Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
The lastest issue of Nature Climate Change to reach my mailbox has some startling news, particularly considering that it comes from a generally Warmist publication. One might say is is “topsy-turvy” (upside down) from a Warmist viewpoint, but quite in keeping with a Skeptic point of view.
1) Total emissions from biodiesel are WORSE than emissions from fossil fuels, when considering both Direct and ILUC (Indirect Land Use Changes) Emissions.
2) Natural gas is WORSE than that “filthy fuel” coal when considering the net warming effects due to leakage rates of methane associated with natural gas and the cooling effects associated with aerosols from burning of coal.
3) Pure electric vehicles are WORSE than petroleum-burning hybrids, considering overall lifetime cost/benefits.
Here are some of the details:
1) A BIOFUEL CONUNDRUM. Biofuels get their energy from the Sun and absorb CO2 from the Atmosphere, making them carbon-neutral. Right? WRONG.
The graphic (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n8/fig_tab/nclimate1265_F1.html, annotations added by Ira) shows total emissions, which is the sum of Direct and ILUC (Indirect Land Use Changes) Emissions. Note that all sources of biodiesel produce more total emissions than the equivalent amount of energy derived from fossil fuels. Also note that bioethanol, while better than fossil fuels in this accounting, are far from carbon-neutral.
The orange and grey dashed lines across the bars show the threshold for a 50% and 35% emission saving, respectively, compared with fossil fuels. Initially biofuels will have to deliver a 35% saving under EU law, but this will rise to 50% in 2017. Indeed, when policymakers talk about raising the threshold in the context of the ILUC debate, they are reportedly talking about raising it to 50% — this graphic shows that according to what we know about the scale of ILUC, this policy approach wouldn’t solve the problem. ILUC data is from a draft report of the International Food Policy Research Institute; direct emissions data is from the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, © European Union, http://eur-lex.europa.eu.
According to this research, bioethanol from wheat saves less than 50% of emissions as compared to fossil fuels. Other bioethanol sources are only about 50-60% carbon-neutral.
2. A NATURAL GAS CONUNDRUM. Natural gas (methane) produces only half the CO2 of coal per unit of energy, so it must be cleaner and greener. Right? WRONG.
According to research by Tom Wigley of NCAR [Climate Change, 108, 601-608 2011]. It turns out that burning of coal releases aerosols that have a cooling effect. Of course, that is not news to those of us familiar with the 1974 National Science Board report that warned of Global Cooling due to human-caused aerosols. In addition, it seems that up to 10% of methane, a potent “greenhouse” gas, leaks out into the Atmosphere. Leakage rates need to be kept below 2% to beat fossil fuels.
3. AN ELECTRIC CAR CONUNDRUM. Pure electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf and my golf cart, release no direct emissions, so they are “greener” than hybrids or conventional cars that burn gasoline or diesel. Right? WRONG.
According to research from Carnegie Mellon University [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 108, 16554-16558 2011] hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles that burn some fossil fuels benefit society over their lifetimes more than either pure electric battery-powered vehicles or conventional gasoline-powered autos. Hybrids have smaller battery packs than pure electrics and therefore cost less to build and maintain.
… The work takes into account, for example, the power plant emissions associated with charging a plug-in car, the direct cost of oil as well as the military expense associated with defending against disruption in its supply, the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions from exhaust pipes, and vehicle recycling and land filling. …
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ira,
I’ve no clue what the “real” reason for invading Iraq was, but here’s the facts.
1. The bulk of oil contracts in Iraq have been awarded to Russian and European companies.
2. The bulk of Iraq’s oil exports go to Europe and other nations, not the US.
So….if the US spent blood and treasure for the purpose of securing oil supplies, may I gently suggests that you got screwed? The profit from developing Iraq’s oil and the security of supply seem to be benefiting a lot of countries, but the US is not one of them.
Smokey: I get “only” 30 mpg, but there is no Leaf, Volt or Prius that can keep up with me in either acceleration or speed.
Are you sure? My son’s Prius, that I have been driving for a while lately, has very good acceleration and can easily maintain a highway speed of 90 mph. At that speed, fuel economy suffers, but at a highway speed of 70 mph it gets 45 mph.
jae, please have a look at the sixth bar from the left on the graphic at the head of this posting. See the “Maize”? That is what they call corn. OK?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
davidmhoffer:
Your post at December 12, 2011 at 8:31 am is similar to a simplistic explanation I use to aid the understanding of those who think all forms of ‘alternative’ energy and recycling are good.
The explanation is as follows.
By definition
energy is the ability to do work
and
money is payment for work done.
So, by definition, if it costs more then it uses more en energy.
Richard
First I like to call ethanol Cornanol, Maizeanol is also good.
Maybe I just missed it but I cannot find that the post took into account the fossil fuel used to plant, tend, harvest, dry and ship bio sources, corn etc.
I thought the propulsion power of petroleum fuel used was equal to the Cornanol produced, if the maize isn’t shipped too far.
Now for the emissions. I keep rereading the chart and only see emissions for bio-fuel and land use change. In the case of Cornanol the fossil fuel emissions should be added to the bio-fuel emissions. I have no clue about the other bio-fuels.
Ira, PhD:
” See the “Maize”? That is what they call corn. OK?”
OK, Doktor, I thought maize was a stunted relative of the towering Iowa variety, but I stand corrected by you and Wiki. BTW, what’s with the “OK?” I was not trying to be a wise guy.
Well Phooey. I skimmed the comments again (yes I really did read them before writing) and found that my comment had already been covered.
So I shall change my idea to subtract the emissions of Maizeanol (maize in deference to the international readers) from the fossil fuels emissions and add the difference to the Maizeanol emissions.
Manicbeancounter says:
December 11, 2011 at 3:32 pm
There may be a problem with sugar beet as opposed to sugar cane. Sugar beet (as grown in Europe) needs around 5 times the land per tonne of sugar compared to sugar cane (as grown in Brazil). As land is scarcer in Europe than Brazil, even comparable crops require greater energy input. It might only be the physical factors that are considered here?
________________________________
A brief look at what they probably left out:
1. Workers going to the mine
2. Mining the ore
3. Transporting the ore
4. Crushing, smelting to form ingots & worker transportation
5. Transporting ingots
6. Producing steel & worker transportation
7. Transporting steel
8. Fabricating parts & worker transportation
9. Transporting parts
10. Assembling tractor/combine/ag equipment & worker transportation
11. Transporting to show room & salesmen transportation
12. transporting to farm
As for the Iraqi oil, it doesn’t really matter who drills and sells it, from the POV of a consumer nation, as long as it hits the open (fungible) market — and as long as it’s not in the hands of someone (Saddam, e.g.) determined to cause chaos and disruption with the process and proceeds. Even the Russians aren’t such loose cannons, though cannons they are.
Jackstraw, look at this http://cementafriend.wordpress.com/. Ira did you read my comment. Methane is a negligible greenhouse, both in radiation absorption and quantity in the atmosphere. The Oil companies have “snowed” the greenies. Further, so-called climate scientists have little understanding of heat and mass transfer (they disregard heat transfer by convection and phase change) or utilisation of energy.
With regards to several comments regarding the efficiency of ethanol producing less energy / power as compared to gasoline when used in an automobile one serious factor that needs to be considered is the function of the fuel and ignition systems on engines not specifically designed for ethanol as most cars over 5 years old. The knock sensor, engine exhaust sensors, electronic engine control (computer), etc work together to control timing advance and fuel/air mixture. A knock or ping caused by the ethanol will be picked up by the knock sensor and the computer will respond by enriching the fuel mixture and reducing the timing advance therefore causing much greater fuel consumption. My Nissan truck dropped from 21 mpg to 14 mpg (33%) with the great green ethanol mandate. My jeep only dropped about 4 mpg (15 – 20%).
The point is that there is a much greater effect in a vehicle’s performance that just the lesser amount of power / energy produced by the ethanol itself. The other factors are much greater.
Ethanol is a big failure by any measure.
Septic Matthew says:
December 11, 2011 at 9:12 pm
eyesonu: Large scale solar and wind seems to have been proven to be a bad joke.
Not solar. Boeing uses solar to power its Dreamliner assembly plant in South Carolina:
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/SCE_and_G_and_Boeing_Flip_the_Switch_on_Large_Rooftop_Solar_Project_999.html
Solar even provides part of the power for two new PV fabrication facilities in the U.S., one in Arizona, one in Michigan. Where sunshine is plentiful and coal and gas are not, solar is a good source of electricity. I personally would like to see more construction of nuclear power plants, but I think that the the golden age of PV power is upon us.
Only the sources are old-fashioned: the harvesting technologies are new. Growing industries everywhere are bidding up the price of coal, oil, and natural gas. The U.S. has plenty, but even for us, PV power is commercially viable in some places.
=================
Thank you for the link. It reads that all of the power produced will remain on the site. Obviously it will supplement the facilities power needs. Was it subsidized by the taxpayers in one form or another? While it is a very large installation at 10 acres, it utilizes the existing roof and is a very good use of space as well as likely reducing the solar heat load on the building’s roof that could be a plus in the summer day. That point could be a wash as it would be a negative in the winter day. The actual dollars invested, how long for payback or break even?
The large scale operations that I was refering to would be building expensive arrays to feed the grid. That, in my opinion, is a joke.
Burning natural gas might emit less CO2e per kilowatt than coal or oil (though leaks from pipes are another issue muddying the waters on that deceptively simple looking claim), but the fact remains that doing so is still taking carbon from its excellent long-term underground sequestration and putting it into the active carbon cycle above ground. It may be cutting our throats slightly more slowly, but it is still cutting our throats. The trick is to leave enough fossil fuels under the ground. Any response that does not take seriously that requirement is either shortsighted, propaganda for more profit, or an avoidance of responsibility (a.k.a. kicking the can down the road).
Ralph said on December 12, 2011 at 7:22 am:
You wanted gatewayev.org, the “Gateway Electric Vehicle Club”:
http://gatewayev.org/how-much-electricity-is-used-refine-a-gallon-of-gasoline
You got it right when you posted the same comment text at Junk Science when this post was mentioned, how did you goof it up here?
That figure comes from a reply by someone at the Department of Energy, prompted by a question of the amount of energy used to refine a gallon of gasoline:
Thus saying “how much electricity is used” is erroneous, with the title of that page somewhat disingenuous, as it is “energy used”, not “electricity used”.
From fueleconomy.gov, the 2012 Chevy Volt uses 36 kWh per 100 miles, combined driving (city and highway). That 6 kWh would be enough to travel almost 17 miles. It also gets 37 mpg combined (premium gas). So, 6/36 * 100mi / 37mpg = 0.45 gal. Sure sounds like a lot of waste when looked at that way.
Although as noticed where the “impressive” Miles per Gallon Equivalent figure is presented, “1 gallon of gasoline=33.7 kw-hr”. 6/33.7 = 0.178 gallon of gasoline. So in reality, the energy to refine 1 gal of gasoline is equivalent to only 0.178 gal of gasoline. The Volt takes 0.45 gal to yield the energy stored in 0.178 gal, so 0.178/0.45=0.40, thus 40% efficiency gasoline to electricity. That 0.178 gal would yield only 6.6 miles.
That “electricity used” page you linked to has at the top the following quote:
There’s a correction in the comments, should be 30 miles for 7.5 kWh.
But at 36kWh/100mi, the 2012 Volt could only get 11 miles for 4 kWh. Thus the Volt, the height of GM engineering excellence in electric powertrain vehicles, is only getting 69% what an average EV can get according to that quote. Also, as reported in this Edmund’s article, the 2011 Nissan Leaf, an all-electric plug-in vehicle, uses 34kWh/100mi, thus gets only 74% of what an average EV can get.
Thus that quote on that page appears questionable in its accuracy.
From Ralph on December 12, 2011 at 5:15 am:
And that’s also questionable. The 2011 Nissan Leaf would get only 18 miles, and that’s rounded up. 6kWh/(0.36kWh/mi)*100mi / 25 mi = 0.71, 71% of the “no link” Nissan figure.
I did find something like your figure on a page on a site, which looks like a wonderful gathering place of many out-there over-hyped pro-EV claims with a heavy anti-oil slant (said site appropriately named “EV Nut”). Fun reading, as the many claims contain many contradictions with the sole given being the collection striving for ever-larger more-hysterical figures:
http://evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Possibly because it just ain’t true? Even at 7.5 kWh per gallon of refined gas, the 2011 Leaf could only go 21 miles.
To expand with some interesting info:
The 2012 Volt gets 40% fuel-to-electricity efficiency (see above). From the US Energy Information Administration, using the method here to calculate power plant efficiency from the numbers here, the average efficiency of a coal-fired electricity-generating plant in 2009 was 32.8%. The EIA also says that electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 7%, thus t&d is about 93% efficient.
So, 0.328*0.93=0.31, from coal to electricity to the Chevy Volt’s charger there is about 31% efficiency. Putting gasoline into the Volt is 40% efficient. No info on efficiency of the charger. So you get more energy from the starting fuel source by using gasoline in the tank rather than electricity from the charger, about a third more. If you’re really worried about “carbon emissions” and real pollution, don’t charge your Volt unless you know your electricity source is “Green” enough to make up the difference.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
December 13, 2011 at 7:51 am
================
Excellent summary. I have seen several instances that I would have liked to repost a portion or all.
All together now…
Say “Integral Fast Breeder Reactor.” Pollution and energy problems SOLVED
FOR ALL, FOREVER!
http://ynpxtpnb.apollohosting.com/ddponline.org/penner05.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
Not bad for decades old energy tech eh? The only question remaining is why aren’t we using these today? Oh , I know; they’re not wasteful enough! The linear economic model
currently driving the worlds economy has no place for such efficiency! No wanton waste,
no economy. Right? WRONG!
With truth and respect…
Sean Holt.