PAN DISCUSSION GROUP 

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PAN Discussion Group Wednesday Nov 28^th 2007

Subject: Alternative Fuels and US Policy

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Location: 

 

Time: 7pm to 10pm - ish

 

Bring drinks and snacks to share 

 

Thanks to everyone who responded to my whining and sent articles. I really appreciate it. This has been a crazy weekend and this has made life so much easier.

 

Maria pointed out that we actually decided to do children and child labor last meeting but I lost that somewhere, sorry. Nobody protested too loudly so I hope we are still happy with this topic.

 

General:

The articles are the basis for the discussion and reading them helps give us some common ground and focus for the discussion, especially where we would otherwise be ignorant of the issues. The discussions are not intended as debates or arguments, rather they should be a chance to explore ideas and issues in a constructive forum. Feel free to bring along other stuff you've read on this, related subjects or on topics, especially topical ones, that the group might be interested in for future meetings.

 

GROUND RULES:

* Temper the urge to speak with the discipline to listen and leave space for others

* Balance the desire to teach with a passion to learn

* Hear what is said and listen for what is meant

* Marry your certainties with others' possibilities

* Reserve judgment until you can claim the understanding we seek

  

Any problems let me know...

 

The Articles:

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First a general article on the car industry ….

Running on Fumes Does the “car of the future” have a future?

by Elizabeth Kolbert November 5, 2007  New Yorker

 

The average new car gets fewer miles to the gallon than Henry Ford’s Model T got.

On September 29, 1993, President Bill Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore, the chief executives of G.M., Chrysler, and Ford, and the head of the United Auto Workers gathered in the White House Rose Garden to talk about cars. Clinton opened his remarks by reminiscing about his first—a 1952 Henry J that his stepfather had salvaged from a fire—and then about one of his “most prized possessions”: a 1967 ice-blue Mustang convertible. “I think when I left my home it was the thing that I most regretted leaving behind,” he said of the Mustang. “The other people who drove on the roads in my home state, however, were immensely relieved.

“I think that all of us have our car-crazy moments and have those stories,” Clinton went on. “Today, we’re going to try to give America a new car-crazy chapter in her rich history—to launch a technological venture as ambitious as any our nation has ever attempted.” The aim of the venture, the President explained, was to “develop affordable, attractive cars that are up to three times more fuel-efficient than today’s cars.” In addition to being moderately priced and energy-efficient, the new cars were supposed to be safe, comfortable, and recyclable. The automakers and the federal government would design the vehicles jointly—the government would provide much of the funding, and make available technologies that had been developed for military use—with the understanding that at the end of a decade the manufacturers would build prototypes of sedans capable of getting eighty miles to the gallon.

The project was formally known as the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, and early reports from those involved were promising. By 1997, participants had settled on the specs of the “super car,” as it became known: the sedan would be a lightweight, diesel-electric hybrid. (Diesel engines, because they use a higher compression ratio, consume less fuel per mile than gasoline engines do.) By 2000, the Big Three had all produced concept cars, which were unveiled with much fanfare at the North American Auto Show, in Detroit. G.M.’s car, which was called the Precept, came equipped with two electric motors, one mounted on each axle. Ford’s Prodigy featured an aluminum body and rear-facing cameras in place of side-view mirrors, and the Dodge ESX3 was made in large part out of plastic.

The concept cars were wheeled out, then wheeled away, never to be seen again. In January, 2002, just months before the prototypes of the vehicles were supposed to be delivered and after more than a billion dollars of federal money had been spent, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that the Bush Administration was scrapping the project. When he delivered the announcement, Abraham was flanked by top executives from the Big Three, at least one of whom—G.M.’s chairman, Jack Smith—had stood next to President Clinton when he launched the program, eight years earlier. Abraham explained—and the auto executives seemed to agree—that the program had been based on a fundamentally flawed premise. The future of the car didn’t lie with diesel hybrids or any other technology that would allow vehicles to get eighty miles to the gallon. “We can do better than that,” Abraham declared. The Administration and the automakers, he said, were undertaking a new, even more ambitious venture, called FreedomCAR. The goal of this project was to produce vehicles that would run on pure hydrogen.

So will a “super car” or a “FreedomCAR” or a “hypercar” or any of the other revolutionary new cars that have been proposed ever get built? Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, the authors of “Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future” (Twelve; $27.99), answer this question with a qualified “yes.” Carson, who covers the transportation industry for The Economist, and Vaitheeswaran, a writer who holds an engineering degree from M.I.T., are “techno-optimists,” as opposed to the “eco-pessimists” they sometimes deride. Yet their argument rests on an account of global trends that is nothing short of terrifying.

Consider what’s happening in India and China. As Carson and Vaitheeswaran point out, car ownership in both countries has been and still remains, by U.S. standards, almost absurdly low. There are nine personal vehicles per thousand eligible drivers in China and eleven for every thousand Indians, compared with 1,148 for every thousand Americans. But incomes in the two countries are rising so rapidly—the Chinese economy grew by eleven per cent last year and is expected to grow by the same amount this year—that millions of vehicleless families will soon be in a position to buy automobiles. Assuming that incomes continue to rise, in a few years tens of millions of families will be buying their first cars, and eventually hundreds of millions. (To satisfy increasing demand in India, the country’s second-largest auto manufacturer, Tata Motors, is set to start producing a four-door known as the one-lakh car—a lakh is a hundred thousand rupees—that will sell for the equivalent of twenty-five hundred dollars.) Were China and India to increase their rates of car ownership to the point where per-capita oil consumption reached just half of American levels, the two countries would burn through a hundred million additional barrels a day. (Currently, total global oil use is eighty-six million barrels a day.) Were they to match U.S. consumption levels, they would require an extra two hundred million barrels a day. It’s difficult to imagine how such enormous quantities of oil could be found, but, if they could, the result would be catastrophe. “Just consider the scale of the potential problem—for instance, the effect on global warming of seven hundred and fifty million more cars in India and China, belching carbon dioxide,” Carson and Vaitheeswaran write.

It’s tough for Americans (or, in the case of Carson, a Scotsman) to argue that, for the sake of the planet, citizens in developing countries shouldn’t buy cars. It’s very nearly as tough to imagine Americans deciding, for the sake of the planet, to give up driving. Since the planet can’t handle ever-increasing numbers of gasoline-consuming, CO₂-emitting vehicles, it follows, Carson and Vaitheeswaran argue, that a radically new kind of car will have to be invented. They aren’t particularly clear on how this car will work—they are keen on a number of (mostly unproved) technologies—or on who, exactly, will develop it. But they are convinced that once the right steps are taken—Carson and Vaitheeswaran advocate a stiff carbon tax, and urge Americans to support any politician with the courage to propose such a measure—it will appear. Indeed, they maintain that the “race” to create the “car of the future” is already under way.

