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N.Y. Governor Pushing for Alternate Fuels
Aviran Mordo writes to tell us that the Governor of New York is pushing hard for the widespread availability of both ethanol and biodiesel on the New York State Thruway and 100 more locations around the state. From the article: "Costs and further details of the plan, which Pataki first sketched out in his State of the State address on Wednesday, will not be disclosed until he makes his budget proposal later this month. If the plan is approved by the Legislature, it will give New Yorkers one of the nation's most diverse ranges of fuel choices. Only Minnesota offers an ethanol-rich blend known as E85 at more than 100 stations. Likewise, biodiesel is offered at only a few hundred of the nation's roughly 180,000 stations."
... NY doesn't make corn like Indiana.
One of the distinct advantages to using ethanol as a fuel is having a local distillation/production facility. While we still have to truck in gas since NY isn't exactly rich in oil wells we still lack the excess starch production that can be used as feedstock to columns.
Given our rather poor winter heat (ie, freezing-ass cold) even MORE energy is going to be required for production.
Now, that said, I realize this only address the distribution points within the state. Having a couple of fuel stops, every other one say, that produce E85 would be great and I'd run it. But there's just no easy way to 'make' it yet because we're so energy poor- the key to cheap fuel is recycling as much waste heat as possible (solar capture to preheat stock, exchangers around the condenser, etc)
But hey, it's a step forward, right?
I'm unfamiliar as a whole with the topic, but is a special type of vehicle required to use ethanol-rich fuel or biodiesel?
Pataki is a twit. He says he wants biodiesel to be made available, yet he has let the moronic authorities in his state make it IMPOSSIBLE TO PURCHASE A NEW DIESEL AUTOMOBILE THERE (as is the case in a growing number of other states as well). Talk about transparent lip service. What a doofus.
The entire rest of the world outside of North America is embracing diesel passenger car technology, as it dramatically improves fuel economy, lowering greenhouse gas production in the process - even before you consider biodiesel, which is an essentially neutral carbon cycle participant which produces no net CO2.
The "Big Three" US automakers already have the technology for E85. Ethanol is the primary automobile fuel in Brazil, and all the automakers mass produce cars for the Brazillian market which run very well on ethanol. There is not any need for expensive pie-in-the-sky research projects: the technology is here, and it works well.
Many employers keep people at or below 32 hours so that they don't have to provide benefits to the employees.
Nobody has to provide benefits to their employees, there is no law mandating that part time, or even full time, employees get health insurance or other benefits...
oh wait, you mean the CEO signed a contract with a group health insurer stating that every employee meeting a certain criteria will be enrolled on the health plan so that the CxOs could get their viagra cheap? I think you're using a misleading version of "have to" here.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
What the government really needs to do crack down on the companies that are classifying non-truck-like vehicles as trucks. A "truck" should be limited to vehicles with frame rails, no unibodies allowed (but the Jeep Cherokee can be grandfathered in).
Examples of the eggregious abuse of CAFE include the PT Cruiser classified as a "truck" even though it's built on a Neon chassis.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Alternative fuels might be good for many reasons. But why not also change the engine at the same time? Turbine engines are used in trucks since a long time http://turbinetruckengines.com/index2.html and even Chrysler invested into turbine engines for cars http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbine-photos.html . Turbine engines have many advantages. Combined with an electric motor-generator concept, like in the Toyota Prius (w/ old piston engine, sigh), things become really interesting. Adding fuel alternative is easy with turbine engines.
To use ethanol, the engine require some adaptation. The use of ethanol is very common here in Brasil since mid 80's when 100% of new cars sold are ethanol. Today, a lot of new cars are using a "flex" fuel technology which is a eletronic device who controls the combustion.
Diesel cars are not very common in the US. The diesel fuel we have is also far far "dirtier" than in Europe because of the high sulfur content. They are talking about phasing in low-sulfur diesel, but it's going to take quite awhile. In the meantime, I have a Prius now. I usually get ~55mpg or so during the summer, and ~45mpg during the winter. Colder temperatures make the engine run more during the winter, especially if the heater is in use. Still though, I can't complain about gas mileage. I think it would be awesome if they made a Prius with a diesel engine instead of the regular gas engine. I'm pretty sure 80-100mpg would not be out of the question in that case. I'd love to have a diesel/electric Prius running on biodiesel.
From a political standpoint, biodiesel subsidies also pay for numerous megacorp farming cronies.
Wow, who do you work for, Shell, Total, or Exxon? This Argumentum Ad Hominem is by far the worst spin I have ever seen on the most promising alternatives to dino-fuels. What is the half trillion dollars we are "investing" in Iraq if not oil industry subsidies?
Not to mention that bio-fuels are cumulatively far less CO2 producing because the plants that comprise it grew by photosynthesis which removes carbon dioxide from the air.
Bio-fuels are the *perfect* transitional solution for weaning the United States off of its petroleum addiction. We can stop paying farm subsidies to keep farming viable - demand would rise and we wouldn't have to pay to keep farmers from farming. We can reuse all of our current fuel infrastructure (refineries, fuel tankers, gas pumps, etc) with next to no investment.
