SOTU

[gfish]

Lower oil dependancy through radical new technologies? Sounds pretty good to me. Maybe I'll submit a grant proposal for research into these crazy ideas I like to call public transit and bicycles.

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I particularly like where he wants to make it from wood chips.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

he what.

I'm not sure that the complete agricultural output of the whole US, less food supply, would manage to produce enough ethanol. Wood chips sure aren't going to do it any time soon (although it's a nice segue into "we have to cut down all the national forests TO FIGHT TERRORISM".)

[kethet.livejournal.com]

If we permit photosynthesis, then the terrists have already won.

[xmurf.livejournal.com]

US oil consumption is currently 2e7 barrels per day. I don't know how much of that is for fuel vs. chemical feedstock. From another source, gasoline usage is 464 gallons per man-year, or about 9e7 gallons per year. The U.S. produced 1.77 billion gallons of fuel ethanol in 2001 using 690 million bushels of corn. If we assume a gallon of EtOH has the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline (it doesn't, but it's close enough), we need 77 times that amount, or 5e10 bushels. At 143 bushels per acre that's about 3e8 acres. Total US corn production for 2007 is estimated at 8e7 acres. So we'd need approximately 4.7 times the current US corn production to meet all our needs assuming (a) we don't reduce gasoline consumption (we clearly can), (b) technology doesn't improve (it will), and (c) we use only corn (which is stupid, because corn is among the most expensive EtOH feedstocks, it's just convenient.).

So I think it's safe to say that the total agri output of the US, with modern technology, could produce just enough EtOH to sustain current demand... and things will get better.

BTW, that 80 million acres that's the total US corn production is about the size of New Mexico.

And It Is Claimed(tm) that 1e6 acres of PV panels would meet all US energy needs (not just gasoline)... somehow I doubt that PV panels are 374 times as efficienet as corn->EtOH, so something's probably wrong with these numbers. Not surprising since it's 4am.

[xmurf.livejournal.com]

Hah! "Even so, the total US corn crop could only supply about 20% of our gasoline needs" from here (http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id36.html). Which is mind-bogglingly close to the figure I came up with above. :)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Of course, we still need that food to eat. Maybe it could work combined with some radical cultural changes -- death of the suburbs and most people rarely eating meat -- but that isn't going to happen easily.