Addicted to Oil
30 years ago, Brazil imported 80% of its oil. With a strong sense of purpose, Brazil invested heavily in bio-fuel technology and refocused its transportation energy towards a resource Brazil could manufacture internally—sugar based ethanol. Today, Brazil uses flexible fuel vehicles that can run on gas, ethanol, or any combination of the two. It still has a mandate to be 100% independent of oil in 2011.
Yes, Brazil still drills for oil, and they still use it - plenty of it. But at least they've had a plan for upwards of 30 years now. We have virtually none by comparison.
If the President had some guts and some vision (like Kennedy did when he said we'd put a man on the moon in the next 10 years) and said "We're getting off oil by 2021", could we do it? Of course we could. It would create huge numbers of jobs, and it would deny billions in revenue to foreign producers many of whom DO NOT LIKE AMERICANS. But, there's no vision, and no guts. And it is not likely we’ll see any of either in this term of office.
Obama's campaign rhetoric has promised us all kinds of wonderful things - however did we manage to get through the first 250 years without Barack Obama to beat some progress out of the terrible corporations that have been holding us back? Hold our “Boot to the neck” of BP? Come on, people. The President is “furious” about the Gulf Oil Spill? Give me a break.
The United States has ethanol (#1 producer in the world) and natural gas (#6 in natural gas reserves), so transitioning to another fuel is not some mythic task beyond our abilities. It is only the oil companies that want to hold us back. If we issue the challenge, set ourselves to the task, and focus our American ingenuity and commitment, there is no reason we cannot make rapid strides that will create jobs in our country and stop sending our cash to the Middle East. Unlike putting men on the moon, this is not rocket science for us, either. It simply takes some resolve, a plan, and some guts. We already possess ample technology to get off of oil.
There's a lot of talk about imposing tariffs on imported ethanol from Brazil. The only thing we should be importing from Brazil is their resolve to become energy independent. Domestic ethanol is cheaper than imported ethanol, and it is far cheaper than gasoline refined from imported oil. The truth is that we have to end our reliance on foreign energy – period. Domestic ethanol helps create U.S. jobs, and helps the U.S. economy, and strengthens our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign energy.
The problem here is that we are simply - ADDICTED TO OIL. And like any addict – whatever the drug – if it remains available, there’s no incentive to go through the pain of withdrawal. Only leaders with exceptional vision, drive and sheer balls can do what President Kennedy did. Unfortunately, none of these qualities seem to be present here now.
Good idea, and I'm with you on ditching foreign energy dependence as much as we can. But we do have to remember that changing a few variables to affect one algorithm changes equations for other algorithms if those variables are shared.
ReplyDeleteWhat do I mean? Ethanol is cheap because corn and wheat are subsidized here in the U.S. by guess who? You and me the tax payer. Also, world food inventories are low from what I understand, and changing the bread basket of the world into a giant gas tank might have unintended consequences on global and domestic food prices.
Not saying using Ethanol, or another energy source, isn't a great idea. I know their are high tech companies in Ann Arbor working on converting restaurant grease into fuel. Just a reminder that as we set goals (God help us, we aren't starting five year plans are we?) we need to look at systems in as a whole, and the ramifications of changing the way we do things in one area how it will change things in all areas.
Sometimes though I take a bit of exception to the 'addicted to oil' statement.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am not addicted to it. Now, I might be 'dependent' on it -- but mainly because I lack the resources needed to create my own energy, or the manufacturing capability to make my own things while also being able to work my day to day job.
If my car ran on cotton candy, or my house was powered by wizards shooting stars: as long as I had something close to parity with my current situation, I personally wouldn't care.
Much like making everything out of plastics and all: especially in the case of packaging -- it becomes pressure from marketing folks to want to 'stand out on the shelf'. Smaller packaging, or packaging made out of bamboo, paper, hemp, or whatever: I simply wouldn't care that it wasn't made from a petroleum based source.
I wholeheartedly agree with your article Peter: there's no reason other than 'greed' for us to continue to use the amount of oil we do. Or to rely on others to provide us our energy. The means is there, the intelligence to use those means is there -- it just needs a plan of activation, and, like you said, some guts.
@Infocyde,
ReplyDeleteEthanol can be made from switchgrass much more cheaply than from corn, and its a better grade of ethanol. Subsidies can be a hindrance, but that's not the main issue. We have to have a plan to get off oil, and we don't have one.
Wow, I almost done know where to begin:
ReplyDelete1. Ethanol in ANY form is a break even fuel at best. It takes more diesel to create the same amount of energy then it produces. Thus it isn't sustainable in any form.
2. The market will decide when oil should be removed from the market and we have a mechanism for deciding when that is: It's called price. The solution isn't to start a holly war on oil, but rather to stop subsidizing it (and everything else) and let the best energy source win.
3. As for other energy sources: The fundamental flaw in almost all proposals to date is a simple one: They all require we go from highly dense energy sources to less dense energy sources (some laughably so in the case of wind and solar).
Hydro power uses gravity and the power of the weather to move water to the top of mountains and then the weight is used to generate power. This is a global power source that requires huge amounts of refined solar and other energy working together. It is about as dense an energy as coal or oil.
Coal and oil are produced by millions of years of compression and rot on organic materials. It's basically a fermentation process. It takes the power of the sun, the wind and everything else very similarly to hydro power to produce and takes a long time of the entire earth doing it.
Solar and wind are small components over a short period of time doing the same. Thus to produce as much power as the US uses using solar and wind, you'd have to cover the entire US and in the process you'd kill essentially every bird on the continent.
Hydrogen is many times less dense than oil/gas and requires you to break hydrogen out of water, which again is a net-loss system.