“The good news is that a promising suite of technologies—ranging from flex-fuel ethanol engines to plug-in hybrids to hydrogen fuel cells—finally offers a way to move beyond oil and the internal combustion engine,” Carson and Vaitheeswaran write. In keeping with their book’s generally upbeat mood, the two manage to tell the story of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles as a kind of automotive comedy. Japanese automakers, excluded from the project, mistakenly took Detroit at its word. They assumed that the Big Three actually intended to develop super-efficient vehicles, and, to protect themselves, they stepped up their own research efforts. Within a few years, Honda had introduced the Insight, and Toyota had introduced the Prius; both got nearly fifty miles to the gallon. (Carson and Vaitheeswaran are adamant that the Prius is not the car of the future, though they give Toyota high marks for forward thinking.) The Big Three were then forced to play catch-up: Ford eventually licensed hybrid technology from the Japanese. However “the car of the future” functions, the book predicts that its appearance will transform the American auto industry, either by reinvigorating it or by finally killing it off. In the words of Lee Iacocca, Carson and Vaitheeswaran urge the Big Three to “lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

“Auto Mania” (Yale; $32.50), by Tom McCarthy, comes to the car of the future via the car of the past. McCarthy is a professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, and his book is based primarily on archival records kept at places like the Michigan Historical Center and the Automobile Club of Southern California. (McCarthy notes that, in the course of his research, he put nearly two hundred thousand miles on his car.) The book is structured around a series of decisions that were made by the auto industry between 1900—the year the first national automobile show was held, in New York—and the present day, and it makes the techno-optimism of “Zoom” seem almost dangerously naïve.

Typical of the tales that McCarthy tells is the story of leaded gasoline. The earliest automobiles were designed to run on ordinary—which is to say, unleaded—gas. But in the nineteen-tens, as automakers began to experiment with higher-compression engines, the problem of “knock” arose. (Knock, which can cause engine damage, occurs when the fuel in a cylinder ignites before the piston has reached the top of its cycle.) In 1921, a team of G.M. researchers looking for a way to prevent knock discovered that by adding small amounts of tetraethyl lead, or TEL, to the fuel supply they could solve the problem.

By that point, the toxicity of lead was already well known. Indeed, one of the G.M. researchers behind TEL, Thomas Midgley, very nearly poisoned himself while working on the additive, and several workers at a plant experimenting with TEL died gruesome deaths as a result of exposure to it. (Midgley went on to invent Freon, which was later discovered to be destroying the ozone layer.) In response to an outcry from public-health experts, G.M. and Standard Oil, which had formed a joint venture called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation to manufacture leaded gas, launched a P.R. campaign. Among the arguments the companies made was that there simply were no alternatives to TEL, a claim that, according to McCarthy, there is reason to believe they knew to be false. (Already in the twenties, chemists proposed eliminating knock by increasing the octane level in gasoline, as was eventually done). The Surgeon General was concerned enough to appoint a commission to look into the matter. The commission punted, with the result that leaded gas, heavily promoted by the Ethyl Corporation, soon became the standard at American filling stations. It took the federal government until the mid-nineteen-seventies to order its phase-out. By that point, G.M. had sold its interest in Ethyl, and automakers in general had turned against TEL, not because it caused brain damage but because it interfered with the operation of catalytic converters, an innovation that car manufacturers had also long resisted. It is estimated that by 1996, when the sale of leaded gasoline for use in cars was finally banned in the U.S., seven million tons of lead had been released from automobiles’ exhaust pipes into the air, and nearly seventy million American children had been exposed to what would now be considered dangerous blood-lead levels.

At the start of “Auto Mania,” McCarthy writes that his is “not an angry book. We don’t need another angry book about automobiles.” In fact, as he acknowledges, many of the stories he recounts have already been told (and, arguably, told better) in earlier, more indignant works, like Jack Doyle’s “Taken for a Ride” (2000) and Keith Bradsher’s “High and Mighty” (2002). What distinguishes “Auto Mania” from these works, besides its tone, is the scope of its indictment. McCarthy doesn’t blame Detroit for the ills of Detroit; he blames all of us.

McCarthy argues—convincingly if, once again, not terribly originally—that, to Americans, cars have never been just a means of transportation. Our choices about what to drive have always had a social component—keeping up with the Joneses—and an antisocial one: outdoing the Joneses. Both impulses have, of course, been fostered or, if you prefer, exploited by automakers, but, in the end, responsibility for our decisions is our own. In the early nineteen-eighties, Detroit introduced new versions of several S.U.V.s, including the Jeep Cherokee and the Chevy Blazer. The timing seemed perverse; as McCarthy notes, “Americans who had grown up listening to Ralph Nader crusading for safer automobiles, who knew that automobiles caused smog, and who lived through the energy crisis in the 1970s, certainly understood that larger, heavier vehicles burned more gasoline and posed a threat to smaller, lighter vehicles in collisions.” Yet sales of the redesigned S.U.V.s were so brisk that even the automakers were surprised. The vehicles may have been dangerous, wasteful, and unnecessary, but what the hey, they were fun! “More smiles per gallon,” promised an ad for the Suzuki Samurai, an S.U.V. that enjoyed wide popularity until reports suggested that it was prone to roll over.

Like Carson and Vaitheeswaran (and just about anyone else who has looked at the numbers), McCarthy views current trends in car-making, car buying, and car driving as deeply problematic. But he sees little reason to believe that challenges like global warming and declining oil reserves and rising demand in China and India will be dealt with any more expeditiously than leaded gasoline was. McCarthy takes up the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles only long enough to dismiss it as an evasive tactic. By his account, the Clinton Administration initiated the partnership to avoid the more effective, but politically riskier, step of raising fuel-efficiency standards. Ditto for the Bush Administration and the FreedomCAR program. Talking up the car of the future, McCarthy suggests, is just another way Detroit has found to insure that it never arrives. It’s worth noting that the average new car sold in the U.S. today gets twenty miles to the gallon, which is virtually the same as it got in 1993, when the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was launched, and—remarkably enough—less than Henry Ford’s Model T got when it went on the market, ninety-nine years ago last month.

Detroit has to change. Detroit won’t change. The two statements seem incompatible, and yet here we are. The Big Three still claim to be on the verge of introducing revolutionary new technologies—“Imagine: A daily commute without a drop of gas,” a G.M. ad touting a battery-powered car (still in the concept stage) exhorts—even as they continue to fight higher fuel-efficiency standards, on the ground that meeting such standards would be technologically infeasible. Their selective incompetence brings to mind Masetto da Lamporecchio, from “The Decameron,” who pretends to be a deaf-mute in order to screw the nuns.

It now seems clear—and both “Zoom” and “Auto Mania” present a compelling case on this point—that car design could be radically improved. Already the technology exists to more or less double fuel efficiency. (A great deal could be accomplished simply by trimming the weight of the average vehicle, which has increased by almost thirty per cent in the last two decades.) The failure of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles notwithstanding, tripling fuel efficiency also seems feasible. Such gains would have a huge impact in terms of oil consumption—passenger vehicles in the U.S. now account for forty per cent of the country’s oil use, and ten per cent of the world’s—and greenhouse-gas production.

