methods are unproven except for the case of grain. Cellulosic ethanol has been mightily hyped, but it is debatable as to whether any of the technologies for producing it are fully mature. Many studies indicate that cellulosic ethanol carries much higher capital and operational expenses than grain ethanol although the feedstock of course is cheaper.
Liquid fuels that are chemically very close to petroleum based gasoline and diesel and are based on unconventional fossil fuel feedstocks and/or biomass can be manufactured by many different processes, including pyrolysis, gasification, plasma treatment, steam reforming, hydro-thermal upgrading, anaerobic digestion, and other completely proprietary techniques and some of these rivals may offer better economics than cellulosic ethanol. But the money is going to ethanol, and we may be facing a technology lock-in if the investment continues without a serious debate.
Thank God, the lock-in never occurred with hydrogen. It eventually became obvious that the economics were unfavorable, and the stream of investment began to dwindle. What was left was a bunch of pilot hydrogen fueling stations but no extensive infrastructure. But with ethanol the cost of production today is sufficiently lower that a heavy reliance may be established, followed by a crisis as the economics fail to prove out.
While we hesitate to suggest policy initiatives, we believe that whatever liquid fuel proves most feasible, the usage of liquid fuel, especially in transportation must decline precipitately. More reliance has to be placed on stored electricity in personal vehicles, and innovative forms of rapid transit have to be initiated on a fairly wide scale. Such measures would give the industrial world a fighting chance while truly sustainable energy technologies are perfected—and, incidentally, we don’t believe that simply building a million wind turbine constitutes any permanent fix for our energy needs.
That sane measures will be taken cannot be assumed, however. They generally haven’t been in the past when societies have faced resource crises. Rather the tendency is to pursue ultimately destructive practices for short term gain until the society collapses. Clive Ponting’s brilliant “A Green History of the World” is a comprehensive historical examination of resource depletion in every region of the world, and it suggests that go-for-broke rather than save-for-the-future is norm for our species. Anyway, we anticipate an interesting decade ahead in the liquid fuels business.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Hotter than HOT
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
CONTEMPLATING THE GRID
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
Living in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, one perforce endures inclement summers. For the past ten years they have been increasingly inclement—not quite reaching the Palm Springs or Phoenix level of inclemency but still mightily oppressive. On the 23rd of July the Valley registered 119 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature not experienced in this region since the 130 degree heat wave of the 1850s.
Predictably, the power grid could not meet the extraordinary demands for electrical current to drive air conditioners, and many power plants shut down, unable to maintain safe distribution voltage levels. In other cases, however, service interruptions were not deliberate but were the result of thermal failures in distribution power transformers. High current levels combined with elevated air temperatures and extraordinarily intense sunlight conduced to dangerous overheating of the transformers and a breakdown of the insulation layers. In many cases the transformer cases literally exploded.
This got us thinking about an innovation that was developed in Russia over a decade ago and has been subject to surprisingly few commercialization efforts, and here we’re talking about the ultraconductor.
Ultraconductors may be considered distant kin to superconductors. They were originally developed for use in experimental Russian tokamak fusion reactors where prodigious values of current are made to circulate in order to create the intense magnetic fields necessary to contain the plasma where the controlled fusion reactions take place. Cryogenic superconductors have generally been used to form the coils of the reactor to prevent uncontrollable heat buildups from ohmic losses, but the high costs of refrigeration and the energy losses involved in providing it have always constituted a major disadvantage.
In Russia as in other highly developed industrial nations, much effort has been expended to create a room temperature, or failing that, very high temperature superconductor, but to no avail. But the ultraconductor, almost unknown prior to 1990, proved an acceptable substitute.
Ultraconductors have extremely low but not zero resistance and they exhibit this property at normal temperatures. They do not exhibit the peculiar magnetic properties of true superconductors and on this basis may be deemed less useful, but by the mere fact of offering resistance levels orders of magnitude lower than silver they all but eliminate the thermal problems that plague all electrical elements including transformers, motors, transistors, and transmission cables.
Had ultraconductors been in use in our distribution transformers, they wouldn’t have failed. Had they been in use in the generators, they could have been driven harder without fear of overheating. Of course, commercial ultraconductors would exert far more transformational effects than simply improving grid reliability. They would also go a long way toward solving thermal problems in all kinds of electrical devices and would permit the construction of extremely compact high powered motors and generators. They would also improve the efficiency of the entire electrical system and result in huge energy savings that could at least partially offset the steep rises we have seen for natural gas.
In the past two companies have claimed to have developed ultraconductors with commercial potential, Ultraconductors, Inc. and WindFire Energy, the latter now defunct. Ultraconductors management claim that much additional financing is required to go forward. The company is involved in other ventures of a largely undisclosed nature which sound suspiciously similar to the so-called “over unity” schemes which are the province of all manner of cranks and mountebanks, and the presence of obscurantist technical discussions on the Ultraconductors Website, while perhaps necessary to protect intellectual property, cannot be making it easier to secure funding for a technology that is represented in the scientific literature of peer reviewed journals.
We would hope that other researchers would investigate ultraconductors because it doesn’t appear that room temperature superconductors are anywhere in the offing. Meanwhile, American Superconductor, an entirely legitimate manufacturer, is attempting to sell cryogenic superconducting transmission cables to public utilities, and finding few takers.
CONTEMPLATING THE GRID
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
Living in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, one perforce endures inclement summers. For the past ten years they have been increasingly inclement—not quite reaching the Palm Springs or Phoenix level of inclemency but still mightily oppressive. On the 23rd of July the Valley registered 119 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature not experienced in this region since the 130 degree heat wave of the 1850s.
Predictably, the power grid could not meet the extraordinary demands for electrical current to drive air conditioners, and many power plants shut down, unable to maintain safe distribution voltage levels. In other cases, however, service interruptions were not deliberate but were the result of thermal failures in distribution power transformers. High current levels combined with elevated air temperatures and extraordinarily intense sunlight conduced to dangerous overheating of the transformers and a breakdown of the insulation layers. In many cases the transformer cases literally exploded.
This got us thinking about an innovation that was developed in Russia over a decade ago and has been subject to surprisingly few commercialization efforts, and here we’re talking about the ultraconductor.
Ultraconductors may be considered distant kin to superconductors. They were originally developed for use in experimental Russian tokamak fusion reactors where prodigious values of current are made to circulate in order to create the intense magnetic fields necessary to contain the plasma where the controlled fusion reactions take place. Cryogenic superconductors have generally been used to form the coils of the reactor to prevent uncontrollable heat buildups from ohmic losses, but the high costs of refrigeration and the energy losses involved in providing it have always constituted a major disadvantage.
In Russia as in other highly developed industrial nations, much effort has been expended to create a room temperature, or failing that, very high temperature superconductor, but to no avail. But the ultraconductor, almost unknown prior to 1990, proved an acceptable substitute.
Ultraconductors have extremely low but not zero resistance and they exhibit this property at normal temperatures. They do not exhibit the peculiar magnetic properties of true superconductors and on this basis may be deemed less useful, but by the mere fact of offering resistance levels orders of magnitude lower than silver they all but eliminate the thermal problems that plague all electrical elements including transformers, motors, transistors, and transmission cables.
Had ultraconductors been in use in our distribution transformers, they wouldn’t have failed. Had they been in use in the generators, they could have been driven harder without fear of overheating. Of course, commercial ultraconductors would exert far more transformational effects than simply improving grid reliability. They would also go a long way toward solving thermal problems in all kinds of electrical devices and would permit the construction of extremely compact high powered motors and generators. They would also improve the efficiency of the entire electrical system and result in huge energy savings that could at least partially offset the steep rises we have seen for natural gas.
In the past two companies have claimed to have developed ultraconductors with commercial potential, Ultraconductors, Inc. and WindFire Energy, the latter now defunct. Ultraconductors management claim that much additional financing is required to go forward. The company is involved in other ventures of a largely undisclosed nature which sound suspiciously similar to the so-called “over unity” schemes which are the province of all manner of cranks and mountebanks, and the presence of obscurantist technical discussions on the Ultraconductors Website, while perhaps necessary to protect intellectual property, cannot be making it easier to secure funding for a technology that is represented in the scientific literature of peer reviewed journals.
We would hope that other researchers would investigate ultraconductors because it doesn’t appear that room temperature superconductors are anywhere in the offing. Meanwhile, American Superconductor, an entirely legitimate manufacturer, is attempting to sell cryogenic superconducting transmission cables to public utilities, and finding few takers.
Hotter than HOT
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C.Sweeney, PhD
CONTEMPLATING THE GRID
Living in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, one perforce endures inclement summers. For the past ten years they have been increasingly inclement—not quite reaching the Palm Springs or Phoenix level of inclemency but still mightily oppressive. On the 23rd of July the Valley registered 119 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature not experienced in this region since the 130 degree heat wave of the 1850s.
Predictably, the power grid could not meet the extraordinary demands for electrical current to drive air conditioners, and many power plants shut down, unable to maintain safe distribution voltage levels. In other cases, however, service interruptions were not deliberate but were the result of thermal failures in distribution power transformers. High current levels combined with elevated air temperatures and extraordinarily intense sunlight conduced to dangerous overheating of the transformers and a breakdown of the insulation layers. In many cases the transformer cases literally exploded.
This got us thinking about an innovation that was developed in Russia over a decade ago and has been subject to surprisingly few commercialization efforts, and here we’re talking about the ultraconductor.
Ultraconductors may be considered distant kin to superconductors. They were originally developed for use in experimental Russian tokamak fusion reactors where prodigious values of current are made to circulate in order to create the intense magnetic fields necessary to contain the plasma where the controlled fusion reactions take place. Cryogenic superconductors have generally been used to form the coils of the reactor to prevent uncontrollable heat buildups from ohmic losses, but the high costs of refrigeration and the energy losses involved in providing it have always constituted a major disadvantage.
In Russia as in other highly developed industrial nations, much effort has been expended to create a room temperature, or failing that, very high temperature superconductor, but to no avail. But the ultraconductor, almost unknown prior to 1990, proved an acceptable substitute.
Ultraconductors have extremely low but not zero resistance and they exhibit this property at normal temperatures. They do not exhibit the peculiar magnetic properties of true superconductors and on this basis may be deemed less useful, but by the mere fact of offering resistance levels orders of magnitude lower than silver they all but eliminate the thermal problems that plague all electrical elements including transformers, motors, transistors, and transmission cables.
Had ultraconductors been in use in our distribution transformers, they wouldn’t have failed. Had they been in use in the generators, they could have been driven harder without fear of overheating. Of course, commercial ultraconductors would exert far more transformational effects than simply improving grid reliability. They would also go a long way toward solving thermal problems in all kinds of electrical devices and would permit the construction of extremely compact high powered motors and generators. They would also improve the efficiency of the entire electrical system and result in huge energy savings that could at least partially offset the steep rises we have seen for natural gas.
In the past two companies have claimed to have developed ultraconductors with commercial potential, Ultraconductors, Inc. and WindFire Energy, the latter now defunct. Ultraconductors management claim that much additional financing is required to go forward. The company is involved in other ventures of a largely undisclosed nature which sound suspiciously similar to the so-called “over unity” schemes which are the province of all manner of cranks and mountebanks, and the presence of obscurantist technical discussions on the Ultraconductors Website, while perhaps necessary to protect intellectual property, cannot be making it easier to secure funding for a technology that is represented in the scientific literature of peer reviewed journals.
We would hope that other researchers would investigate ultraconductors because it doesn’t appear that room temperature superconductors are anywhere in the offing. Meanwhile, American Superconductor, an entirely legitimate manufacturer, is attempting to sell cryogenic superconducting transmission cables to public utilities, and finding few takers.
by Daniel C.Sweeney, PhD
CONTEMPLATING THE GRID
Living in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, one perforce endures inclement summers. For the past ten years they have been increasingly inclement—not quite reaching the Palm Springs or Phoenix level of inclemency but still mightily oppressive. On the 23rd of July the Valley registered 119 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature not experienced in this region since the 130 degree heat wave of the 1850s.
Predictably, the power grid could not meet the extraordinary demands for electrical current to drive air conditioners, and many power plants shut down, unable to maintain safe distribution voltage levels. In other cases, however, service interruptions were not deliberate but were the result of thermal failures in distribution power transformers. High current levels combined with elevated air temperatures and extraordinarily intense sunlight conduced to dangerous overheating of the transformers and a breakdown of the insulation layers. In many cases the transformer cases literally exploded.
This got us thinking about an innovation that was developed in Russia over a decade ago and has been subject to surprisingly few commercialization efforts, and here we’re talking about the ultraconductor.
Ultraconductors may be considered distant kin to superconductors. They were originally developed for use in experimental Russian tokamak fusion reactors where prodigious values of current are made to circulate in order to create the intense magnetic fields necessary to contain the plasma where the controlled fusion reactions take place. Cryogenic superconductors have generally been used to form the coils of the reactor to prevent uncontrollable heat buildups from ohmic losses, but the high costs of refrigeration and the energy losses involved in providing it have always constituted a major disadvantage.
In Russia as in other highly developed industrial nations, much effort has been expended to create a room temperature, or failing that, very high temperature superconductor, but to no avail. But the ultraconductor, almost unknown prior to 1990, proved an acceptable substitute.
