Biofuels

Introduction of the Open Fuel Standard Act

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The OFS would require that 50 percent of new automobiles in 2014, 80 percent in 2016, and 95 percent in 2017, would be warranted to operate on non-petroleum fuels in addition to or instead of petroleum based fuels. Compliance possibilities include the full array of existing technologies – including flex fuel, natural gas, hydrogen, biodiesel, plug-in electric drive, and fuel cell – and a catch-all for new technologies. This requirement will then provide certainty to investors to produce alternative fuels and fueling stations to have a variety of pumps supplying those alternative fuels.

Innovation of the Week: Creating farms that produce food and energy

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Around 3 billion people, or half of the world’s population, rely on unsustainable biomass based energy sources, including wood, and around 1.6 billion people still lack access to electricity. With an Integrated Food Energy System (IFES), FAO believes that people will have access to sustainable and reliable energy.

Man Bites Dog: CNBC runs programs that acknowledge fossil fuel resource limits

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I was surprised that CNBC (I sometimes think that the first “C” stands for Cornucopian*) just ran two programs that seriously talked about resource limits, Sprawling from Grace on Wednesday and Fuel on Thursday.

Of the two, I think that Sprawling from Grace was a lot better, but having said that, it seemed to me to be largely a remake of End of Suburbia, and in fact Jim Kunstler was prominently featured in both. But Sprawling was on CNBC, while End of Suburbia was not.

ODAC Newsletter – Apr 15

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The IEA reported this week that there are preliminary signs of oil demand destruction due to soaring prices. Goldman Sachs underlined this viewpoint on Tuesday by advising its clients to sell oil, copper, platinum and cotton. Prices fell in response, although concern over conflict in the Middle East and Saudi production saw prices nudging up again by the end of the week.

What’s your game plan as corn prices skyrocket?

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History is being made in the corn market and the mainstream press isn’t paying attention. Corn prices hit an all time high last week. As you pull on your boots and head for the garden or fields for spring planting, what are your plans? Are you ready for some seismic changes in food prices? Do you feel too helpless to do anything much but keep on hoeing?

Attributing the food price spike

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All caveats aside, you can see the main point here: biofuels are much much larger than Russian weather fluctuations as a total factor affecting cereal supply for food. This is not to deny any role for the Russian harvest change in the current food price spike.  It was an unexpected negative shock, and I’m sure it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  But should we blame the straw, or instead focus on the fact that the camel was already loaded to the breaking point?

Farm prices, food prices, and biofuels

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It’s worth noting that the energy content of the human food supply is about a sixth of the energy content of the human fuel supply (about 86 mbd of liquid fuels, equivalent to somewhere in the neighborhood of 120-130mbd of ethanol). This is the core problem with converting food to fuel – we are taking from a small pool to try to make up for deficiencies in a large pool, and we will have a much bigger effect on the level of the small pool than the bigger pool.

Doing Due Diligence

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To people who follow the energy industry closely, it’s a common occurrence to come across announcements from companies proclaiming to have developed the key to the ‘next big thing’ — for solving the world’s energy crisis. Maybe they say they can take any sort of waste biomass and turn it into fuel — ethanol, diesel, pyrolysis oil, mixed alcohols — at very low cost. Or they say they can produce renewable electricity at a price competitive with coal.

The layperson reads the news release and is curious: “Is this real?”