@fred schumacher

Do you see a diesel price level that will force air and truck transport to yield to electrified high speed rail?

fred and axil:

Most (if not all) long range ground transport can/could easily be done with electrified railroads. Local trailer pick-up and delivery could be done with electrified trucks/tracters.

Containers can easily go directly from ships to electrified railroads and by electrified trucks from railroads to final destinations.

Not a single drop of diesel (or ICE machines) may eventually be required to move goods from A to Z. It is a matter of organization and transition from ICE to electric transport vehicles.

Airplanes and ships represent a real challenge with todays's technologies. Limited liquid fuels production could be reserved for them.

Algae need water and by definition desert is a place without water.

Algae can also be grown in CLOSED bioreactors in desert areas:
http://www.variconaqua.com/bioreactors.htm
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/chemtech/97/jul/ind.html
Or what about closed don't you understand?

The best use for desert under current technology is solar thermal plants, but without a good electric storage device, solar thermal is not applicable to transportation.

1. Solar thermal energy is actually stored in molten salt tanks http://www.solarmillenium.com/
2. Weather in deserts is extremely predictable
3. HVDC works
4. Hydro storage works
5. Algae oil can also be used to power flexible, low cost, distributed heat and power plants.
6. Algae waste produces Methane, which can also be used to power flexible, low cost, distributed heat and power plants.
7. Electricity consumption during day time is significantly higher than at night
8. More trains also run on electricity during day time

Many people mix motor fuel with electric production: mixing apples and oranges in the context of this tread.
Electricity can be used to heat coffee as well as power trains or cars. This is an undeniable fact. If you can't stand it, stop using your computer - it also runs on electricity.

The hoover dam has a storage capacity of 35.2*10^9 kg of water.

With a dam height of 221m, that's
21.2 * 10^9 kWh or 21.2 * 10^6 MWh of energy

At least 10'000 2 MW Windturbines need to run for over 1000 hours to generate the same amount of energy.

Theoretically, the dam could stop its turbines when a surplus of wind power is generated and the same could be done with distributed heat and power plants, but this wouldn't be fair to the large power plant operators who claim that renewable electricity cannot be stored.

"If the land is out here, we might as well use it, and growing biomass is a lot *cheaper* than covering it with solar farms."

There's no reason you can't do both. Solar arrays need strong direct sunlight to keep operating at their most efficient. So they have to be spaced to avoid shading. Plants don't have this problem, in fact plants evolved in competition with other plants so they have to be able to grow while being shaded. Almost any plant can grow with only 10% direct lighting so they could grow quite well around the spaced solar arrays.

For the same reason plants could also grow under the arrays because these arrays have to move to keep pointing at the sun, and when they move their shadows move too.

Same thing with wind farms. Wind turbines have to be spaced so each gets clear air. This leaves 98% of the land of a wind farm free for other uses.

So they have to be spaced to avoid shading.

Actually, that depends on how you arrange them:
http://www.solar-islands.com/
http://www.ausra.com/technology/

With the 'fresnel-approach' you don't necessarily need to space them apart.

Price of diesel is not the only consideration for conversion of freight travel to electrified rail, and it may not be the most important one.

A major impediment to railroads converting to full electric operation is that the installation of wires would be considered a land improvement and be subject to property tax, whereas the cost of diesel is simply a cost of operation and is deductible.

The present rail network is most efficient at moving bulk cargo, preferably in unit trains, long distances at slow speeds in long trains. This is not a good system for the kinds of time-critical, high value cargo hauled by over-the-road trucks.

What is needed is a melding of the tractive efficiency of rail with the flexibility of trucks. This can't be done with the present system of privately owned rail right of way and trackage. Rail is highly concentrated -- there are only seven Class A railroads in the U.S. and Canada -- whereas trucking is highly distributive.

If trackage were federalized and became publicly owned essential infrastructure maintained through user fees and general fund taxes, then trackage could be greatly increased and improved, multiple users could operate on the same trackage as happens now on our road system, and rail could have three modes of operation: 1) slow speed, long train bulk cargo; 2) high speed, short train priority cargo and rural passenger travel; 3) very high speed passenger service connecting metropolitan areas. There is no reason trucking companies couldn't operate high speed rail freight service or airlines operate passenger service.