Ultraconductors have extremely low but not zero resistance and they exhibit this property at normal temperatures. They do not exhibit the peculiar magnetic properties of true superconductors and on this basis may be deemed less useful, but by the mere fact of offering resistance levels orders of magnitude lower than silver they all but eliminate the thermal problems that plague all electrical elements including transformers, motors, transistors, and transmission cables.
Had ultraconductors been in use in our distribution transformers, they wouldn’t have failed. Had they been in use in the generators, they could have been driven harder without fear of overheating. Of course, commercial ultraconductors would exert far more transformational effects than simply improving grid reliability. They would also go a long way toward solving thermal problems in all kinds of electrical devices and would permit the construction of extremely compact high powered motors and generators. They would also improve the efficiency of the entire electrical system and result in huge energy savings that could at least partially offset the steep rises we have seen for natural gas.
In the past two companies have claimed to have developed ultraconductors with commercial potential, Ultraconductors, Inc. and WindFire Energy, the latter now defunct. Ultraconductors management claim that much additional financing is required to go forward. The company is involved in other ventures of a largely undisclosed nature which sound suspiciously similar to the so-called “over unity” schemes which are the province of all manner of cranks and mountebanks, and the presence of obscurantist technical discussions on the Ultraconductors Website, while perhaps necessary to protect intellectual property, cannot be making it easier to secure funding for a technology that is represented in the scientific literature of peer reviewed journals.
We would hope that other researchers would investigate ultraconductors because it doesn’t appear that room temperature superconductors are anywhere in the offing. Meanwhile, American Superconductor, an entirely legitimate manufacturer, is attempting to sell cryogenic superconducting transmission cables to public utilities, and finding few takers.
Monday, July 10, 2006
ALTERNATIVE FUELS
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
ALTERNATIVE FUELS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
ALT FUELS
Having completed our hydrogen study and thrust it upon a largely indifferent marketplace, we are now contemplating a study of so called alternative fuels, though we have not fully committed to the project as yet. Hydrogen apparently is so 2002, no longer fascinating to investors, hence the tepid reception given our report. Indeed, we heard a recent interview with Amory Lovins, hydrogen’s biggest proponent heretofore, and he was talking about cellulosic ethanol from switch grass, a palliative also endorsed by President Bush. There is apparently some sort of harmonic convergence going on here, if we can resurrect a term from the wonderful lost decade of the nineties when it was very heaven to be alive.
At any rate, alternative fuels are now the rage and shall remain so for some considerable span of time, just as food is the rage of a starving man—or at least until he finally starves to death. Of course one could argue that people could simply become reconciled to high petroleum prices and forget about alternatives, and indeed we are being enjoined to follow such a course by certain figures on the political right, but so long as petroleum prices continue to inch up such forgetfulness becomes extremely unlikely. One may become reconciled to a high price if that price remains stable, but if it is continually ascending then fresh irritants manifest themselves at every turn.
Alt Fuel and Objectivity
As with many other issues relating to energy and energy security, more heat than light is evident in most discussions we have read on the subject of alternative fuels. And this is because ideology colors all such discussions.
Here we cannot resist an illustrative anecdote.
We were attending graduate school when the first oil crisis occurred—this in the year of grace, 1973. That crisis was entirely political in its origin and arose from the conflict between Israel and several Arab states known as the Yom Kippur War. Oil production in the Middle East was cut back in an attempt to persuade the U.S. to slacken in its support for Israel, but fortunately Egypt and Israel, the principal combatants, were both desirous of peace and the crisis was quickly resolved. At the time, however, no one knew that a swift resolution was in the offing, and there was much speculation concerning future interruptions and ongoing shortages in petroleum.
We vividly recall a conversation on this subject with one of our fellow graduate students, an individual who was already enjoying great success in landing research grants and seemed destined for academic stardom.
Now this person might be said to have anticipated James Howard Kunstler, a widely quoted and self appointed energy pundit, in that he held to a species of neo-agrarian vision where in the face of an ongoing energy shortage the masses would return to working the land; although in contradistinction to Kunstler he foresaw the toiling masses being mired in a condition of serfdom, while a small aristocracy continued to enjoy the high consumption lifestyle of the twentieth century.
“People like you,” he said referring to myself and to similar low born oafs, “will remain on collectives performing backbreaking work in the fields while people like me jet over to Europe to study on Ford Foundation grants.” He smiled at the thought of this, himself exalted, myself abased. Upon hearing this, I obligingly tugged my forelock, broke wind as peasants are wont to do, and shuffled off to begin the hard scrabble existence that awaited me.
Of course not all neo-agrarians favor a return to feudalism as did my classmate. Some are utopian environmentalists or collectivists who believe that a sharp reduction in energy usage will conduce to social leveling, on the one hand, and sustainable use of natural resources on the other, though in fact most traditional societies have tended to overexploit the resources available to them. But, in any case, an implied socio-political ideology generally lies behind any position on energy. And this is because energy plays such a major role in determining the nature of any given society. High energy societies are wealthy societies—no exceptions. They can use that wealth to foster high standards of living, as have many Western democracies, or to support imperialist expansion as did Japan prior to 1945. Or they can do both by turns as did the U.S. in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But in all cases, energy is destiny.
Topics and Issues
We define alternative fuels as any combustibles apart from conventional fossil fuels. That’s a large universe of substances.
Within this large universe the fuels themselves may be categorized according to either the foodstocks from which they are derived or the chemical composition of the derivatives.
Now this makes for considerable confusion, because one can derive fuels of similar chemical compositions from widely varying feedstocks. One can, for example, derive methanol, ethanol, diesel, and gasoline from coal. One can also process agricultural wastes to produce biodiesel, ethanol, diesel, and gasoline. And in turn one also produce a wide array of finished fuel products from natural gas, landfill gas, paper pulp waste products, recycled plastics, meat byproducts, manure, algae—the list is almost endless. Furthermore, there are a multitude of chemical reactions as well as processing equipment which one can utilize to produce fuels for motive power and heating for each individual type of feedstock. In short, there is no single successor technology for supplementing or replacing conventional fossil fuels.
What we find interesting, and we shall return to this topic in future postings, is that, as in the case of hydrogen, both the investment community and government agencies have already made choices which may not make economic sense. Biodiesel and ethanol, the favored alternative fuels at present, may not represent the best options for containing fuel costs, reducing greenhouse gases, or reducing dependence upon imported oil. And yet this is where the funding both public and private sector is going.
Of course missteps in respect to energy policy have been made before. Nuclear energy has proven far less cost competitive than originally envisioned, and is thought by many to represent a serious misallocation of resources, though one could argue that as various fossil fuel resources are depleted the nuclear option becomes more attractive. Still, no one can maintain today that fission reactors are the panacea that they were seen as being fifty years ago.
But if nuclear power was a misstep, it was a misstep that has not been productive of the most dire consequences to date, however intense the opposition to the technology in some quarters. True, there remain knotty issues of waste disposal, but few seriously believe that economic crisis impends due to the now diminished activities of the nuclear industry.
But in the case of combustible fuels for transportation and stationary power a misstep culminating in an uneconomical product would mean that the citizenry at large would be thrust back into an utter dependency on increasingly costly traditional fossil fuels, at least until a new technology for alternative fuel could be funded and perfected. Which seems to us altogether more serious.
Naturallly, we are assuming that steadily rising fuel costs would not be without economic consequences, but we must report that there is contingent of conservative economists prepared to argue otherwise. Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel laureate, recently wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek in which he opined that rapid continuing increases in industrial productivity in the U.S. were far outstripping increases in oil and natural gas prices and would assure us of a bright future irrespective of future oil crises. So take that, Mr. James Howard Kunstler. We don’t have to worry about going back to the land when those rivers of oil dwindle to rivulets. Industry will be so productive that we will all be as rich as Croesus and well able to afford $20 a gallon for low test, and the hell with the rest of the world which lacks Yankee ingenuity and won’t be able to increase productivity as quickly if at all. Thus I won’t have to perform backbreaking labor on a hard scrabble farm while the fortunate few study in Florence.
At least I hope not.
ALTERNATIVE FUELS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
ALT FUELS
Having completed our hydrogen study and thrust it upon a largely indifferent marketplace, we are now contemplating a study of so called alternative fuels, though we have not fully committed to the project as yet. Hydrogen apparently is so 2002, no longer fascinating to investors, hence the tepid reception given our report. Indeed, we heard a recent interview with Amory Lovins, hydrogen’s biggest proponent heretofore, and he was talking about cellulosic ethanol from switch grass, a palliative also endorsed by President Bush. There is apparently some sort of harmonic convergence going on here, if we can resurrect a term from the wonderful lost decade of the nineties when it was very heaven to be alive.
At any rate, alternative fuels are now the rage and shall remain so for some considerable span of time, just as food is the rage of a starving man—or at least until he finally starves to death. Of course one could argue that people could simply become reconciled to high petroleum prices and forget about alternatives, and indeed we are being enjoined to follow such a course by certain figures on the political right, but so long as petroleum prices continue to inch up such forgetfulness becomes extremely unlikely. One may become reconciled to a high price if that price remains stable, but if it is continually ascending then fresh irritants manifest themselves at every turn.
Alt Fuel and Objectivity
As with many other issues relating to energy and energy security, more heat than light is evident in most discussions we have read on the subject of alternative fuels. And this is because ideology colors all such discussions.
Here we cannot resist an illustrative anecdote.
We were attending graduate school when the first oil crisis occurred—this in the year of grace, 1973. That crisis was entirely political in its origin and arose from the conflict between Israel and several Arab states known as the Yom Kippur War. Oil production in the Middle East was cut back in an attempt to persuade the U.S. to slacken in its support for Israel, but fortunately Egypt and Israel, the principal combatants, were both desirous of peace and the crisis was quickly resolved. At the time, however, no one knew that a swift resolution was in the offing, and there was much speculation concerning future interruptions and ongoing shortages in petroleum.
We vividly recall a conversation on this subject with one of our fellow graduate students, an individual who was already enjoying great success in landing research grants and seemed destined for academic stardom.
Now this person might be said to have anticipated James Howard Kunstler, a widely quoted and self appointed energy pundit, in that he held to a species of neo-agrarian vision where in the face of an ongoing energy shortage the masses would return to working the land; although in contradistinction to Kunstler he foresaw the toiling masses being mired in a condition of serfdom, while a small aristocracy continued to enjoy the high consumption lifestyle of the twentieth century.
“People like you,” he said referring to myself and to similar low born oafs, “will remain on collectives performing backbreaking work in the fields while people like me jet over to Europe to study on Ford Foundation grants.” He smiled at the thought of this, himself exalted, myself abased. Upon hearing this, I obligingly tugged my forelock, broke wind as peasants are wont to do, and shuffled off to begin the hard scrabble existence that awaited me.
Of course not all neo-agrarians favor a return to feudalism as did my classmate. Some are utopian environmentalists or collectivists who believe that a sharp reduction in energy usage will conduce to social leveling, on the one hand, and sustainable use of natural resources on the other, though in fact most traditional societies have tended to overexploit the resources available to them. But, in any case, an implied socio-political ideology generally lies behind any position on energy. And this is because energy plays such a major role in determining the nature of any given society. High energy societies are wealthy societies—no exceptions. They can use that wealth to foster high standards of living, as have many Western democracies, or to support imperialist expansion as did Japan prior to 1945. Or they can do both by turns as did the U.S. in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But in all cases, energy is destiny.
Topics and Issues
We define alternative fuels as any combustibles apart from conventional fossil fuels. That’s a large universe of substances.
Within this large universe the fuels themselves may be categorized according to either the foodstocks from which they are derived or the chemical composition of the derivatives.
Now this makes for considerable confusion, because one can derive fuels of similar chemical compositions from widely varying feedstocks. One can, for example, derive methanol, ethanol, diesel, and gasoline from coal. One can also process agricultural wastes to produce biodiesel, ethanol, diesel, and gasoline. And in turn one also produce a wide array of finished fuel products from natural gas, landfill gas, paper pulp waste products, recycled plastics, meat byproducts, manure, algae—the list is almost endless. Furthermore, there are a multitude of chemical reactions as well as processing equipment which one can utilize to produce fuels for motive power and heating for each individual type of feedstock. In short, there is no single successor technology for supplementing or replacing conventional fossil fuels.
What we find interesting, and we shall return to this topic in future postings, is that, as in the case of hydrogen, both the investment community and government agencies have already made choices which may not make economic sense. Biodiesel and ethanol, the favored alternative fuels at present, may not represent the best options for containing fuel costs, reducing greenhouse gases, or reducing dependence upon imported oil. And yet this is where the funding both public and private sector is going.
Of course missteps in respect to energy policy have been made before. Nuclear energy has proven far less cost competitive than originally envisioned, and is thought by many to represent a serious misallocation of resources, though one could argue that as various fossil fuel resources are depleted the nuclear option becomes more attractive. Still, no one can maintain today that fission reactors are the panacea that they were seen as being fifty years ago.
But if nuclear power was a misstep, it was a misstep that has not been productive of the most dire consequences to date, however intense the opposition to the technology in some quarters. True, there remain knotty issues of waste disposal, but few seriously believe that economic crisis impends due to the now diminished activities of the nuclear industry.
But in the case of combustible fuels for transportation and stationary power a misstep culminating in an uneconomical product would mean that the citizenry at large would be thrust back into an utter dependency on increasingly costly traditional fossil fuels, at least until a new technology for alternative fuel could be funded and perfected. Which seems to us altogether more serious.