But improving gas mileage will take us only so far. Once the Chinese and the Indians really start driving, doubled or even tripled fuel efficiency won’t suffice. This is why Carson and Vaitheeswaran regard the Prius merely as a stopgap: the true car of the future has to accommodate everyone, which is to say six and a half billion, soon to be nine billion, people.

Hard-core techno-optimists insist that this goal, too, could be met, if only automakers and politicians would apply themselves to the task that up to now they’ve taken such pains to avoid. This is a comforting argument; unfortunately, though, it assumes precisely what’s at issue. After all, just because someone has never bothered to enter the New York City Marathon doesn’t mean that if he runs in it he’ll win.

 

The Sierrans are not ‘cornvinced’  yet……..

 

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200701/decoder.asp

Decoder: Corn-Fed Cars  Detroit's phony ethanol solution by Paul Rauber
January/February 2007

EVER SINCE LAST SUMMER, when gas prices bounced as high as $3 a gallon, sales of fuel-efficient Toyotas and Hondas have been booming, and the Big Three are struggling to retain half the U.S. auto market. Rather than employing technology to achieve major mileage increases, however, Detroit is trying to fool people by making gas-guzzlers that can guzzle ethanol as well. These flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) can theoretically run on E85--a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. In practice, though, 99 percent of them run on gas alone.

General Motors (GM) is hyping its FFV program with a series of ads like the one at right. Ford, which last June retracted its previous promise to sell 250,000 hybrid vehicles a year by 2010, joined DaimlerChrysler in pledging to double production of FFVs. It's a cheap fix for the automakers: Converting a standard car or truck to flexible fuel costs only about $100 per vehicle. And even though FFVs get worse mileage than cars that run on gas, federal fuel-economy regulations pretend otherwise, so for each FFV, the automakers are allowed to produce two more gas-guzzlers.

1.      If every vehicle in the United States were powered by ethanol, only one of eight would be driveable. Already, 20 percent of the nation's corn goes to ethanol production. Replacing just one-eighth of U.S. gasoline consumption would require the country's entire corn crop.

2.      Corn-based ethanol's contribution to fighting global warming is marginal at best. A debate is raging, in fact, over whether ethanol takes more energy to produce than it provides. Ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline, but its production relies heavily on diesel-chugging tractors and petroleum-derived fertilizers, to the tune of some 140 gallons of oil per acre. Distilling corn into ethanol is also energy intensive, and while some forward-thinking producers are processing it with methane, biomass, and other alternative fuels, most of the 190 ethanol plants now in the works will be powered by coal. A recent survey by the University of California at Berkeley found that corn-based ethanol cuts greenhouse-gas emissions by, at best, 13 percent over gasoline.

3.      Ethanol does boost octane, and thereby engine performance, but supplies less energy per gallon than gasoline. While it is somewhat less expensive than gas, its lower energy content means you get fewer miles per gallon. Greencarcongress.com calculates that based on September 2005 prices, it would cost $2,781 to drive a Chevy Tahoe FFV 15,000 miles on E85, compared with $2,444 for regular gasoline. Until the price of E85 drops to about 72 percent of gas, consumers won't see any savings.

4.      If it's energy independence you're interested in, it might be better to turn your world to switchgrass, the prairie grass touted by President George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union address. Fuel produced from switchgrass and plant waste is known as "cellulosic ethanol" and is generally considered environmentally preferable to corn-based fuel. It doesn't take a mountain of pesticides to grow and might (theoretically, at least) require much less energy to distill. A lot of research remains to be done before cellulosic ethanol will be ready for prime time.

5.      GM boasts that it has produced more than 1.5 million FFVs. But E85 is available at only 918 of 170,000 public gas stations nationwide, almost all of them in the Midwest. California and Oregon have three each, New Jersey none at all. (To locate the closest station, visit the Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center at eere.energy.gov/afdc.) Rather than boosting fuel-efficiency standards, the Big Three are lobbying Congress to pay gas-station owners $30,000 each to offer E85.

6.      Even come the golden age of cellulosic ethanol produced in zero-emission plants, you'd still do more to stop global warming by driving a vehicle with high fuel efficiency. It wouldn't be hard to beat the E85 mpg ratings of the GM products pictured above: from left, the Chevy Avalanche (11 mpg city, 14 mpg highway); the Chevy Monte Carlo (16 city, 24 highway); the GMC Yukon (11 city, 14 highway); and the Chevy Impala (16 city, 23 highway).

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Dan Becker is a Senior Representative in the Sierra Club's Washington, D.C. legislative office, and one of the nation's leading experts on global warming and clean cars.

Let's start with the nitty-gritty, Dan. What do you drive?

I drive a Toyota Prius, 2000 model. It's our only car. It doesn't quite get the advertised mileage, but it does get about double what the previous car did, which was also a compact sedan.

So, do you consider your Prius a clean car? Or is "clean car" an oxymoron?

It's definitely a cleaner car than most. The best hybrids are dramatically more efficient than the same type of vehicle without the hybrid technology. There are lots of other technologies that can achieve significant improvements, and most of them are combined in the hybrids.

We've talked for years about better engines, better transmissions, better aerodynamics. The hybrids use all of those and more. Most hybrids have regenerative braking, for example, so that they generate electricity when you slow the car rather than having that braking energy lost as heat. In addition, the hybrids have idle-off technology that turns off the engine when the car is stopped at a red light or in traffic and that saves even more gas.

So, there's a lot of good technology in these cars. You don't need to have a hybrid to have a relatively efficient vehicle, but most of the most efficient vehicles today are hybrids.

Are there good hybrids and bad hybrids?

There are good hybrids and less-good hybrids. There are some hybrids where the manufacturer used the technology to increase power and acceleration rather than to save gas and improve environmental performance. The Honda Accord hybrid, for example, is only about 25 percent more efficient than the normal Honda Accord, compared to a 50 percent efficiency improvement in the Civic hybrid. The Toyota Highlander is not a particularly stunning environmental achievement, nor is the Lexus 400H - both from Toyota. And GM is going to underwhelm everyone with its new Saturn Vue hybrid when it debuts in the Fall.

The good news is that Americans seem to be responding appropriately by not buying these cars. They continue to wait in long lines to buy the best hybrids. That's a good sign for the environment and for the manufacturers who are making them.

Ford made headlines recently when it backed off a commitment to sell more hybrids and instead chose to emphasize flex-fuel vehicles. What's the story behind that?

Well, it takes good technology and some level of commitment to make a significant number of hybrids. It only takes a desire to evade the law to build flexible fuel vehicles. A flexible fuel vehicle is a regular car or light truck that has the theoretical capability to run on alternative fuels such as E85, which is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

I say theoretical because the vehicles usually have an optical scanner in the fuel line but no other significant changes to optimize them for running on ethanol. Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, so you need to coat the fuel tank so that it doesn't corrode. The auto companies don't do that because they recognize that the vast majority of people who buy these vehicles will never put ethanol in them. Why? Because out of 176,000 gas stations in the United States, only about 600 serve E85.

