GOP bill would repeal federal ethanol mandate
A new Republican bill introduced Tuesday would completely repeal the federal mandate to blend ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply.
Archive for month: June, 2015
The retreat of ‘peak oil’
Oil’s dramatic price changes seem baffling. In mid-2014, crude prices averaged around $100 a barrel; now, they’re gyrating between $50 and $60. Over the same period, U.S. gasoline prices have dipped from more than $3.50 a gallon to around $2.50. With the world economy slowly recovering, why have prices collapsed?
Lawmaker discusses far-reaching California climate bill
Sen. Kevin de Leon, president pro tem of the California state Senate, is not only confident a climate-change bill will pass the Legislature and be signed into law. He fully expects the rest of the nation to follow California’s lead.
“Leadership does matter. That’s why we will not wait,” de Leon said last week during an energy discussion in Sacramento.
The lawmaker went on:
“We have never waited for Washington, D.C. To be honest with you, while Washington, D.C., dithers on this issue, between members who are negative, climate-change deniers altogether when the empirical data is there … We’re not waiting for that. We’re not gonna wait for Washington, D.C. We never have; we never will. We are the state of California, and we are the leaders nationally. And they’re gonna have to follow, and they will eventually follow what is done here.”
Senate Bill 350 passed the Senate on June 3 and now goes to the Assembly. If it’s approved there and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the state will have achieved an ambitious plan that could have a huge impact on transportation and power generation in the state, and could affect the state’s economy long into the future.
The bill sets three goals to be achieved by 2030: cut petroleum use by 50 percent; increase the amount of renewables in electricity generation by 50 percent; and boost efficiency of buildings by 50 percent.
To discuss the measure, the group Diesel Technology Forum sponsored a gathering called “50/50/50 by 2030: Transportation and the California Energy Challenge. Carl Cannon, the Washington bureau chief of the website Real Clear Politics, moderated the event and interviewed de Leon.
De Leon said that if SB350 passes, it will save consumers money from “better fuel efficiencies” as well as reduce smog. “Air pollution knows no boundaries of political ideologies,” he said. The Democrat called the network of freeways in his Los Angeles district a “serpent that chokes the air out of a young child’s lungs.”
The bill was among several related to climate change passed by the Democrat-controlled Legislature. “These measures together represent the most far-reaching measures dealing with climate change, not in the history of California or the history of the country, but I would go a step further and say in the history but the world.”
De Leon said he’s looking forward to a “vigorous debate on the merits of the measure itself. … I think it’s going to be fun.” Democrats easily outnumber Republicans in both houses of the Legislature (26 out of 40 in the Senate; 52 out of 80 in the Assembly), but de Leon said that some Republicans had said to him privately that they “concurred that something must be done about this issue. Politically, that’s another issue altogether. But privately, I’ve heard on numerous occasions that ‘I agree with you, but it’s extremely difficult for us to do anything about this.’ ”
Watch the interview here:
And watch a panel discussion, with energy expert Amy Myers Jaffe and others:
Hey California … Why wait until 2030 if you want to meet energy and environment goals? Ethanol can make it happen now!
The solution doesn’t require significant engine conversion; it doesn’t require futuristic technology or not-yet-available innovation. It merely requires taking the blinders off, and the gags out of public officials’ mouths to inform the public that they should use more ethanol in their gasoline-powered vehicles, and ethanol-based bio-diesel in their diesel-powered vehicles.
Oil price fall and limits on use of crops hits biofuels industry
The past year has brought a welcome surge in investment and growth for the renewable energy industry — with one very large exception: biofuels.
The oil glut is getting even bigger
OPEC is producing one million barrels more than the official target OPEC ministers agreed to last week.
The beginning of the end for the oil age
In coming years, presuming no substantial geopolitical shocks, oil demand will struggle to keep pace with oil supply, keeping pressure on oil prices.
Airplanes may soon(ish) face EPA global warming emissions cuts, too
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a draft finding that, if finalized, would trigger federal rules to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. commercial aviation.
Audi tries synthesizing fuel
Tesla is trying to convert the world to the electric car. The Japanese are pushing hydrogen. But Audi, the German carmaker, has a different idea. It’s trying to synthesize fuel from the simplest of elements – water, carbon dioxide and solar energy.