Naturallly, we are assuming that steadily rising fuel costs would not be without economic consequences, but we must report that there is contingent of conservative economists prepared to argue otherwise. Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel laureate, recently wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek in which he opined that rapid continuing increases in industrial productivity in the U.S. were far outstripping increases in oil and natural gas prices and would assure us of a bright future irrespective of future oil crises. So take that, Mr. James Howard Kunstler. We don’t have to worry about going back to the land when those rivers of oil dwindle to rivulets. Industry will be so productive that we will all be as rich as Croesus and well able to afford $20 a gallon for low test, and the hell with the rest of the world which lacks Yankee ingenuity and won’t be able to increase productivity as quickly if at all. Thus I won’t have to perform backbreaking labor on a hard scrabble farm while the fortunate few study in Florence.
At least I hope not.
Monday, June 19, 2006
WAR OF THE WORLD VIEWS
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
In the past we worked for a highly controversial journal covering an area that, to the uninitiated, would seem to be devoid of controversy, namely consumer stereophonic high fidelity systems. The name of the book was The Absolute Sound and its editor was one Harry Pearson.
Mr. Pearson, like many great editors, and he was a great editor, combined considerable literary gifts with a bilious nature and tendency toward vituperative outbursts. He once told us that he valued writers for their ability to provoke controversy, genuine controversy, rather than personal attacks. It took us years to understand what he was saying, but when we did it struck us with the force of revolution.
So what has this to do with energy?
The last post discussed at no great length a concept in transportation known as PRT or personal rapid transit. We received more responses, some from obviously agitated individuals, than from any other posting we have made over the past year. Clearly, we were doing something right according to the Pearson canon.
We mentioned PRT because it seldom figures in discussions of the future of transportation in the light of declining fossil fuel reserves and because we believe that the concept remains a matter of some interest. We also mentioned that we believe that actual systems are a long way off. Our rather cautious approach to the subject did not prevent a string of passionate replies and a few quite insightful questions.
Here perhaps some background is in order, and I’ll drop the editorial we for a moment. My father was involved in PRT back in the early seventies to the extent that he was charged with studying the phenomenon by the Los Angeles Department of Public Works of which he was an official. During that period interest in the notion was at its height as was federal funding. Richard Nixon for a time was backer and then cooled on the notion, but of course he had other fish to fry. The PRT craze, if you could call it that, was nothing remotely comparable to that surrounding fuel cell powered automobiles a quarter of a century later, and it was far less publicized, but it certainly engaged the attention of transportation authorities such as my father.
I’ll never forget our discussions on the subject. This, we were both convinced, was the future of transportation.
Obviously, it hasn’t been. The technology was just as premature in the seventies as fuel cells appear to be today, and a series of publicly financed boondoggles involving PRT soured public policy types on the whole idea. And, rather curiously, PRT aroused the determined opposition of two groups who normally don’t agree about anything. Those groups consisted of advocates of traditional public transportation systems, primarily light rails, and opponents of the same who tended to lump PRT with light rail to the utter consternation of the PRT camp.
Light rail advocates including many manufacturers of such systems feared that PRT boded no good for them. If it succeeded it would tend to displace many light rail systems, and if it failed it would harden public opposition to mass transit of any sort.
Public transportation opponents had different motivations, some of them covertly ideological. Many believed and continue to believe that public transportation represents a form of creeping socialism, an unwarranted expansion of government that might ultimately result in restrictions in regard to private automobiles.
Here it might be well to remember that a hundred years ago electric trolleys were the dominant form of mechanized urban transportation in the U.S. and that almost all systems were privately owned. Furthermore, they tended to be the province of gung ho entrepreneurs who were, often as not, real estate agents on the side. The streetcar lines encouraged the growth of suburbs, and the streetcar owners took advantage of the fact to organize building projects in the new suburbs. Trolleys were the hot technology of 1905. Who’d have thunk it?
A few further thoughts on the subject of PRTs.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed a multitude of individuals in the PRT business, which in truth is not much of business today. All of the executives with whom I spoke were without exception deeply knowledgeable transportation wonks who had spent years conceptualizing networks and creating predictive models for traffic flow in such networks. They weren’t nut jobs, they weren’t naïve idealists, and many had taught civil engineering on the university level. Having long reported on telecom where extravagant claims were the norm, I was amazed at how cautious these individuals were and how little inclined they were to oversell their own products. Where they were for the most part deficient I think, was in their perceptions of the political hurdles confronting them. People tend not to get out of the PRT field once they’re in it, it’s kind of like organized crime in that regard. It becomes a sort of obsession, and obsessions tend to confound clear thinking regarding external factors.
One reader asked if PRTs might be combined with more conventional automotive transport. Indeed, yes. These are known as dual mode systems and they have their own separate and distinct advocacy groups. In my opinion, the logistical difficulties involved in implementing such systems are far greater than is the case with simple PRTs—they’re approximately twice as complex—but I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. Incidentally, several major auto makers have studied such systems extensively.
Our Troubles Are Over
Many who chance to read this blog also browse the various peak oil blogs of which there are several. Peak oil is a hot potato I am seldom inclined to grasp between my thumb and my forefinger, though I suppose I believe that a peak is not only inevitable but likely to arrive sooner than one might wish.
Anyway, rather recently I was speaking with a business acquaintance who was eloquent in his assertions that no departure from the status quo in oil consumption was necessary or desirable, and who advanced some supporting evidence which I’m sure will gratify almost everyone who views the prospect of $5 a gallon low test with some trepidation.
This individual, who will go unnamed since he does not welcome online communications from strangers, advanced the following argument:
Since the world was created approximately six thousand years ago, if we read the scriptures aright, all this talk about petroleum deposits requiring millions of years to form must be obvious nonsense. Instead oil must form almost instantaneously in geological terms, and fresh deposits must be abuilding even as we speak. This same individual who has close connections to the leadership of what has come to be known as the religious right, maintains that this argument will be advanced very forcibly in the months and years to come in order to persuade the electorate that elevated oil prices are a momentary annoyance and that redoubled exploration efforts will save the day. In other words, oil is renewable resource. How remarkable if it were. This argument, by the way, is somewhat distinct from the largely discredited abiotic oil theory which has it that vast new deposits lurk somewhere near the mantle of the earth. Most abioticists are not creationists and do not subscribe to the theory of a young earth.
At any rate, this individual quite evidently accepted the validity of this argument, and indicated that the view is widely held among our corporate as well as our religious leadership. Is this in fact true? I mean to say, are both in fact true? Is crude oil rapidly replenishing itself and does everyone in positions of responsibility think so?
Damned if I know. Maybe someone can enlighten me here.
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
In the past we worked for a highly controversial journal covering an area that, to the uninitiated, would seem to be devoid of controversy, namely consumer stereophonic high fidelity systems. The name of the book was The Absolute Sound and its editor was one Harry Pearson.
Mr. Pearson, like many great editors, and he was a great editor, combined considerable literary gifts with a bilious nature and tendency toward vituperative outbursts. He once told us that he valued writers for their ability to provoke controversy, genuine controversy, rather than personal attacks. It took us years to understand what he was saying, but when we did it struck us with the force of revolution.
So what has this to do with energy?
The last post discussed at no great length a concept in transportation known as PRT or personal rapid transit. We received more responses, some from obviously agitated individuals, than from any other posting we have made over the past year. Clearly, we were doing something right according to the Pearson canon.
We mentioned PRT because it seldom figures in discussions of the future of transportation in the light of declining fossil fuel reserves and because we believe that the concept remains a matter of some interest. We also mentioned that we believe that actual systems are a long way off. Our rather cautious approach to the subject did not prevent a string of passionate replies and a few quite insightful questions.
Here perhaps some background is in order, and I’ll drop the editorial we for a moment. My father was involved in PRT back in the early seventies to the extent that he was charged with studying the phenomenon by the Los Angeles Department of Public Works of which he was an official. During that period interest in the notion was at its height as was federal funding. Richard Nixon for a time was backer and then cooled on the notion, but of course he had other fish to fry. The PRT craze, if you could call it that, was nothing remotely comparable to that surrounding fuel cell powered automobiles a quarter of a century later, and it was far less publicized, but it certainly engaged the attention of transportation authorities such as my father.
I’ll never forget our discussions on the subject. This, we were both convinced, was the future of transportation.
Obviously, it hasn’t been. The technology was just as premature in the seventies as fuel cells appear to be today, and a series of publicly financed boondoggles involving PRT soured public policy types on the whole idea. And, rather curiously, PRT aroused the determined opposition of two groups who normally don’t agree about anything. Those groups consisted of advocates of traditional public transportation systems, primarily light rails, and opponents of the same who tended to lump PRT with light rail to the utter consternation of the PRT camp.
Light rail advocates including many manufacturers of such systems feared that PRT boded no good for them. If it succeeded it would tend to displace many light rail systems, and if it failed it would harden public opposition to mass transit of any sort.
Public transportation opponents had different motivations, some of them covertly ideological. Many believed and continue to believe that public transportation represents a form of creeping socialism, an unwarranted expansion of government that might ultimately result in restrictions in regard to private automobiles.
Here it might be well to remember that a hundred years ago electric trolleys were the dominant form of mechanized urban transportation in the U.S. and that almost all systems were privately owned. Furthermore, they tended to be the province of gung ho entrepreneurs who were, often as not, real estate agents on the side. The streetcar lines encouraged the growth of suburbs, and the streetcar owners took advantage of the fact to organize building projects in the new suburbs. Trolleys were the hot technology of 1905. Who’d have thunk it?
A few further thoughts on the subject of PRTs.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed a multitude of individuals in the PRT business, which in truth is not much of business today. All of the executives with whom I spoke were without exception deeply knowledgeable transportation wonks who had spent years conceptualizing networks and creating predictive models for traffic flow in such networks. They weren’t nut jobs, they weren’t naïve idealists, and many had taught civil engineering on the university level. Having long reported on telecom where extravagant claims were the norm, I was amazed at how cautious these individuals were and how little inclined they were to oversell their own products. Where they were for the most part deficient I think, was in their perceptions of the political hurdles confronting them. People tend not to get out of the PRT field once they’re in it, it’s kind of like organized crime in that regard. It becomes a sort of obsession, and obsessions tend to confound clear thinking regarding external factors.
One reader asked if PRTs might be combined with more conventional automotive transport. Indeed, yes. These are known as dual mode systems and they have their own separate and distinct advocacy groups. In my opinion, the logistical difficulties involved in implementing such systems are far greater than is the case with simple PRTs—they’re approximately twice as complex—but I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. Incidentally, several major auto makers have studied such systems extensively.
Our Troubles Are Over
Many who chance to read this blog also browse the various peak oil blogs of which there are several. Peak oil is a hot potato I am seldom inclined to grasp between my thumb and my forefinger, though I suppose I believe that a peak is not only inevitable but likely to arrive sooner than one might wish.
Anyway, rather recently I was speaking with a business acquaintance who was eloquent in his assertions that no departure from the status quo in oil consumption was necessary or desirable, and who advanced some supporting evidence which I’m sure will gratify almost everyone who views the prospect of $5 a gallon low test with some trepidation.
This individual, who will go unnamed since he does not welcome online communications from strangers, advanced the following argument:
Since the world was created approximately six thousand years ago, if we read the scriptures aright, all this talk about petroleum deposits requiring millions of years to form must be obvious nonsense. Instead oil must form almost instantaneously in geological terms, and fresh deposits must be abuilding even as we speak. This same individual who has close connections to the leadership of what has come to be known as the religious right, maintains that this argument will be advanced very forcibly in the months and years to come in order to persuade the electorate that elevated oil prices are a momentary annoyance and that redoubled exploration efforts will save the day. In other words, oil is renewable resource. How remarkable if it were. This argument, by the way, is somewhat distinct from the largely discredited abiotic oil theory which has it that vast new deposits lurk somewhere near the mantle of the earth. Most abioticists are not creationists and do not subscribe to the theory of a young earth.
At any rate, this individual quite evidently accepted the validity of this argument, and indicated that the view is widely held among our corporate as well as our religious leadership. Is this in fact true? I mean to say, are both in fact true? Is crude oil rapidly replenishing itself and does everyone in positions of responsibility think so?
Damned if I know. Maybe someone can enlighten me here.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
INDUSTRIAL POLICY PT 2
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
BY Daniel Sweeney, Ph.D
INDUSTRIAL POLICY II or WE STICK OUR NECK OUT
Last post we expatiated on what we feel is wrong with the usual calls to arms in respecting to changing our energy regime--bully the auto makers into increasing mileage, fund a lot of fuel cell research in the National Labs, undertake a lot of pilots involving zero emissions vehicles and government fleets, and so on. Such well meaning initiatives haven't worked in the past and there's little reason to believe they'll work in the future. One instigates major changes by building new markets notchivyingying incumbent oligopolists. Does anyone seriously believe, for example, that the Bell Empire would have launched the Internet or even mobile phone service for that matter? Building new markets simply wasn't in their DNA, as they say.
So what's needed here in the way of an industrial policy that might have some chance of succeeding?
Let's try some thought exercises.
Suppose government on some level, preferably local, bought a transportation system that could really exert major competitive pressures on the existing regime and compel them to change to meet changing market conditions and not because of top down regulation.
So what might this entail?
Ever since the nineteen sixties a number of transportation mavens, some in academia, some in the automobile industry, and some in private companies have talked about what is known as personal rapid transit. Personal rapid transit is a form of public transportation but it is the very antitheses of bus lines, light rail, traditional railroads, and all of the slow, crowded, noisy, and expensive mass transit systems most of us have grown to hate.
