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TechnoratiIf We Want To Save The Planet, We Need a Five-Year Freeze on Biofuels
It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks.In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants - if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010. By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the US target for biofuels: by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel.
So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already.
Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from maize and wheat.
Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.
Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild.
But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel.
There are similar impacts all over the world. Sugarcane producers are moving into rare scrubland habitats (the cerrado) in Brazil, and soya farmers are ripping up the Amazon rainforests. As President Bush has just signed a biofuel agreement with President Lula, it's likely to become a lot worse. Indigenous people in South America, Asia and Africa are starting to complain about incursions onto their land by fuel planters. A petition launched by a group called biofuelwatch, begging western governments to stop, has been signed by campaigners from 250 groups.
The British government is well aware that there's a problem. On his blog last year the environment secretary David Miliband noted that palm oil plantations "are destroying 0.7% of the Malaysian rainforest each year, reducing a vital natural resource (and in the process, destroying the natural habitat of the orang-utan). It is all connected." Unlike government policy.
The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don't upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It's an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn't increase our official impact by a gram.
In February the European commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It had intended to tell car companies that the average carbon emission from new cars in 2012 would be 120 grams per kilometre. After heavy lobbying by Angela Merkel on behalf of her car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel.
The British government says it "will require transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply". But it will not require them to do anything. It can't: its consultants have already shown that if it tries to impose wider environmental standards on biofuels, it will fall foul of world trade rules. And even "sustainable" biofuels merely occupy the space that other crops now fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be a "second generation" of biofuels, made from straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles. By the time the new fuels are ready, the damage will have been done.
We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugar cane. Even then, the targets should be set low and increased only cautiously. I suggest a five-year freeze.
This would require a huge campaign, tougher than the one which helped to win a five-year freeze on growing genetically modified crops in the UK. That was important - GM crops give big companies unprecedented control over the foodchain. But most of their effects are indirect, while the devastation caused by biofuel is immediate and already visible.
This is why it will be harder to stop: encouraged by government policy, vast investments are now being made by farmers and chemical companies. Stopping them requires one heck of a battle. But it has to be fought.
You can join the campaign at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk. www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
48 Comments so far
Show AllThis is a very interesting discussion...
Lobo Gris demands to see "the physics", though that's a bit unreasonable -- who's going to do the math in an online forum??
But conceptually, it's easy to show why hydrogen is a non-starter (which someone started to get to in an earlier post).
Law of Conservation says energy can't be created or destroyed, just moved around. Second Law of Thermodynamics says any time you move it around, you lose some. Practically, that means we either capture energy coming at us in the present -- solar and its derivatives: wind, waves, etc. -- or we mine it from the past -- that is, we retrieve it from the earth as a substance that has stored this incoming energy (petroleum, coal...).
There are many reasons why only the latter has been our modus operandi for the Industrial Age, but a big one is that all present incoming energy sources are highly diffuse, while the mined forms are highly concentrated (they are really just storage vessels for millions of years of sunlight). We simply can't concentrate present incoming energy sufficiently to run our society -- believe it or not, there is not enough solar energy falling on the earth to convert to our uses in the present without turning inconceivably vast tracts of the planet's surface into solar collectors, and beside the engineering problems, who knows what the effects are of taking such quantities of present solar energy out of the ecosystem?
So the idea that you're going to use present incoming energy to sever the chemical bonds of water in order to produce hydrogen at the scale needed to meet current transportation needs is out of the question. That means you're back to using past energy, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. Unfortunately, there are no hydrogen mines -- free hydrogen basically doesn't exist. 2nd Law means that there's not much point in burning fossil fuels to make hydrogen fuel, you will always end up burning more of it than if you just put it in your gas tank.
And now we've returned to Mr. Monbiot's initial problem, which (in the largest sense) is that we're not going to grow our way out of this one, technically or otherwise. Hydrogen won't do it, and neither will biofuels. We'll either vastly reduce our energy needs voluntarily, or through some form of coercion, natural or man-made -- massive die offs, warfare... Probably a combination of both and hopefully more of the voluntary sort, but I'm not counting on it.
foamweapons,
EVs with lead-acid batteries have limited range due to size & weight, can do light urban delivery work, and may be built locally. Lithium and other battery types are lighter and may extend range for commuters, but expensive due to "intellectual property" and not as buildable locally. Battery swapping for long distance can work. The public has to exercise political/market power to prevent capital from dominating these markets.
Existing fossil-fueled central plants can't support any sizable number of EVs because coal and gas are nearly as expensive as oil, in total costs (probably 1/3 to 1/2 as expensive, still bad enough). Total costs include environmental, security. Distributed cogeneration is far more efficient that central plants.
Replacing half the batteries with a small efficient diesel generator goes long distance and with biodiesel can support local economies with small-scale production, sequester carbon, and eliminate the multiple scourges of fossil fuel for personal transport. The batteries may be charged via solar thermal, and wind energy. Photovoltaic can't be built locally.
GM doesn't build EVs because GM does what's good for GM, not what's good for America. That's laissez-faire capitalism for ya. crack1000 is right about the power being in the people's hands. Many people are waking up to it.
Folks, why nobody has mentioned termonuclear power? Do you forgot how about dozen years ago oil industry, aka US Congress, dismantle PPL - Princeton Plazma Lab TOKOMAC project, which just started to build the first not yet commercial but well above 'break even' TOKOMAC. Reason? The almighty USA could not spare $10 Billion for the next 10 years. Well, they destroy priceless 'human capital' the same way they destroyed Bell Lab, Texas's Supercollider and multitude other scientific collectives for the last 25 years and now EU is quietly building the first semi-commercial prototype.
