Putting the Biofuels eggs in one basket

The following quote comes from a Reuters story on a biofuels conference.

New-generation biofuels will come from a wide range of sources and no single feedstock may dominate, a conference on second generation biofuels organized by German commodity analysts F.O. Licht heard on Friday.

This makes me question why would we want one feedstock to dominate? There are good diversification reasons to want the opposite. Not being totally dependent on one crop of biomass will help stabilize supply. Suppose theoretically everything is based on corn. When the corn crop is devastated one year due to weather, disease , or insects; then the fuel supply (not to mention the US food supply) would be very hard hit. Same would hold true if the crop were jatropha, grasses, etc.

The point being that you don't want to depend on one single crop or geographical region for your biofuel any more than you want to invest only in companies named Enron or Bear Sterns. Diversification is good; hence the old saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

Another item in this article struck me as odd.

They fuels would have to show a technical performance equivalent to fossil fuels, offer improved carbon dioxide savings and come from abundant and cheap biomass to make them sustainable and competitively-priced without subsidies, Blondy said.

That is phrased to imply that fossil fuels are sustainable and biofuels are not sustainable; when the opposite is true. I think the concern is producing enough biomass to create enough biofuels to replace fossil fuels. If we can't do that, then there is a fundamental question of are we using our fuel sources responsibly? If we use more than we can replace, then the answer is no. If that is the case then more effort needs to be placed on efficiency improvements and there is considerable room for improvement.

Getting Off Oil

I enjoy watching TEDtalks on a semi-regular basis. I think of the TED video podcast as the Discovery channel of IPTV. Normally I find the TED talks to be uplifting and giving hope in a world where people like to delivery bad news. Today I watched a talk that at once gives hope, and at the same time brings frustration that its message is being ignored.

In this talk, Amory Lovins presents ways to get the US economy off of oil while turning a profit. Amory has also co-authored a book which will be going on my reading list, Winning the Oil Endgame.

There are a few items from the talk on which I want to find more research. 1) How well does carbon fiber respond to shock (in a crash for example). 2) The cost of carbon fiber compared to aluminum or other light weight materials.

Based on the example of a friend who put 365,000 miles on a medium sized SUV and figures he has paid around $50,000 on fuel for a $17,000 SUV, I calculated my fuel costs for my Accord. I have a 2004 Honda Accord that has nearly 75,000 miles on it. Getting 29mpg that means I've run about 2586 gallons of gasoline through it. With an average cost of around $2.75 a gallon that would work out to $7,112.07 on fuel. (And that doesn't count oil changes.)

Fuel costs are a little more than 29% of what I paid for the car in late 2003. Puts in perspective what kind of premium it would make sense to pay at the car lot to save money at the gas pump. (Since I bought the cheaper 4 cylinder model instead of the six; I saved money at the lot to save even more money at the pump!)