___While the're at it, put in a floor price for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other refined products too. For gasoline and diesel, $2.00-$2.55/ga (based on the regional/local std./cost of living) should be a good start. Increase the floor price yearly at the rate of inflation plus 5%. This would, more or less, create a predictable upward tick in fuel prices, and drive consumers to make choices. Such a floor price would provide for a way to foster all forms of alternative energy and efficiency improvement technology, not just specific efforts, like the CTL's above.

___The choice to go with CTL must be tempered with a viable plan for conversion to BTL and carbon sequestation/conversion (algae or solar thermalchemical conversion).

Apart from the GHG angle I think SUV drivers will feel uncomfortable (or maybe not) with the amount of above-ground destruction going on to make CTL. In contrast oil is like drawing blood with a needle, a lot less visible. So CTL could actually create pressure to reduce liquid fuel demand.

Coal... hmmm, such a destructive process.

Maybe the solution is to drink more sake?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070511/lf_nm/japan_ethanol_dc;_ylt=AqXggRQk5PoixG7fz.nzg.Vg.3QA

This has nothing to do with ventures, it is price floors. If there were price floors for other energy commodities, perhaps there would be more investment, exploration and development.

How much has the tax payer had to pay for failure in Iraq...$500 billion..how much for the Savings and Loan mess...$500 billion..and some would complain about maybe 1/1000th as much for an investment in our future that did not quite work out?

Funny how no one likes c-t-l projects, but lets hear what you have to say when our oil imports get cut off. We need these types of projects until we find something else to run our transportation system on! Wishful thinking doesn't cut it.

Roger,

H2-Vehicles in your mind means fuel cell or ICE?

Going forward, we need price floors on all forms of fossil fuels. Alternatives of all kinds, including conservation, will be more successful if consumers and producers are assured that their investments are more likely to pay off.

Floram & Neil,
FCV and ICE-H2 can co-exist. In GM's vision, fuel cell cost may be reduced to $50/kw. Current H2 tank can store 4kg at reasonable cost, weight, and space. Major manufacturers are having working FCV/FC-PHEV prototypes. But they don't have working BEV prototypes anymore, as these have been crushed, sadly!
FC-PHEV would be ideal, if FC is still expensive, but if they can bring down the cost of FC to $50/kw, then a FC-HEV with a small battery pack is all that'll be needed, kinda like the Honda FCX or a similar concept envisioned by Toyota, or GM FCV-PHEV volt, or Ford Airstream concept... with ~ 50%-60% efficiency tank-to-wheel, or 3 times current conventional ICE vehicle technology. It doesn't take a genius to see that these will be the future of motorcars, given more limited energy availability.

With BEV, you still have the problem of range and how to charge it up for a 300-mi range in a few minutes! Major infrastructure upgrade before that can happen, even if your battery is ready for quick charge in under 5 minutes and won't blow up or get over-heated. And, like I've outlined before, there will be no energy efficiency advantage of BEV over FC-HEV or a very advanced H2-ICE-HEV, inspite of what you are reading today.

Now if you want to talk about hydrogen vs batteries, I will take that bait.

I was an early investor in Ballard power systems years ago. Lost a ton of money on that one thank you very much. Ask Ford how much money they have spent on fuel cell research and what have they got to show for it?

How much does a Honda FCX cost these days. Last I heard about a million bucks a pop.

In my garage is a Battery Electric vehicle that I built myself. It is what you call an R&D project and it is not much to look at for sure, but it is functional.

http://web.mac.com/kyledansie/iWeb/zevutah/Ninja_0507.html

It also gets me around town on a very small amount of energy. Last test run it used 137 watts per mile. When I recharge the batteries I use 100 % wind power, because I hate all the pollution from coal fired power plants.

How much did my homebuilt BEV cost?

About 3k so far with off the shelf parts, Zero carbon emissions, and on the road today.

KJD

Here is an 'anti'-inconvenient truth video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...2170&q=movie+duration%3Along
Not all is true however, similar to that by Al Gore.

I really would like to find out if CO2 is the only reason for global warming.

A test I could think of is using two large glass containers, preferably both heat insulated, one filled with regular air, the other with a higher CO2 content e.g with 550 ppm, both exposed to sun light.

See what the temparure difference will be after a clear and sunny day.

Then there is that huge amount of 'naturally' generated CO2 besides the rather small amount of man made CO2.
Will it have an impact if we reduce the man made CO2 by say 30% or less?

Coal-to-Liquids would be great for a few in the short-term, but bad for the many in the long-term: I haven't seen any unselfish arguments for it. This bill is irresponsible, and should never have been sponsored by a Chairman of the Energy and Air Quality Committee. We assume that he should be working for "good" air quality. I am writing to my representative, and to Speaker Pelosi. Would you like to as well?
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

My apologies for the last post: I may have spoken too soon. I did not read the last paragraph of the article, which says that Baard claims a 46 percent reduction in carbon dioxide over petro diesel. I looked for the Idaho National Laboratory study though, and could only find a Baard/INL presentation, which had this disturbing caveat:

* Carbon dioxide emission reductions are achieved using a 30 percent biomass co-feed, carbon capture and storage technology, and combined cycle, co-generation processes.

Baard plans to burn a huge amount of biomass. If their calculation lets them say that the biomass is "renewable" (carbon neutral), then I would look at their improvement over petro diesel as only 16 percent. Can they really sustain that as they start burning up their supply of wood "waste"? And does this co-generation process really help reduce emissions?

Aside from the obvious distruction from strip mining, I am also concerned about whatever else that may get released into the environment: are they sequestering all of the sulphur, mercury, etc? The Canadian oil sands scheme has already produced the world's largest toxic waste site. Seems like our legislators should at least be cautious.