Trucks would retain their distributive functions, which, except for extremely short, high density urban routes, would continue to require the use of diesel fuel or something similar. That's where biofuel comes in. Producing enough biofuel to equal 10% of today's liquid fuel use would probably do the essential job, if private passenger vehicles were primarily electric.

It's irrelevant to use today's liquid fuel use as a standard for projection into the future. No matter what happens, the quantity of energy-dense, portable fuel we have grown accustomed to was a temporary aberration and will not be replicated in the future.

@Joseph:

"How come this flies in the face of everything I have ever been told, read, led to believe and therefore think?"

Unfortunately there is a severe need for some [people] to control what and how you think. It's a disease of condescension. The Science is available however:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/282/5388/442

The real reason we don't like biofuels is it would transfer equity in the global economy to tiny, little third world countries. If they get the idea that they can grow energy crops for food and fuel, install wind turbines around those fields, convert biomass and waste to electricity - AND preserve habitat for wildlife and natural beauty - it will be a disaster to G8 ego.

And let's get clear once and for all that no one believes the ICE has more than a 30-40 year window IF that - so biofuel is transitional only. Unless the planet becomes far more alcoholic than it already is.

@fred schumacher

You told me something I did not know.

Reference:
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm

Excerpt:
Twenty BTUs of diesel fuel for one BTU of electricity is the energy trade by shifting from heavy trucks to electrified railroads. Replacing 2 million barrels/day of heavy truck diesel fuel will take just 1.4% of US electricity.

Railroad electrification is a priority response to peak oil / global warming.

I seldom write about details but the statement that 10,000 two megawatt wind towers are needed to match Hoover Dam is incorrect.

Wikipedia says the maximum output of Hoover is just over 2,000 megawatts. 1,000 towers would match that.

Still a lot of towers.

Those interested will see that the earlier post (2:33pm) compared the power of the water behind Hoover (if totally full) to that from the wind towers. It should have compared Hoover generators to wind tower generators.

Quick check:

My home draws about 5000 watts with the AC running. 2,000 megawatts should power .4 mega homes.

A peak capacity for Hoover of 400,000 homes in the summer seems reasonable.

@ibo
Algae can also be grown in CLOSED bioreactors in desert
areas:

Or what about closed don't you understand?

Where does the CO2 fed into the tubes come from?
If you say from a co-located fossil fuel power plant, that is not good.

Electricity can be used to heat coffee as well as power trains or cars.

This is an undeniable fact. If you can't stand it….

For energy storage, batteries are not yet comparable to fossil fuel. They are marginally acceptable in passenger car hybrids which include a fossil fuel range extender. The affordable all electric car is not here yet.

Axil wrote:

"How do you answer the critics in that biomass is limited and unreliable?"

To address the question of limited applicability:
In the “Billion Ton Report” the DOE estimates that 1 billion tons of biomass are needed annually in order to produce enough biofuels to displace 30% of our current petroleum consumption. They estimate that the US can feasibly produce ~1.3 billion tons of biomass annually by 2030.

To address the question of reliability:
Clearly biofuels are dependent on weather (not unlike wind and solar) which certainly is undesirable. However, even oil supplies can be disrupted by weather (as evidenced by hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of years ago) not to mention political instability.

@paul
Reference:
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011459862

Excerpt:

Corn Acres Will Decline Due To Midwest Flooding, USDA Projects.....

The number of corn crops harvested is projected to go down by almost 9 percent to 78.9 million, compared to 78.9 million acres in 2007.

A 9% drop is a big lose to last one whole year.

Do you think weather is something to worry about?

Those interested will see that the earlier post (2:33pm) compared the power of the water behind Hoover (if totally full) to that from the wind towers. It should have compared Hoover generators to wind tower generators.

As far as storage of electricity is concerned the capacity of the dam is important and not the maximum power of the hydro dam.

It's easy to increase the power of a hydro dam or to add additional pumps to indirectly store wind-energy. It's not easy to increase its capacity.

But if you prefer: Instead of running 10,000 wind-turbines for 1000 hours you can run 1000 wind-turbines for 10,000 hours (strong wind conditions - that is).

Coalman: I think you have the decimal point off. The dam is matched by 1,000 towers not 10,000.

It is no easier to increase the generators at a dam than to build more wind towers.

Or maybe I have the decimal off. Open minded about it.

