Glad to see it. I have become convinced that biodiesel with added alcohol is absolutely the way to go.

In time the market forces will prove it.

We don't NEED any other fuel.

"We don't NEED any other fuel."

But for the fact that enough farmland does not exist to produce enough biodiesel and ethanol to feed the world's people and run the world's cars.

Bringing marginal lands into production for hardy fuel-only crops (switchgrass, jatropha) is a possible partial solution, but has its own potential drawbacks (loss of wilderness habitat). Bringing the sea into cultivation is also a possibility (algae), but a pretty embryonic idea, not to mention the potential impacts on that environment that would have to be controller. Solar and wind to electricity have promise, but how do you run a vehicle off that? Batteries, hydrogen and ultracaps all have their ups and downs. Electricity and hydrogen from nuclear plants can also be produced in large quantities, but there are significant public oppositing and long-term waste issues with that.

Conservation is also key, but not a cure all. The United States could converge on several European characteristics (size and efficiency of cars, availability and utilization rate of public transit, general walkability of neighborhoods), but even if we overcame some significant cultural barriers and got close, we'd still be burning more fuel than we could grow, at present rates.

Faced with large and systemic problems that stem from the very lifestyle that our country has collectively adopted over the past 55 years, I think it is simply wrong to say that any one technology is all that we need to fix things up.

"But for the fact that enough farmland does not exist to produce enough biodiesel and ethanol to feed the world's people and run the world's cars."

Not if you do it on farmland, growing corn, switchgrass or (insert your favorite energy crop here). The answer I believe is to use algae.
"...we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles".
- http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Algae can also be grown at sea, in fact that is exactly what is happening in the "dead zone" in the gulf of Mexico. Perhaps we can start by harvesting the dead zone, taking a load of Mother Nature and recycling all the nutrients that caused the problem in the first place. Fuel as a nice byproduct, to pay for the clean-up.

Since the dead zone is as large as 7,728 square miles (see http://www.smm.org/deadzone/what/yearly12-8.html) the dead zone is in theory capable of producing just over 50% of all US transportation fuel!

Of course, biodiesel has some problems, as they recently found out in Minnesota. Perhaps a better solution would be to convert the algal biomass to hydrocarbons (i.e. identical to fossil petroleum fuels) via gasification/Fischer-Tropsch or TDP.

I love algae. It's really my favorite technology. Motor Trend had an article about algal biodiesel in March, I think. GreenFuel Tech keeps attracting investors. And their algae can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel at the same time.

Biodiesel is accelerating with just the energy crops we already have. An 80-million gallon refinery broke ground in Indiana, 85 million in South Dakota, and 96 million in Oregon. The latter two will use canola, which has a better oil yield. The first two will start production by the end of next year.

This can't go fast enough for me.

On your last point:

> Would you exchange fossil oil dependency from
> Muslim Saudia to palm oil dependency from Muslim
> Indonesia?

This is false logic. The choice, even if we ignore genetic or other improvements to "domestic" fuel crops, is between:

- Dependency on Muslim/unstable Persian Gulf

and

- "Dependency" on Persial Gulf *or* Indonesia *or* Brasil *or* some African producer *or* ... i.e. less of a seller's market.

Many (most?) proponents of biofuel in the US deliberately confuse the security aspect of not enriching feudal societies with old-fashioned agrarian electioneering/protectionism.

"2) Cultivation of biodiesel crops requires amount of energy close to found in final product. Most of the energy comes from combustion of natural gas and coal to produce fertilizers and lime.
3) Tilling of farmland exposes organic-rich internal soil layers to air and promotes it oxidation with massive CO2 generation. Even worse is tilling-in remaining organic wastes: it generated anaerobic CH4, which is 20 times more powerful GHG then CO2.
4) Massive cultivation of energy crops will result in severe damage to ecosystems due to use of pesticides, land requisition, etc. Do not forget, then agriculture is by far the most intrusive into natural ecosystems side of human civilization."
Not so fast, Audrey!

There are ways around these concerns:
1. You can grow algae in wastewater (aka sewage). This ensures free fertilizer, and has the nice byproduct of cleaning the water. After processing the algae, most of the nutrients remain in the byproduct, ready for recycling. So, in fact, you can reduce the amount of oil used for fertilizer production.
2. As I suggested above, one can harvest the dead spot in the Gulf of Mexico, again recovering nutrients as a byproduct and further reducing the amount of oil needed for fertilizer production.
3. No pesticides required, you'll be glad to learn.

"6) Native biodisel crops are by far inferior compare to palm oil grown oversea. Would you exchange fossil oil dependency from Muslim Saudia to palm oil dependency from Muslim Indonesia?"
Let's rephrase that for clarity:
"Would you rather allow Muslim Saudi Arabia to maintain its position of power or would you rather play them off against another country, even if it is Muslim Indonesia?"

here is a real solution...

see link for new ethanol feedstock from algae...

it uses CO2 to grow...

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-10-algae-powerplants_x.htm

http://www.veridium.com/news.php?id=29

Who let that optimist in here?

Nice blog and comments...

Rather than trying to make biodiesel from feedstock such as soy and palm oil which have other uses and have yields which are woefully low in the context of fuel requirements, I think the way to go is biodiesel from algae...recent research suggests that yield from algae could be over 200 times that from soy!

I found some more inputs on biodiesel from algae @ Oilgae.com

Hope this helps

Ec @ eIT