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Synthetic Biology For Natural Fuel
CoolBeans writes "Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky. The Department of Energy has promised $125 million to the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a team of six national labs and universities that will be run like a startup company. They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. The genes of crops that produce large amounts of cellulose will be tweaked to improve the yield per acre and to increase drought and pest resistance. Microbes that produce sugar from cellulose and ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency." The article mentions as an aside that earlier this year, "the energy giant BP gave $500 million to Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for similar alternative energy research. That gift will fund the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will operate separately from the JBEI." So UC Berkeley and LBL are both participating in two separate energy-biotech research programs.
Seriously, why? Why bother with all this expensive "synthetic biology" or (worse) growing and using perfectly good corn to make something that's less effective than gasoline when you can just grow an imperial fuckton of algae, render them down for biofuel, and use that? Carbon neutral, and you get something more akin to good ol' diesel fuel than ethanol.
Plus there's some incentive to clean up eutrophicated bodies of water this way because, hey, that's profit floating on the top!
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
As much as I'm supportive of any program that might, conceivably, provide a partial alternative to our petroleum addiction, I have seen several pieces lately about ethanol vs. biodiesel, which seem to indicate that biodiesel is a much more realistic alternative to gasoline than ethanol is, but that its major shortcoming is that it doesn't reward corn production.
While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.
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Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky.
So...Brazil isn't a developed country? 40% of the gas used by *cars* comes from Ethanol (they actually import oil because of diesel and petrochemical needs.) They do it with cane sugar.
The reason we don't have cheap ethanol, and why corn prices are skyrocketing, is because corn is almost *the* worst way to make ethanol. Corn, however, is what the midwest does, and only what the midwest does. The earliest primaries are in...guess where...the midwest (well, not so much any more, thank god.) The government forks over billions to farmers and farm corporations because it buys votes. Corn is what livestock are fed, not grass. High fructose corn syrup, which is quite bad for you (compared to regular sugar) is in damn near everything because it's cheaper than sugar (which, incidentally, is price fixed. Sugar is *dirt* cheap on the world market, but to protect a fairly small contingent of sugar farmers in the US, the feds price-control it.)
By the way, Bush's favorite line is "reducing our foreign dependency on oil." Guess what? We already get our oil from a rather diverse group, and half of our oil comes from domestic sources.
Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.
Please help metamoderate.
BP also invests in solar. No doubt that there are a lot of scum at oil companies (particularly Exxon), but BP at least seems to see the writing on the wall. They're doing it to secure their future profits and pr, but thats ok as long as they're steadily lowering their contribution to the problem.
Mod parent up!
BP is taking advantage of the political benefits of ethanol as transportation fuel. Politicians are winning over votes of corn growers by inflating the price of their crop and making them feel useful in solving a national problem. BP is positioning itself with this important constituancy with a huge advertizement campaign. I want to rip out my hair every time I see that ignorant farm kid talking about powering crap and growing it back in a year.
Learn a little bit about how agriculture works and you will discover that we are really just trading natural gas for ethanol. What do we do when we run out of cheap sources of fertilizer as natural gas starts getting tight?
Currently, that's the deal, but one of the areas of agricultural research right now is to develop nitrogen fixing traits to high sugar yield crops, and to investigate and tweak non traditional crops that can be grown on marginal land, and make them drought resistant, etc..
No need to thank this non kid farm boy. google is your friend--and save your hair and lower your blood pressure, a lot of smart guys who are doing this for a living are WAY ahead of you with your observations, as in they are *fully* aware of how this works right now, both chemically and economically. Are you an agricultural professional, a farmer or a researcher with biofuels?
We are in a transition stage now-so of course it isn't as efficient yet.
We are doing corn in the US because that is what we are set up to do in humongous mass quantities at the current time, as in this freaking year we get the corn, so that next year we will have millions of vehicles on the road that are at least partially being fueled with some biofuel.
Baby steps. Farm equipment is quite specialized and quite expensive, we are using what we have right now.
By the way, how are your solar panels doing? Mine are just fine. Oh-you don't have any, like 99.999% of the other complainers out there? I bet you have just a ton of silicon using and electricity wasting devices though, ie, just part of the problem, no part of the solution at all besides a hot head and a sharp tongue.
Sure, it's a semi free country and you can talk all you want, but a lot of people are actually doing stuff to try and make this better for everyone rather than just blogging about it or complaining. If you got a better way, do it, even at a small scale prototype level, then submit an article about it, turn everyone on to your leet energy producing skills.
Well the beauty of a plug-in hybrid is that you stay on "plugged-in" electricity for your every day commute.
Most of the Prius' that are being modified as plug-in hybrids will last for 50-60 miles on one charge and then switch over to hybrid "mode" after that. So you can stay off petrol for your everyday commute, and switch to a still fuel efficient "hybrid mode" when you want to go skiing or hiking for the weekend.
There was some stat listed on Google's site that said if every car in the world was switched to a plug-in hybrid, the current grid could power 82% of those cars. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, but at the very least we know that the cars won't switch to plug-in hybrid over night. I think the infrastructure of the utility companies could grow to support that need over time. No matter what "solution" we choose it will take time to be adopted by the general public. If the utilities start ramping up now (being more efficient etc..), we might be able to support a world of plug-ins just fine.
Last point. I'm not sure about your "energy efficiency won't work in SUV's" statement. I actually just got done test driving a Ford Escape (SUV) Hybrid edition this weekend. I had no problems with it's power output at all. I even took it up a 4-5% grade and it handled the climb with ease. (Averaged 40MPG for the trip too... not shabby for an SUV)
I know what you mean about that farm kid...damn near every time I saw that ad, I answered his question to myself with "because it would rape the soil of nutrients and prevent us from growing anything ever again". I think they just were looking for an emotional response there...
But as far as I see it, BP and Shell, they are both investing in the possible next-gen fuel. They see that, they only have to invest, what, a half percent of their annual profits, and they might, just MIGHT come up with the next oil, which would put them in a position to reap trillions in profits for the rest of their lives, and their successors lives....
And so I applaud them.
The American oil companies just do not give a shit though. They are all about quarterly profits. When oil runs out or becomes too expensive, they are fucked. But hey, who cares when Ken Lay (or whoever, yes I know Ken Lay is dead) makes assloads of money this year by following the old business model?
Hear hear to BP and Shell.