There are also signs that 'cold fussion' is not exactly out of the window.
abejapai
shucks.
you miss the point. In America, who gets elected can tell those who do not what to do. Corporations have hegemony, certainly, but, again, bush has alienated a whole group of people, a group of people that can be directed towards, believing others, or believing you.
Simple.
As long as you push this group of citizens away, then yes, corporations will continue their control. Once you wake up, and weld a coalition with small farmers, by assisting them with what they want, as well as what you want, in other words: compromise and move forward together, you begin to regain the control people want.
Corporations are not Gods. As long as you continue to suppress the people with exasperated rants on 'oh there is nothing we can do...' all you do is play into their hands.
Small farmers in America, along with liberals, along with minorities, are the real majority in America. the same people are victimizing all three groups.
All three need to wake up and make some coffee.
I didn't respond to the question before: Electric cars, why aren't they being sold? It would make sense for GM to make billions of dollars selling these things... especially now since they are getting their asses kicked by Toyota.
Well actually, EVs are less profitable to auto-manufacturers than Combustion Engine cars. There are barely any moving parts, no gaskets, hoses, oil changes, the transmission systems in EVs are very simplistic... all this adds up to a lot less maintenance for electric cars. Dealerships make huge amounts of money ripping people off fixing cars. It would cut into their profits if they switched to EVs... not only that but it would cut into their suppliers profits who manufacturer tons of the parts for them who they have close ties to.
Just like how the RIAA is a front-group for record companies suing people who want non-DRM music, the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM) sues states like California when they propose better emission caps or forward-thinking proposals like the EV Mandate. Look how they immediately stopped all production and talk of EVs immediately after their lawyers (and the Bush Administration) crushed the EV mandate.
Only now are they talking about EVs again (e.g. Chevy Volt). It's because start-up companies and the movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car' have been bad PR. What happened the last 5 years, why haven't start-ups taken the lead? Well you have to understand it costs $400 million to manufacture a car that passes US Safety Tests. You have to crash a ton of your cars to make sure they are safe and to get all the parts of a car produced and assembled costs tons of money. So what do people expect, someone in a garage can't make a start-up car company these days.
The only promising company is Tesla Motors. They have a blog and white paper that covers EV FUD about the electrical grid not supporting all these new electric cars... http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=8
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf
They can better explain the technical issues with bringing EVs to mass-market... but in summary the Electric Grid is way more efficient than putting gasoline and burning it in your car. The electric grid has a ton of energy that is unused at night, and that is where the power is lost... so using that "free power" wasted at night anyway you could charge 180 million EVs overnight with no extra costs to the electric company (although they would charge you for it). Anyway it is so much easier to produce clean power in centralized sources like power plants instead of a distributed system, like every single car in America. EVs just make too much sense.
@crack
Silly Rabbit?
Now who is being naïve? I live and work in the country of Colombia, where bio-fuels make up one of the primary economic strategies of the government. In the Department of Chocó (like a State in the US), for example, one of the poorest in the nation, African Oil Palm is planted on land owned and constitutionally protected for collective Afro-Colombian communities.
What, then, is the problem? Simply that the government, with assistance from international banking interests and the US development agency, USAID, has rewritten those legal protections to favor foreign investors, employed divisive measures in the communities, and, ultimately, resorted to paramilitary-backed violence to displace those communities. Which is to say that 97% of the Oil Palm in the region is now owned by foreign interests, large corporations, or illegal armed actors themselves. The local communities largely now live without basic necessities in shanty-towns of squalor at the fringes of the cities, Colombia's new form of violent displacement helps to maintain its position with the third highest internal displacement in the world. Ultimately, many of the community members return to work for minimal wages, rather than starve, on the very land that they have traditionally held title to – with all profits going to these other groups.
Even in the case where these communities successfully lobby for the return of their land, as has happened recently in the southwest, in the Department of Nariño, they return to find their homes, virgin forests, and crops vanished and replaced by miles – literally – of mono-cropped Oil Palm. Which, among other things, maintains no diversity of fauna. In other words, sustainable and locally managed ecosystems, including the human ecosystem, are irreparably destroyed.
Do you really think with the enormous profits at stake, not to mention the power associated with an alternative to petroleum fuel, that the power elite would sit back wringing their hands as the common and communal control of these resources displaced them from their position of economic monopoly?
Even a silly rabbit can't survive in an Oil Palm plantation.
"But, even in the suburbs, making the home location - near work, transit, and shopping - the key factor, rather than all the other frills, can cut your fossil fuel consumption hundreds of percent."
I'm sure it does but those aren't the only considerations that are important to many. It depends on the demographics. Young or even middle age families want good schools for their kids, parks for them to play in, and a low crime rate to name just a few that rate a lot higher than whether they can save a little on gas.
But it's all beside the point anyway. Just driving less isn't the only way to get there. Hydrogen fueled vehicles emit zero pollution so the only issue becomes cost and fuel availibility. If someone wants to drive a Hummer, can afford the cost of the hydrogen to do so, and don't infringe on availability of fuel for others to be able to drive, then they aren't doing any harm except to their own pocketbook.
"Most of you arguments are not convincing - 90% of USAns DO live in either suburbia, the exurban McMansion belts, or the city."
Sitting in your seat back east. Cities in the west, LA excepted are different than those in the east. Driving distances are further, the big downtown areas with high rise office buildings are few and sometimes don't exist. Public transportation is almost non-existent. Given that I find your arguments not convincing either.
Lobo Gris
oops,
incompleted paragraph: ...gentrification has put home costs in most (non-blighted) parts of the city out of reach. But, even in the suburbs, making the home location - near work, transit, and shopping - the key factor, rather than all the other frills, can cut your fossil fuel consumption hundreds of percent.
Lobo G wrote,
"Everywhere in the U.S. isn't congested citys or sprawling suburbia. In fact I grew up on a farm, producing food for you so that you could walk to the store to buy it. The nearest town was six miles away and for medical treatment and many other necessities it was an addional 12 miles to the town after that."
No, you missed my point - cities and suburbia are utter opposite poles. The city - with it's compact neighborhoods and main-streeets and public transit, enables people to live car-free, suburbia was deliberately engineered for car-dependence.
All other things equal, city living is the most carbon-free and sustainable way to live. A significant number of households in my Pittsburgh neighborhood of Bloomfield don't even own cars.
Most of you arguments are not convincing - 90% of USAns DO live in either suburbia, the exurban McMansion belts, or the city. Most younger USAns change homes or even cities an average or every 5-8 years or so - but environmental and energy considerations are utterly off their radar when home shopping. I understand that in increasing numbers of cities, gentrification has put home costs in most (non-blighted) parts of the city out of reach.
I fully acknowlege that cars may be the only practical transportation for rural areas, and the farmers, foresters, farm-service people, etc who must live out there. But maybe not. Most people I've met in the countryside 40 to 80 miles out of town, grow only brush and weeds on their land and drive their big SUV into town every day to their jobs. But somehow, the Amish and old-order Mennonite farmers in the same area earn a perfectly safisfactory living - and somehow survive just fine without cars or any other motorized equipment except for a couple church vans for group trips into town.
Urban workers who choose "country living" should be strongly discouraged by tax and zoning policy or other carrots and sticks.
BTW. I'm not proposing hydrogen use as a direct fuel source as an end all be all solution, but as an interim one that gets us to the point quickest where we stsrt really reducing our carbon footprint. I would fully hope and expect that hybrids would be the next step where hydrogen connsumption is reduced and then full electrics as fuel cells and battery technology advances.
Lobo Gris
Silly rabbits...
One of the main barriers to successful liberalism is actually, their close-mindedness. Counter-intuitive, since liberal means 'open-minded' liberals need to, i stress need to, remember their open minds. Sticking to Utopian idealism is great as a moral choice. However, Utopian idealism and what can actually get done rarely cross paths.
Consider, at this particular moment in History, President Bush has alienated a whole group of common sense citizens. At this moment, these citizens may turn to Tom Delay, who is attempting to organize them. Or...
This group could turn to a group of organized individuals who believe in the mantra "Power to the People". Farmers are acutely aware that, in the past, they gave away their authority to large corporations. In the future, with ethanol development as a primary fuel source, and with the support of 'liberals' we can weld a coalition that will tell the tom delays of the world where to go.
Don't be surprised, when, by sticking to your utopian idealism, when farmers turn to tom delay and 'the hammer' turns things around on you guys and leaves you on the outside looking in again...
Y'all need to grab this group of folks now, these days they all have the internet.
pangolin March 28th, 2007 5:16 am
"Of course due to the fleet turnover rate of 20 years and the distinct possibility that 2005 was the peak-oil year (google: oil drum saudi) we won't have time to change out enough cars to make a difference even if every vehicle produce from 2008 onward was a PHEV."
And that is one of my major points. With hydrogen burned directly as a fuel you don't need fleet turnover to put it in place. Every vehicle on the road today, right now, can be converted to run on hydrogen for about a $1,000 per vehicle. With tax incentives it could be done virtually free for the consumer that has to pay the upfront costs. All it takes is the production facilities to produce the hydrogen, and a distribution system to deliver it. Which BTW can consist of above ground stand alone tanks. With a crash Apollo type program it could be in place in five years.
Lobo Gris
pangolin March 28th, 2007 5:16 am
"Hydrogen is a scam meant to divert attention from anything resembling a solution. The physics say it can't work."
Show me the physics that says it can't work.
Lobo Gris
Jan Steinman March 28th, 2007 2:04 pm
"That said, we need viable transition strategies. I agree that hydrogen is a hoax, perpetrated by well-meaning people (and some outright dishonest people) who stand to make lots of money from it.'
And just exactly how is hydrogen a hoax? Details please. BTW I don't stand to make a penny if hydrogen is adopted and used and I'm not a well meaning know nothing that doesn't know what I'm talking about either.
Lobo Gris
gmkaake March 28th, 2007 2:08 pm
"also, there is a lot more profit in building and marketing hummers and gas-guzzeling trucks and SUVs"
You are absolutely right there and that is one of the things that needs to be changed.
Lobo Gris
hibiscus March 28th, 2007 1:43 pm
"problems with electric and answers.
batteries depleted in ticking time bomb scenario: this is why future battery systems will be swappable, as they are with cell phones."
Yes, but we aren't talking about cell phone batteries here but 1200 to 1500 lb. battery packs.
"conversion costs: $1,000 per vehicle sounds very good. i think though, by the time hydrogen is widely available, most cars and light trucks in the united states will have been replaced once already. meanwhile the weight of the remaining old vehicles will not have changed and whether we are carting it around with gasoline or hydrogen, it will still be a wasteful load to be carrying. meanwhile, since pretty much any hydrogen-cell car will have battery components to recover energy, you're still talking about hydrogen being driven by improvements in battery tech."
You are mixing and matching. Hydrogen fuel cells and burning hydrogen directly as a fuel are two different animals. Using hydrogen directly as a fuel could happen as quickly as it can be produced and distributed. Within 5 yrs if a crash Apollo type program were put in place.
It will take 20 yrs or more to convert to electric cars en masse. The cars have to be designed and produced in quantity , and made available to the public. Then the people have to need them. The people buying a new car today won't need to replace it for 5 to 10 yrs. I have a 99 and 87 model, neither of which I plan to replace anytime soon. Especially at a cost of $20,000 or more. I would however convert both to run on hydrogen this year at a cost of $1,000 each if the kits were available and the distribution system were in place.
"meanwhile the weight of the remaining old vehicles will not have changed and whether we are carting it around with gasoline or hydrogen, it will still be a wasteful load to be carrying."
Car weight is not going to be reduced significantly anytime soon with the mandates for safety, and the demand for convienence and comfort accesories. Air bags, side door beams, safety cages for passengers, air conditioning, power windows, door locks, and seats, navigation systems, and stereos, just to name a few. In fact it will most likely increase with 1500 lb. battery packs and the associated required strengthening of the chassis to accomodate them.
"as far as i can tell, no single energy vector, or combination of vectors, can make the north american transportation system as it now stands, sustainable, in a strictly carbon-limited situation.'
Hydrogen can.
"it's true that the motives behind current hydrogen development are profit, but maybe it isn't direct, maybe it's pointed toward protecting ICE profits. how else is one to interpret offering a hydrogen-hybrid vehicle at the same time as being a party of a lawsuit against carbon limits?"
The motive for anything is profit. All companies exist for that purpose and that purpose alone. To ignore that is to ignore reality. And yes companies are always going to resist change, change costs money which at least temporarily reduces profit. Especially when what is being proposed is unknown. Companies have no absolute assurance that after the millions invested in technology that it will sell after they produce it. Example; pure electric cars in the ninetys. That is why the government steps in and mandates things like fuel economy and and safety standards. Companies by their nature are generally conservative and risk averse. They have stockholders to answer to if their ideas don't sell. As long as a company is still making a profit off of what they are producing the incentive to change is little to none.
Lobo Gris
also, there is a lot more profit in building and marketing hummers and gas-guzzeling trucks and SUVs than light hybrids and electric cars that will require significant R&D investment. the marketing GM did for the EV1 was sad to say the least. it almost seemed like they didn't want them to sell to bring pressure on governmental regulators to loosen up the regulations.
First off, I agree that our lives must become simpler, that we must consume less, and that population must decline. There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth before we learn to live in a steady-state world, before we recognize, as a species, that "growth" cannot happen without death.
That said, we need viable transition strategies. I agree that hydrogen is a hoax, perpetrated by well-meaning people (and some outright dishonest people) who stand to make lots of money from it. And electric cars are simply "pollution displacers" that put the problem in someone else's back yard. Biofuels are viable only when run from existing "waste" streams, NOT when propped up by entirely new and equally complex and damaging infrastructures. (We power our Permaculture farm using waste vegetable oil.)
What shows promise is the so-called "flow battery." It can be very simple and low-tech. Take a ubiquitous lead-acid battery. Charge it from a renewable energy source. Suck out the sulfuric acid and deliver it to a dead lead-acid battery, which is now charged. From there, one can imagine a tank full of ions, being delivered to batteries that cannot provide the necessary capacity by themselves.
That was for illustration in a way most can understand. Real-world flow battery researchers are attacking the problems of suitable chemistry and working with the current liquid-fuel infrastructure. It combines the advantages of other liquid fuels with the advantages of electric power. It appears that a driving range of 1,000 miles is not unreasonable. Yes, you have to replace existing cars, as you do with hydrogen, since running compressed hydrogen into a modified carburetor is highly inefficient with driving ranges no better than battery-electrics.
But don't be enticed by the glitter. Technology isn't going to save us, although it may make the inevitable energy decline road less bumpy. Start by moving to within walking or biking distance of your work -- that is HUGE in the overall scheme of things!
http://www.EcoReality.org
problems with electric and answers.
batteries depleted in ticking time bomb scenario: this is why future battery systems will be swappable, as they are with cell phones.
power available on grid: it looks like people are lining up to hold every new technology accountable for the current state of other technology sectors, instead of the future state. per user energy use will drop. this will happen with transportation, manufacturing, and consumption. if there's nothing on the grid for the electric car then there's nothing on the grid to make the hydrogen, either.
grid efficiency: uh, hello. improving the grid's performance is a number one priority for reducing carbon emissions. if you don't think that's going to happen, nothing else really matters, does it? why talk about this at all?
conversion costs: $1,000 per vehicle sounds very good. i think though, by the time hydrogen is widely available, most cars and light trucks in the united states will have been replaced once already. meanwhile the weight of the remaining old vehicles will not have changed and whether we are carting it around with gasoline or hydrogen, it will still be a wasteful load to be carrying. meanwhile, since pretty much any hydrogen-cell car will have battery components to recover energy, you're still talking about hydrogen being driven by improvements in battery tech.
automobile manufacturer profit motives: i don't trust any industrial concern's motivations right now. everybody's jockeying for position in the carbon market, trying to prove that they're innovating and shouldn't have to pay for their pollution. as far as i can tell, no single energy vector, or combination of vectors, can make the north american transportation system as it now stands, sustainable, in a strictly carbon-limited situation. it's true that the motives behind current hydrogen development are profit, but maybe it isn't direct, maybe it's pointed toward protecting ICE profits. how else is one to interpret offering a hydrogen-hybrid vehicle at the same time as being a party of a lawsuit against carbon limits?
Great posts - thanks for sharing all the info.
So much change needed when you think about it. My husband and I are trying to make changes - it's been step by step. We moved a half mile from his work, in a small apartment and don't need to drive to commute any more, but there aren't any stores close by unfortunately. Our town is so spread out. We have really minimized as far as "stuff" - we just have the basics and we both really like it. We recycle, try to buy local and buy organic and have gone mostly vegetarian. We have an organic CSA farm near that I will be working at this year and in turn receive veggies all season. Long term we would like to move to Oregon, and eventually buy a small farm and go solar - but that is still a ways off. I love the idea of a battery-electric motor scooter - thanks PJD for website.
And, I'm not into bicycling much either, so I have a battery-electric motor scooter, 25 mile range 35-40 mph speed, miniscule power consumpion...
http://evtamerica.com
"the batteries are depleted, and you have a medical emergency and have to get to the emergency room, or what if you have a sick relative, or just forgot to pick up something at the store on the way home?"
Answers in order: ambulances, public transit, bicycle; don't buy or rent a home that isn't a short walk to the store...
Why are you choosing to live and work where you are dependent on a car at all? You don't have to live and work in sprawling suburbia - or if you must, you can still pick your home location so you aren't dependent on a car for the most basic necessities; I did ...
#
PJD March 28th, 2007 12:07 pm
"the batteries are depleted, and you have a medical emergency and have to get to the emergency room, or what if you have a sick relative, or just forgot to pick up something at the store on the way home?"
Answers in order: ambulances, public transit, bicycle; don't buy or rent a home that isn't a short walk to the store…
And the cost of an ambulance trip? Check, it isn't cheap. Plus with all electric vehicles how overloaded are the emergency services going to be?
Public transit? Right you are going to get on a public bus or train or subway, bleeding profusely or ill enough to be throwing up all over.
Bicycle? Right again, bleeding profusely, or throwing up constantly or whatever and you're going to go get on your bicycle and pedal yourself to the hospital?
Don't buy or rent a home that isn't a short walk to the store? You people are unreal. You now not only want people to run out and buy a new $20,000 automobile but give up their homes that they have lived in for decades in some cases just so they can walk to the store instead of having to drive.
Quick reality check, it isn't going to happen.
"Why are you choosing to live and work where you are dependent on a car at all? You don't have to live and work in sprawling suburbia - or if you must, you can still pick your home location so you aren't dependent on a car for the most basic necessities; I did …"
Everywhere in the U.S. isn't congested citys or sprawling suburbia. In fact I grew up on a farm, producing food for you so that you could walk to the store to buy it. The nearest town was six miles away and for medical treatment and many other necessities it was an addional 12 miles to the town after that.
Look at a map sometime. Everything doesn't revolve around New York city or L A.
Lobo Gris
Mr Monbiot, You have made some good points in this article . However rarely in these debates ,is lifting the prohibition on industrial Hemp mentioned.A field of Hemp can be grown with little input on margial unirrigated land.The machinery can all be run on carbon neutral, Hempseed oil diesel fuel.The fiber used to reduce deforestation,the bast(stem breaking byproducts) used to produce celulosic ethanol or methanol,the leaf returned to the soil to build topsoil.The seed cake leftover from the cold oil extraction process can be used for Human or animal feed.Indeed the quality of Hemp foods is excellant high quality protein with with heathy esential fatty acids.The technology to do this has been around for a century.The most eco-friendly bio-diesel/food/fiber/ethanol/methanol crop available.Studies do need to be done to find the most efficient ways to sequester carbon,and the most viable alternative energy sources .But Hemp is here now,certainly a more viable option,one that produces more food,and energy per hectare than Corn,Soybeans,Palm,Coconut,or other crops.
Some day I hope to have diesel hybrid vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells.I will plug them into my passive solar, earth sheltered home upon returing from work and spin my electric meter backward.Does this sound too utopian to you? Thanks for your article.
Peace out. jh
To put a fine point on what jonedon said. Lost in this discussion is just how much input from fossil fuels enables all the alternatives. The "green revolution" relies on fossil fuel power or derivatives for it's success. In a few brief centuries we humans will have reintroduced what it took nature millions of years to sequester. A species responds to its environment and the future looks bleak. War, strife, scarcity, mass die-offs, and then what?
The Electric Car in California--great idea bring'em on. Don't worry a bit that California can't keep up with its current electrical generation needs.
As for hydrogen, another great idea. You're going to get the electricity from the renewables--good luck, would like to see it. And we shouldn't worry about the technological and economic problems still to be solved. Should we expect it in popular use about the same time as a successful fusion reactor--another 20 years, no matter when you ask. (Hate to be pessimistic, but have been around long enough to see the trends--and they ain't positive.)
Bio fuels, another great idea, except as GM points out, for all the people that are going to be priced out of the food market. And don't worry about the loss of the the jungles--they were swampy, nasty places anyway. And not only that, but we are making new ones in the northern polar regions as well as getting rid of another unruly predator.
Cut population. Please! That was discredited 50 years ago after the book "The Population Bomb" bombed--Malthus has been proved by the Green Revolution to be nothing other than what we today call a Luddite. (The green revolution is still going to work when the price of petrol goes out the ceiling, the weather patterns become no longer predictable, the water tables sink out of site, the soils deplete, and the Earth heats up, isn't it? ) Also, there is the issue of who will support social security and the other social systems in the industrialized world as those populations age, and also who will help balance out the flood of brown peoples into those countries--maintain the genetic and cultural superiority if you get my drift.
If we can't reduce our numbers, we could reduce consumption, except that would require a paradigm change, and we sure as hell ain't up for that. Growth is EVERYTHING. I think we should just continue on as we are going, turn up the AC when it gets too warm, totally occupy the Middle East and the other places where our petrol is (and also coincidentally, bad people who want to do us harm.) Let the brown people around the world fend for themselves. Mother Nature is not a fairy god mother. Capitalism has brought more joy and consumer goods to us good people than any other system. It has won--it is the End of History--and we only need sit back and enjoy.
Of course, we could all become responsible environmentalist. NPR highlighted some a few weeks ago--the people who fly into Vail in their private jets. The Vail mgt explained to the idiotic NPR reporter that Vail uses wind power now because its clientèle is environmentally sensitive and expects such trendy improvements from the resort.
A most unattractive option is to stop dreaming and see this whole fossil fuel business for what it is (in spite of the what we have enjoyed from it)--man kind's single most tragic error. The error that allowed us to fill up the Earth with humans--each of which require more and more from it every year after being properly advertised to--and all based on the assumption of an unlimited supply of cheap energy, unlimited supply of non renewables, ignorance of the Earth's carrying capacity (and how we are now reducing it by over using renewable resources), and the utterly crazy idea that it is technology that is providing everything.
The problems with fossil fuels again:
The price trend is up, up, and up
We are utterly dependent on it, and going to fight for OUR SHARE of this declining resource
We are poisoning our atmosphere with CO2--with disrupting increased heat too follow.
It has allowed us to fill the the Earth with more people than can remotely be cared for even now (and we have billions more on the way)--3.6 billion living on $2 per day or less, 850 million malnourished, every fourth child with Protein-energy malnutrition, and 1.1 billion lacking even safe drinking water.
It has fostered the creation of colossal human beings--those who use massive amount of resources like jet planes, big houses, suv's etc etc
In summary, it has put us out on a limb from which there is no safe retreat.
Yes, we have technology to thank.
Yes, while there are no solutions, there is the option to understand the wholly unintended crisis we find ourselves in and act from our greatest humanity--vs continuing to behave like decerebrate hominids--so as to mitigate the hardship that is only going to grow.
jon
Connecting the dots: From human behaviors to ecosystem decline
http://StudentsForTheEarth.org
recommend OVERSHOOT by Wm Catton. written 25 years ago but sounds like it was written yesterday. Has helped me enormously, and continues to do so, in trying to get my mind around the crisis in some sort of comprehensive way that lets me see beyond the latest cosmetic solution: clean up the pollution, cycle the cans, and now go to renewables--they're cool.
Where to start? We aren't saving the planet we are saving ourselves. The planet is a large ball of iron that has survived several large meteor strikes and rebuilt ecologies from scratch before.
Hydrogen is a scam meant to divert attention from anything resembling a solution. The physics say it can't work.
Biofuels are simply pulling food from the mouths of the poor to fuel our SUV's. Eventually we will need that food to feed ourselves. Starve an african village to fuel your Hummer.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are efficient already and could get more efficient. Coupled with Stirling generators they could truly be flex-fueled due to the unique nature of the engine.
Of course due to the fleet turnover rate of 20 years and the distinct possibility that 2005 was the peak-oil year (google: oil drum saudi) we won't have time to change out enough cars to make a difference even if every vehicle produce from 2008 onward was a PHEV.
Be prepared to bicycle for 95% of your travel. Long tail bikes, electric assist and trailers make long commutes and load hauling well within the range of most of us.
Anybody who thinks we have a magic scientific bullet to pull the human race past peak oil and climate change is delusional. We will have to reduce consumption and share or fight the poor for our right to starve them.
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gladstone March 27th, 2007 6:01 pm
"{How about a five-year freeze on population growth? That's what's causing damage to the planet: too many people."
Probably politically incorrect but I definitely agree with you. The earth's population has almost tripled in the last 50 to 60 years from 2 1/2 billion people to 6 billion. I honestly don't think it can sustain another tripling to 18 billion over the same time period in the future. It's time for all nations to sit down with the worlds best scientists and figure out what a sustainable world population is and figure out a means to achieve it. Because one thing I can guarantee everyone, if we don't do it, mother nature will and it won't be pretty.
Lobo Gris
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nomorebombs March 27th, 2007 9:57 pm
Bicycles…..
Great idea except it requires you to have two good legs which not all of us have.
Multiple solutions are the answer.
Lobo Gris
gmkaake March 27th, 2007 5:34 pm
"What about electric plug-in cars? Zero emissions and we already have a distribution system in place (the power grid). The simplicity of the engineering is amazing - check out movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" for a very effective visual demonstration. It does shift energy to the electrical grid system but that may be an advantage since it centralizes the energy source. Convert the electric power plants to green energy - solar, wind etc."
There is nothing wrong with plug-in cars and they should certainly be part of the mix. They do have two disadvantages
in comparison to hydrogen. One is range, and even if you use them in a hybrid once the batteries are depleted you run more on the IC engine which drops the fantastic mileage on batteries alone dramatically and you are back to using fossil fuels, unless of course you have an IC engine converted or built to run on hydrogen. They are great in an urban environment where driving range requirements are limited. If you drive less than 100 miles a day you could probably not use any fossil fuels at all other than those used to produce the electricity that you use to recharge the vehicle at night.
The second is cost and this is the most important one. To convert to electric or electric hybrid cars requires everyon to purchase a new car. The Toyota Prius starts at what, right around $20,000? That is no small expense. Every car that is now on the road can be converted to run on hydrogen for $1,000 or less. No new car purchase required.
One point about all electric as opposed to electric hybrid vehicles or hydrogen powered vehicles. With an all electric vehicle what happens if you have used the vehicle heavily that day, the batteries are depleted, and you have a medical emergency and have to get to the emergency room, or what if you have a sick relative, or just forgot to pick up something at the store on the way home?
Lobo Gris
foamweapons March 28th, 2007 12:21 am
A lot of completely unsupported statements made as if they are fact.
Ask yourself this. If the electric cars you say were so great in fact were, and the demand so great why aren't the car manufacturers lining up to build them. Especially considering the trouble that the big three domestic manufacurers are in financially. If electric cars were profitable and sold well the manufacturers would make them and that's a fact.
Companies are in business to make a profit and to suggest that they would turn down a profit making opportunity is to put it mildly ridiculous. Even if there were no other reason the shareholders would demand it.