Personal rapid transit is only possible with the latest technology. What it consists of is cars that carry one or at most a few persons, in other words, a single party, and take that party directly to the designated destination via instructions punched at a terminal or possibly through voice commands. The car is summoned by the rider at a terminal and appears in no more than three minutes and then proceeds directly to the destination at speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour and perhaps in excess of 100mph. There are no stops, no remembering schedules or where to get off, no set routes, and there is no congestion because the entire system is computer controlled and access of vehicles is metered to maintain proper spacing. Cars onload and offload on sidetracks to avoid delays and are monitored at all times to prevent vandalism or attacks on occupants. Offenders within the cars are immediately transported to the nearest police stations. Rush hour delays are eliminated, and riders can go anywhere within a large metropolitan area within minutes. Furthermore, because the individual cars are extremely light compared to so-called light rails, project costs are fraction of those of existing systems.
Personal rapid transit is radically different from any existing metropolitan public transit system. The vehicles are faster by far than any competing system and provide the rider with complete privacy.
So where do they operate, and when is one coming here?
While many companies have developed prototype PRT vehicles, no one has succeeded in selling a system yet. No city has been willing to commit to a system because no system has proven itself. Simply put, itÂ’s much easier for urban transit authorities to vote for conventional light rail systems even if no one rides them and they lose money. No one ever gets penalized for upholding the status quo.
Regardless of the lack of working examples, we are absolutely convinced that PRTs could work with existing technology. They couldnÂ’t have worked in the late sixties when they were conceived because the cost of the required computing power was prohibitive and because computer modeling of complex systems was in its infancy. But today we see no fundamentally intractable engineering problems.
A PRT would have vastly greater energy efficiency than today's automotive transport and would almost certainly reduce automobile usage in urban areas once the systems were built out. And mandates for clean electrical sources in powering such systems could take a big, big bite out of particulate emissions and carbon dioxide emissions.
True, there are many skeptics concerning PRTs, and any Web search on the subject will reveal truly venomous opposition full of the usual Web incivility to the effect that anyone who disagrees with the writer is both a sack of shit and an idiot (what motivates such vicious personal attacks in what is after all a technical discussion?). But we have yet to see any arguments that convince us that such a system would be impossible to build with existing technology or presents engineering problems of the magnitude of say a suborbital airliner. Financing such a system would assuredly be difficult, but the existing automotive transportation is simply not going to function better in the future. Streets will grow more and more congested, the air will grow more and more polluted, and gasoline will grow dearer and dearer. Somewhere someone will build such a system and make it work. And when that happens the opposition will have no where to go but back to its own online discussion groups.
So do an end run around the auto makers. Build one system and make it work in one big city and soon everyone will want one. The auto makers could try to lobby them out of existence, but I doubt they could pull it off, especially if gas prices keep going up. No one but the most committed right wing ideologue would willingly endure hours in transit to and from the job site while paying twenty dollars per day for gasoline when he could climb into an automated jitney and get to his destination in minutes for a couple of bucks. Even Americans aren't that crazy.
Second Thought Exercise
A lot of people believe that the mid term future of the private automobile is the so-called plug-in hybrid where advanced batteries do a lot of the work and an internal combustion engine functions as balance of plant as it were. Several companies are already in the business of performing aftermarket modifications on Toyota Priuses to permit plug-in recharging and one major automotive parts manufacturer has formed a partnership with AFS Trinity, a California battery and flywheel manufacturer, to launch a vehicle.
We think that such cars are almost inevitable if gas prices stay elevated, and they probably represent a correct response on the part of the public in terms of promoting the long term economic health of the nation. They will, however, be resisted by American auto makers who bet the farm on SUVs and bet wrong and now need to improvise some kind of survival strategy for themselves.
So how to speed the adoption process along? How about temporary government sponsorship of free or almost free DC charging stations. DC charging, battery to battery, only requires a few minutes as opposed to hours for AC recharging, and so the purchaser of the plug-in hybrid is doubly encouraged. One needn't really publicize such charging stations people will find out, and the energy oligopolists will be caught flat footed. Maybe they will get them closed down by crying foul, although one could argue that no foul is being committed when the U.S. auto makers are perfectly free to make their own plug ins. But even if they succeed, the plug-ins themselves would not go away and would have received the initial impetus to grow in the marketplace.
Of course, the other attractive feature of plug-ins, is that they don't require public infrastructure. One can charge the vehicle at home with off-peak hour electricity which is a far more energy efficient process than running off gasoline even when fossil fuel is used to generate the electricity.
Just ThinkingÂ….
So what's the chance of either thought exercise being realized? We think PRTs are a very long shot, and that plug-ins won't happen quickly but are fairly likely in the long term. We also doubt that anything approaching an effective new industrial policy for transportation will be implemented. It's easier to make political hay with hot button social issues and it requires a lot less hard analytical work.
BY Daniel Sweeney, Ph.D
INDUSTRIAL POLICY II or WE STICK OUR NECK OUT
Last post we expatiated on what we feel is wrong with the usual calls to arms in respecting to changing our energy regime--bully the auto makers into increasing mileage, fund a lot of fuel cell research in the National Labs, undertake a lot of pilots involving zero emissions vehicles and government fleets, and so on. Such well meaning initiatives haven't worked in the past and there's little reason to believe they'll work in the future. One instigates major changes by building new markets notchivyingying incumbent oligopolists. Does anyone seriously believe, for example, that the Bell Empire would have launched the Internet or even mobile phone service for that matter? Building new markets simply wasn't in their DNA, as they say.
So what's needed here in the way of an industrial policy that might have some chance of succeeding?
Let's try some thought exercises.
Suppose government on some level, preferably local, bought a transportation system that could really exert major competitive pressures on the existing regime and compel them to change to meet changing market conditions and not because of top down regulation.
So what might this entail?
Ever since the nineteen sixties a number of transportation mavens, some in academia, some in the automobile industry, and some in private companies have talked about what is known as personal rapid transit. Personal rapid transit is a form of public transportation but it is the very antitheses of bus lines, light rail, traditional railroads, and all of the slow, crowded, noisy, and expensive mass transit systems most of us have grown to hate.
Personal rapid transit is only possible with the latest technology. What it consists of is cars that carry one or at most a few persons, in other words, a single party, and take that party directly to the designated destination via instructions punched at a terminal or possibly through voice commands. The car is summoned by the rider at a terminal and appears in no more than three minutes and then proceeds directly to the destination at speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour and perhaps in excess of 100mph. There are no stops, no remembering schedules or where to get off, no set routes, and there is no congestion because the entire system is computer controlled and access of vehicles is metered to maintain proper spacing. Cars onload and offload on sidetracks to avoid delays and are monitored at all times to prevent vandalism or attacks on occupants. Offenders within the cars are immediately transported to the nearest police stations. Rush hour delays are eliminated, and riders can go anywhere within a large metropolitan area within minutes. Furthermore, because the individual cars are extremely light compared to so-called light rails, project costs are fraction of those of existing systems.
Personal rapid transit is radically different from any existing metropolitan public transit system. The vehicles are faster by far than any competing system and provide the rider with complete privacy.
So where do they operate, and when is one coming here?
While many companies have developed prototype PRT vehicles, no one has succeeded in selling a system yet. No city has been willing to commit to a system because no system has proven itself. Simply put, itÂ’s much easier for urban transit authorities to vote for conventional light rail systems even if no one rides them and they lose money. No one ever gets penalized for upholding the status quo.
Regardless of the lack of working examples, we are absolutely convinced that PRTs could work with existing technology. They couldnÂ’t have worked in the late sixties when they were conceived because the cost of the required computing power was prohibitive and because computer modeling of complex systems was in its infancy. But today we see no fundamentally intractable engineering problems.
A PRT would have vastly greater energy efficiency than today's automotive transport and would almost certainly reduce automobile usage in urban areas once the systems were built out. And mandates for clean electrical sources in powering such systems could take a big, big bite out of particulate emissions and carbon dioxide emissions.
True, there are many skeptics concerning PRTs, and any Web search on the subject will reveal truly venomous opposition full of the usual Web incivility to the effect that anyone who disagrees with the writer is both a sack of shit and an idiot (what motivates such vicious personal attacks in what is after all a technical discussion?). But we have yet to see any arguments that convince us that such a system would be impossible to build with existing technology or presents engineering problems of the magnitude of say a suborbital airliner. Financing such a system would assuredly be difficult, but the existing automotive transportation is simply not going to function better in the future. Streets will grow more and more congested, the air will grow more and more polluted, and gasoline will grow dearer and dearer. Somewhere someone will build such a system and make it work. And when that happens the opposition will have no where to go but back to its own online discussion groups.
So do an end run around the auto makers. Build one system and make it work in one big city and soon everyone will want one. The auto makers could try to lobby them out of existence, but I doubt they could pull it off, especially if gas prices keep going up. No one but the most committed right wing ideologue would willingly endure hours in transit to and from the job site while paying twenty dollars per day for gasoline when he could climb into an automated jitney and get to his destination in minutes for a couple of bucks. Even Americans aren't that crazy.
Second Thought Exercise
A lot of people believe that the mid term future of the private automobile is the so-called plug-in hybrid where advanced batteries do a lot of the work and an internal combustion engine functions as balance of plant as it were. Several companies are already in the business of performing aftermarket modifications on Toyota Priuses to permit plug-in recharging and one major automotive parts manufacturer has formed a partnership with AFS Trinity, a California battery and flywheel manufacturer, to launch a vehicle.
We think that such cars are almost inevitable if gas prices stay elevated, and they probably represent a correct response on the part of the public in terms of promoting the long term economic health of the nation. They will, however, be resisted by American auto makers who bet the farm on SUVs and bet wrong and now need to improvise some kind of survival strategy for themselves.
So how to speed the adoption process along? How about temporary government sponsorship of free or almost free DC charging stations. DC charging, battery to battery, only requires a few minutes as opposed to hours for AC recharging, and so the purchaser of the plug-in hybrid is doubly encouraged. One needn't really publicize such charging stations people will find out, and the energy oligopolists will be caught flat footed. Maybe they will get them closed down by crying foul, although one could argue that no foul is being committed when the U.S. auto makers are perfectly free to make their own plug ins. But even if they succeed, the plug-ins themselves would not go away and would have received the initial impetus to grow in the marketplace.
Of course, the other attractive feature of plug-ins, is that they don't require public infrastructure. One can charge the vehicle at home with off-peak hour electricity which is a far more energy efficient process than running off gasoline even when fossil fuel is used to generate the electricity.
Just ThinkingÂ….
So what's the chance of either thought exercise being realized? We think PRTs are a very long shot, and that plug-ins won't happen quickly but are fairly likely in the long term. We also doubt that anything approaching an effective new industrial policy for transportation will be implemented. It's easier to make political hay with hot button social issues and it requires a lot less hard analytical work.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Industrial Policy
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
ENERGY TRANSITIONS AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY
BY DAN SWEENEY, PhD
Way back when at the end of the nineteen eighties when the first George Bush was mounting his successful campaign for President, the big thing with the so-called New Democrats of that period was industrial policy. You remember, Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart, Donna Rice…well, maybe not Donna Rice, but the other two…. These were guys who were gonna revitalize the party, and industrial policy was a part of their platform.
So what was it? One could assume that it could be almost anything having to do with guiding the industrial sector, but in the minds of the New Democrats it was actually something fairly specific. It was emulating the Japanese, specifically the Japanese organization known as MITI that imposed overarching directives on the Japanese manufacturing sector, pushing it to enter into certain new industries or to emphasize certain of those that had already been penetrated. MITI, so the thinking went at the time, had enabled the Japanese to target certain industries where the U.S. had formerly been dominant such as automobiles, consumer electronics, and steel production, and subsequently to mount powerful challenges that would either displace the American incumbents or rob them of significant market share.
The idea was that we had to learn from the Japanese, and that Big Government which Democrats were supposed to love so dearly was going to shift from dispersing welfare and cracking down on safety violations and become an active partner with business in boosting industrial capacity in key areas.
Industrial policy caught a lot of Republicans flat footed. Japanese firms were the models in American business schools at the time and undeniably they were kicking ass in the markets they had chosen to enter. But most conservatives simply didn’t cotton to the idea of the government “picking winners”, to reprise the argot of the time. They were frankly confused, and they decided that the whole thing was best ignored.
Well, anyway, it turned out that industrial policy didn’t get much exposure in the ensuing campaign when Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic nomination after the erstwhile leader Gary Hart got a lap dance from Donna Rice on the deck of the good ship Monkey Business. (Ms. Rice has enjoyed a subsequent career as spokesperson for the religious right whom one suspects might have actually hired her to perform that long ago lap dance.) Hart was the real industrial policy booster in the party just as Jack Kemp was associated with flat tax on the other side of the aisle, and, with Hart out of action, industrial policy was effectively off the table. Dukakis didn’t so much as mention it, in fact he didn’t say much of anything that was memorable and spent most of the time attempting to remove the slime with which Lee Atwater was pelting him. He lost, and George H.W. Bush, who had no interest in industrial policy whatsoever, went on to attempt to sell the American public on “the thousand points of light” which sounds like something terribly Zen and never seems to have been clearly defined by anyone.
