A long time ago I called for beta testers for a new service that we are rolling out here at The Sietch. Andy over at greenspree was brave enough to give it a try. He is in the process of building his own straw bale home this summer, a process he has decided to document at his new My Sietch blogging space. Below is an Article I thought was very interesting. Do you want to sign up for your own blog? If you want to get your own fully functional blog, with full control over what you post and when you post it click here. We are still in beta so there might be a couple of bugs, but you can help squash them! If you write something really cool I will feature it on the main site and the regular readers of The Sietch can take a look.
Why I oppose ethanol technology by Greenspree at My Sietch
Ethanol is a red herring, it can reduce net CO2 emissions but will also require huge amounts of resources to grow, distill and distribute. In order for ethanol to replace gasoline all cars would need to be retooled to be able to run on 100% ethanol (the most currently available pump varieties are a blend with mostly gasoline; E10 or E15) plus to supply the world with enough ethanol to run all internal combustion engines could require more or most of the arable land that is currently available, leaving little or none for food production.
The real emphasis should be on changing how society consumes energy, making our processes more efficient and sustainable and harnessing the free and mostly unused energy the sun throws at us constantly. In fact the real crux of the matter is we need to reinvent the way we travel and move things. We need to reduce the number of vehicles and make the ones we use more efficient. Whether this means switching to biodiesel or hydrogen fuel cells, electricity, etc… the most important step is to go on a car diet. Personal transportation should be reduced to next to nothing. Trying to force technology to catch up with our consumption is a battle we have been steadily losing ground on for the last century and it shows.
Biodiesel and ethanol blends made from waste products are viable but cannot be produced in nearly enough quantities to satisfy our energy needs. In other words they should be employed as a stop gap measure but shouldn’t be viewed as a solution to environmental concerns.
Take Canada as an example. We need about 35 billion liters of gas a year to fuel our vehicles. If we switched to an all ethanol technology (which does not exist yet, only ethanol blends are commercially viable) we would need about 80-90 million tonnes of grain to produce enough fuel. Currently out total grain production is at about 50 million tonnes, where does the rest come from?
When I calculate how many liters of gasoline we use in the world per year I come up with 3.23 trillion. Ethanol from sugar beets (a good candidate that can be grown in many climates) has been reported to produce 150 million liters a year from 20 thousand acres or 7500L/acre. To replace our oil consumption we’d need 431 million acres of land. That’s 21% percent of the earth’s estimated arable land… E85 has anywheres from 25-30% less MPG than gasoline in similar cars. So make that 27%. This represents a huge amount of land that currently provides food, forest areas, etc… even 5% would be a huge amount, factor in crop rotation required to keep the land arable and you can easily double or triple that amount.
Just because it’s not a fossil fuel doesn’t make it the best choice. Sure it’s better than gas or diesel but is it the worthwhile alternative? When you factor in all the costs and impacts is it really practical? Is using 27% (or possibly much more) of the earth’s arable surface for growing fuel crops sustainable? Sure you have lower emissions, but you are also cutting down forests to plant the crops you need to produce it and therefore reducing the earth’s ability to absorb carbon. So are you any further ahead?
This argument can be further bolstered by calculating the planting, harvesting, fertilizing and refining impacts as well. I have not had the time to look into it, and may never do so as from a land usage standpoint ethanol is proven unrealistic already.
People scoff at the notion that the world needs to completely change the way it does things. “Impossible†they say, “Too drastic†they caution. Nonsense! The industrial revolution changed the way the world worked/lived/consumed virtually overnight (relatively speaking), there soon needs to be another revolution to deal with the problems this has caused.
Energy for transportation is only one place needing addressing,i.e. energy for lighting.
It may not sound like much but (anyone verify this) over half of our energy consumption goes towards lighting,coal fired power plants produce electricity to not only charge electric cars but to power lights,lights of all sorts, from in door house lighting to outdoor neon signs etc. The medium ,perhaps long term solution is the LED, yes the Light Emitting Diode. The LED comes about as close to the perfect light source as physics allows, except for cost, that’s it. Instead of the Govt forcing us to stop using incandescent light bulbs and replacing them with those silly toxic mercury ladened florescent they should of focused their (our tax $) resources into LED research to bring the costs down to affordable level,heck the prices have already dropped an order of magnitude in the last decade, think about the next decade.
Even at current prices LED’s are competitive with traditional light sources when you factor in their extraordinarily long life and energy savings over that long life time.
The LED is also extremely compact, rugged,cool running and non toxic and now cover the entire spectrum from IR to UV and have revolutionized the laser which has its own awesome benefits to humanity from medicine to astronomy to traffic/vehicle lighting to entertainment (the DVD,light shows,etc.). Bottom line – We could virtually over night cut our energy consumption in half by replacing traditional lighting with LED’s. When it comes to light, The LED does it all better than any other light source.