Re: Oil Economics, a (long) thought experiment

From: Kai M. Becker (kmb@kai-m-becker.de)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 14:23:44 MST

  • Next message: Dickey, Michael F: "RE: Hydrogen as SCAM?"

    Robert J. Bradbury schrieb:
    > Kai, a couple of comments. We are getting (a).

    I know. Modern cars are lighter and need less fuel. That's what the high
    taxes (eco-taxes...) in Germany should achieve. Unfortunately, the
    income of these taxes is not used to improve the engines or the sources
    for fuels, but for our pension system...

    > Oil (or esp. methane) *could* be both unlimited and sustainable *iff*
    > it were produced in solar ponds instead of pumped out of the ground.

    Jepp. We can buy synthetic diesel oil here, made from rapeseed. It's
    cheaper than fossil oil, but only because the tax on it is lower *sigh*

    > That however requires a fair amount of bioengineering. But it is *not*
    > unreasonable to expect that it could be accomplished within a decade
    > if enough resources were devoted to the problem.

    Sure. We've produced synthetic fuel in the 30s. There were even cars that
    drove with wood and straw :-) Not that I'd suggest to rebuild that, but
    it shows that the technology to get Methane from bio mass is fairly
    simple and safe. I don't know though, what the most efficient scale for
    this is with respect to transportation costs, personnel, etc.

    > One cannot produce enough energy to meet an average individual's
    > transportation requirements from the surface area of ones home
    > *but* I suspect for less than the cost of a few years gasoline
    > consumption one could buy some significant fraction of an acre
    > in a sunny location and produce sufficient energy resources
    > (such as methane) that your effective energy costs are zero

    I've looked for some facts about biomass energy and C4 plants like
    Miscanthus (china grass). This plant delivers 5-24t/ha in western Europe,
    depending on soil and nutrients with a heat value of 16MJ/kg (coal 28,
    brown coal 9, wood 12, straw 15, petroleum 44). That would lead to an
    "oil equivalent" of 2-8t/ha. This seems to be the best we can get without
    some intelligent genetic modifications. The good news is, that every
    other kind of straw and wood can also be used. BTW, maize/corn is also a
    C4 plant.

    > The Europeans should be buying land close to the ocean in North Africa.

    There's a cooperation between Spain and Marocco for this. But Methane
    and H2 pipelines are more expensive than High Voltage DC cables. Don't
    ask me why, that's what several papers say.

        Kai



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 14:22:50 MST