Wild Bill Clinton who succeeded Bush Pere was supposedly ideologically similar to Tsongas, Hart, and certainly to Donna Rice, but we don’t recall him saying squat about industrial policy, and Al Gore was mum as well. It was one of those notions like community based policing that briefly make for animated conversation at wonk taverns but don’t hold anyone’s attention for more than a few months.
So why bring it up now?
Because we need to start thinking about it again in the context of energy.
Here’s the problem. At some point the world has to transition to sustainable energy sources. Unfortunately, we can’t expect energy markets to function the way they did when previous energy sources came to the fore, and the industrial policies of the past aren’t likely to work to support such a transition.
So we had industrial policies in the past? How could that be when the Japanese came up with idea only a few decades ago?
It turns out that the Japanese did not invent industrial policy, though what they did with it was unique. Japanese industrial policy was and is tied to developing export markets for Japanese good and adding capacity to the Japanese industrial sector to support those markets. American industrial policy, and we always had one, was much more concerned with domestic markets and with effecting fundamental changes in American life through core technological transformations.
American government-sanctioned industrial policy favored the construction of the railroads and the dissemination of motorized transport. Federally insured bonds financed the great railroad expansion following the Civil War, and Federal land grants to the Western railroads of one mile of land on each side of the tracks was a sheer giveaway.
We find further industrial policy in regard to energy emerging in the twentieth century, this time involving both the Federal and local government and massive industrial and financial combinations. Three examples come readily to mind.
When the electrical utilities were building out at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, many were financed by the banking trust headed by the House of Morgan which controlled, directly or indirectly, most of the investment capital in the country—private industrial policy, as it were. Furthermore, local governments began to grant monopoly status to electrical utilities in return for token rate regulation on the grounds that they were “natural monopolies”.
The automobile industry and the oil industry that powered it grew as a direct result of government subsidies. Government built almost all the roads over which automobiles traveled and granted oil producers depletion allowances that relieved them, for the most part, from the burden of paying taxes like the rest of us. It all culminated in the Interstate Highway System of the nineteen fifties when the Feds began taxing gasoline and using the revenues to build superhighways.
So now it’s fifty years on, and we’ve got an energy crisis on our hands which, rest assured, is going to get worse. What can the government do apart from drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Preserve or invading Iran? What is the place of industrial policy at this particular juncture?
The usual palliatives being mentioned in the press, don’t, unfortunately, represent very fresh thinking.
A lot of people are all for saddling the auto manufacturers with stringent regulations in order to compel them to boost fuel efficiency. Further funding of hydrogen fuel cell research at the National Laboratories is also being advocated, said research, presumably, being shared with the auto makers who will pass on the benefits to the public.
Tax breaks for renewable energy also get a lot of support as do further subsidies for the coal industry. Finally, higher gasoline taxes have their supporters, including, most surprisingly, Grover Norquist, the right wing gray eminence who never met a tax he didn’t detest.
So let’s cast a critical eye on all of this conventional wisdom and try to determine if it’s wise at all, that is, if represents appropriate industrial policy.
Cajoling the auto industry into become creative with a lot of burdensome regulations strikes us as fairly absurd—kind of like Singapore dictator Lee Kew’s efforts to coerce his cowed subjects into becoming innovators. As one inventor of our acquaintance told us, the kind of young, rebellious engineers that actually innovate don’t tend to take jobs at General Motors, and, absent such individuals, the organization’s ability to innovate simply isn’t that great. Sure what’s left of the U.S. auto industry can eke out a few more miles per gallon out of existing designs, but they’re not inclined to do anything radical. What they’re more likely to do is lobby Congress to back off, something they’re very, very good at.
We don’t see the official efforts of the National Labs stimulating any revolutions either. We think they do great work, but unlike, say Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, which wrought revolutions in communications, computing, home entertainment, and business machines, the Labs aren’t really oriented toward product development.
The problem here as we see it is a refusal to grapple with the implications of a major technological transformation. Everyone expects that somehow we’re going to change over to this clean, green economy where everything works pretty much like it does now except there’s no smoke and no anxiety attacks at pump. All we’ve got to do is just get over our “addiction” to foreign oil.
This whole discussion we’re having about energy today is so wanting in intellectual clarity and rigor that it is hard to know where to begin in dispelling some of the misconceptions, but we have to try simply because the exercise is so vitally important.
First, we need to stop talking about oil addiction. The implication here is that some kind of sinful self indulgence got us where we are and a little self discipline can set things right. Oil and the mass affluence of late twentieth century America were closely conjoined. The whole of our industrial civilization was built upon it. Absent cheap oil America would not have enjoyed its age of affluence and plentiful material comforts. Only the few would have experienced abundance. What everyone is calling addition was more in the nature of nourishment.
We need to continue to use petroleum because our world is literally built of petrochemicals. What we do need to do is stop burning petroleum. It’s way too valuable to burn. In fact petroleum is the most useful substance in the world. It’s God’s gift and to burn it for energy is a sacrilege.
So just substitute biodiesel or ethanol and set up a bunch of subsidies to speed that along? It’s not so easy unfortunately.
When one goes about substituting for materials or artifacts that serve as the foundation of an entire technological edifice that edifice is apt to change fundamentally or to come tumbling down to be replaced by something else. We know this from past technological transformations.
The only reason we started using fossil fuel in the first place was because we began to run out of wood. England in the thirteenth century was already cutting down most of its forests and firewood was becoming constrained while coal was still readily obtainable from surface outcroppings. Nobody really liked coal—it smelled bad, gave off choking smoke, and cast soot over everything—but what were you going to do, freeze to death?
Coat turned out to be not a very direct substitute for wood as a fuel. It polluted like hell but at the same time it burned much more fiercely. When steam engines came into use in the eighteenth century coal’s hot flame was greatly appreciated. It facilitated the mechanization of industry in a way that wood never could have.
No one could have built a large scale industrial civilization with wood fuel. It took coal. Coal changed everything. And going from petroleum to renewable fuels is likely to change everything as well. But not in the same ways.
What we need to do here in setting a halfway intelligent industrial policy is consider the fact that renewable fuels will not be straight substitutes for petroleum and will not permit the continuation of our current mode of existence. We need to plan way beyond reducing dependence on foreign oil and looking for substitutes because there are no real substitutes. A world with less oil will be a very different world, one that is apt to be very hostile toward our existing transportation and electrical industries.
Industrial policies based on the notion of propping up existing industries and jawboning them into changing are not going to work, at least not in our society. Owners of coal fired electrical generation facilities are not going eliminate carbon emissions, they’re going to back Republican administrations that favor “voluntary emission curbs”. Automobile manufacturers are not going to scrap their production facilities and build hydrogen fuel cell cars. There is no such thing as a smoothly orchestrated technological revolution where the incumbents are in fact revolutionaries. Or as one management consultant put it, “bottlenecks are always at the top of the bottle, they always involve existing top management.”
So what does the government do, do nothing? Trot out some red herring issue like building electrified fences across from Tiajuana, or prayer in the schools, or gay marriage?
Or, to put it another way, what would we say to some well intentioned politician, if such exists, who asked us how to craft policies that will really make a difference?
That, gentle reader, is the subject of the next post.
ENERGY TRANSITIONS AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY
BY DAN SWEENEY, PhD
Way back when at the end of the nineteen eighties when the first George Bush was mounting his successful campaign for President, the big thing with the so-called New Democrats of that period was industrial policy. You remember, Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart, Donna Rice…well, maybe not Donna Rice, but the other two…. These were guys who were gonna revitalize the party, and industrial policy was a part of their platform.
So what was it? One could assume that it could be almost anything having to do with guiding the industrial sector, but in the minds of the New Democrats it was actually something fairly specific. It was emulating the Japanese, specifically the Japanese organization known as MITI that imposed overarching directives on the Japanese manufacturing sector, pushing it to enter into certain new industries or to emphasize certain of those that had already been penetrated. MITI, so the thinking went at the time, had enabled the Japanese to target certain industries where the U.S. had formerly been dominant such as automobiles, consumer electronics, and steel production, and subsequently to mount powerful challenges that would either displace the American incumbents or rob them of significant market share.
The idea was that we had to learn from the Japanese, and that Big Government which Democrats were supposed to love so dearly was going to shift from dispersing welfare and cracking down on safety violations and become an active partner with business in boosting industrial capacity in key areas.
Industrial policy caught a lot of Republicans flat footed. Japanese firms were the models in American business schools at the time and undeniably they were kicking ass in the markets they had chosen to enter. But most conservatives simply didn’t cotton to the idea of the government “picking winners”, to reprise the argot of the time. They were frankly confused, and they decided that the whole thing was best ignored.
Well, anyway, it turned out that industrial policy didn’t get much exposure in the ensuing campaign when Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic nomination after the erstwhile leader Gary Hart got a lap dance from Donna Rice on the deck of the good ship Monkey Business. (Ms. Rice has enjoyed a subsequent career as spokesperson for the religious right whom one suspects might have actually hired her to perform that long ago lap dance.) Hart was the real industrial policy booster in the party just as Jack Kemp was associated with flat tax on the other side of the aisle, and, with Hart out of action, industrial policy was effectively off the table. Dukakis didn’t so much as mention it, in fact he didn’t say much of anything that was memorable and spent most of the time attempting to remove the slime with which Lee Atwater was pelting him. He lost, and George H.W. Bush, who had no interest in industrial policy whatsoever, went on to attempt to sell the American public on “the thousand points of light” which sounds like something terribly Zen and never seems to have been clearly defined by anyone.
Wild Bill Clinton who succeeded Bush Pere was supposedly ideologically similar to Tsongas, Hart, and certainly to Donna Rice, but we don’t recall him saying squat about industrial policy, and Al Gore was mum as well. It was one of those notions like community based policing that briefly make for animated conversation at wonk taverns but don’t hold anyone’s attention for more than a few months.
So why bring it up now?
Because we need to start thinking about it again in the context of energy.
Here’s the problem. At some point the world has to transition to sustainable energy sources. Unfortunately, we can’t expect energy markets to function the way they did when previous energy sources came to the fore, and the industrial policies of the past aren’t likely to work to support such a transition.
So we had industrial policies in the past? How could that be when the Japanese came up with idea only a few decades ago?
It turns out that the Japanese did not invent industrial policy, though what they did with it was unique. Japanese industrial policy was and is tied to developing export markets for Japanese good and adding capacity to the Japanese industrial sector to support those markets. American industrial policy, and we always had one, was much more concerned with domestic markets and with effecting fundamental changes in American life through core technological transformations.
American government-sanctioned industrial policy favored the construction of the railroads and the dissemination of motorized transport. Federally insured bonds financed the great railroad expansion following the Civil War, and Federal land grants to the Western railroads of one mile of land on each side of the tracks was a sheer giveaway.
We find further industrial policy in regard to energy emerging in the twentieth century, this time involving both the Federal and local government and massive industrial and financial combinations. Three examples come readily to mind.
When the electrical utilities were building out at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, many were financed by the banking trust headed by the House of Morgan which controlled, directly or indirectly, most of the investment capital in the country—private industrial policy, as it were. Furthermore, local governments began to grant monopoly status to electrical utilities in return for token rate regulation on the grounds that they were “natural monopolies”.
The automobile industry and the oil industry that powered it grew as a direct result of government subsidies. Government built almost all the roads over which automobiles traveled and granted oil producers depletion allowances that relieved them, for the most part, from the burden of paying taxes like the rest of us. It all culminated in the Interstate Highway System of the nineteen fifties when the Feds began taxing gasoline and using the revenues to build superhighways.
So now it’s fifty years on, and we’ve got an energy crisis on our hands which, rest assured, is going to get worse. What can the government do apart from drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Preserve or invading Iran? What is the place of industrial policy at this particular juncture?
The usual palliatives being mentioned in the press, don’t, unfortunately, represent very fresh thinking.
A lot of people are all for saddling the auto manufacturers with stringent regulations in order to compel them to boost fuel efficiency. Further funding of hydrogen fuel cell research at the National Laboratories is also being advocated, said research, presumably, being shared with the auto makers who will pass on the benefits to the public.
Tax breaks for renewable energy also get a lot of support as do further subsidies for the coal industry. Finally, higher gasoline taxes have their supporters, including, most surprisingly, Grover Norquist, the right wing gray eminence who never met a tax he didn’t detest.
So let’s cast a critical eye on all of this conventional wisdom and try to determine if it’s wise at all, that is, if represents appropriate industrial policy.
Cajoling the auto industry into become creative with a lot of burdensome regulations strikes us as fairly absurd—kind of like Singapore dictator Lee Kew’s efforts to coerce his cowed subjects into becoming innovators. As one inventor of our acquaintance told us, the kind of young, rebellious engineers that actually innovate don’t tend to take jobs at General Motors, and, absent such individuals, the organization’s ability to innovate simply isn’t that great. Sure what’s left of the U.S. auto industry can eke out a few more miles per gallon out of existing designs, but they’re not inclined to do anything radical. What they’re more likely to do is lobby Congress to back off, something they’re very, very good at.
We don’t see the official efforts of the National Labs stimulating any revolutions either. We think they do great work, but unlike, say Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, which wrought revolutions in communications, computing, home entertainment, and business machines, the Labs aren’t really oriented toward product development.
The problem here as we see it is a refusal to grapple with the implications of a major technological transformation. Everyone expects that somehow we’re going to change over to this clean, green economy where everything works pretty much like it does now except there’s no smoke and no anxiety attacks at pump. All we’ve got to do is just get over our “addiction” to foreign oil.
