Wishful thinking

(phrase) Hoping for a socially good outcome when evidence suggests otherwise.

Example//

The United States has enough land, water and transport capability to make cellulosic ethanol that could displace one-third of its gasoline needs in 2030, according to a study by a government laboratory, in partnership with General Motors.

But the study does not say how to actually make the fuel.

  [end trite transmission]

I work in the renewable energy field and have a fair amount of experience with technology adoption and policy strategies.  Cellulosic ethanol (ethanol from grasses, trees, waste instead of corn) is hailed as the solution to getting off foreign oil, using cleaner fuel, and avoided the (specious) food v. fuel debate.*

The problem is that nobody knows exactly how to do it.  We have options:

a) break down the biomass with acid and enzymes to release the complex sugars, and then ferment sugars to make ethanol.  Problems: you need very uniform feedstock because it's difficult to engineer an enzyme that works with many different kinds. 

b) gasification.  We can gasify biomass and create various compounds that can be cracked (a la refineries) into various products.  Ethanol is not really the first thing you get, but it can be made from the gaseous products.  This system has a higher capital cost than (a), which is already at least five times higher than corn ethanol.  Plus, it may actually be easier to turn biomass into diesel than ethanol - although this makes integration into our fuel mix easier, it does not make our fuel any cleaner.

In short, we are hinging our hopes for fuel independence on a technology that is very complex, has yet to reach commercialization, and for which we have no readily available production and distribution network.  Corn ethanol, anyone?


*Note: ethanol from corn can contribute to an increased price for feed corn, which can in turn increase the price of meat and processed food, including such goodies as high fructose corn syrup.  If you combine the American obesity epidemic with Economics 101, this is a Good Thing.

*Other note: the major problem with corn ethanol is that growing corn is a fossil fuel intense activity.  The energy return on energy invested is positive, but not by much.  Research suggests we get - at best - 2 units of energy back for every 1 we put into corn ethanol.  Oil returns 10-to-1, so modern civilization is going to slow down a lot if we have to rely on corn ethanol for transportation.

Road rage and bumper stickers: it's a territorial thing

The more personalized your automobile, from steering wheel covers to bumper stickers, the more likely you are to commit road rage.

“The number of territory markers predicted road rage better than vehicle value, condition or any of the things that we normally associate with aggressive driving,”

Marking one's territory. Sounds like we should watch out for other "markers," too.

The SUV is dead

Gas is $4 a gallon and the SUV is dead.

Industry watchers predicted sales of passenger cars would surpass those of trucks within in a couple of years. Instead, it happened almost overnight...Need more proof the SUV is a goner? Ford's venerable F150 pickup ended its 17-year-run as the best-selling vehicle in America last month, dethroned by the Honda Civic and three other Japanese sedans.

Good riddance.

Cell phones may cause traffic jams

The science slowly catches up to the intuition about driving distracted.

First, a study at the University of Exeter last month noted that traffic jams are not caused by heavy traffic, but by drivers overreacting. Braking too hard or slowing below certain speeds creates a ripple effect that can put you in an area of abruptly slow traffic with no indication as to why. The key issue:

This model takes into account the time-delay in drivers’ reactions, which lead to drivers braking more heavily than would have been necessary had they identified and reacted to a problem ahead a second earlier.

Why is the time delay key? Because that's what cellphone chatting or other distracted driving does - reduce reaction time.

Motorists talking on the phone drive about two miles per hour more slowly than people who aren’t on the phone...Slower cellphone drivers may be increasing overall commuting times by 5 percent to 10 percent, he calculates, and talking on the phone may increase each daily commuter’s travel time by 20 hours a year....other studies have shown that delayed reaction time related to cellphone use is a safety hazard.

The slow driving held true regardless of use of a hands-free headset:

It’s the talking, not the cellphone, that distracts the brain.

Prediction: the findings will lead to the splendid irony of finding that many Americans phone their destination when they get stuck in traffic to report in and pass the time, perpetuating the traffic jam.

Plug-in hybrids can reduce pollution, too

The tireless folks at Energista have struck energy information gold again, reviewing two new reports at the Minnesota Department of Commerce. The more interesting (to me) is the report analyzing the air pollution impact of converting Minnesota's vehicle fleet to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

PHEVs are an existing-technology route to gaining oil independence by shifting fuel use to electricity. When combined with a flexible fuel engine capable of using E85 or biodiesel, a car could get over 100 miles per gallon of fuel and more than 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

I examined this technology in a past post and concluded that for $170 billion, the United States could achieve oil independence in two years, assuming a price premium of $5000 for a hybrid engine and $100 to make it flex-fuel compatible.

The Minnesota report shows that for almost all criteria air pollutants, a fleet of PHEVs would reduce pollution compared to regular cars (the exception being sulfur dioxide, due to most Minnesota electricity coming from coal). However, with Minnesota already committed to 25% renewable electricity by 2025, these figures can only improve.

Save gas, lose weight!

Fuel efficiency and hybrids aren't the only things affecting gas consumption. Larger Americans are also affecting fuel economy, for the worse. With so many overweight Americans, we're using almost a billion more gallons of gasoline a year than we did in 1960 just to move that extra pudge around.