Rethink biofuel, says Nobel laureate

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080114-112152/Rethink-biofuel-says-Nobel-laureate

Rethink biofuel, says Nobel laureate

By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:28:00 01/14/2008

MANILA, Philippines -- A Nobel laureate has cautioned the government against rushing into biofuel development because there’s little energy to be gained from it.

Dr. Hartmut Michel, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, who was in Manila last week for a talk, said investing in biofuel development was “counterproductive.”

“When you calculate how much of the sun’s energy is stored in the plants, it’s below one percent,” he said at a forum at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City on Wednesday.

“When you convert into biofuel, you add fertilizer, and then harvest the plants. There’s not real energy gained in biofuel,” said Michel, 59, whose prize-winning research with two other chemists dealt with the process of photosynthesis.

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[yourout]

1. algae based biodiesel shows great promise....

<http://www.oilgae.com/>

<http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html>

[Aviation Pro]

3. Beat me to it....

...lol

[Aviation Pro]

2. Dr. Michel is right concerning traditional biofuel....

...made from soy and corn, but he has not offered a prognosis on second generation biofuels derived from algae. Currently, DARPA, Boeing and Virgin Fuels are investing heavily into aquatic based Fischer-Tropsch processes which have a number of advantages to them including not using biomass used for food production and conversion of greenhouse gases to oxygen. Here is an excellent paper on the subject from the commercial aviation point of view (.pdf required).

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/environment/pdf/alt_fuels.pdf

[snagglepuss]

4. Thanks for posting.

[AndyTiedye]

5. Make Biofuel from Waste, not from Food

Even then, it might be better to compost the waste in some cases.

So much food waste goes into landfills. THAT we should be able to turn into fuel.

[GliderGuider]

6. Agrofuels vs. second generation biofuels

Agrofuels (first-gen biofuels made from food crops) are self-evidently one of the worst ideas humans have ever had, given the scale of the use of fuels and their abysmal net-energy picture. The problems with them are so enormous and so obvious that any rational civilization would have simply dropped the idea without a murmur and gone on to explore other avenues. That's not happening, of course.

Algae is a nice thought, of course, as is cellulosic ethanol. However, neither of these is out of the starting gate yet, while agrofuels are already climbing into the hyper-acceleration section of the adoption sigmoid (shamelessly cribbed from The Oil Drum):



With a head start like this for agrofuels, along with the added economic value of ethanol compared to just growing food, along with the relative price elasticities of food in rich nations vs. poor ones, I wonder if second-gen fuels will stand a chance over the next 10 years. If they don't convincingly defeat agrofuels within the next decade, it may be too late for a large segment of the human population.



The reason price elasticity is so important is that it indicates that if agrofuel production follows the sigmoid given above, the inevitable rising food prices will affect the poor much more than the rich. Fuel use is notoriously price-inelastic across all income levels. As a result we have price inelasticity for food in rich nations, and price inelasticity for fuel in both rich and poor nations.. The only elasticity left in this (admittedly hand-wavy) picture is for food in poor countries. That suggests strongly that in a food-fuel competition that drives up global food and fuel prices, there will be one identifiable let of losers.

Read the whole biofuel analysis at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431 - it's a good one.