This whole discussion we’re having about energy today is so wanting in intellectual clarity and rigor that it is hard to know where to begin in dispelling some of the misconceptions, but we have to try simply because the exercise is so vitally important.
First, we need to stop talking about oil addiction. The implication here is that some kind of sinful self indulgence got us where we are and a little self discipline can set things right. Oil and the mass affluence of late twentieth century America were closely conjoined. The whole of our industrial civilization was built upon it. Absent cheap oil America would not have enjoyed its age of affluence and plentiful material comforts. Only the few would have experienced abundance. What everyone is calling addition was more in the nature of nourishment.
We need to continue to use petroleum because our world is literally built of petrochemicals. What we do need to do is stop burning petroleum. It’s way too valuable to burn. In fact petroleum is the most useful substance in the world. It’s God’s gift and to burn it for energy is a sacrilege.
So just substitute biodiesel or ethanol and set up a bunch of subsidies to speed that along? It’s not so easy unfortunately.
When one goes about substituting for materials or artifacts that serve as the foundation of an entire technological edifice that edifice is apt to change fundamentally or to come tumbling down to be replaced by something else. We know this from past technological transformations.
The only reason we started using fossil fuel in the first place was because we began to run out of wood. England in the thirteenth century was already cutting down most of its forests and firewood was becoming constrained while coal was still readily obtainable from surface outcroppings. Nobody really liked coal—it smelled bad, gave off choking smoke, and cast soot over everything—but what were you going to do, freeze to death?
Coat turned out to be not a very direct substitute for wood as a fuel. It polluted like hell but at the same time it burned much more fiercely. When steam engines came into use in the eighteenth century coal’s hot flame was greatly appreciated. It facilitated the mechanization of industry in a way that wood never could have.
No one could have built a large scale industrial civilization with wood fuel. It took coal. Coal changed everything. And going from petroleum to renewable fuels is likely to change everything as well. But not in the same ways.
What we need to do here in setting a halfway intelligent industrial policy is consider the fact that renewable fuels will not be straight substitutes for petroleum and will not permit the continuation of our current mode of existence. We need to plan way beyond reducing dependence on foreign oil and looking for substitutes because there are no real substitutes. A world with less oil will be a very different world, one that is apt to be very hostile toward our existing transportation and electrical industries.
Industrial policies based on the notion of propping up existing industries and jawboning them into changing are not going to work, at least not in our society. Owners of coal fired electrical generation facilities are not going eliminate carbon emissions, they’re going to back Republican administrations that favor “voluntary emission curbs”. Automobile manufacturers are not going to scrap their production facilities and build hydrogen fuel cell cars. There is no such thing as a smoothly orchestrated technological revolution where the incumbents are in fact revolutionaries. Or as one management consultant put it, “bottlenecks are always at the top of the bottle, they always involve existing top management.”
So what does the government do, do nothing? Trot out some red herring issue like building electrified fences across from Tiajuana, or prayer in the schools, or gay marriage?
Or, to put it another way, what would we say to some well intentioned politician, if such exists, who asked us how to craft policies that will really make a difference?
That, gentle reader, is the subject of the next post.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
DILUTING DINOSAUR JUICE
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
DILUTING DINOSAUR JUICE
by Dan Sweeney, Ph.D
It’s been a long time since our last post, but we have not been inactive. We were preparing our hydrogen report for release, and it should hit the streets on the 1st of May.
The success of the study will determine our further involvement in energy industry analysis. If it doesn’t sell, we’ll likely go back to so-called high tech reporting which today really only covers only one area of technology, namely IT, information technology. Such is investor infatuation with all things digital, that many people assume that technical innovation is confined to the areas of computing and communications electronics.
If the hydrogen study finds a market and an audience, our next venture will address a topic that is equally timely and just as weighty, namely, alternative fuels. (Obviously, if one strives for grammatical correctness one cannot use the word alternative in the plural, but the term alternative fuels has become part of the energy dictionary, so grammar be damned.)
With gasoline prices having reached the lofty peak of $3.50 per gallon in many areas, the citizenry is, to say the least agitated—sufficiently so that politicians are agitated too. Which is all very curious because anyone with a will to know could have foreseen many years ago that this day of reckoning was on its way. But of course no one with legislative responsibilities was prepared to propose ameliorative actions because a crippling partisan attack would have followed.
Now it seems everyone in political office and in the press is an instant expert on energy policies and energy technologies. Interestingly, many of the proposals we’re seeing in the press have to do with alternative fuels.
Ethanol, biodiesel, and, yes, hydrogen, all have their advocates, and the underlying assumption behind all of the advocacy is that comprehensive solutions are ready at hand if only those opposing a particular policy would get their heads out of their nether regions. Everything is obvious to the instant expert. Just read the editorials. Those editorializing have all the answers.
We’ve been studying these issues intensively for five years, and we certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, but then we’re not inclined to editorializing either. The business of the analyst is to analyze not to advocate. One must confine oneself to determining what is likely to happen rather than declaring what one thinks should happen.
So here we go.
Regardless of how many glaciers melt and polar bears succumb in the ensuing months and years, global climate change is not going to drive energy policy in the U.S. Greenhouse emissions will continue to climb. Indeed if emissions trading were to become a real market, one could grow rich on commissions.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not going to happen, at least not in the transportation sector regardless of what George Bush says. Hydrogen will remain much more expensive than gasoline for the foreseeable future, and increases in the cost of hydrogen will tend to track increases in the cost of petroleum. And there’s no way that the cost of fuel cells themselves will drop sufficiently to permit mass adoption.
What will happen is that people will look to alternate fuels burned in internal combustion engines as the solution to high gasoline prices.
Such fuels include all manner of hydrocarbon compounds including naptha and naptha derivatives such as gasoline produced from unconventional sources such as coal, unconventional petroleum, natural gas, and biomass; ethanol, methanol, and other alcohols; methyl ether; methyl ester and other forms of so-called biodiesel; butane and propane; octane; liquid petroleum gas; and on and on. The total number of contenders is great, and because internal combustion engines cannot normally run on more than one type of fuel, likely no more than four alternate fuels will find a market.
So who will be the winners and who the losers? That will be the subject of our next report. Right now we don’t know the answer because no one ourselves included has ever performed a comprehensive assessment of competitive fuel technologies. What we have instead is self serving advocacy from trade groups representing the various feed stocks used to produce alternate fuels.
What we can say with some confidence is that alternate fuels will probably be initially used as additives to stretch supplies of conventional petroleum products and not as substitutes or replacements. We believe that oil companies will strive to maintain control over the distribution of motor fuels and that independents attempting to sell replacements will face a daunting uphill struggle due to the incredible expenses involved in building parallel distribution networks.
We are also certain that alternate fuels will not lead to low fuel prices though they could help to stabilize prices at some level which will probably be even higher than that for gasoline today.
Even with consumers desperate for some panacea, alternate fuel innovators are going to have difficulty attracting sufficient investment to go into full production. There is simply too much confusion as to which technology is most likely to succeed, and the lengthy period required to set up production facilities is a further inhibitor as is the difficulty of securing distribution. The lack of coordination with auto manufacturers is also a significant problem.
High fuel prices are here to say and they will be first a shock and then a permanent drag upon the economy. Timidity, intransigence, and heavy investment in existing technology will make it difficult for key institutions to implement the changes required to meet the needs of our mature industrial society and consumer culture. Difficult times lie ahead. But they will certainly be interesting.
DILUTING DINOSAUR JUICE
by Dan Sweeney, Ph.D
It’s been a long time since our last post, but we have not been inactive. We were preparing our hydrogen report for release, and it should hit the streets on the 1st of May.
The success of the study will determine our further involvement in energy industry analysis. If it doesn’t sell, we’ll likely go back to so-called high tech reporting which today really only covers only one area of technology, namely IT, information technology. Such is investor infatuation with all things digital, that many people assume that technical innovation is confined to the areas of computing and communications electronics.
If the hydrogen study finds a market and an audience, our next venture will address a topic that is equally timely and just as weighty, namely, alternative fuels. (Obviously, if one strives for grammatical correctness one cannot use the word alternative in the plural, but the term alternative fuels has become part of the energy dictionary, so grammar be damned.)
With gasoline prices having reached the lofty peak of $3.50 per gallon in many areas, the citizenry is, to say the least agitated—sufficiently so that politicians are agitated too. Which is all very curious because anyone with a will to know could have foreseen many years ago that this day of reckoning was on its way. But of course no one with legislative responsibilities was prepared to propose ameliorative actions because a crippling partisan attack would have followed.
Now it seems everyone in political office and in the press is an instant expert on energy policies and energy technologies. Interestingly, many of the proposals we’re seeing in the press have to do with alternative fuels.
Ethanol, biodiesel, and, yes, hydrogen, all have their advocates, and the underlying assumption behind all of the advocacy is that comprehensive solutions are ready at hand if only those opposing a particular policy would get their heads out of their nether regions. Everything is obvious to the instant expert. Just read the editorials. Those editorializing have all the answers.
We’ve been studying these issues intensively for five years, and we certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, but then we’re not inclined to editorializing either. The business of the analyst is to analyze not to advocate. One must confine oneself to determining what is likely to happen rather than declaring what one thinks should happen.
So here we go.
Regardless of how many glaciers melt and polar bears succumb in the ensuing months and years, global climate change is not going to drive energy policy in the U.S. Greenhouse emissions will continue to climb. Indeed if emissions trading were to become a real market, one could grow rich on commissions.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not going to happen, at least not in the transportation sector regardless of what George Bush says. Hydrogen will remain much more expensive than gasoline for the foreseeable future, and increases in the cost of hydrogen will tend to track increases in the cost of petroleum. And there’s no way that the cost of fuel cells themselves will drop sufficiently to permit mass adoption.
What will happen is that people will look to alternate fuels burned in internal combustion engines as the solution to high gasoline prices.
Such fuels include all manner of hydrocarbon compounds including naptha and naptha derivatives such as gasoline produced from unconventional sources such as coal, unconventional petroleum, natural gas, and biomass; ethanol, methanol, and other alcohols; methyl ether; methyl ester and other forms of so-called biodiesel; butane and propane; octane; liquid petroleum gas; and on and on. The total number of contenders is great, and because internal combustion engines cannot normally run on more than one type of fuel, likely no more than four alternate fuels will find a market.
So who will be the winners and who the losers? That will be the subject of our next report. Right now we don’t know the answer because no one ourselves included has ever performed a comprehensive assessment of competitive fuel technologies. What we have instead is self serving advocacy from trade groups representing the various feed stocks used to produce alternate fuels.
What we can say with some confidence is that alternate fuels will probably be initially used as additives to stretch supplies of conventional petroleum products and not as substitutes or replacements. We believe that oil companies will strive to maintain control over the distribution of motor fuels and that independents attempting to sell replacements will face a daunting uphill struggle due to the incredible expenses involved in building parallel distribution networks.
We are also certain that alternate fuels will not lead to low fuel prices though they could help to stabilize prices at some level which will probably be even higher than that for gasoline today.
Even with consumers desperate for some panacea, alternate fuel innovators are going to have difficulty attracting sufficient investment to go into full production. There is simply too much confusion as to which technology is most likely to succeed, and the lengthy period required to set up production facilities is a further inhibitor as is the difficulty of securing distribution. The lack of coordination with auto manufacturers is also a significant problem.
High fuel prices are here to say and they will be first a shock and then a permanent drag upon the economy. Timidity, intransigence, and heavy investment in existing technology will make it difficult for key institutions to implement the changes required to meet the needs of our mature industrial society and consumer culture. Difficult times lie ahead. But they will certainly be interesting.
Friday, March 31, 2006
THE HYDROGEN REPORT
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
The Hydrogen Report - Some Summary Findings and Some Unanswered Questions
BY Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D
We have just completed our report on hydrogen and it will soon go on sale. Visant Strategies with whom we are associated will publish it. The document is aimed at corporations involved in or contemplating involvement in the hydrogen business and at governmental bodies grappling with the implications of the hydrogen economy.
Much of the report deals with specific markets for hydrogen, and since the information is for sale and constitutes the primary value of the report we cannot provide that data here, except to say that the overall market for hydrogen is significantly smaller than the figure of 50 million tons that is bandied about with some frequency.
One thing that we can say is that the use of hydrogen in energy applications, the market that constitutes the “hydrogen economy”, is pretty close to nonexistent as yet, and its future is dependent upon a number of contingencies, some having to do with technology and others with private finance and governmental policies.
Any attempt to initiate a hydrogen economy with current technology would almost certainly fail for reasons given in the report. A number of technical breakthroughs rather than incremental improvements would have to occur in a number of key areas—fuel cell design, hydrogen storage, hydrogen generation (particularly in the design of electrolyzers), hydrogen transmission, the management of a largely or wholly renewables based electrical grid, and in the design of power conversion equipment.
Quite apart from technical feasibility, financing a move to a renewables based hydrogen economy would probably ultimately entail tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars—in other words, the commitment of sizable fraction of U.S. industrial capacity and financial resources. This would of course involve some very hard choices. Consider that the current level of military funding in the U.S. is only about a half trillion dollars a year, and that that it is arguably an enormous drag on the rest of the economy.
Any attempt to construct a hydrogen economy quickly would starve other industries of credit and investment and would involve direct or indirect government subsidies that would impact basic government services.
A couple of weeks ago we attended a hydrogen investment conference in Long Beach, California, where such issues were conveniently ignored, or, to put it another way, assumed not to exist. Instead a hydrogen Rapture was proclaimed by all and sundry, just as it had been in several previous hydrogen shows and, doubtless, will be again over the course of the next several years.
All of which left us with troubling questions which we have difficulty in answering.
We should begin by saying that we are quite confident of our pessimistic analysis of the economics of a hydrogen economy. Maybe some day, but not with current technology or the current political climate. And yet damned near everyone seems to be lined up behind it—the major oil companies, the auto manufacturers, major chemical companies, leading academics, environmentalists, and government spokespersons from many nations including our own. Even staunchly anti-environmental George W. Bush endorses the idea.
Now we performed our analysis using data in the public domain. The pricing of hydrogen and hydrogen generating equipment, fuel cells, hydrogen powered internal combustion engines, and renewable electrical generation equipment is all readily available as are the operational costs associated with each. All we did was add and multiply, the same kind of tedious tabulations we used to perform when we did statistical studies for a government agency. Nothing that a mathematically challenged chimpanzee couldn’t do. We also made certain assumptions as to economies of scale which were based on observations that have generally true in other industries.
Surely all of these corporate executives and governmental bodies must know the same things we do. They’ve got guys that can add and multiply. Hell, they’ve got whole office buildings full of bean counters, and you really only need one and a few man weeks to dedicate to the task. All you need to do is tell somebody what it takes in the way of infrastructure to establish a hydrogen economy and then task that somebody with checking prices and running the numbers.
I wish we had an answer as to what is going on here, but we don’t. We are deeply and genuinely mystified.
Why would so many people get behind anything so uncertain, particularly when they’re gambling with our future, everyone’s future? We have an energy crisis looming in the middle distance, one that is going to determine the kind of lives our grandchildren have. We need to be planning coping strategies that can be accomplished with current technology, not technology that may exist ten, twenty, thirty years from now. In energy many expected breakthroughs never occur. No one has succeeded in building a fusion reactor after fifty years of trying. No one has ever made a room temperature superconductor after thirty years of intensive and expensive research. No one has demonstrated a cost effective, field proven ocean energy system after more than fifty years of experimentation. And no one has succeeded in perfecting a low cost fuel cell after decades of efforts and billions of dollars in funding.
Whatever we do, it has to be done with tools that are available today, not something predicated on untold man years of additional research. That research might never get done for any of a number of reasons, and even if it is, it might not pan out.
A final thought. At the hydrogen conference, one David Freeman, an energy official in the Carter Administration and later a manager of several large public utilities, addressed the attendees. Freeman is a man not noted for diplomacy or mincing words. What he told the audience was this. Quit undertaking pilot program and start launching products. Build markets now, not next year or the year after. We couldn’t agree more.
The Hydrogen Report - Some Summary Findings and Some Unanswered Questions
BY Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D
We have just completed our report on hydrogen and it will soon go on sale. Visant Strategies with whom we are associated will publish it. The document is aimed at corporations involved in or contemplating involvement in the hydrogen business and at governmental bodies grappling with the implications of the hydrogen economy.
Much of the report deals with specific markets for hydrogen, and since the information is for sale and constitutes the primary value of the report we cannot provide that data here, except to say that the overall market for hydrogen is significantly smaller than the figure of 50 million tons that is bandied about with some frequency.
One thing that we can say is that the use of hydrogen in energy applications, the market that constitutes the “hydrogen economy”, is pretty close to nonexistent as yet, and its future is dependent upon a number of contingencies, some having to do with technology and others with private finance and governmental policies.
Any attempt to initiate a hydrogen economy with current technology would almost certainly fail for reasons given in the report. A number of technical breakthroughs rather than incremental improvements would have to occur in a number of key areas—fuel cell design, hydrogen storage, hydrogen generation (particularly in the design of electrolyzers), hydrogen transmission, the management of a largely or wholly renewables based electrical grid, and in the design of power conversion equipment.
Quite apart from technical feasibility, financing a move to a renewables based hydrogen economy would probably ultimately entail tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars—in other words, the commitment of sizable fraction of U.S. industrial capacity and financial resources. This would of course involve some very hard choices. Consider that the current level of military funding in the U.S. is only about a half trillion dollars a year, and that that it is arguably an enormous drag on the rest of the economy.
Any attempt to construct a hydrogen economy quickly would starve other industries of credit and investment and would involve direct or indirect government subsidies that would impact basic government services.
A couple of weeks ago we attended a hydrogen investment conference in Long Beach, California, where such issues were conveniently ignored, or, to put it another way, assumed not to exist. Instead a hydrogen Rapture was proclaimed by all and sundry, just as it had been in several previous hydrogen shows and, doubtless, will be again over the course of the next several years.
All of which left us with troubling questions which we have difficulty in answering.
We should begin by saying that we are quite confident of our pessimistic analysis of the economics of a hydrogen economy. Maybe some day, but not with current technology or the current political climate. And yet damned near everyone seems to be lined up behind it—the major oil companies, the auto manufacturers, major chemical companies, leading academics, environmentalists, and government spokespersons from many nations including our own. Even staunchly anti-environmental George W. Bush endorses the idea.
Now we performed our analysis using data in the public domain. The pricing of hydrogen and hydrogen generating equipment, fuel cells, hydrogen powered internal combustion engines, and renewable electrical generation equipment is all readily available as are the operational costs associated with each. All we did was add and multiply, the same kind of tedious tabulations we used to perform when we did statistical studies for a government agency. Nothing that a mathematically challenged chimpanzee couldn’t do. We also made certain assumptions as to economies of scale which were based on observations that have generally true in other industries.
Surely all of these corporate executives and governmental bodies must know the same things we do. They’ve got guys that can add and multiply. Hell, they’ve got whole office buildings full of bean counters, and you really only need one and a few man weeks to dedicate to the task. All you need to do is tell somebody what it takes in the way of infrastructure to establish a hydrogen economy and then task that somebody with checking prices and running the numbers.
I wish we had an answer as to what is going on here, but we don’t. We are deeply and genuinely mystified.
Why would so many people get behind anything so uncertain, particularly when they’re gambling with our future, everyone’s future? We have an energy crisis looming in the middle distance, one that is going to determine the kind of lives our grandchildren have. We need to be planning coping strategies that can be accomplished with current technology, not technology that may exist ten, twenty, thirty years from now. In energy many expected breakthroughs never occur. No one has succeeded in building a fusion reactor after fifty years of trying. No one has ever made a room temperature superconductor after thirty years of intensive and expensive research. No one has demonstrated a cost effective, field proven ocean energy system after more than fifty years of experimentation. And no one has succeeded in perfecting a low cost fuel cell after decades of efforts and billions of dollars in funding.
Whatever we do, it has to be done with tools that are available today, not something predicated on untold man years of additional research. That research might never get done for any of a number of reasons, and even if it is, it might not pan out.
A final thought. At the hydrogen conference, one David Freeman, an energy official in the Carter Administration and later a manager of several large public utilities, addressed the attendees. Freeman is a man not noted for diplomacy or mincing words. What he told the audience was this. Quit undertaking pilot program and start launching products. Build markets now, not next year or the year after. We couldn’t agree more.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
SOLID ACID
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
SOLID ACID FUEL CELLS – THE HOLY GRAIL?
BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PhD
In this blog we have had frequent occasion to comment upon the inflated expectations fostered among the public by many individuals within the fuel cell industry. At the beginning of this decade fuel cell proponents were confidently predicting that the rollout of fuel cell vehicles would be well underway by mid decade and that a hydrogen transition would be beginning. Obviously such predictions were false.
Introducing any radically new technology is difficult, but fuel cells present special problems which have not proven amenable to easy solutions. Five years ago, the PEM (polymer electrolyte) type of fuel cell, generally seen as the most promising technology, was about an order of magnitude too expensive to sell in designated markets and suffered from serious problems of manufacturability, useful lifespan, and reliability. Since then pricing has not descended significantly and technical limitations have at best been ameliorated.
Fuel cell manufacturers still offer the same assurances that solutions are in the offing and that the technology is essentially good to go, but investors are beginning to have second thoughts, and without a great deal of further investment there is little chance of technical hurdles being overcome.
We have long believed that the best chance for the fuel cell industry would be the development of some entirely new chemistry. We felt that existing designs were probably approaching their design limits and that further investment might well be misguided. Now just such a fundamentally new design has appeared, the solid acid fuel cell.
Solid acids are a recently described class of chemicals intermediate between salts and acids in their characteristics. At somewhat elevated temperatures in the 300 to 400 Centrigade range such substances become “superprotonic” permitting single protons representing hydrogen ions to migrate to an anode or positively charged terminal while blocking oxygen and other atoms.
Nafion, used in PEM fuel cells, has similar properties, but Nafion tends to degrade at temperatures over 80 C, and must be used in conjunction with a costly platinum catalyst. Nafion is also vulnerable to carbon monoxide poisoning and requires ultra high purity hydrogen gas. Furthermore, Nafion must be continually hydrated with distilled water in precise amounts. Finally, Nafion itself is extremely costly.
Nafion is used in almost all PEM fuel cells sold today. For all its limitations, it is considered the best available material by most manufacturers. But if Superprotonic Inc., a Southern California based startup founded by refugees from Cal Tech, is correct, Nafion may now have a real challenger.
According to Calum Chisolm, the president of the firm, Superprotonic’s solid acid membrane possesses all of the desirable characteristics long sought in a fuel cell electrolyte. It operates at medium temperatures, and cannot only tolerate low purity hydrogen but can directly reform methanol and ethanol. It doesn’t require rare earth catalysts, it is cheap to manufacture and form, it is impervious to carbon monoxide, and it doesn’t need hydrdation. Furthermore, it appears to be robust.
We are very used to hyperbole and inflated claims in this business, and so we will reserve judgment on the strength of Superprotonic’s assertions until they are proven or disproven in the marketplace. We did, however, find Dr. Chisolm, refreshingly unassuming when we interviewed him. He admitted that unforeseen obstacles to commercialization could arise and that his company was at a relatively early stage in the development cycle of the solid acid fuel cell.
It should be noted here that other manufacturers such as ITM in Britain, Pemeas in Germany, and PolyFuel here in the U.S. have introduced other alternatives to Nafion without achieving singular success. Nafion has been around since the nineteen sixties and extensive research in Nafion based PEM cells goes back almost twenty years. For all its problems, Nafion has a track record, and Nafion PEM cells are in the marketplace now.
Chisolm informs us that several Japanese electronics majors are also pursuing research in solid acid membranes, so evidently the technology has momentum. We would expect that if its promise is fulfilled we might be seeing some productization early in the next decade. And as for fuel cell vehicles based on solid acid? If it works, and that’s a big if, don’t count on seeing anything until the twenties of this century and that is likely to be limited production. Clearly the fuel cell future we’ve all been hearing about is a good ways off even best case.
Friday, February 24, 2006
The President's sudden conversion to energy policy
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
BUSH AND ENERGY BREAKTHROUGHS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D
As I am fond of insisting to my friends, nothing can diminish the unconditional love I feel for George W. Bush whom I believe to be anointed by God to lead this country. Nevertheless, I would have to say that if anything could diminish that love, it would be what passes for an energy policy on the part of this Administration.
This week our President announced that the U.S. was on the verge of energy breakthroughs that would startle most Americans. That statement is as disingenuous as the famous “mission accomplished” nearly three years ago.
As an energy analyst I am inundated by such claims. Scarcely a day passes that I don’t happen upon some company I’ve not encountered previously announcing a “breakthrough”. Consequently my arousal threshold is becoming increasingly elevated.
I am reminded here of a luminous essay penned by the great French actor and critic Antonin Artaud entitled “No More Masterpieces”. Artaud was a radical modernist in the arts and he abhorred the notion of sacred masterpieces, particularly in regard to the theater. I feel similarly about “breakthroughs” in the energy business. We need to stop talking about them and expecting them to occur. Like artistic masterpieces they belong to the past. The last real breakthrough in energy was Nicola Tesla’s development of three phase alternating current in the late eighteen eighties. Since then it’s all been downhill.
I don’t mean there isn’t progress, but there aren’t breakthroughs. Here’s why.
Breakthroughs imply the notion of some outside-the-box kind of guy having a brainstorm that is quickly turned into a technology revolution because everything’s moving at Internet speed now. Things like that happen in the software world where the outside-the-box guys are simply writing code and all nighters fueled by plenty of cappuccino can result in a new search engine and a new way of life. Unfortunately, energy revolutions are not software downloads. They involve massive construction and mega mega bucks, not some mad money thrown together by a venture capital firm.
Let’s consider cellulosic ethanol which Bush is been promoting—I wonder who told him about that? A Canadian company called Iogen has been promoting some pretty interesting technology involving enzymes for several years, and there are various labs doing things with micro-organisms. Fairly low cost cellulosic ethanol probably is doable, but right now there is only one plant that’s even in the planning stage in the U.S., and that’s not due to produce anything for years. Most people who’ve studied the process think that even the most massive exploitation of available land resources for alcohol production could only produce about a third of the fuel used in transportation today, and building up the infrastructure for that would take decades.
And where’s the money going to come from? The financial community shows no likelihood of springing for ethanol on a massive scale, and here we’re talking about trillions, not billions. Is Bush just going to subsidize it and pump up the deficit some more? He’s already spending one half trillion on the military. Is he going to shift some of that away to energy?
Bush also visited the Ovonics Division of Energy Conversion Devices and talked that up. The Oshinksy family that runs the thing are really smart people and undoubtedly they’ve advanced the art of battery design considerably, but the fact is that the auto manufacturers are not developing the kind of plug-in hybrids that could significantly lessen dependence upon petroleum. Whatever battery breakthroughs are going to occur at Ovonics or elsewhere are pretty meaningless unless they’re widely adopted.
Bush’s so-called “clean coal” initiatives are another big joke and anything but breakthroughs. Unless you’re talking about coal gasification and/or sequestration, you’re just throwing words around. Truly clean coal involves everybody who is operating coal fired plants doing extensive retrofits which cost tons of money. Adding a scrubber just ain’t gonna cut it. No one is going to do the retrofits absent strong financial incentives, especially if they can lobby the legislature to pass bogus “clean coal” legislation that puts “voluntary compliance” measures in place. Incidentally, I can’t help asking myself why in God’s name would someone legislate voluntary compliance. You can always volunteer to pollute less if you’re so inclined. Older legislation didn’t oblige you to pollute. The market did, however. Plainly put, it’s a lot cheaper to pollute than to renovate your plant.
To return to our initial subject, technology breakthroughs, the fallacy here is that technological breakthroughs automatically diffuse through the industrial establishment. In fact there are countless examples of countries developing technologies and then doing nothing with them. England developed AC electrical power, albeit in crude form, before the U.S., but neglected to set up generating stations. An Austrian inventor made a vacuum tube amplifier the same year as the American Lee De Forest, but did not promote his invention. U.S. electronics firms developed discrete transistors, videocassette recorders, cellular telephones, and optical disc players and then let Japanese and European firms bring those inventions to market and profit by them.
Bush is partially right in his pronouncements concerning new energy technologies, however. A tremendous amount of research and entrepreneurial activity in the area of new energy technology is taking place in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean it is going to see expression in an altered energy regime.
If we as Americans had the national will, which we don’t, we could effectively address our energy problems with current technology and we could plan for incremental improvements that would ultimately make the task easier. The likelihood of that happening is very slight, however.
The problem is fundamental. Previous U.S. energy transformations well as transformations within other infrastructure technologies such communications and transportation were very largely market driven and rewarded investors with excellent short term and mid term profits. It’s difficult to see how a replacement technology within the energy sphere would do the same. And yet attempting to impose top down, command economy imperatives is fraught with a multitude of hazards. There are no inherent feedback mechanisms for stabilizing command economies other than infrequent elections, and they frequently pursue ill-conceived policies long after a market driven economy would have abandoned them. They’re also subject to corrupt practices.
In short the problems we’re facing have more to do with the nature of our society and our lack of a pre-existing model for an energy transformation that would free us from dependence on foreign fossil fuel. Technology itself does not constitute the biggest hurdle.
BUSH AND ENERGY BREAKTHROUGHS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D
As I am fond of insisting to my friends, nothing can diminish the unconditional love I feel for George W. Bush whom I believe to be anointed by God to lead this country. Nevertheless, I would have to say that if anything could diminish that love, it would be what passes for an energy policy on the part of this Administration.
This week our President announced that the U.S. was on the verge of energy breakthroughs that would startle most Americans. That statement is as disingenuous as the famous “mission accomplished” nearly three years ago.
As an energy analyst I am inundated by such claims. Scarcely a day passes that I don’t happen upon some company I’ve not encountered previously announcing a “breakthrough”. Consequently my arousal threshold is becoming increasingly elevated.
I am reminded here of a luminous essay penned by the great French actor and critic Antonin Artaud entitled “No More Masterpieces”. Artaud was a radical modernist in the arts and he abhorred the notion of sacred masterpieces, particularly in regard to the theater. I feel similarly about “breakthroughs” in the energy business. We need to stop talking about them and expecting them to occur. Like artistic masterpieces they belong to the past. The last real breakthrough in energy was Nicola Tesla’s development of three phase alternating current in the late eighteen eighties. Since then it’s all been downhill.
I don’t mean there isn’t progress, but there aren’t breakthroughs. Here’s why.
Breakthroughs imply the notion of some outside-the-box kind of guy having a brainstorm that is quickly turned into a technology revolution because everything’s moving at Internet speed now. Things like that happen in the software world where the outside-the-box guys are simply writing code and all nighters fueled by plenty of cappuccino can result in a new search engine and a new way of life. Unfortunately, energy revolutions are not software downloads. They involve massive construction and mega mega bucks, not some mad money thrown together by a venture capital firm.
Let’s consider cellulosic ethanol which Bush is been promoting—I wonder who told him about that? A Canadian company called Iogen has been promoting some pretty interesting technology involving enzymes for several years, and there are various labs doing things with micro-organisms. Fairly low cost cellulosic ethanol probably is doable, but right now there is only one plant that’s even in the planning stage in the U.S., and that’s not due to produce anything for years. Most people who’ve studied the process think that even the most massive exploitation of available land resources for alcohol production could only produce about a third of the fuel used in transportation today, and building up the infrastructure for that would take decades.
And where’s the money going to come from? The financial community shows no likelihood of springing for ethanol on a massive scale, and here we’re talking about trillions, not billions. Is Bush just going to subsidize it and pump up the deficit some more? He’s already spending one half trillion on the military. Is he going to shift some of that away to energy?
Bush also visited the Ovonics Division of Energy Conversion Devices and talked that up. The Oshinksy family that runs the thing are really smart people and undoubtedly they’ve advanced the art of battery design considerably, but the fact is that the auto manufacturers are not developing the kind of plug-in hybrids that could significantly lessen dependence upon petroleum. Whatever battery breakthroughs are going to occur at Ovonics or elsewhere are pretty meaningless unless they’re widely adopted.
Bush’s so-called “clean coal” initiatives are another big joke and anything but breakthroughs. Unless you’re talking about coal gasification and/or sequestration, you’re just throwing words around. Truly clean coal involves everybody who is operating coal fired plants doing extensive retrofits which cost tons of money. Adding a scrubber just ain’t gonna cut it. No one is going to do the retrofits absent strong financial incentives, especially if they can lobby the legislature to pass bogus “clean coal” legislation that puts “voluntary compliance” measures in place. Incidentally, I can’t help asking myself why in God’s name would someone legislate voluntary compliance. You can always volunteer to pollute less if you’re so inclined. Older legislation didn’t oblige you to pollute. The market did, however. Plainly put, it’s a lot cheaper to pollute than to renovate your plant.
To return to our initial subject, technology breakthroughs, the fallacy here is that technological breakthroughs automatically diffuse through the industrial establishment. In fact there are countless examples of countries developing technologies and then doing nothing with them. England developed AC electrical power, albeit in crude form, before the U.S., but neglected to set up generating stations. An Austrian inventor made a vacuum tube amplifier the same year as the American Lee De Forest, but did not promote his invention. U.S. electronics firms developed discrete transistors, videocassette recorders, cellular telephones, and optical disc players and then let Japanese and European firms bring those inventions to market and profit by them.
Bush is partially right in his pronouncements concerning new energy technologies, however. A tremendous amount of research and entrepreneurial activity in the area of new energy technology is taking place in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean it is going to see expression in an altered energy regime.
If we as Americans had the national will, which we don’t, we could effectively address our energy problems with current technology and we could plan for incremental improvements that would ultimately make the task easier. The likelihood of that happening is very slight, however.
The problem is fundamental. Previous U.S. energy transformations well as transformations within other infrastructure technologies such communications and transportation were very largely market driven and rewarded investors with excellent short term and mid term profits. It’s difficult to see how a replacement technology within the energy sphere would do the same. And yet attempting to impose top down, command economy imperatives is fraught with a multitude of hazards. There are no inherent feedback mechanisms for stabilizing command economies other than infrequent elections, and they frequently pursue ill-conceived policies long after a market driven economy would have abandoned them. They’re also subject to corrupt practices.
In short the problems we’re facing have more to do with the nature of our society and our lack of a pre-existing model for an energy transformation that would free us from dependence on foreign fossil fuel. Technology itself does not constitute the biggest hurdle.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
ADDICTION TO OIL? WHAT CAN WE DO?
Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
Is ethanol the answer?
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D
We recently received a couple of queries regarding celluosic ethanol, perhaps prompted by President Bush’s reference to the topic in his State of the Union message. Here are our thoughts on the matter.
First of all, we were rather surprised that Bush should mention celluosic ethanol in the first place. It is a rather esoteric technique for producing the fuel, and there are no commercial operations yet in operation in the U.S. though one is in the planning stage. We wonder who in the Administration decided to float this notion. Cellulosic ethanol scarcely has a lobby today, and we’d always assumed that Bush was most sensitive to the needs of past campaign contributors.
In fact, cellulosic ethanol probably has a place in the transportation industry in the coming years. We do not believe that the economics of hydrogen are such that it will be feasible anytime soon, and so the country will have to continue to make do with liquid hydrocarbons. Upping the percentage of ethanol in gasoline—a couple of percent is usual today—and deriving it from low cost feed stocks strikes us as a pretty good idea.
Ethanol derived from food crops such as corn has gotten a fairly bad rap in the environmental community, with many detractors claiming that more energy is required to produce it than can be derived from burning it. We’ve read many well-to-wheel efficiency studies on the subject, and while we’re inclined to believe that there is a modest net energy gain, it doesn’t seem to be very great. The thermodynamics of cellulosic ethanol look much better though, and we think it’s a good renewable biofuel.
The Department of Energy has published a number of studies on the subject as have various academic researchers, and the current thinking is that ethanol of whatever derivation could not be produced in sufficient quantities to serve as complete substitute for fossil fuel. True, it can be harvested from fast growing plants like switch grass, but unlike the case with crops intended for food, everything in the plant is used and so soil depletion tends to be rapid. There’s just too much organic material being removed for the practice to be sustainable on a vast scale.
And there are other issues. Ethanol, when burned in internal combustion engines, produces fewer greenhouse emissions than a quantity of gasoline of equal energy value, but it’s far from zero emissions. The theory is that the plant matter used to produce it will have fixed a quantity of atmospheric carbon equal to that emitted, but if any fossil fuel is used in the production process, which is inevitably the case, the carbon balance is not so favorable.
The other problem with ethanol is that it contains only about half the energy of gasoline by volume so you’re looking at a reduced cruising range if ethanol is the sole fuel. Usually, however, it is mixed with gasoline, and we see it being used in this manner if ethanol production significantly increases.
In any case, we can only speculate as to how serious George Bush is about promoting energy independence, or for that matter, in instituting an energy policy of real coherence. And it’s not only Bush, very few elected officials seem prepared to confront our looming energy problems with realistic proposals for change. It’s as if the prevailing attitude is that the really bad stuff is going to happen on someone else’s watch and so the best choice is to do nothing.
The preponderance of expert opinion has it that a peak in oil production and probably natural gas production as well will occur before 2025, and some believe it is imminent now. This is a matter of the gravest concern and is far, far more important than preventing the cloning of humans or Afghan hounds, outlawing homosexual marriage, re-instituting prayer in the schools, or any of the other pseudo issues that seem to fascinate the American electorate. Acute shortages of petroleum and natural gas, unless addressed with effective countermeasures, will have a devastating effect on the economy here and abroad and will lead to fierce competitions for remaining supplies and possibly to resource wars. The economies of developed nations depend upon petroleum just as much as the human body depends upon its own blood.
We believe that the problems involved in effecting a transition from utter dependence upon petroleum and natural gas are very formidable and not susceptible to easy answers. We consider ourselves to be staunch environmentalists, but at the same time we are continually dismayed and exasperated by the many well meaning individuals in the green community who express the belief that simply by building wind turbines and hydrogen filling stations our problems are going to be solved, and that the only people standing in the way are the big bad oil companies with a stake in the status quo.
We have just completed a monumental study of industrial hydrogen and our analysis indicates that with present technologies and cost structures expenditures of tens of trillions if not hundreds of trillions of dollars would be required to effectuate a hydrogen transition in the U.S. alone. We see absolutely no evidence that public or private monies in such amounts are being allocated for the purpose or that the price of replacement infrastructure will fall sufficiently to permit a painless transition.
Past energy revolutions have generally been the result of entrepreneurial activities, at least in the Western World. But now everybody is thinking in terms of top down economic models, even someone as right wing as Bush. And the problem is that most of these models are designed to preserve as much of the status quo as possible. Rather than re-examining our entire transportation infrastructure, we are enjoined to wait until the auto companies bring out fuel cell automobiles, as if they ever will. Rather than explore the possibility that our current fueling structure may be entirely obsolete, we are encouraged to smile at all those pilot hydrogen filling stations the oil companies are setting up, as if is the will of God that those who control the energy industries of today must continue to control them for all eternity.
The great American anthropologist Edward Hall, who performed epochal cross cultural studies of how different culture experience the dimensions of time and space, said in one of his books that Americans are very good at planning for the future, but no more than ten years out. A historical view of the future is almost entirely lacking in our culture and arguably in the ancestral culture of England. And that historical myopia appears to be getting worse. We make our living covering high technology and we are continually confronted by the attitude of “I’ll get my mine now and the hell with later.” As that attitude solidifies into the cultural bedrock of the society there is very little incentive to deal with issues like looming energy crises. Instead one looks to quick fixes like perhaps hogging all the oil in the Middle East and daring anyone to do anything about it.
We hope we’re dead wrong and that our pessimism is entirely unwarranted. But we think that there is abundant evidence that we are right. Good night, and God bless.
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