Wind turbines are rated for maximum power output. Actual annual power output as a ratio of maximum output is called "Capacity Factor." European on-land wind turbines tend to operate at a capacity factor of 25 to 35%. Turbines on the North American Great Plains operate at around 40% capacity factor. Capacity factor is a coefficient of wind speed variability.

Stanford University published a wind power reliability study based on large area turbine interconnectivity. The study showed a smoothing of power output and increase in reliability with interconnection. The study is available online at http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf

Windpower is baseload power, the same as coal fired or nuclear power. On the Great Plains, windpower is a very reliable source of baseload power and is now the cheapest form of new electrical power production. Great Plains windpower has less intermittancy than solar power.

The problem with windpower is not with putting up turbines, themselves (there is a long list of projects waiting for authorization), but building collector electrical transmission lines to service the towers. This will require a paradigm shift in how we manage electrical power.

If the DOE study on biomass production is a reliable predictor of future possibility, then we would be in very good shape for a post-oil world, assuming of course total energy demand reduction due to greatly increased efficiency and portable fuel demand reduction, in particular, from conversion, where possible, to electrical power.

Question to someone:

How many acres of switchgrass could be grown along side the road on interstates? The various state DOTs pay millions to mow these right-of-ways which are basically tall weeds.. Couldn't they just plant a strip of switchgrass? The increase in cost of mowing and bagging instead of just mowing is very small.

Guys,
As for fuel versus batteries for transportation controversy:
We all know that hydrocarbons have a high energy density i.e. a lot of energy per mass unit is evolved when they are oxidized which can be conveniently converted to mechanical energy via the ICE. So do derivatives of other electron rich 2nd row periodical table elements such as boron, nitrogen, and possibly sulfur (3rd row). This is basically because in these redox reactions the electrons are hopping between levels that are close to the nucleus and respectively they have very different energies. That is, when such a transition takes place a lot of energy is evolved. If we take elements from lower rows, the electrons involved in redox reactions are already in the outer levels, and only comparatively small amount of energy is evolved when they change these levels. Think lead acid battery.
Thus, if we are ever going to make a battery that has an energy density in the same order of magnitude as hydrocarbons we want to base this battery on 1st and 2nd row electron rich elements, i.e. hydrogen, lithium, boron, carbon.
Hydrogen battery is the fuel cell - it sucks big time!
Carbon battery - direct carbon fuel cell - not possible for practical reasons - carbon not soluble!
Boron battery - never heard of this!
Lithium battery - our only hope, but looking on the current models, disappointing energy density.
So, hydrocarbons are going to stay where they are for transportation!
Anyone disapprove me!

Cars and trains don't necessarily need hydrocarbons.

Trucks and aircrafts do.

@Karol

With all the resources, money and time sent on batteries, it looks to me that a battery breakthrough is improbable: it would have happened by now. IMO, superconductivity using iron is where the future lies. The enthusiasm in the condensed matter physics community is wild with two papers a day being published. Their goal is room temperature superconductivity, but I think they are along far enough right now to meet or exceed the best battery technology out there. A 200 Tesla superconducting magnetic storage unit has the same energy storage capacity as gasoline. If I were king, I would switch resource money and time to Iron superconductors. That is where I would place my bet.

Coalman: I think you have the decimal point off. The dam is matched by 1,000 towers not 10,000.

The dam capacity can be matched by 1 or 1,000,000 wind turbines. It is only a question of the time you let the wind turbines spin to reach the same capacity.

As I said: As far as storage of electricity is concerned the capacity of the dam is important and not the maximum power of the hydro dam.

It's easy to increase the power of a hydro dam or to add additional pumps to indirectly store wind-energy. It's not easy to increase its capacity.

There's one project in the Alps (Linth-Limmern) where they add one single hydro pump/turbine to an existing hydro dam with a power of 1000 MW (that is: One pump/turbine with one motor/generator in one unit with 1000 MW).

Re: switchgrass on roadsides

For perennial grass biomass production, it is best to allow the plant to go through the full senescence process before harvest, that is, the plant translocates carbohydrate reserves into its underground root system and then goes dormant, and the above ground biomass dries down to equilibrium moisture content.

This is not what highway departments like to see happening. The University of Illinois' miscanthus and switchgrass trial plots are 6 to 12 feet tall at harvest. Roadsides can be and are hayed for animal feed. For best quality, hay should be cut at first anthesis (about 10% of the plants in flowering stage). This is not the best time for biomass harvest.