So, you may ask, 'Well, if that's the case, then why do automakers bother to make FFVs?' And the answer is because they get a credit, due to a loophole in the law, that allows them to evade CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards and make more gas guzzlers than the law would otherwise allow. The Big Three plus Nissan have all availed themselves of this loophole in the law, and, yesterday, Toyota announced that they intend to as well.

What if we got to the point where we had, say, 60,000 gas stations serving E85. Would FFVs start to make sense then?

Talk to me when we get anywhere near that. It costs anywhere from 10 to 30,000 dollars to put an ethanol pump in. The oil companies don't have any interest in doing that. And most of the station owners don't either.

The reality today is that there are places where you would have to drive a thousand miles to find the nearest ethanol station. And, even in places where there are more ethanol stations, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, most folks don't bring their FFV to the ethanol pump.

So, the first level of response is that E85 and FFVs are scams. If you really want to increase the use of ethanol, a better strategy and the one that the ethanol industry has proposed (as opposed to the auto industry which is pushing E85) is lower-ratio blends containing two to ten percent ethanol.

But couldn't ethanol help wean us off oil?

Certainly there is some level of ethanol, if it were produced from cellulosic material - not corn or soy, but switchgrass and other woody feedstocks - that could help us back out some of our addiction to gasoline. But above some level there will be other problems. You may be using more pesticides and water to produce your crop. You may be displacing food production. You might end up importing feedstock from tropical countries where they're already growing biofuel crops, but where any further increase will damage the rainforest. This is already happening in countries like Indonesia and Brazil. In Indonesia they're planning to cut a thousand-mile swath of rainforest to plant biofuel plantations for the Chinese automotive market. And if we become dependent upon ethanol in this country, it's likely that the rainforests could pay some of the price.

We used 140 billion gallons of gasoline last year, and we produced the equivalent of 2.5 billion gallons of ethanol, total. E85 just a little bit and gasohol much more. That's in terms of the actual heat content equivalent of gasoline. The actual volume of ethanol produced was 4 billion gallons but since there are fewer BTUs per gallon of ethanol than gallon of gas, it's the energy equivalent of 2.5 billion gallons of gasoline. That's a tiny fraction of the 140 billion. We would have to dramatically increase production to meet demand.

And that's why - and this is a novel expression - the single biggest step to curbing our oil addiction and global warming and to save consumers money at the gas pump is to raise CAFE standards and make cars go further on a gallon of gas. For the average vehicle, we could cut our gasoline consumption by more than half just by using existing technology. And that doesn't mean they all have to be hybrids. If they were all hybrids, it would be a much deeper cut than that. But it would also be somewhat more expensive.

So, why has it been so difficult to get Congress to take that step?

Well, Washington is broken, and the Congress is broken. Congress is good at not doing things. They're not very good at doing things. So, we have a stalemate now. The bad guys can't drill the Arctic, and we can't raise CAFE standards and thereby take the Arctic off the table forever. But Congress can't divorce itself from the monied interests that finance campaigns. The auto industry is a very powerful industry, and they funnel a lot of money into congressional campaigns. They also have a very effective lobbying campaign based on a series of big lies - one of which, fortunately, has been proven wrong. And that is 'We can't possibly make a vehicle that gets 40 mpg. It would have to be the size of a thimble. It would be unsafe. And of course it would drive the automotive industry out of business.'

Well, the hybrid is a rolling advertisement to prove that wrong. But big lies are hard to kill and many members of Congress would rather take the easy path instead of doing the right thing and vote to raise CAFE standards. So, we've learned that we need to take our campaign out of Washington, DC.

Starting a few years ago, in 2001, we began a three-part campaign. One part was taking the fight directly to the auto companies, such as Ford. Another part was exciting people about hybrid technology to get them to recognize that they actually can choose clean vehicles and pressure automakers to make more of them. And the third part was going at the global warming problem through the states with the Pavley Law, which isn't a mile-per-gallon fuel economy law but a global warming emissions reduction law. And we've now gotten 11 states to adopt that, plus Canada. And that represents about 40 percent of the US and Canadian car-buying market.

The auto companies have sued to overturn the law, and that lawsuit will be settled by the courts in the next couple of years. But once that's done - and I think we'll win - the automakers will have a stark choice: They will either have to make clean cars and dirty cars in each of their plants and ship them accordingly, or they'll just decide, 'Oh, the hell with it. We'll just make them all Pavley cars and the whole nation will enjoy cleaner vehicles.'

President Bush has owned up to our oil addiction - an admirable first step in the recovery process. Has he done anything to follow up? And what should he do?

The president has the power himself to raise CAFE standards. He doesn't need Congress to do it. And, in fact, the president proposed last year an extraordinarily modest increase in CAFE standards for light trucks - all of 2 mpg for light trucks by 2011. That includes SUVs, vans and pick-ups. That infinitesimal increase is a fraction of the dramatic improvement that we got from the first round of CAFE, which doubled the fuel economy of America's cars from 1975 through the 80s. And the technology exists to do this again, cost-effectively and safely, but the president has sat on his tailpipe rather than taking out his pen and getting to work. That is shameful.

Here we have young Americans dying in Iraq. We have a lot of Iraqis dying. And we have all of the other consequences of oil dependence ranging from high gas prices to high global warming emissions, and enormous transfers of wealth to foreign nations, not all of whom are our best friends. The president talks piously about our oil addiction but has done nothing, other than utter those words, to begin to end it.

President Bush's early emphasis was on the promise of fuel cell cars. But we haven't heard much about that lately. Is there a future for fuel cell cars?

There may be, but it's a distant future. In order to run vehicles on fuel cells, there are a number of difficulties we need to get beyond. For starters, where are we going to get the hydrogen? It takes a lot of energy to create it. And then you've got to store it. And if you store it as a gas, you can't put very much of it on a vehicle, because you need a pretty thick tank to hold it, for safety. So the driving range of the vehicle isn't going to be very great. To store it as a liquid, it needs to be kept at minus 423 degrees F, which means you're using a lot of your energy just to keep it cold. Someday, we may have a solid that we can use, but we don't have one now.

All that said, the fuel cell is a really neat technology with lots of potential applications. My guess is that it will most likely be used to run stationary plants first - buildings rather than cars.

Let's talk about something that looks like it could be closer to reality: Plug-in hybrids. Are you excited about plug-ins?

Plug-ins certainly have some attraction, but currently there's no manufacturer making one, and I think we need to be careful to avoid a situation, going forward, where we're effectively running cars on coal. There are already too many proposals to build new coal-fired power plants. We don't want to add to that threat by running a lot of transportation off electricity unless we've first figured out how to clean up the electric grid.

Looking ten years ahead, where do you want to see us?

The scientists say we have about ten years to turn ourselves around on global warming emissions. We're racing down a road that ends at a giant chasm, and we've got to stop the car and turn it around and get it to go the other way. We've seen the warnings, from the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers pretty much everywhere on Earth, the heat waves, Hurricane Katrina. These are the harbingers of a future that I think a lot of Americans recognize we need to avoid.

There is no good reason why we can't solve the problem of global warming. We managed to solve the problem of ozone depletion just in time. Another couple of years and the ozone hole probably would have been a runaway disaster. But a combination of better technology and the commitment to solve the problem combined to save us from a really dangerous situation. And the ozone hole itself won't close for sixty years.

Global warming is much more complicated. Anybody with a match is a potential source. We have terrible energy systems that aren't going to change very quickly, and we have many other countries that want to improve their lifestyle and their comfort levels like we did, and we need to help them find ways to meet their needs in ways that don't destroy the atmosphere as well. In order to do that, we in the United States, the world's biggest polluter, need to take a lead. We need to get our head out of the sand. We need to recognize that global warming is a major problem that faces our nation and the world, that we have a major role in creating the problem and that we therefore have an enormous obligation to solve the problem.

An edited article with more on the great hope: celullosic ethanol

May 2005 eNews Bulletin Biocycle Diane Greer April 2005

 Creating Cellulosic Ethanol: Spinning Straw into Fuel

In the Grimm Brother's fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold. Thanks to advances in biotechnology, researchers can now transform straw, and other plant wastes, into "green" gold - cellulosic ethanol. While chemically identical to ethanol produced from corn or soybeans, cellulose ethanol exhibits a net energy content three times higher than corn ethanol and emits a low net level of greenhouse gases. Recent technological developments are not only improving yields but also driving down production cost, bringing us nearer to the day when cellulosic ethanol could replace expensive, imported "black gold" with a sustainable, domestically produced biofuel.

Cellulosic ethanol has the potential to substantially reduce our consumption of gasoline. "It is at least as likely as hydrogen to be an energy carrier of choice for a sustainable transportation sector," say the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Union of Concerned Scientists in a joint statement. Major companies and research organizations are also realizing the potential. Shell Oil has predicted "the global market for biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol will grow to exceed $10 billion by 2012." A recent study funded by the Energy Foundation and the National Commission on Energy Policy, entitled "Growing Energy: How Biofuels Can Help End America's Oil Dependence", concluded "biofuels coupled with vehicle efficiency and smart growth could reduce the oil dependency of our transportation sector by two-thirds by 2050 in a sustainable way."

ISN'T ALL ETHANOL THE SAME?

Conventional ethanol and cellulosic ethanol are the same product, but are produced utilizing different feedstocks and processes. Conventional ethanol is derived from grains such as corn and wheat or soybeans. Corn, the predominant feedstock, is converted to ethanol in either a dry or wet milling process. In dry milling operations, liquefied corn starch is produced by heating corn meal with water and enzymes. A second enzyme converts the liquefied starch to sugars, which are fermented by yeast into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Wet milling operations separate the fiber, germ (oil), and protein from the starch before it is fermented into ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol can be produced from a wide variety of cellulosic biomass feedstocks including agricultural plant wastes (corn stover, cereal straws, sugarcane bagasse), plant wastes from industrial processes (sawdust, paper pulp) and energy crops grown specifically for fuel production, such as switchgrass. Cellulosic biomass is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, with smaller amounts of proteins, lipids (fats, waxes and oils) and ash. Roughly, two-thirds of the dry mass of cellulosic materials are present as cellulose and hemicellulose. Lignin makes up the bulk of the remaining dry mass.

As with grains, processing cellulosic biomass aims to extract fermentable sugars from the feedstock. But the sugars in cellulose and hemicellulose are locked in complex carbohydrates called polysaccharides (long chains of monosaccharides or simple sugars). Separating these complex polymeric structures into fermentable sugars is essential to the efficient and economic production of cellulosic ethanol.

Two processing options are employed to produce fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass. One approach utilizes acid hydrolysis to break down the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars. An alternative method, enzymatic hydrolysis, utilizes pretreatment processes to first reduce the size of the material to make it more accessible to hydrolysis. Once pretreated, enzymes are employed to convert the cellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars. The final step involves microbial fermentation yielding ethanol and carbon dioxide.

Grain based ethanol utilizes fossil fuels to produce heat during the conversion process, generating substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Cellulosic ethanol production substitutes biomass for fossil fuels, changing the emissions calculations, according to Michael Wang of Argonne National Laboratories. Wang has created a "Well to Wheel" (WTW) life cycle analysis model to calculate greenhouse gas emissions produced by fuels in internal combustion engines. Life cycle analyses look at the environmental impact of a product from its inception to the end of its useful life.

"The WTW model for cellulosic ethanol showed greenhouse gas emission reductions of about 80% [over gasoline]," said Wang. "Corn ethanol showed 20 to 30% reductions." Cellulosic ethanol's favorable profile stems from using lignin, a biomass by-product of the conversion operation, to fuel the process. "Lignin is a renewable fuel with no net greenhouse gas emissions," explains Wang. "Greenhouse gases produced by the combustion of biomass are offset by the CO2 absorbed by the biomass as it grows."

Feedstock sources and supplies are another important factor differentiating the two types of ethanol. Agricultural wastes are a largely untapped resource. This low cost feedstock is more abundant and contains greater potential energy than simple starches and sugars. Currently, agricultural residues are plowed back into the soil, composted, burned or disposed in landfills. As an added benefit, collection and sale of crop residues offer farmers a new source of income from existing acreage.

Industrial wastes and municipal solid waste (MSW) can also be used to produce ethanol. Lee Lynd, an engineering professor at Dartmouth, has been working with the Gorham Paper Mill to convert paper sludge to ethanol. "Paper sludge is a waste material that goes into landfills at a cost of $80/dry ton," says Lynd. "This is genuinely a negative cost feedstock. And it is already pretreated, eliminating a step in the conversion process."

Perennial grasses, such as switchgrass, and other forage crops are promising feedstocks for ethanol production. "Environmentally switchgrass has some large benefits and the potential for productivity increases," says John Sheehan of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The perennial grass has a deep root system, anchoring soils to prevent erosion and helping to build soil fertility. "As a native species, switchgrass is better adapted to our climate and soils," adds Nathanael Criers, NRDC Senior Policy Analyst. "It uses water efficiently, does not need a lot of fertilizers or pesticides and absorbs both more efficiently."

OVERCOMING THE RECALCITRANCE OF BIOMASS

Reducing the cost and improving the efficiency of separating and converting cellulosic materials into fermentable sugars is one of the keys to a viable industry. "On the technology side, we need a major push on overcoming the recalcitrance of biomass," continues Greene, referring to the difficulty in breaking down complex cellulosic biomass structures. "This is the greatest difficulty in converting biomass into fuel." R&D efforts are focusing on the development of cost-effective biochemical hydrolysis and pretreatment processes. Technological advances promise substantially lower processing costs in these fields compared to acid hydrolysis. "In the enzyme camp, we have only scratched the surface of the potential of biotechnology to contribute to this area," adds Reade Dechton of Energy Futures Coalition. "We are at the very beginning of dramatic cost improvements."

CONSOLIDATED BIOPROCESSING

Many experts believe consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) shows the greatest potential for reducing conversion costs. CBP employs recombinant DNA technology to alter the DNA of a microbe by joining it with genetic material from one or more different organisms. In the case of cellulosic ethanol production, the goal is to genetically engineer microbes with the traits necessary for one-step processing of cellulosic biomass to ethanol.

FEEDSTOCK RESOURCES

Can American agricultural systems support large-scale cellulosic ethanol production? That is the big question. Do we have sufficient land? Can biomass be supplied without impacting the cost of agricultural land, competing with food production and harming the environment? The answer to these questions ranges from no to a qualified yes, contingent upon R&D efforts, technological innovation and government policy.

Battelle's recent report entitled, "Near Term U.S. Biomass Potential", looked at a scenario for producing 50 billion gallons of ethanol per year from cellulosic biomass. "The primary biomass supply would consist of waste biomass streams plus the production of energy crops." The waste stream was estimated to contribute 40-50% of the supply. The report concluded that the expansion of biomass supplies needed to achieve this level of production "would not result in large impacts on the agricultural system." Beyond this level of production, "dedicated energy crops would be required with implications for the cost of cropland and competition with food crops."

Assuming no increase in vehicle efficiency and a continued growth in driving, the U.S. is on a path to consume 290 billion gallons of gasoline in our cars and trucks by 2050. The report found increasing vehicle efficiencies to 50 mpg or better and instituting smart growth policies could reduce consumption to 108 billion gallons by 2050. "Our goal is mobility, not energy consumption," says Lend. "For a given unit of energy, two-thirds can be replaced by efficiency and one third by supply. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can supply our way out of this. We can make the biggest impacts fastest by impacting the efficiency equation."

"The key to producing enough ethanol is switchgrass," says Greene. Switchgrass shows great potential for improving yields, offers environmental benefits and can be grown in diverse areas across the country. Current average yields are five dry tons per acre. Crop experts have concluded standard breeding techniques, applied progressively and consistently, could more than double the yield of switchgrass. Yield improvements predicted by the report of 12.4 dry tons per acre are in keeping with results from breeding programs with crops such as corn and other grasses. The innovations discussed have a net effect of reducing the total land required to grow switchgrass to an estimated 114 million acres. Sufficient switchgrass could be grown on this acreage to produce 165 billion gallons of ethanol by 2050, which is equivalent to 108 billion gallons of gasoline. The next logical question is how do we integrate switchgrass production into our agricultural systems. The answer lies with the ability to produce animal protein from switchgrass. "If we have cost-effective agricultural policy, farmers will rethink what they plant," says Lynch "For example, we are using 70 million acres to grow soybeans for animal feed. You can grow more animal feed protein per acre with switchgrass. If there were a demand for biomass feedstocks to produce ethanol and other biofuels, farmers would be able to increase their profits by growing one crop producing two high value products."

While the promise of higher profits and more products is enticing, planting new crops and introducing new methodologies will present risks to farmers. Switchgrass is a perennial that takes several years to mature. Farmers will not make such a commitment unless they feel confident in the economics.

TRANSITIONING TO CELLULOSIC ETHANOL

One of the attractions of biofuels is they can be utilized in today's internal combustion engines with little or no changes. "The only source of liquid transportation fuels to replace oil is biomass," says Greene. "Everyone is excited about hydrogen but there are some very serious technical and infrastructure challenges. If you can stick with a liquid fuel which is compatible with our infrastructure and the vehicles we use, it is an easier transformation."

Light duty cars and trucks can already run on gasoline containing 10% ethanol. There are an estimated 1.2 million flex-fuel cars on the road capable of running on a wide range of biofuels including E85, a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. "Manufacturing flex-fuel vehicles is a trivial change," said Dechton. "It costs less than $200 per vehicle. They are selling them now and people do not know that they are buying them."

ECONOMICS, THE ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY SECURITY

The arguments in favor of cellulosic ethanol as a replacement for gasoline in cars and trucks are compelling. Cellulosic ethanol will reduce our dependence on imported oil, increase our energy security and reduce our trade deficit. Rural economies will benefit in the form of increased incomes and jobs. Growing energy crops and harvesting agricultural residuals are projected to increase the value of farm crops, potentially eliminating the need for some agricultural subsidies. Finally, cellulosic ethanol provides positive environmental benefits in the form of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

There is a growing consensus on the steps needed for biofuels to succeed: increased spending on R&D in conversion and processing technologies, funding for demonstration projects and joint investment or other incentives to spur commercialization. There is also agreement on one of the main factors impeding the development of biofuels - inadequate government funding. "We are grossly under investing in this area," says Dechton. "We are piddling along at 30 or 40 million dollars per year. This is a national security issue." Sheehan agrees, adding "the other problem is over the last several years Congressional earmarking has been horrendous. It is splintering critical resources, as a result effectiveness is way down. We do not have well aligned, consistently directed R&D effort."

Given sufficient investment in research, development, demonstration and deployment, the report projects biorefineries producing cellulosic ethanol at a cost leaving the plant between $.59-$.91 per gallon by 2015. The price range is dependent upon plant scale and efficiency factors. At these prices, biofuels would be competitive with the wholesale price of gasoline.

Development of Biorefineries

One of the essential elements in the economical and efficient production of cellulosic ethanol is the development of biorefineries. The concept of a biorefinery is analogous to a petroleum refinery where a feedstock, crude oil, is converted into fuels and co-products such as fertilizers and plastics. In the case of a biorefinery, plant biomass is used as the feedstock to produce a diverse set of products such as animal feed, fuels, chemicals, polymers, lubricants, adhesives, fertilizers and power.

Process and technological innovations are focusing on utilizing every component of the biomass feedstock. Essentially, the waste or by-products from one process become the raw materials for another product.

Lignin and protein, two important co-products, have the potential to significantly improve the economics of biorefineries. Lignin is a non-fermentable residue from the hydrolysis process. It has an energy content similar to coal and is employed to power the operation, thereby reducing production costs

Production of protein will not only bolster process economics but also increase land efficiencies by allowing the production of both fuel and animal feed on the same acre. The NHOC "Growing Energy" report estimates the co-production of animal protein could lower the cost of cellulosic ethanol by $0.11-$0.13 per gallon, depending on the size of the production facility.The leaves and stems of the plants are the source of protein found in cellulosic biomass feedstocks. The protein, referred to as leaf protein, is used in animal feed. Agricultural residues contain four to six% protein while crops like switchgrass and alfalfa contain 10% and 15 to 20% respectively.

To date, only a few small demonstration biorefineries are producing ethanol from cellulosic feedstock. Iogen is operating a facility in Ottawa, Canada, utilizing proprietary enzyme hydrolysis and fermentation techniques to produce 260,000 gallons a year of ethanol from wheat straw. The company has announced plans for a commercial-scale facility in western Canada, the U.S or Germany. Iogen is seeking government financial support and other incentives to help fund the $350 million expected cost.

John Sheehan of National Renewable Energy Laboratory has been utilizing process simulation software to look at biorefinery design. "Scale is a huge issue," said Sheehan. "The cost of capital is extremely scale specific." "Capital is a problem," says Brent Erikson, Vice President of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). "Nobody has constructed a commercial size biorefinery. They cost between $200 and $250 million to build."

Sheehan believes existing niche markets can play a vital role in the development of cellulosic

A short piece from the a tech publication ( In Tech) which always seems to have little promising tidbits ..

Real-time hydrogen production around the corner

It has always been off in the horizon and seemingly staying there, but now using hydrogen as an everyday, environmentally friendly fuel source may be closer than we think.

“The energy focus is currently on ethanol as a fuel, but economical ethanol from cellulose is 10 years down the road,” said Bruce E. Logan, the Penn State University Kappe professor of environmental engineering. “First you need to break cellulose down to sugars, and then bacteria can convert them to ethanol.”

A new method based on microbial fuel cells that converts cellulose and other biodegradable organic materials directly into hydrogen is now available, said Logan and Shaoan Cheng, a research associate.

The researchers used naturally occurring bacteria in a microbial electrolysis cell with acetic acid, the acid found in vinegar. Acetic acid is also the predominant acid produced by fermentation of glucose or cellulose. The anode consisted of granulated graphite, the cathode was carbon with a platinum catalyst, and they used an off-the-shelf anion exchange membrane. The bacteria consume the acetic acid and release electrons and protons creating up to 0.3 volts. When more than 0.2 volts come from an outside source, hydrogen gas bubbles up from the liquid.

“This process produces 288% more energy in hydrogen than the electrical energy that is added to the process,” Logan said.

Water hydrolysis, a standard method for producing hydrogen, is only 50 to 70% efficient. Even if the microbial electrolysis cell process is set up to bleed off some of the hydrogen to produce the added energy boost needed to sustain hydrogen production, the process still creates 144% more available energy than the electrical energy used to produce it.

For those who think a hydrogen economy is far in the future, Logan said hydrogen produced from cellulose and other renewable organic materials could blend with natural gas for use in natural gas vehicles.

“We drive a lot of vehicles on natural gas already. Natural gas is essentially methane,” Logan said. “Methane burns fairly cleanly, but if we add hydrogen, it burns even more cleanly and works fine in existing natural gas combustion vehicles.”

And another  with good words for the  often abused diesel   

InTech  Magazine 15 November 2007

Diesel, hybrid vehicles aid society; ethanol's benefits in doubt

Cars and light trucks that use advanced diesel technology or hybrid technology can provide larger societal benefits than gasoline-powered automobiles, according to a RAND Corp. paper.

The research also found light trucks and cars continuously fueled by a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, known as E85, compare unfavorably with the other two alternatives, according to RAND, a non-profit research organization.

“Rising oil prices coupled with concerns about global climate change are driving debate about which fuels and engines should be used to power the 17 million new cars and trucks sold each year,” said John Graham, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School and senior author of the research paper. (The paper, “The Benefits and Costs of New Fuels and Engines for Cars and Light Trucks,” is at www.rand.org.)

“Advanced diesel and hybrid technologies show very well in this study, in terms of benefits to the individual and society overall,” Graham said. “E85 simply doesn’t provide the same benefits.”

The research examines the benefits and costs of three alternatives to the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine for the 2010-2020 period: gasoline-electric hybrid technology (as found in the Toyota Prius or the Ford Escape SUV Hybrid), advanced diesel technology (such as the Mercedes-Benz E320 sedan), and dual-fuel vehicles that are powered continuously by E85.

Each alternative has the technological potential for significant market penetration in the near term, the research finds.

Additionally, researchers compared each technology to a gasoline-powered vehicle. Comparisons were from three vehicle types: a mid-sized car, a mid-sized SUV, and a large pick-up truck. The cost-benefit comparisons came from the perspective of individual consumers and society in general, on a per-vehicle basis over the life of the vehicle.

The paper ranks the four technologies using benefit-cost analysis. Using most reasonable assumptions, the results placed advanced diesel technology first, followed by hybrid technology, the gasoline engine, and E85 technology.

The consumer perspective accounted for technology cost, fuel savings, mobility, and performance. The societal perspective also included tailpipe pollutants, greenhouse gas emissions, and “energy security costs” for the fuels, the costs to society as a whole from greater dependence on expensive and unstable foreign oil supplies.

The results assume fuel prices of $2.50 per gallon for gasoline, $2.59 per gallon for diesel fuel, and $2.04 per gallon for E85 (including tax credit). The report also examines scenarios where fuel costs are much higher and much lower.

Findings from the consumer perspective:

              For all three vehicle types, the advanced diesel offers the highest savings over the life of the vehicle among the options considered. These savings increase with the size and fuel use of the vehicle: $460 for the car, $1,249 for the SUV, and $2,289 for the large pick-up truck;

              The hybrid option has smaller but still considerable savings for SUV applications ($1,066), moderate savings for pick-up applications ($505), but minimal savings over the life of the vehicle for car owners ($198);

              The vehicles operating on E85 cost all three owners more over the vehicle life, with a greater net cost burden for larger vehicles and increased fuel consumption: -$1,034 for cars, -$1,332 for SUVs, and -$1,632 for pick-ups.

The hybrid and diesel vehicles are more fuel efficient than their gasoline-powered counterparts: 25 to 40% better for hybrid and 20 to 30% for diesel, depending on the vehicle.

“While it is assumed that the hybrid vehicle will save more fuel than the advanced diesel, the overall advantage goes to the diesel because of its lower technology costs and better performance such as increased torque,” Graham said. “For E85, it is the cost of producing the fuel, not vehicular changes, that drives the negative results.”

The societal perspective shows results similar to those of the consumer perspective:

              The advanced diesel again shows the most promise, particularly for the larger vehicles: $289 for cars, $1,094 for SUVs, and $2,199 for large trucks.

              The net benefits for hybrids are somewhat less positive, with moderate-to-small values of $481 for SUVs and $132 for light trucks, and an increased cost for cars (-$317) over the life of the vehicle.

              Results for E85 remain uniformly negative, even more so for larger than smaller vehicles: -$1,046 for cars, -$1,500 for SUVs, and -$2,049 for light trucks.

Another piece, that talks more about policy,  or lack of it ..

The Carbon Calculus

By MATTHEW L. WALD November 7, 2007  The New York Times

A CHANGE is in the works that could go a long way toward making alternative energy less alternative, and more attractive to consumers and businesses.