Bio-fuels would release us from foreign oil dependence, substantially drop our CO2 emissions, costs us nearly nothing, and save us money on farm subsidies. A nice crutch until we can arrive at an end-to-end solution for "zero-emission" fuel.
Lastly, bio-fuels have other positive aspects, for example biodiesel: 0 sulfur emissions, 2/3 less exhaust smoke (over dino-diesel), *far* superior lubricating qualities (than dino-diesel), etc.
This site seems to debunk much of the hype over ethanol. It also has some choice things to say about the "hydrogen economy". I don't know how credible their analysis is, comment if you think it's crapola or not.
unfortunately most people are too dumb, if you want proof just look at who is in the oval office right now.
All joking aside, people are great at deciding what they want, not so great at deciding what they need. for example, before the Highway safety dept was created with all its safety laws etc. there were no seatbelts, airbags etc. well there were some cars that had these things, those particular cars did not sell so well because people didnt really care about these things.
Now I am not saying that the govt should decide at all times what the people need, since this sentiment has been used for bad things. On the other hand we do need govt intervention in certain areas, Health care for example, isnt it time the US joined the rest of the developed world and gave everyone free health care?
Caveat: I worked in the Biodiesel industry in its infancy, 10 years ago.
You do want your country to be in a position where we are making a choice between feeding the population, or fueling our vehicles.
One issue with bio-generated liquid fuels is meeting the need: The US does not have the agricultural capacity to replace petroleum liquid fuels with biofuels. I do not remember the exact production numbers, but the best we can hope for is to dent, not eliminate our current petroleum use through biofuel/petroleum blends without impacting our ability to produce food.
Fuel efficent vehicles, hybrids and ultimately, a vehicle poured by water (fuel cells) will do more to reduce petroleum dependency.
Totally agreed. We'd be able to get more cars that are popular in Europe, especially cars from manufactures that can't keep up with the US's inane changes in safety and environmental requirements.
Look at the Lotus Elise. Okay, so it's not an especially economical car, but with its 1.8L engine, and weight just under a ton, it does get pretty good gas mileage--around 25MPG, which is incredible for a sports car. The only problem is that Lotus wasn't able to fully make the feds happy with the Elise, and so it's here on a sort of temporary exemption. The failings, as I understand it, were that it didn't have a traditional bumper, airbags, or ABS (which nobody being a Lotus would want anyway), the headlights somehow didn't comply, and they had a hell of a time with emissions, not because it's somehow singularly responsible for Global Warming, but instead because the entire fuel system needs to be certified by some asinine smog standard, which probably costs many millions of dollars to do and has miniscule effect, if any. So they essentially have to lift the entire engine and fuel from a Toyota MR2, just like Panoz does with Ford's Mustang parts. I'm sure the big boys like the setup--for a nominal cost, they all but eliminate any potential small players in the US market.
What any of that has to do with anything is beyond me, though. It seems like quite a lot of Federal bullshit. The Elise's nose is so low that even if it did have a bumper that fit well into the design, it would still manage to get under the rear end a standard, normal height sedan, let alone a truck! That's why it has good brakes! The structure is sound enough to protect the passengers pretty well in the event of a collision (probably better than every other car of similar size)... So what if the car gets bruised if it's bumped in the parking lot at 5 MPH?! You shouldn't have been run into! The headlamps are probably adequate--I'm sure that European Elise drivers don't feel compelled to go inside when the driving gets dark on account of this. ABS? So what? It's not like anyone is going to be driving this car in a snow storm, and outside of that remote possibility, this car will stop better than 99.5% of the cars out there, wet or dry, even if one is simply to jump on the brake.
I dunno, it seems to me that the US regulations are much more of a moving target than the Europeans', and in a way, that's not fair considering their casualty rate and car related pollution isn't any worse than ours.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The real potential is in alternative oil sources
nah the Real potential is in the sunlight hitting the earth that is unused/reflected back into space etc. more energy hits the earth in a day than ever existed in every coal and oil mine.
Bio diesel side-steps the problem of mass producing photo votaics, and all the promlems (durability, only provides power when it's sunny etc) related to them. because plants simply grow slower if they have less direct sunlight than they need. bio diesel and plant oils can be stockpiled like oil and can be held in 'reserves.' there are plenty of reasons to 'support' bio diesel via government subsidies... after all the petrolium oil industry is the most heavily subsudized industry in the US today.
Coal-oil costs as much or more to develop as developing a biodiesel industry would, and there isn't as much coal in the ground as there are days of sunlight left.
I'd much rather see people trying to wean us off foriegn energy get 'cronyism' benefits than those who say we have to kill other people to provide our economy with ever more petrolium. Yeah E85 benefits states like iowa and minnesota, and wisconsin etc etc etc.. and yeah biodiesel benefits any state where soybeans are grown.. but would you rather see that money heading to the mid-east? or to some people in minneapolis?
sure you'd rather have a perfect system, but I'll take one where we can at least have the logic to persue energy sources that won't runout before our days in this solar system do.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html