I'm a retired North Dakota native grass seed producer. Switchgrass was one of my cash crops, so I'm quite familiar with it. Switchgrass has a lot of tricks up its sleeve that have hardly been tapped into for biomass production. Remember, most plant breeding has been done with the aim of increasing dry matter digestibility and crude protein content for animal feed. For biomass, bulk cellulose production is most important, and, luckily, cellulose production is a low-fertility process.

@ Axil

Thanks for clarifying a little about the superconducting storage units! I have heard about them but never really got a chance to think about the details. Is this basically when you charge a current into a superconducting coil and it just circles there because there is no resistance? And you can charge as much as you want? Looks like a great idea; still much technical issues i.e. strong magnetic field of such a coil, necessity for low temperatures for superconducting. But the idea is great and worth working on!
In my last post I forgot Magnesium. What about Mg-based batteries? They should have potential too.

But, when I am thinking about these things, I cannot but accept that HC-based internal combustion engine (or turbine, whatever) is a pretty ingenious thing. By burning the hydrocarbon-air mix in a cylinder you basically create a high temperature and pressure CO2/H2O gas which then adiabatically expands and makes work. Then you just exhaust the cold CO2/H2O into the atmosphere - both of them are natural constituents of the atmosphere. Now you just have to take them out and make hydrocarbons back from them so you can repeat the circle.
One way to do this is let the energy of the sun via the photosynthesis convert CO2 to biomass C and make HC out of biomass with simple gasification - FT hydrocarbon synthesis.

Interesting study.

Brazil's 120 million hectares of abandoned pasture land can supply approximately 20 million barrels of oil equivalent energy per day.

Replicate the example in South-Central Africa (another 20 million boe), and we have already approximately half of all oil.

I think I trust the projections made by the Copernicus Institute more.

These projections show we can produce 1500 Exajoules of bioenergy by 2050, after meeting all food, fiber, fodder and forest product needs of populations, and without deforestation and while keeping large tracts of land as conservation areas (10%).

Of course, the Stanford study is static in nature (it looks at the current situation), whereas the Copernicus study is dynamic and assumes improved land use in developing countries (e.g. African farmers can in principle easily triple to quadruple yields, with modest interventions).

@Sulleny,

read the actual study. It was about where the additional carbon goes.

The actual study is here

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibliography/1998/sfan9801.pdf

From me from an earlier post.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/new-system-quan.html

"This study in no way validates your claim that NAm is an overall sink of carbon. What the study is about is the quantification of where the increase in carbon produced between 1988-1992 went to. Whether it was terrestrial or oceanic sinks and where. It did not imply in any form that NAm is an overall negative sink for the total amounts it produces. It did not talk about how much of a carbon sink NAm is. It did not talk about what the overall CO2 production was or it's sources.

Between 1990 and 2006, the US increased the CO2 output from 6146.7 to 7075.8 with a high of 7181.4 million metric tonnes in 2005. Looking at the NAm temperate uptake of 1.2 Pg from the stanford study (and saying that the sinks remained approximately the same)and the US increase of about 1 Pg reduces the uptake of NAm to within the variance where the uptake could easily be wiped out.

Some things to take into account would be increased CO2 fertilization (which would increase takeup) but also the fact that the figure is for NAm temperate uptake which would include large parts of Canada and parts of Mexico (which skews the numbers by increasing the area that is taking up CO2).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

No one is saying that NAm isn't a sink of carbon. There are many sinks. Worldwide CO2 levels show definite yearly cycles as the season change. That carbon is being taken out is not in question, but the overall trend is upwards and with the US generating around 20% of the CO2, it is almost certainly not an overall sink. The upward CO2 trend has lasted far longer than the industrialization of India and China has been occuring. It is also of note that this study you are basing you presesnt view of NAm and the US in particular is a decade old. It's validity as a foundation for your arguement of present day conditions is therefore suspect even if the interpretation was correct, which I don't believe it was."

If there is a post about N-Am being a carbon sink, I know it's stan posting again. It's one of his favourite things. :(

As for this study. The land is marginal and unused for a reason. The use of this land would probably result in initial success but long term degradation just like the agricultural output from the Chinese cultural revolution when they tried to farm as much land as possible. Not smart at all.

As for the intermediacy problem. Pump storage facilities of 19.5 GW exist in the US in 2000 providing load leveling and peak production. Although the most economic locations are probably already exploited other similar ideas do exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage