Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

I'm thinking that nukes look very good right now. As does ANWAR. Very disappointed in the 6 years of Bush with a Republican congress, an no meaningful energy plan. Just a bunch of feel good policies, that in the end, really don't feel good at all. Go to the grocery store and feel the pain!

Can you believe we are boxed into this "no nuke" corner because of a stupid Jane Fonda movie?

There may be few simple panacea biofuel solutions without unexpected consequences. Early in the last century, John Campbell predicted castor beans could produce a cheap biofuel for the transportation revolution beginning at the time. Unfortunately, castor beans were then found to be the source of ricin which was one of the early weapon of mass destruction threats.

We needed castor oil for a variety of important uses, so we imported the oil from countries like Brazil and India, and created a national defense reserve. Today Brazil is using the castor bean as a biofuel source, and our agriculture universities might be asking for more castor bean research funding for domestic production ... if it weren't for those periodic ricin poison news headlines!

Remembering Dan's comment from the other day. I wonder-- how DOES this effect farm subsidies? I can easily see removing all tariffs from foreign produce to increase domestic supplies, but how many tariffs do we still have in the age of GATT and NAFTA? Do high grain prices and low tax revenues provide sufficient leverage to buck the farm lobby?

And after decades of subsidies, how competitive WOULD our farms be? I'm remember last year, when a bumper crop in my state resulted in our governor declaring a state of emergency because of difficulties getting the grain to market.

T. Boone Pickens is spending $10 billion to develop 4,000 megawatts of wind power capacity in Texas.

Assume that at any point in time an typical car utilized in an average manner is using 35 horsepower or 26.11 kilowatts. Assume too, that we have perfect efficiency from the point at which electric power is produced, used to crack water to hydrogen and then recombined in a fuel cell with atmospheric oxygen into water for the release of the stored electric power.

T. Boone's 200,000 acre wind farm, via the hydrogen loop, can move 153,198 cars at perfect efficiency. Assume that at any given hour there are 25,000,000 cars operating in the US. That would require the replication of 163 T. Boone Wind Farms at a cost of $1.632 trillion.

Now drop the hydrogen loop efficiency down to say 50% and the cost doubles to $3.263 trillion. These 326 wind farms are spread across 65,275,000 acres or 101,992 square miles; roughly an area equal to the State of Colorado.

This is just power capacity to move cars. Assuming dispersion of this across the Great Plains and U.S. continental shelf, its plausible it will have a measurable impact on airflow and weather.

Bottom line: hydrocarbons store a hell of a lot of energy. Replacing burned hydrocarbons with an electric power - hydrogen loop will require massive electric generating capacity - probably using solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, tidal and geothermal on an industrial scale that's hard to comprehend.

Cheers
Glenn

What if climate change is not caused by burning fossil fuels?
How do ancient forests and dead dinosaurs keep on keeping on, producing ever more oil - predicted to run out long ago?
What is a theory?
How much is that tortilla in the window? Jeez.
Hook, line and sinker ...
Oh yeah, pollution is bad.

I agree we need more nukes, but I'm not sure cracking water (hydrogen is pretty uncrackable Tom) is the best solution for electricity from nukes. I'd pour money into battery research so that plug-in hybrids could start to eliminate any liquid fuel use for the short trips around town. If you did generate hydrogen, it might make more sense gasifying coal. Hydrogen is not practical stuff. It's low energy density and ability to leak through anything makes it hard to move around. I just don't see it ever being widely used.

Biofuels are the means to increasing connectivity between the Core and Gap countries in Africa, Central America and South America.

For decades, farmers in those countries have had to compete with food from the US and EU that was dumped in their local markets and sold for minimal cost. This make the city dwellers happy to have low cost food and the rulers were happy because the city dwellers were not rioting.

Now that $100 a barrel oil makes biofuels economically competitive, food is no longer being dumped in the Gap. At the same time that the Core is increasing food production in order to feed the biofuel market, we should probably try to assist Gap farmers to produce additional food so that the Gap can feed itself. At the same time, many Gap countries can grow sugar cane and turn it into ethanol and electricity the way that Brazil does. They can satisfy much of their own needs for transport fuel and export ethanol to the Core. This transition from contemptible beggars to valued energy suppliers could take place over just a few years.

I'll believe in a hydrogen economy when I see it, but in the mean time, it would certainly be a good Idea for the United States to get the same percentage of electricity from nuclear power as France does.

Tom, a good article to post. How about two suggestions for the future:
1) Convert the inedibles like stalks and harvest trash into ethanol first before food crops.
2) More nukes, more nukes. Power the stationary stuff (buildings) with this.

Final note: Keep that ethanol mix fuel away from coastal areas. My personal experience is that gasoline mixed with ethanol gives me less mileage. I live on the SW Florida coast. Ethanol attracts moisture, car mileage takes a dive and boats just plain do not work.