Alternative Energy and Renewable Fuels are today's headliners and attention grabbers. I have been doing quite a bit of research on the state of play for the future of fuels, I wanted to see what the advances were and what the possible impacts and hindrances to their widespread deployment really are, sans green-washing and hype. So I took a little surf over the Internet and looked at many hours of amazingly boring videos of lectures and focus groups on the subjects, pain I endured to bring you this update on the state of play in the field of alternative fuels.
I really wanted to know where we are headed and how fast and what could trip us up along the way, now I am no expert in this field and I would greatly appreciate any input you, my readers, can provide that covers anything I missed this time through.
The Technologies
Bio-Fuels or more correctly termed Agro-Fuels ( fuels from agriculture inputs ) has been the subject of tons of talk regarding food supply and the like but I want to stay away from that dead horse, we have beaten it enough, lets instead talk about ethanol and its advancement into second generation production that does not use the consumable portion of the plant, what they call agricultural waste. This is termed Cellulosic Ethanol. When I first heard this I said to myself, "I am pretty sure that we use that portion of the plants already and it is pretty darn important" ( I even used my Northern Alberta farmer voice ).
Blink. Blink. Ok I see some of you went blank on me.
There is a slight omission in the agro-fuel industry propaganda, and it is a simple fact of agriculture all over the world and that is farmers use the left over plant material to recondition the soil. Perhaps you have heard of the term composting? In field based agriculture the left over bio-mass is tilled into the soil each year to help replace nutrients lost during the growing season. If we started collecting up this mass for fuel we would deplete the soil and make it completely unproductive. Farming 101, preservation of the agricultural land base for sustainable production. This alone is reason enough to abandon this line of research.
This is one of those pesky little annoyances that we less-than-green people think about while others rush forward under the Agro-Fuels 2.0 banner waving corn and wheat stalks.
Food waste (trash) and solid human waste to fuel, this one is interesting and I will actually say I see potential here mainly because it takes care of a real problem caused by society and ties into my feeling that waste disposal should be central point and involve all forms of recycling and reclamation. This one I will watch with special interest because I love the idea of food waste and human feces becoming fuel.
Next up is the great algae debate, while algae seems to have promise it also appears to be having some problems getting implemented commercially. I must admit this one has me scratching my head because I cannot find any real reliable data regarding this beside speculative literature regarding yields and such ( If you got it post it ), so I have no real hard data that I can use to understand the production variables. So I will stay away from commenting on it's viability until I can actually come up with some. I just wanted to mention it so I did not get accused of being ill-informed.
U.S.E. Theory
Some ask me how I come up with all these negative cannot do positions on new technologies, let me start first with this, nothing being promoted currently is a new technology. Ethanol is not some new wonder fuel. Government mandated ethanol content is new, the product has been viable for some time but the price of production at the old deflated food prices was not competitive. Strangely going forward it will still be uncompetitive, just even more so as input costs rise, but you can watch your tax dollars at work by visiting any one the plants popping up across the planet. Sorry, back to how I determine the problems associated with certain types of energy and GHG reduction strategies, it is really simple, I call it my Unintentional Side Effect or for short my USE theory. I simply look at the solution using a macro vision of the interdependencies inside the economic and resource framework we currently have and look for the dominoes that have fallen over, then trace the effect. Sometimes it is hard dealing with the information available as many people take what I like to call the Christmas tree approach when promoting or reporting on a solution or strategy( positioning the tree with the best side showing and all the imperfections and unsightly parts around the back where nobody will see them ) . I simply start the process by looking behind the tree.
How do I know when to apply my theory? I simply wait for a group who is loudly yelling "USE THIS". Then I do.