Re: gas gasoline vs electric car vehicle


"Bret Cahill" <BretCahill@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:adf54e5b-ac5d-4c6a-9d05-85cc978b3576@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
No one will deny it's hard to beat the portability of liquid fuel.
Even if proposed super batteries have the same energy density as jet
fuel, no air frame designer wants 50 ton electric motors on 500 mph
airliners.

Algae diesel and algae ethanol will probably take over in 15 - 20
years.

The real problem is more immediate. There is just no way to stop
spiraling liquid fuel costs in the next few years. Any algae fuel
production will get dragged up in price by the world market price of
petroleum, same as drilling in ANWR or Florida.

We need some _interim_ solutions to prevent a humanitarian disaster.


Bret Cahill

I believe that everything should be on the table. We need Volts and Prius's
plus conservation measures, no doubt about it. We need nuclear power also.

However, I disagree with your 15 - 20 year estimate for algal oil. It may
take that long to get ramped up to 20 quads of energy but I suspect we will
see it start to take hold long before that. If some forward looking energy
using company like railroads or UPS starts looking into growing its own
fuels as we discussed in another post, we could start seeing progress in a
couple of years.

First would come some pilot operations to work out the details and kinks,
but, if successful, the thing will take off like a rocket because it is
simple, does not use a lot of infrastructure or capital equipment and can be
impelmented relatively cheaply. Furthermore, it can be easily scaled from a
pilot installation producing a few thousand gallons per year to mega
operations producing millions of gallons. There is no need to fund and build
a whole massive installation before it's proof of concept is known.

Yes producing algal oil for the general energy market will be dragged into
OPEC pricing because of the way markets work, at least in the short term.
But, separation of algal oil from the general market by single companies
growing their own fuel will focus attention a lot more on what is possible.
Imagine the clamor if a UPS, for example, could produce it's own fuel for
under Two Dollars per gallon and what effect that would have on markets. By
contrast, if the same quantity of algal fuel was dumped into the OPEC
stream, few would notice and the price would hardly change.



.

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