Vince Lawrence March 28th, 2007 1:24 am
"Won't wade into the technical debate here. The hours I have spent over the years trying to get to the bottom of all of this. I detest the hydrogen technology because of it's susceptibility to monopolization - the same names will be there."
Every water source, and the entire coastline of the U.S. would have to be under the control of anyone trying to create a monopoly.
Lobo Gris
gmkaake March 27th, 2007 5:34 pm
"I thought that we had significant engineering barriers to overcome with hydrogen which make it unfeasible in the short run?"
There are no technical barriers to using hydrogen in the short run. Propane gas has been used for years to power vehicles in rural areas of the country. All it takes is the conversion kit, and a propane tank. The vehicle can even be used on either gasoline or propane by simply switching a switch inside the vehicle.
Just recently a Hummer H2 was driven across the country in a rally using only hydrogen fuel. The only drawback was that the infrastructure isn't in place and they had to refuel at indusrial supply houses.
There are some current barriers to using hydrogen fuel cells to power electric vehicles. Cost being the main one but I would expect that to come down with more research, and the economies associated with mass production.
Lobo Gris
I did mean to mention one technical tidbit though. Of the 100 percent of electricity put into the grid at the generation end, only 20 percent at best is available for consumption at the plug in your home. The rest is a victim of the transmission grid. That's right: 80 percent "waste" as a fact of transmission. The grid is a dinosaur and a sure way to energy suicide is to hope for more "centralization."
Won't wade into the technical debate here. The hours I have spent over the years trying to get to the bottom of all of this. I detest the hydrogen technology because of it's susceptibility to monopolization - the same names will be there. Plug in cars? Please. Wind and solar may never, if ever, provide more than a small a percentage of our current needs, so that means more coal.
All that is beside the point though. All of these discussions revolve around the unspoken assumption that our excessive rate of consumption is a law of nature, like gravity or something and likewise with our "projected requirements." One poster answered part of the problem; the human population has surpassed the capacity of the planet to sustain all of us. Most serious minds around this subject stress conservation first. First reduce our consumption, and the percentage provided by bio, wind and solar becomes more important and efective.
And wouldn't it be nice if instead of spending 1.5 billion a week to secure more oil we were spending that money on research and development.
Hydrogen is a big-time scam. The membranes deteriorate quickly. The overall efficiency of converting electricity to and from hydrogen is dismal. The portability is far less than anything else. It was always a scam aimed at derailing the electric car. Remember: "they even took back and crushed every EV they leased." And without you knowing it either.
The prison industrial complex will bring us the sugar cane we need for biofuels. We just need to increase the penalties for marijuana possession to life in prison.
Biofuels are idiotic. Even the Wall Street Journal ran an article called "Ethanol Could Fuel Rise in Corn," where they discussed the food-versus-fuel issue. It's not a clean fuel, and it still has to be transported. Almost as bad as gas.
As for hydrogen... hydrogen is actually a scam. The "hydrogen economy" is an intentional deception by those who felt threatened by the electric car.
It costs too much to make hydrogen, it's expensive to store and the infrastructure is non-existant. George W. Bush is scamming American tax-payers by investing in hydrogen. He was told to do it by auto-manufacturers and the oil industry...
Back in the 1990s, California passed a law that required major car companies to make electric vehicles... they were FORCED to either make EVs or they would be forbidden to sell cars in California. The auto companies made electric cars that were fast, looked good and could go 120 miles on a charge. Thousands of people wanted them. Instead of selling the cars, the auto companies leased them, then joined oil companies to lobby California politicians to cancel the EV mandate.
Andrew Card, former GM lobbyist and Bush Chief of Staff acted as a plaintiff against the State of California, attempting to sue the state for pushing the EV mandate. A few years later, the Department of Justice under the Bush administration filed an amicus brief supporting GM and other automakers. The automakers were very clear, they didn't want to make electric cars... so much so they even took back and crushed every EV they leased.
To replace EVs, Bush presented the new "Hydrogen Economy." He gave $1.2 billion of taxpayer money to car makers just to research the technology. Hydrogen is of course 10 to 15 years away... suspiciously convenient for auto-manufacters and oil companies who don't want electric cars. So my conclusion is that, everything you see about hydrogen, it's all just a big charade to distract people away from electric cars.
Ethanol and all that other new-fuel crap is also a distraction. The fuel still has suppliers, gas stations where you fuel up, and it needs to be transported. Biofuels keep the old system in place. If you had electric cars filling up overnight at home on the power grid it would disrupt the old system.
Here we are in 2007, thinking of burning corn (food) for fuel because the oil industry decided that energy security and environmental concerns warrant burning a bunch more (different) shit in combustion engines. It's like we're in an alternate reality. How can the world be so messed up?
well said gladstone...
Bicycles.....
As if the position described by George Monbiot isn't bad enough, the production of ethanol from corn requires almost as much energy as it produces. In other words the net energy gain from the whole business is miniscule - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
In Brazil they make ethanol from sugar, which is more efficient (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/05/business/LA-FIN-Brazil-US-Ethanol.php ), but the US has imposed a 54 cents per gallon tariff on Brazilian fuel in order to protect US farmers. Not only would the US be screaming blue murder if another country dared to impose an import tariff on one of their major products, but food prices will surely increase (and as GM says, poor people will starve) merely to satisfy the PR concerns of a handful of politicians.
Biofuels and hydrogen are both energy storage methods, not energy supplies. The energy source in the first place is solar, the latter near real time solar (in the case of hydroelectric, wind, or photovoltaic), stored solar (fossil fuels), or a small fraction of available power, stored geological sources.
The real problem is overconsumption, caused by failure of markets to price stored fuels to reflect their loss, and costs associated with pollution, etc.