Audi’s research facility in Dresden has produced what the company calls an e-diesel – a net-zero-carbon-footprint fuel made from carbon dioxide and water. The company announced the project to great fanfare on April 21. In May, it unveiled another advance – e-benzine, a fuel that acts just like gasoline.
The two are the latest of a suite of six fuels developed by Audi that behave just like traditional gasoline or diesel, but burn without releasing any sulfur or aromatic hydrocarbons, the stuff that produce air pollution. The fuels also can be labeled as carbon-neutral, since the carbon dioxide they’re removing from the atmosphere perfectly matches the CO2 they put back in when they burn. E-benzine currently derives its carbon from organic material – biofuels made from rapeseed, sunflower oil or corn. But Audi officials say they soon hope to switch to atmospheric carbon dioxide.
“To me, this is a historic moment,” said Marc Delcourt, CEO of Global Bioenergies, the French company that is partnering with Audi on the e-benzine project. “It is the first time that we have produced real gasoline from plants.”
The e-diesel process works like this: Audi begins by splitting water by electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. The electricity is provided by wind or solar energy, which makes it completely fossil-fuel free. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Audi filters carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The C02 is stripped down to carbon monoxide, and the CO and hydrogen are then mixed together under high pressure to produce a long-chained hydrocarbon that Audi calls “blue crude.” It has all the properties of crude oil and can be refined down to commercial fuels like e-diesel. “We’re thinking we’re bringing green-ness to a field that desperately needs green-ness,” said Rick Bockrath, vice president for chemical engineering at Global Bioenergies. “It’s basically how we’re moving away from an oil-based economy towards something that has a renewable, sustainable future to it.”
Johanna Wanka, Germany’s Minister of Education and Research, attended the ceremony at which the first batch of Audi e-diesel, five liters’ worth, was put into her official car, an Audi A8 3.0 TDI clean diesel Quattro (that’s her in the photo above). “This synthetic diesel, made using CO2, is a huge success for our sustainability research,” she said. “If we can make widespread use of CO2 as a raw material, we will make a crucial contribution to climate protection and the efficient use of resources, and put the fundamentals of the ‘green economy’ in place.”
The product has a 100 octane rating and can be used either as an additive or as a stand-alone fuel. Audi says cars run much smoother on the product because of the lack of aromatic compounds, sulfur and other impurities. It also converts to energy at 70 percent efficiency, which is much better than regular diesels.
Audi’s pilot project in Dresden is currently producing 160 liters of e-diesel per day. Obviously, that isn’t enough to shake the world. But the long-term plan is to scale up to a level that will make the product available to the public. The estimated price will be 1 to 1.5 euros per liter, which comes to about $3.75 per gallon. This would not offer any price advantage in the United States, where diesel is selling at $2.88 per gallon, but it would be competitive in Europe, where diesel currently sells for about 1.4 euros per liter.
The problem with all such inventions, of course, is whether they can scale up at a price that remains competitive. Robert Rapier, the highly respected energy analyst, is skeptical. In a lengthy piece in GreentechMedia, Rapier did a step-by-step analysis, including all the chemical reactions. He concluded that the price is going to be $3.76 per gallon, which would put it above the current price of diesel in the United States, but perhaps not in Europe. But that doesn’t include any price increases that may come with scaling up the process. In addition, several critics have wondered whether solar and wind electricity will be available on a scale capable of supporting such a commercial operation.
“To sum up, can Audi produce fuel from thin air? Sure. There is no question about technical viability,” Rapier wrote. But “The question boils down to economic viability, which appears to be challenging given what has been released about the process.”
All this doesn’t mean Audi shouldn’t continue experimenting. There’s always room for improvement, and there may be other breakthroughs down the road. A carbon tax would also benefit the process, particularly if Audi could be given credit for the carbon it takes out of the atmosphere. There is also the possibility of combining the procedure with a carbon-capture and storage operation at a fossil-fuel plant, where carbon dioxide is currently regarded as a noxious waste material.
A system that would manufacture automotive fuel out of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be like the philosopher’s stone of the transport sector. Audi should keep trying.
(Photo credit: Audi)
U.S. ousts Russia as top world oil, gas producer in BP data
The U.S. has taken Russia’s crown as the biggest oil and natural-gas producer in a demonstration of the seismic shifts in the world energy landscape emanating from America’s shale fields.
