Hi Gordon,

I'll help out Brian by answering the cost of "bio mass" question.  (Maybe he won't think this is helping).  In 1992, congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 1992.  Part of that act appropriated research funds to develop sustainable alternative fuels and develop the infrastructure to make it happen.  One of the spawns of that act has been biodiesel.  Granted, biodiesel has been around since before Congress got scientist working on a good formulation and the infrastructure developed, but that action has brought biodiesel into a viable option TODAY!  

Biodiesel is a direct replacement for diesel, though most blends only mix 20% biodiesel with 80% petroleum diesel.  However, 100% blends can be used.  Like all alternatives, there are specific emission advantages and drawbacks I won't take time to detail.  There are 177 biodiesel station throughout the U.S., although there are still several states who do not have biodiesel stations available.  

Diesel is the same thing (with small modifications) as Jet fuel, heating fuel and Kerosene, so it covers a lot of bases.  Diesel cars aren't very popular here in the US, but they are very popular in Europe because of their superior fuel economy.  

Biodiesel is made from food stock, such as soy beans, that have a low commercial value as food stock.  It can also be made from animal fats, such as the surplus from commercial beef slaughter and even the gunge that restaurants have to dispose of as "hazardous" waste.  Thus, farmers who can't make good money on their crops at the market, are inclined to sell to Biodiesel producers.  O.K., it the other way around, Biodiesel producers buy the cheap stuff where supply out strips demand.  The point being, biodiesel is not stealing food away from anybody.  As demand rises, so will the production to meet that demand.  Farming is one of the toughest commodity markets out there, with margins so tight that most small farmers can't compete.  The US has had an excess of agriculture production since the '20s, so there is plenty of room to accommodate biomass production as demand rises.

O.K., your specific question of cost, taken from the Department of Energy's website http://www.eere.energy.gov , last June, the national average for diesel at the pump was $1.76 per gallon and the cost of biodiesel was $2.11.  What is not reflected in those figures are two factors.  One, petroleum diesel is heavily taxed and biodiesel is tax free, so the unburdened cost of petroleum diesel is more like $0.90 per gallon.  Secondly, most biodiesel is the 20/80 blend, so the 100% biodiesel would be even more.  Numbers from the DOE website give roughly $1.50 per gallon just for the soy bean cost.  Add refining, distribution and overhead to get the final cost.

This puts the cost of biodiesel higher than petroleum, even with subsidy from the government.  However, cost parity with petroleum diesel would happen long before oil reaches $100 a barrel.  Not that biodiesel is the end all of energy woes, but it is one of several commercial options ready to kick in whenever crude oil truly becomes scarce.  My crystal ball for the future says, when diesel hits $5.00 a gallon, 100% bio diesel will also hit $5.00 a gallon, fully burdened with taxes.

Ryan Grant 

-----Original Message-----
From:   Davy, Gordon [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Friday, December 10, 2004 12:50 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        [EN] FW: [LF] The derivative Tale of the Dog

Brian,

I was glad to see that you "draw the line at extracting the tin oxide from MOF resistors or the arsenic from GaAs semicons." That establishes the notion that some things are not worth recycling. Now the issue becomes the basis to be used to draw the line. How much extra should people pay for recycling, and should that be from altruism or coercion? (Coercion, apart from other disadvantages, is expensive.) I noticed when I was in an office services store recently , they had three versions of printer paper available: ordinary, 40% post-consumer content, and 100% post-consumer content. The price increased as the post-consumer content increased. So now you can have degrees of altruism. But what I have not seen publicized is how much benefit the earth experiences from such altruism, particularly for a renewable resource like trees. Where's the life cycle analysis, the cost-benefit analysis? One would think that with all the environmental activist organizations, these would have been widely disseminated long before now.

Even for fossil fuels, how much privation is appropriate for people to endure to ensure an adequate supply for future generations (and for how far into the future)? Apart from possible future privation, consider the real present privation for people in the third world who must spend a significant amount of time daily collecting wood for their energy needs, and the associated health issues involved in breathing all that smoke. Why is so much more attention given to the needs of people as yet unborn than the present suffering of live humans? If the environmental activists are really so concerned about privation, why don't they promote policy changes that would benefit these people? 

The logic would seem clear to me that use of nuclear energy (fission, or some day, fusion) will prolong the availability of fossil fuels, and does of course not entail CO2 emissions either, so one would think that environmentalists would promote, rather than oppose, this idea. Again, a cost-risk-benefit analysis, with numbers, is needed so decisions are made on the basis of fact and not slogan, truth, not dogma. (Incidentally, as I've commented before, you have an impressive range of topics about which you have facts to present - I'd just like to see more such facts presented to ensure that decisions are rational rather than emotional.)

Some day, fossil fuels may not be anywhere as important as they are today. After all, there was a time when whale oil was important commodity. Then people figured out how to meet their needs in other ways. Ordinary biomass may, at some price, become the feedstock of choice for both fuel and and material needs. Do you have an estimate of what that price might be today? And lest we take the recent runup in oil prices too seriously, I can remember the oil crisis of the 1970s. It was claimed then that we were running out of petroleum. Somehow, supply increased and prices dropped, and the crisis was over, at least for a long time. I've watched the price for silver, copper, palladium, and other industrial metals rise dramatically, and then fall. The price for many minerals is lower today than it was decades ago, which must frustrate the sustainability crowd, who must resort to generalizations and appeals to altruism to make their claims.

Gordon Davy
Baltimore, MD
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410-993-7399