If you have read this blog very long you will know I'm not enthusiastic about some of the dumb things we try to do to create energy at a loss.
I have come out against Wind Power. Too expensive and in the end except for localized uses like pumping water or oil or generating power off the grid there is no sense to it.
Some of the other sexy methods like tide and even solar are great but not practical for widespread usage.
I like coal but my friend RBB scared the heck out of me with pollution in China. If we can use coal cleanly I like it because we have a lot of it.
And ethanol is the biggest joke of all. I was against it from the beginning and I haven't changed my mind. It's phony baloney. Hybrid cars are dumb too. I like plug in hybrids. I like all electric cars. But unplugged hybrids are silly.
But if I am going to be a picker of good technologies there are two I have been following for some time somewhat due to my friend Pastor Terry B's hot tip.
The first is all the research on Butanol. Butanol can be used just like gasoline. It can be put in the tank and you drive on down the road. Bingo. The fact of the manner is fuel cells, hydrogen and all the other "great ideas" are useless. We are going to be using liquid fuels for a longtime to come.
In Alberta they are doing research on creating butanol from anything cellulosic. Much of household garbage, wood waste, grass, hay, corn stalks, landscape waste, leaves, construction debris, old newspapers and magazines, really what makes up most of our landfill.
The good news is by using e-coli which is modified to digest all that junk will replicate what goes on in a ruminates stomach. Deer eat tree limbs all winter and do very well. Cows eat grass. Soup up that rumen bacteria and hang on to your hat.
The result of that is butyric acid. That can easily be distilled to butanol. The really good news is we will be able to use all those useless ethanol plants for this process.
Look at all the links. One other is research going on with termite cellulosic conversion. This one has lots of possibilities. Did you know that Termites give off the most Methane? There's lots of possibilities in the bugs.
The other liquid fuel replacement technology is bio diesel from algae. The idea of growing soybeans, harvesting and crushing them to yield less than it takes to produce the crop is just silly. Bio diesel from crops just doesn't work. But Algae makes lots of sense. The more polluted the water is, the better the process works. The algae lives best off polluted salt water. I think we might be able to find some.
We won't have to create it.
These two technologies all by themselves can and will if left along create all the liquid fuels we will ever need. All completely greenhouse gas neutral. Over time the amount of CO'2 releases would be reversed. We are on the way to energy Independence and not a moment too soon.
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