Biofuels, while effective, release temporarily trapped carbon from trees into the atmosphere. It's true that it doesn't add more than is already available in the ecosystem, but when you're theoretically trying to cut carbon emissions, this isn't doing it because the carbon from the trees would otherwise be sequestered in a dump or underground not released into the atmosphere. And it's a little less dense than oil/gas.
Nuclear power and other energy sources such as nuclear that rely on the power of the atom, are the only more dense sources that we know of compared to our current sources of energy, and because of the EPA they are ridiculously expensive for no good reason. (and we had 30 years of no development in that front because of the EPA too)
And then there are the government subsidies for all of these that skew the market and make it impossible for investors to make intelligent decisions.
The solution of course is to remove the subsidies and let the market solve the problem. Of course we likely ended up on the moon before the end of the 60s, however the resulting government monopoly on space travel including NASA actively undercutting private firms to keep them out of space by flying at a loss has resulted in a complete stagnation of the science and accessibility of space to the point where the US won't even be able to have an astronaut in space in 2 years if it wasn't for private space tourists.
The government is an abject failure at all of this stuff. Always has been always will be because of the nature of government.
The solution is to get the government out of it and allow competition to win. When oil becomes too expensive or more expensive that alternatives, guess what? It will go away, just like whale blubber did a 120 years ago.
Until then, there's nothing wrong with using Oil other than our government again interferes in the affairs of other nations for no good reason instead of allowing commerce to rule.
"Ethanol can be made from switchgrass much more cheaply than from corn, and its a better grade of ethanol. Subsidies can be a hindrance, but that's not the main issue. We have to have a plan to get off oil, and we don't have one."
ReplyDeleteFirst to do so would result in the entire midwest being planted with switchgrass. Even with the subsidies on corn Ethanol that Bush II put in, the result was horrible on our food costs and polluted more. The same will be true here best case.
Second why do we have to have an energy policy? The government's job isn't to tell business what to produce, it's the government's job to ensure that producers are protected from violence while working under voluntary contracts with others. Nothing more. The government is horrible at it, and requires force at the barrel of a gun to accomplish anything in the form of making things illegal etc.
@John,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Libertarian treatise. Actually, cellulosic ethanol production is very competitive now with gasoline.
A paper published in Science by Berkeley has calculated a Net Energy Value (Output energy – Input energy) for corn ethanol of 4.5 MJ/Liter and for cellulosic ethanol a Net Energy Value of 22.8 MJ/L. This compares quite favorably with the cost of refining oil into gasoline.
But again, all this still misses the point- that we're addicted to oil. I'ts not just a market thing (and I agree with you on that) - it's a geopolitical one. And right now, until we "get off oil" we're on the losing end.
We are no more addicted to oil than we're addicted to food. It's ridiculous to call the use of a natural resource an addiction unless you believe that our use of energy, which one of two transforming discoveries of the 1800s that significantly increased our standard of living and raised us out of the muck, is somehow evil.
ReplyDeleteOur minds and our ideas and our use of natural resources is not only not evil, it is what makes us human and better than animals. Oil happens to be the most efficient and effective provider of energy right along with Coal thus intelligent human beings don't waste time with inefficient systems. And that's a VERY GOOD THING.
And while you're statements about cellulosic ethanol are correct as far as they go, you forget to factor in the density equation. All land that you dedicate to production of energy is taken away from food. And the amount of land required to produce the same amount of energy, even cellulosic ethanol compared to that used for oil is staggering.
The end result is that even if a significant amount of oil was replaced with it, food prices would at least double if not triple. And the result would make us poor, and worse, starve 3rd world nations in the process.
End result, your suggestions result in death.
Again, the only viable long term, non-government funded (this part is important given that the Federal government is essentially bankrupt) energy sources that will take over from oil and coal are higher density ones. At this time, there are only two known: Fission and Fusion.
Since we cannot (yet, it may happen this summer with a new ultra-powerful laser) break even with Fusion, we're left with Fission at this time.
It's time for the unconstitutional EPA (created illegally with a Presidental Order) to get out of the way and allow businesses to really start to do research in this area again. Then of course you'll say that we're addicted to nuclear (in whatever form) but in actuality it will just be humanity's natural and good predilection for working as efficiently as is possible... that is unless you work in a union in which case that's a strict no-no that will get you threatened and your family attacked.
Again, government cannot and will not solve this. They're in the way and making things way worse (i.e. BP doesn't have to pay for the full cost of the oil spill because the government shields them from liability > $75 million!) by interfering in the market.
Command societies fail because governments cannot know better than individuals how to allocate resources. The crash of 2008-??? is a perfect example of government interfering in the housing market in this way and created a disaster as a result. When are we going to learn?
Ethannol? Really? Ethanol is about the least efficient bio-alternative there can be unless it's heavily gov't subsidized (as it is here and in Brazil). The only reason its in use at all is because the cost of production isn't factored into the market economics of ehtanol production. It certainly won't get us off oil since its Return on Energy is miniscule.
ReplyDeleteOff oil, sure, great idea. Not an easy task as you make it out to be. The technology to down and out REPLACE the versatility of oil does not exist today. Minimizing before anything means downsizing our way of life and especially the motor vehicle excess in this country and the military which is the biggest consumer of oil in the world.
I don't see either of these happening anytime soon either politically or individually.
@Rick
ReplyDeleteI respect your judgement but where do you get your figures that ethanol production is so inefficient?
Brazil (for example) currently produces enough ethanol domestically to power every car, truck and bus in their country.
Why would they bother to do this if it is so expensive?
We do not need to "downsize" our lifestyle at all -- as long as we have a plan for phased-in replacement of fossil fuels for natural fuels. Ethanol production is only one facet of a plan for energy independence. Since I know you fairly well, I'm kind of surprised at the content of your comment.