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Canada is actually doing very well with regard to ethanol distribution.
Add to your station 1,100 others across Canada that already offer ethanol. That beats the US hands down right now. They only have 600 stations out of ~180,000 across the country.
Canada and the US are in parity with respect to ethanol production and its future importance. Right now the US is on track to increase its annual production by 12 B litres anually, while Canada expects to increase by 7 B litres. This represents a huge leap forward.
The Feds in Canada have undergone a couple of rounds of ethanol expansion funding through Natural Resources Canada and new plants making use of corn are already underway. Because of the work of Iogen Corporation of Ottawa you'll see that Bush's 5 year timeline is actually the time it will take to commercialize the technology and roll out the infrastructure to take care of switchgrass along with wheat and barley straw where they are abundantly available.
After reviewing Iogen's technology the United States elected to invest its considerable R&D clout in a European consortium that had similar products in development. This is probably a political decision to alert Europe with respect to the North American-led charge into ethanol as the fuel of choice for the automotive industry.
When you think about how an industrialized economy works you get the idea that to devalue the one product on top of which all others rest and on which governments make or break their budgets because of the lucrative tax haul that mobility fuel tax represents then, to me, it seems natural that nothing can change at the pumps without some form of fiscal instability. This is what government and industry have acted upon.
Efficient solar, then, becomes a disruptive technology, especially in light of little or no regulatory injunction against the production of hydrogen at the local level. That is to say, utilizing the solar/hydrogen cycle to producing hydrogen through electrolisys can't happen if the economy is to remain stable. Governments and industry view efficient and inexpensive solar as a disruptive force that could destroy cash flow. Imagine a fuel without a tax associated with it. Who will pay for roads? How will the GMs of the world be able to saturate the automotive market -- making profit on the number of vehicles sold into the market -- if people can't afford to pay for a vehicle because the lifetime cost of fuel is associated with the purchase of the vehicle?
What would happen if an automobile becomes both the producer of its fuel, its storage location and the place where energy is generated and also distributed. The car as a rechargable battery is NOT far fetched. It is feared.
My biggest secret is knowing that fuel reform technology is readily available to convert portable ethanol directly to hydrogen.
My biggest fear is that the early focus on wheat and barley straw will irreversibly bind food and fuel.
With any successful ethanol production it is necessary to have a certain percentage of biomass with a high carbohydrate (sugar) content. Iogen's reverse stomach process carried out by the genetically modified Jungle Rot enzyme requires a 60% carbohydrate content. We have arable land that produces our food out there on the prairies. China is a huge importer of our wheat.
Imagine a world in which the oil consumptiveness of a mobility dependent economy projects itself onto the framework of Canada's agricultural heritage and its current-day infrastructure.
Yield is everything. Yield is pressed on by profitability harder than it is pressed on by hungry mouths that can't afford to feed themselves. We can't forget that it takes less energy and less cost to farm 10 acres by one machine that it does to farm each of those acres in 1 acre lots by 10 machines.
This means only big business can play. Look at what kind of demand there will be. And the expense, too. Right now, projections on the cost of hydrogen to propel a car at an equivalent distance to gasoline come in at roughly 25% higher than gasoline in a stabilized infrastructure. At-the-pump pricing is higher. I'm a little fudgy on the exactness of these figures as it has been a while since I read those documents and I can't source them at the moment. Suffice it to say that one of the caveats here is that the hydrogen is sourced from existing fossil fuel supply and not from biomass as the model favored by North American governments is. The complications of using this supply are enormous, not to mention that the carbon cycle doesn't really change. Petroleum producers would have us believe that they can manage any scenario with respect to keeping their product on the shelf and be environmentally responsible. This includes the huge task of reinjecting acid gases such as carbon dioxide into the substrate to sequester the gas, presumably forever.
Keeping in mind, despite a robust infrastructure for diesel fuel distribution in North America, that the family-owned fleet running on this more efficient engine design comprises only 3% of vehicles in this class on the road. In Europe the scene is much different. Diesel is actually more popular. But without expensive and filters diesel is a higher cancer risk than the emissions from gasoline combustion engines.
Many pundits so far have criticized hydrogen economy enthusiasts as being far too optimistic about the supposed 50% penetration of hydrogen powered vehicles by 2027. My view is that the use of ethanol without moving directly to reform is the prolongation of an oil scenario well past this US and Canadian endorsed 2027 time frame.
Considering that corn based ethanol is presumed to working on an energy in to energy out ratio of 1:1.2 and switchgrass could be expected to perform at 1:6 and that these figures are based on internal combustion engine use, then a more efficient vehicle that uses ethanol to hydrogen reform should realize roughly a 1:2.4 ratio using corn and a 1:12 ratio using switchgrass as the feedstock. Sure, the numbers are simplified, but once the connection to reform is more generally recognized you'll probably see more accurate studies based on real-world designs.
-- tim
Dan wrote:
--- In Renewable_Energy_Ontario@yahoogroups.ca, Tim Pozza
<tim.pozza@s...> wrote:
>
> http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2006/02/24/griscom-little/index.html?
source=daily
>
We have an ethol gas station in Northern Ontario. It has been there
for over 20 years. It was built for a farming community as a COOP
station and store It's a clean burning fuel however residents have had
compliants that it is hard on the vehicles' motors unless they are
built to burn ethanol gas. GMC has trucks that are built to be
ethanol friendly which is specified in the vehicles' manual.
Here in Ontario, since the Liberal party have taken over the
government, the big push is on Nuclear energy. They even have paid
advertisement on the radio and television about nuclear energy and its
so called positive sides. This, in my opinion scares me. It seems
like our politicians are being pushed by mining lobbists and that they
have all forgetten about the history of nuclear plants. I for myself
remember Chernobyl. Ontario is rich in natural resources and uranium
is one of them...you do the math. Once again it seems the government
is pushing issues related to the mighty dollar.
Why can't Canada focus on the future like Sweden's annoucement this
week that they want to become fossil fuel and nuclear independent? I
am wondering how this would effect Canada's economy? Anyhow that is a
whole new type of discussion.
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