OK , there is a LOT of confusion about energy. Really there is. Let me help you all out by explaining a few things in a way that isn't overly confusing.
First, global warming/climate change caused in part or in total by humans is BAD. Humans are contributing to this in part or total by digging up or drilling for carbon based fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) that have been locked out of the planets atmospheric loop in our soil and rock for in some cases BILLIONS of years.
Simply put if you want our planet to revert to the hot swampy largely flooded place that lizards used to dig on... burn all that stuff back into the atmosphere and be happy. I personally would prefer to keep the moderate planet we historically have had because it allows farmers to raise crops and feed us. Changing weather means failed crops. Failed crops equal war, disease, and famine. This is happening as we speak.
Once people get scared enough, which I hope should be happening say NOW, they start to do something about the problems. Solutions are usually easy and in hindsight usually elegant. This is really the case now.
Let's start with liquid fuels. We have become dependent on easy to store and use liquid fuels for our cars, ships, aircraft, and trains. Logically, when we determine which way to go with a alternative to petroleum based fuels we should look at which fuel is used by the most various devices mentioned. The answer is simply enough diesel. Ships, trains, buses, trucks, and yes jet aircraft all use one grade or another of diesel. Even some cars use diesel. This would indicate to me that the easiest transition for us to make that would effect the most areas of the transportation industry would be switching to biodiesel.
This makes sense for many reasons. Oil producing crops are a wide ranging group going from legumes like peanuts and soybeans to inedible crops that utilize desert wastelands like jojoba. In my mind however the biggest factor is competition for foodstuffs. When you squeeze out the oils, you are still left with most of the foodstuffs.
Unlike using grain to make alcohol, pressing the oil out of grains and legumes is already done. With soybeans, it is part of the process of making all those soy products. Corn, same thing... first squeeze out the oil. You are still left with the 80% or more of the foodstuffs.
They even have fuel cells now that run on nasty old diesel. No need to try to store hydrogen gas in your car safely to run a fuel cell. This would actually work better with biodiesel because it is a purer product. Diesel is just a group of hydrocarbons that happen to evaporate and condense out of oil stock between a certain pair of temperatures (between 200°C (392°F) and 350°C (662°F) ). It also includes all the other crap like sulfur that evaporates with it. Biodiesel is at worst the purified oils of certain specific plants. Much easier to use, and for that matter predict the performance of.
Since plants use the sun to make all this fuel, you are really using old school biotechnology to store and use solar energy in a liquid form. You are also doing this without digging up EXTRA carbon out of the ground. You are using what is called a closed carbon cycle. This is sort of like using rechargeable batteries.
With a closed carbon cycle you grow your energy source (wood, biomass, plant based oils) using CO2 from the atmosphere as your carbon source, the sun as your energy source, and water as your hydrogen source to make hydrocarbons and liberate oxygen into the atmosphere. This is then recombined with the liberated oxygen at a later date to release the stored solar energy as heat and work. This is basically how life works on most all levels. We would essentially be putting our machines into the life cycle of the planet rather than working against the life cycles by dumping petrochemicals, ground source methane, and coal into it.
Diesel gets a bad rap for being polluting. The stuff they pump out of the ground with all that sulfur in it is nasty. Biodiesel is vastly different. It burns cleaner, they can use catalytic converters on it if needed because there is nothing in vegetable oils that would ruin the catalyst like there is in petrodiesel. You could even make injector control computers that recognized the different pure oils and would adjust for a more perfect burn. Stuff like that is what computers are good at.
So now we have done away with gasoline, jet fuel, petrodiesel. We have even done away with grain based alcohol that competes with humans and livestock for foodstuffs. Good for us!
Lets now look at how to get rid of one of the biggest cancer causing radiation hazard in the world today, and a major contributor to global warming. No, not nuclear power (which has hazards of it's own). Coal.
According to Oakridge National Laboratories (they know a thing or two about these things) if you live down wind of a coal fired power plant you receive over 100 times the radiation dose of a person living down wind of a nuclear power plant operating within NRC maximum allowable standards. The stuff coal plants emit are also nastier and more durably radioactive than anything a nuclear reactor is allowed to vent. The amounts are truly staggering. Coal is essentially low grade uranium and thorium ore, and burning it to ash just tends to concentrate it. There are of course other nasty heavy metals concentrated out into the ash.
Don't believe me, read it yourself at http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html to read the Oakridge laboratories own report. Coal is killing us. I almost choked when President Obama brought up “clean coal” early in his presidency as a positive thing. There is no clean coal. Coal is SO nasty in all ways it should be illegal to mine and burn.
So, what do we change here to make coal plants safer? Quit burning coal, and switch to a easily available alternative fuel. Biomass briquettes. Basically small “presto logs” made from agricultural waste.
Corn, wheat, soybean, cotton farmers (just to name a few) mow down tons more stalks than they actually harvest in product. If you tell farmers that you'll give them another $20 per ton for the stalks (which is half what coal is going for) they would be very interested. If you told them you would come and get it with your own harvesting rigs that would follow right behind their harvesters they would be ecstatic. You get around 8 tons per acre of corn. Easily you are leaving 5 times that amount behind as stock, cob, and leaf matter. That is at a bad guess 40 tons of usable biomass. At $20 a ton you are talking $800 an acre more profit for a farmer. Lets say he's a small farmer and only has 120 acres in corn. That's a additional $86,000.00 per crop harvest. I would let someone haul away my trash for that. Heck, buy it at per ton price and I will even plant crops with a higher biomass yield.
Let's get the farmer even MORE involved in the profits. Say as a farmer I sell my crops through a co-op that pre-processes the products. They extract oil for biodiesel production, then sell the other products such as soy flour, soy proteins, etc. How about as part of the co-op membership I get to re-buy the biodiesel at production cost? Better still get enough back to generously cover energy usage to grow the crop for free, then be able to buy extra as needed at cost?
Even hog farmers could profit from this if they raise corn, send it off to extract the oil, and have processed feed returned to them for the pigs. Then make the extra bit per acre from the cornstalks to boot.
That biomass can be pelleted or pressed to briquettes suitable in size to fit any combustion application. Power plants, home heating, factory boilers, you name it. It can even be “gasified” like they did in the old days pre-natural gas into what they called process gas to replace natural gas.
We really have no energy shortage. We just have a lack of will backed by a engineered lack of information. We can keep our lifestyles, cut out deadly pollution, and make ourselves permanently energy independent. Shoot, there is even money to be made on a grass roots and industrial level by shifting things around.
