Energy

Today's Energy spent inefficiently.

I saw this in the latest VCOA rag and even though the writer did say that they are not an expert on the subject, some of this seemed to make sense.

The article had to do with the high cost of gas, some likely reasons behind that, and also energy; snippet below (actually the following is sorta long):

....I believe the real reason to be happy about high fuel prices is that it might actually spur the development of alternative energy sources and high efficiency machines. There is a lot of hype and hot air around this subject. Let me tell you what I think.

Hybrid Cars Not worth it! Economically speaking, are you ahead to sell your 850 and buy a small hybrid? No. The savings in gas costs would never pay for the new car. From an energy standpoint should you do it? Probably not. The energy required to build, ship, prep and sell the hybrid would most likely never be recovered by the decreased gas consumption. Hybrid cars are a fashion accessory. Celebrities like to drive them to the airport to get on their G4 and go somewhere cool. Pay no attention to the fact that the take-off and climb out in the G4 uses enough energy to run a V8 SUV for thousands of miles.

People buy hybrids in California to get access to the car pool lane for a lone driver. Hybrids are a complex solution to a fairly simple problem. If you want great gas mileage buy a small diesel. Speaking of energy used by airplanes, it takes about the same amount of fuel to fly the Oakland Raiders to New York to play the Jets as it does to run the entire Indianapolis 500. Don't let anybody put an energy guilt trip on you about being a motor sports fan.

Electric Cars This seems to have some potential. There is now an electric car, the Tesla Roadster, that goes from 0 to 60 mph in around 5 seconds, has a 135 mph top speed, and the manufacturer claims it will go 250 miles on a charge. It costs a lot, but sometimes real innovation starts life as toys for the rich.

Electric cars do cause some problems. About 70 percent of the electric power in the US is produced by burning coal, which is the largest source of greenhouse gases. You should figure that electric cars really run on coal, but the fire and the pollution are somewhere else. Not a perfect solution. Large scale charging of electric cars would mean more power plants, primarily burning coal. True, there are some efforts to use wind and solar power to generate electricity but there really isn't enough. And there is the little problem of where to get power when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

Hydrogen Fuel Pure smoke and mirrors! The general public and the press are slowly coming to the conclusion that energy industry people have known for many years: hydrogen is a manufactured commodity. It takes large amounts of electricity and/or natural gas to make a little hydrogen. In order to meet 10 percent of California's motor fuel requirement you would need to build several new coal or nuclear power plants dedicated to making hydrogen.

There is no fueling infrastructure. The current liquid fueling infrastructure for gasoline, refineries, pipelines, tanks, fuel stations has been under construction for a hundred years. A similar system for dispensing hydrogen would take decades to build.

Bio Fuels Some potential. The effort to turn corn and sugar into motor fuels seems to be gaining some ground and interest from investment banks and savvy business people. Think of this as fuel shifting. Ethanol and other bio fuel products effectively shift us away from importing crude oil, which is a good thing, primarily because of the political problems. The bad thing about bio fuels is that they actually require more energy to produce than they contain, and they are almost price competitive with gasoline primarily because of government corn subsidies. If you do an energy balance on a gallon of ethanol, you will discover that between the manufacture of fertilizer, which require large amounts of natural gas, processing, shipping, and farm operation that it required about 10 to 15 percent more energy to produce the gallon of ethanol that you can get back out of it. Most of the energy invested is in the form of natural gas, which is in short supply and will need to be imported, but probably not from the Middle East.

Synthetic Fuels Lots of potential. Synthetic fuel is a name given to liquid fuel products manufactured by rearranging the hydrocarbon molecules found in coal and tar sands. You can make a fuel very similar to diesel from coal. It is a proven technology.

South Africa used coal to manufacture fuel on a large scale during the time when they were under economic sanctions due to apartheid. It works, but it costs #3.50 to $4.00 per gallon. There is enough coal and tar sand in Montana alone to fuel the country for 200 years. Again, coal is the big source of greenhouse gases, so it isn't without problems.

Back to our friends the petroleum producers, speculators and traders. It is not in their interest to get the price of gasoline so high that we actually start to develop alternatives. They are right on the cusp now, so prices will be stable for awhile. Here is what they are banking on: we won't do anything but complain.....

-Lee Cordner, President, Volvo Club of America

I am not an energy expert myself. I am an avid recycler, but know in the back of my mind that the only material which doesn't take at least as much energy to recycle as it does to get from scratch is probably only aluminium (it takes a lot of energy to extract the metal from bauxite)....