According to a note posted here in GCC some months ago,
the bio-fuels that could be produced in available land worldwide could power 8% of the transportation that is currently powered by petroleum based fuels.
The above, according to a study from Stanford University.

According to the Energy Watch Group report, by 2030 world oil production will be about half of the current production !!
So if the Stanford study is correct, it seems difficult that the bio-fuels could power 30% of the world transportation despite increases in the efficiencies of vehicles.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of fleet MPG do these studies assume we'll be getting in 2030?

Personally, I expect to be getting about 6 miles/kWh by 2015 or so...

Kum

1 Billion of Acres = 500 millions Hectares = 10 times the size of a country like France about half the size of US, humm sounds a lot isn't it ? But anyway the potential of biofuels seems attractive only and ONLY IF the EROI is good enough something like 5 otherwise it won't be scalable, period. So I would like to see BP giving some insight about that. 2nd the problem of collecting all this problem is still to be solved, well the Brazilian are still harvesting the Sugarcane manually but we have to find something else.

I hope you realize what size of land you are talking about ? I doubt that we can put this amount of land in highly productive fuel crop, the production of fertilizer and water won't keep pace. Where are you sources to assert that the trend in improving EROI would make 5:1 a piece of cake ? on all the websites of the start up working on biofuel very few mention their EROI so it is not a good sign, I think the problem of the EROI is a huge challenge and even a showstopper, I have no doubt that people on the verge of starvation will work on biofuel production whatever the EROI, the problem is that the net final energy will be peanut so we will be destroying rain forest, spreading fertilizer, killing life in rivers and in estuaires for little energy, sorry sir but I don't share the lightness with which you consider the scalability of biofuel. The intensive growth of corn ethanol is killing the gulf of mexico and depleting the aquifer for an EROI of 1.2-1.6 so I can't buy your inconscious optimism in that matter

When they say "fuel" are they just talking liquid and gaseous fuels? in which case there's probably a grain of truth in this projection because most of the miles driven will be electric miles.

It has to be biomethane - this is s 2nd generation biofuel already available.....an acre of land that grows crops and makes vehicle fuel wil send a car or a truck much further on biomethane than on any other fuel. Now we have the new turbocharged Passat and Zafiras that run on 100% biomethane and MB are doing an entire biomethane capable fleet (B Class, Sprinter, Econic, refuse truck, buses already), we can go for it. All these other 2nd generation fuels WASTE too much energy. They are with drink driving and smoking, on the naughty step.

treehugger, before you call other people "unconscious" you should study the history of "hypoxia" in the gulf. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Refineries like "Corn Plus" are already at in the 5:1 range, and the reason the bluefires, and coskatas of the world don't talk about eroei is because in's "unimportant" to their business models. The fact is they are setting up to produce most, if not all, of their process energy from the feedstock, itself, thus having virtually no "E" in the EROEI equation.

Kum

I won't lecture on you about energy but you should do some research on you, people who ignore the E in EROI will be bitterly bitten in the ass sooner or later, look at the Tar Sand they were telling the breakeven is 45$ 5 years ago, 2 years ago it was 65$ now it is 85$ and soon they will have to pay for the environmental damages and it will be even more, the problem is their EROI is too low, period so when the cost of the energy increase their breakeven moves away. The problem of the simplistic reasoning you apply is that you can turn a US$ in energy, unfortunately US$ is paper only, energy is physical, the modern world is fooling itself with that. The refinerie like Corn Plus may have en EROI of 5 but the overall EROI of corn ethanol is 1.6 and that's the showstopper.

@Harvey D,

I agree with you, but you should realize that for the past thirty five years the ONLY solution to petroleum and price dependency, has been efficiency and conservation approaches. Only now are substitution technologies becoming viable.

Despite the propaganda, we have come a long way on that efficiency path. The average US auto now achieves a CAFE rating of over 30 mpg, by the same measuring stick that rated a 1975 Beetle as one of the most efficient vehicles at 16 mpg, on the CAFE scale. Mileage that Suburbans and Escalades now almost double. On the EPA guesstimate window sticker scale, a '75 bug would be listed at under ten mpg.

Unfortunately, the easy conservation and efficiency gains have already been undertaken. Each incremental improvement now takes and increasing effort; until we succeed in wringing out all the efficiency to be gotten from a given technology.

For the ICE engine, that end is in sight. Add GDI and HCCI and that is about it. OTOH, for the HVAC and refrigeration market, my 17 SEER has not much more to achieve. It is almost the best that can be done, and I get hot water essentially for free too, while improving the delta T efficiency some more.

Nitwits seem to think that they can endlessly go to the same well, and get all they want. Sooner or later the well runs dry. The Green wackos have gone one time too many to the automakers and demanded that they open their purses, and spend billions developing technology that they simply desire, with no concern to rationality of schedule or benefit reality.

Now every automaker in the world, both foreign and domestic is losing money hand over fist, and that well has run dry. TANSTAAFL.

Thankfully, we will be abandoning the ICE approach, replacing it electricity over the next few decades. Electric generation methods are there to enable lots of clean electricity, a tiny portion will even come from the official "renewables", unrecognized warts and all. But most will come from Nuclear fission, then Fusion and clean coal will contribute efficiency gains, too.

But the transition, while exhiliarating, will have many bumps along the way.

“When you have a hundred million starving subsistence farmers with nothing to do, and an unlimited amount of fallow land lying unused, eroei doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot.”

That’s right. EROEI is a criteria made up by the parasite class like some college professors and all journalists to describe what they do not like about how the producing class makes what they use. BTW treeguggar what is the EROEI on what you produce?

@Treehugger: "The refinerie like Corn Plus may have en EROI of 5 but the overall EROI of corn ethanol is 1.6 and that's the showstopper."

Corn ethanol is over. 95% corn refineries are converting to cellulosic.

@Harvey: "Why do we (the end users) have to look for ways to consume as much if not more than now. That's what energy producers/sellers want us to do."

One good reason to diversify the energy production base. The greater the number of energy resources the less political and market leverage any one has.

As to conservation we have come a long way from the earliest days of refrigeration and heating. Present day Energy Star rated appliances utilize a third to half less electricity they did twenty years ago. Still there is more to do - just in the arena of hot water alone we could see 20-30% improvement by going to tankless and solar supplemented systems. And there are other means of quick heating water that exploit the chemistry of water itself - to astonishing advantage.

The global transition to electrified transport will greatly increase total electric consumption per capita. However, if that electric is generated from renewable, clean resources, it is far less problematic.

Oddly, the greatest energy problem of the future may not be meeting increasing demand - it may be learning how to distribute an abundance of energy to 70% of a global population that has never had it.

Stas:

I partly agree with you except for the claimed great gain in efficiency of the typical USA ICE vehicle (i.e Ford V-8, F150 etc)

In reality, the mpg gain has been next to NIL in the last 50 years for that great vehicle that so many Americans want/like to drive.

More is probably going to be achieved in the next 10/15 years than in the last 50/60 years with regards to vehicle efficiency. Future electrified vehicles will be lighter and much more efficient (well over 100 mpg equivalent) versus about 17/18 mpg for the number one seller today.

I fully agree with you that much more electrical energy will be required and that nuclear will play a major role. Clean coal power plants NO NOT exist. It is more of a misinformation strategy by the coal industry. It may be more appropriate to convert coal into syngas (in a closed environment) and use the existing NG pipeline network to distribute it across the country for the next 100 years or so.