It's not a technological fix from some solar-cell laboratory in Silicon Valley or wind-turbine researcher in Colorado or the development of some superbug to turn wood waste into ethanol.

Rather, the change would come from Washington, if Congress does what it has talked about and puts a price tag on greenhouse-gas emissions. Suddenly the carbon content of fuel, or how much carbon dioxide is produced per unit of energy, would be as important as what the fuel costs. In fact, it might largely define what the fuel costs.

That could shake up the economics of energy, handicapping some fuels and favoring others. Those that produce hefty emissions, like coal and oil, would likely look much worse. And some -- sunlight, wind, uranium, even corn stalks and trash as well as natural gas -- would probably look much better. ''Carbon-negative'' fuels that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they are made, might even become feasible.

Carbon dioxide is what economists call an ''externality,'' something that imposes a cost on somebody other than the manufacturer. At some point, the thinking goes, Congress will force industries to pay those costs, either with a tax or a cap-and-trade system in which allowances will cost money. The consensus in the energy business is that lawmakers will come up with a charge that could start at $10 per metric ton or more.

On Thursday, a Senate subcommittee approved a bill to establish a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide, and the Democratic leadership is eager to have the Senate pass it by year's end. But prospects in the House are less certain.

Still, with all the talk about a carbon charge, ''your perspective shifts,'' said Revis James, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium in Palo Alto, Calif. ''We're definitely going to be paying a bill here for wanting to reduce these emissions.''

Some companies are already counting on paying such a bill. In October, NRG, an electric company in Princeton, N.J., made the first application in three decades for permission to build a nuclear power plant. In an interview, the chairman, David Crane, said his calculations showed that such a plant would be cost effective if the price of carbon dioxide emissions ran into ''double digits'' per ton.

The Electric Power Research Institute's staff estimates the effect of a charge on carbon dioxide emissions on the price of a kilowatt-hour, the amount of electricity needed to run 10 100-watt bulbs for an hour. Natural gas produces 0.84 pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour, and coal produces more than twice as much, 1.9 pounds.

At $10 per metric ton, the impact is minimal. But at $50 a ton, for example, the cost of a kilowatt-hour produced by coal goes from about 5.7 cents to about 10 cents. Wind power currently isn't competitive, according to the institute's calculation, but it becomes competitive when carbon dioxide costs $25 a ton. By their calculations, nuclear energy, with negligible carbon dioxide emissions, looks sensible at a small carbon charge.

Here's how the new economics might work for solar power, according to Charles F. Gay, the vice president and general manager of solar business at Applied Materials, a California semiconductor company that has branched into that field.

Solar power from photovoltaic cells is very expensive, about 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. But compare a kilowatt-hour produced by such cells, which emit no carbon dioxide, with one produced by a conventional coal plant. At $20 or $30 a ton, the 1.9 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted in producing that kilowatt-hour costs 2 to 3 cents. That cuts into coal's price advantage and -- when coupled with progress in reducing the cost of solar power through manufacturing and economies of scale -- gives solar power ''a much larger chance to be relevant,'' Mr. Gay said. Solar thermal systems, which use mirrors to concentrate sunlight to boil water, might benefit even sooner.

The new calculus of energy would not be limited to electricity. Like a kilowatt-hour, a gallon of ethanol is a commodity. But its impact on the environment depends on how it is made. Ethanol is a prime example of a product with what Lee Schipper, an energy and transportation expert at the World Resources Institute, calls ''closet carbon.'' That is, carbon dioxide embedded in the production of what is supposedly a renewable product.

For example, Range Fuels, of Denver, plans to open a plant in Soperton, Ga., next year to make ethanol from pine tree waste. About 25 percent of the tree cannot go to a lumber mill or paper mill, the company says, and is usually left behind when the forest is clear-cut. If it is burned, it produces carbon dioxide. If it rots, it produces methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas.

Range has a thermochemical method for turning the waste -- bark, cones, treetops, needles and small branches -- into ethanol. Burning ethanol creates carbon dioxide no matter how it was made. But the economics could vary if Range got credit for producing a fuel by using material that was going to turn into a greenhouse gas anyway.

In contrast, corn ethanol is made using natural gas or coal that also contains carbon, but could have stayed in the ground if not for the ethanol manufacture. Ethanol advocates say that some gallons of corn ethanol have twice as much closet carbon as others. One new approach to ethanol uses algae; in Arizona, a utility is testing a process to fertilize algae with carbon dioxide captured from an adjacent power plant. The algae can be grown and processed into fuel.

''As carbon dioxide fees are imposed, these thing become more and more cost-competitive,'' said Jennifer S. Holmgren, director of renewable energy and chemicals at UOP, a subsidiary of Honeywell that is taking on the project. ''Algae, because of its ability to capture carbon, has a bigger potential than anything else for being carbon neutral.''

Meanwhile, sugar producers in Brazil are arguing that the ethanol they produce should be able to be imported without the stiff tariffs it now faces. It is made from sugar cane and, they say, requires far less energy to make than corn-based ethanol. Each gallon of sugar-cane ethanol results in 10 percent as much CO2.

Some researchers think there could even be products that are carbon negative. Two papers discuss using renewable energy to displace fossil fuel and to remove carbon from the environment.

One is built on the 80-year-old technology of making liquid motor fuel from a gas consisting of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The Nazis pioneered the technique in the 1930s, making the gas, called ''synthesis gas,'' from coal, and some companies in the United States would like to revive it, again using coal. But the ''synfuel'' has more than a closet full of carbon; it produces about twice as much carbon dioxide per mile driven as ordinary oil does, counting the carbon dioxide released in production.

But synthesis gas can also be made from biomass: wood chips, corn stalks or the paper in garbage. Getting synthesis gas that way is carbon neutral, since next year's production will come from new trees or agricultural waste, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere.

At Princeton, however, Robert H. Williams, a physicist, is pushing carbon negative bioenergy, in which the carbon monoxide is burned for heat to drive the process, but the resulting carbon dioxide is captured chemically, pressurized into a liquid, and pumped underground.

If you use plants to make syngas and capture the carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide is not a byproduct but a co-product, he said.

The invisible hand of carbon affects even building sites. Michael H. Deane, operations manager for sustainable construction at Turner Construction, said that companies building offices are looking at sites for characteristics that barely mattered before.

''You can set a building into a hillside, so you can take advantage of the existing mass of the hillside,'' he said. The ambient temperature of the dirt is 55 degrees, winter and summer, which can help with heating and cooling, he said. And sites are now evaluated for solar orientation and prevailing winds, both of which can heavily affect energy use, he said.

Carbon dioxide can also be invoked to try to justify other kinds of changes. In October, a San Francisco company, the Wine Group, said that heavy glass bottles took too much energy to make. The lower-carbon way, it said, was plastic bags of wine in cardboard boxes. Bottles, the company said, were too vulnerable to ''carbon criticism.''

That’s all folks

 

Colin