Much lighter vehicles, slower speeds, and less stuff are a much bigger part of the solution than biofuels or hydrogen. What can be more ridiculous than a multi-ton vehicle transporting payloads less than 100 Kg?
i still don't quite understand why there needs to be a vector other than a wire and a battery. all electric has three advantages:
* no fixed fuel/drive system in vehicle (easy to shift source mix)
* much more flexible infrastructure (recharge your parked volt-cycle while you're doing your chores!)
* multiplies the amount of R&D being done on battery tech (a big help for everything)
in addition, swappable battery systems would allow for fast "recharges" and for instant performance upgrades as new battery tech became available.
With too much technology.
How about a five-year freeze on population growth? That's what's causing damage to the planet: too many people.
What about electric plug-in cars? Zero emissions and we already have a distribution system in place (the power grid). The simplicity of the engineering is amazing - check out movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" for a very effective visual demonstration. It does shift energy to the electrical grid system but that may be an advantage since it centralizes the energy source. Convert the electric power plants to green energy - solar, wind etc.
I thought that we had significant engineering barriers to overcome with hydrogen which make it unfeasible in the short run?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4199381.html
Ethanol still emits greenhouse gases, correct? That doesn't seem to solve the problem.
crack1000 March 27th, 2007 1:29 pm
Silly rabbit.
"I agree with a lot of what you say, but, of course, realize you are approaching this without a thought to the totality of the struggle."
No I'm approaching this from the perspective of what is the quickest way to quit producing green house gases. Farmers, corporate or small private farms are going to find it more and more difficult to produce anything, much less ethanol as the climate changes and the weather gets more violent and acts in other unpredictable ways.
Even so this doesn't require an all or nothing approach as most people seem to advocate. It doesn't have to be all ethanol, or all hydrogen, or all electric, in fact I have repeatedly advocated a multitiered approach to the problem. Solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol, wave energy, geothermal, and hydroelectric power.
I do still think that hydrogen is a better solution than ethanol from an environmental point of view but that doesn't prevent ethanol from being a part of the overall mix.
In fact ethanol and biodiesel may be the only solution in sectors such as shipping, airlines, and heavy transport such as semi-trucks and trains.
Everyone needs to quit worrying about their own ox being gored and sit down and find a solution to the problem before nature solves it for us in a way that we won't find pleasant.
"Consider, any other fuel source can be controlled, completely, by large corporations."
And so can ethanol. How do you think we got where we are today with large corporate farms controlling U.S. agriculture? They bought out the small farmer and consolidated. They will still be able to with ethanol production, the price will just be higher. No higher prices alone won't solve that problem, in fact it may aggravate it because higher prices and the prospect of them remaining high will encourage corporate farmers to buy more, not discourage them.
Lobo Gris
Silly rabbit.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but, of course, realize you are approaching this without a thought to the totality of the struggle.
Consider, any other fuel source can be controlled, completely, by large corporations. Land, however, is owned by people, small farmers. As long as ethanol processing plants are controlled, owned and operated by a myriad of ownership, we are safe, and can then work to control our destiny. so the first part of the process must be to keep land ownership in the hands of smaller and smaller groups. This can only be done economically, through diversification of crop demand. A small farmer then says: general mills wants me to grow this, budweiser wants me to grow this, the ethanol plant wants me to grow this, which one of you fellas offers me the best deal? in this way, a small farmer has control, a previously unheard of control. in this way, prices for those crops are driven up, in this way, smaller and smaller tracts of land are required to make a living. Since i am from Montana, USA, i see small farmers losing their land, i see, small churches closing, small schools consolidating. this effect drives churchgoers to large churches where they fall under the sway of Taggart and their ilk, puts their children in larger schools where their information is less, their knowledge less, and creates a resentment towards the poor, based on what their religious leaders (Taggart, Robertson, etc.) tell them.
Once ethanol becomes real, we then see this trend reversed, with definite real power in the people, and with definite real goals to properly practice stewardship of the land.
Once again, a misguided egghead doesn't really get it.
This Indian, from the land, sees that we should never have started farming in the first place, reads the Christian bible and sees the shepherd getting preference over the farmer, and realize that farming was not a good idea in the first place. But now that it is here, without ethanol, you deny farmers, who have no reason to not perform and advocate for proper stewardship once we insure that ownership of land stays small and diversity of ownership in ethanol production remaains.
Hydrogen is still a better answer than biofuels.
Hydrogen emits zero polution, the only byproduct is water which can be cracked to produce more hydrogen.
Biofuels emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and are only carbon neutral if plants are replanted to absorb the carbon dioxide they emit.
Hydrogen can be produed from seawater, the most plentiful substance on the surface of the planet.
It can be produced using electricity produced from pollution free sources such as solar cells, wind energy, and wave energy which uses the natural movemnent of water producesd by ocean tides to spin turbines
Hydrogen can be used now. For years in the rural areas of the U.S. we have been using propane conversion kits which allow propane to be used as a vehicle fuel. The vehicle can even be switched back and forth between propane and gasoline from inside the vehicle. The kits including the propane storage tank are less that $1000. The same could be done for Hydrogen. The only things needed are the hydrogen production plants, a distribution system, and the kits to convert vehicles to be able to use it.
And yes, it is less efficent than gasoline to use it directly in an IC engine (no other product yet found produces more heat energy than gasoline) but that misses the point. How quickly do we want to clean up the planet and reduce the effects of global warming? Hydrogen has the potential to do it more quickly than any other technology.
That is not to say that we shouldn't continue to push other technologys. Full electric cars for instance. Mabe that use hydrogen fuel cells as energy delivery devices, after all the hydrogen infrastructure will already be in place.
But conversion to electric vehicles will take time, if for no other reason than the fact that the consumer will have to purchase a whole new vehicle, not just a conversion kit.
Lobo Gris