Quote:
Bush's push for Alternative Energy
Feb. 21, 2006 — President Bush is turning a lot of heads this week with another big push for alternative sources of energy.
In the State of the Union address, he spoke about hydrogen-powered cars and fueling cars with switchgrass and wood chips. Now he's talking about hybrid cars.
More than 200,000 Americans bought a hybrid car last year — they run on both gas and an electric battery. The president said that if more Americans drove them, the nation could significantly decrease its dependence on foreign oil.
"The plug-in hybrid, they estimate, can initially go 40 miles on electricity alone," the president said.
"I know it came as a shock to some to hear a Texan stand up there in front of the country and say, 'We've got a real problem; America is addicted to oil,'" Bush said.
Today, Bush is expected to visit the Energy Department's Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado.
Some environmentalists are shocked, but pleased, that the world's most famous former oil man is suddenly speaking their language.
"It's wonderful. In about a year, everyone's going to hear about plug-in hybrids," said Felix Kramer, a member of a California grass-roots group that is pushing for cars that can plug into a wall and that use even less gas than the hybrids on the road today.
The United States imports 10 million barrels of oil a day to meet current demand. One group said imports could be slashed by 8 million barrels a day by 2025 if every car on the road was a hybrid and half of them were the kind that plug in.
But Detroit has been slow to embrace hybrids, leaving consumers with few options. Some say the president needs to push even harder to get the new technology on the road. Critics say the president is putting enough money behind his energy ideas.
"We think the president could be bolder," Kramer said. "He could call up the president of a car company and say, 'Make this happen now.'"
The president also said that wind turbines could supply up to 20 percent of the nation's electricity, but Democrats say his budget for wind energy hasn't increased since 2001.
"This is mostly a rhetorical offensive more than it is a spending offensive," said Jerry Taylor of the CATO Institute, a Washington think tank.
Much of what the president is proposing is years, even decades, away from happening. But even Bush's harshest critics have trouble arguing with the president's newfound passion for alternative sources of energy.
To learn more about Felix Kramer's organization, visit the web site at www.calcars.org.
Yeah I know what your thinking Bush and Alternativ Energy in the same sentence let alone him pushing for it makes you think
. Kinda smells like BS politics to get a better approval rating so there'll be a republican successor in office after him. If it's not BS Politics he needs to start putting more funding into Wind Energy as well as other alternative energy sources.
Every single president since Nixon has said almost the same thing. End dependance on forign oil blah blah blah. None of them ever gave a good crap cause they were all spoon fed tons of money from the oil companies. Its just a PR load of sh-t don't wait on it. In fact we've been waiting since Nixon.
Semper Fi SAINT. May you rest in peace.
Jackalope wrote:Every single president since Nixon has said almost the same thing. End dependance on forign oil blah blah blah. None of them ever gave a good crap cause they were all spoon fed tons of money from the oil companies. Its just a PR load of sh-t don't wait on it. In fact we've been waiting since Nixon.
Yea, when all is said and done, usually more is said than done. At least he's talking about it, which is more than I would have ever given him credit for doing.
So "Good Job, George".
GM is doing a lot more than talking about it.
GM's Flex Fuel Vehicles
This isn't science fiction, these are on the road today. And different from electric or hybrids, these function exactly like gas engines, but with more horsepower.
The drawback? About 25% less miles per tank. I haven't seen how much E85 is per gallon, but the E85 website claims it is less than regular unleaded.
E85 website, and it's 105 octane!
I think it's a fantastic idea, and you won't need a "space shuttle" diagram to do a tune up like the hybrids.
General Motors wrote:GM has more than 1.5 million FlexFuel Vehicles on the road today in all 50 states, able to operate on gasoline or on a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. So you can choose the fuel that's best for you. Important, because E85 fuel is not yet widely available. And vehicles running on E85 may have a cruising range that is about 25% shorter than the same vehicle operating on regular gasoline.
Yet when you can choose E85 ethanol, you make a difference. This renewable fuel, made from U.S. grown bio material (like corn or grain products), helps reduce our dependence on petroleum and greenhouse gas emissions. GM FlexFuel Vehicles operating on E85 fuel can help:
* Gain increased horsepower for better engine performance because E85 ethanol fuel has a higher octane rating than premium gasoline
* Lessen engine wear
* Support the domestic agriculture industry in the U.S.
John Wilken
2002 Cavalier
2.2 Vin code 4
Auto
My thoughts are simple: Hybrids will not be popular until the oil industry can find a way to make money off of them. I forsee Dow Chemical making a new power cell that costs $4500 to replace.
Okay seriously, there's a lot of talk, and not a whole lot else happening, at least from the gov't's side that I've seen. I haven't seen major tax breaks given to Companies that are R&Ding new hybrid/alt. fuel engines. I don't think it'll happen anytime soon. I mean, there'd be no more wars to fight!
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
All I want is cheap gas...
last night at 9:30pm gas was 2.06, I drive by that same station today at 12:30pm and gas was 2.36... what kind of bull@!#$ is that? I want to hear people talk about that @!#$.
Ethanol is not the answer........it takes 29 percent more energy to make ethanol than the energy it produces.
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This renewable fuel
And it is in no way renewable.
but kermit the frog said it was renewable
, damn those muppets
SunfireN2o wrote:Ethanol is not the answer........it takes 29 percent more energy to make ethanol than the energy it produces.
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This renewable fuel
And it is in no way renewable.
Incorrect. You're probably thinking of Methanol which is made by burning woodchips in the absence of oxygen.
http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id1.html
Ethanol is made through fermentation of starchy feedstocks, similar to those you can use to make alcoholic spirits. The ethanol cooking process uses in 10 litres roughly the same energy as it takes to hydrocrack a litre of Heavy-sour crude. You also get about 300 times cleaner burning fuel, and, your feedstocks produce 2 major by-products: Food-meal (which can be sold for animal feed enrichment) and carbon-dioxide (which has industrial and beverage applications), which is better than the sludge and PCB's that are left over from the distillation process of oil (particularly in North American refinaries).
Gasoline is by far more expensive to produce, even in scale per step (IIRC for 89 octane unleaded fuel, there's 4-5 steps). Making ethanol requires a still setup, and you get with about 180 Proof ethanol, the same kind of energy and performance you get out of 106 octane racing fuel. The best part of it is that you can generally produce your own fuel without a permit, and you can make about gallon of fuel an hour once the process gets going. The other good thing: Ethanol can be stored pretty much indefinitely without spoilling or separating like gasoline (no additives required!), the feedstocks can be run quite literally off of garbage, and the output for a life-time's worth of fuel is about the same as what a year's worth of gas costs.
Where is the downside?
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
well im not big on the E85 either, some guy I know has a flex-fuel suburban and we read the flex-fuel thing it came with it. It said E85 cost more, its hardly available and you dont get any better fuel economy when compared to gasoline. We both looked at each other and wondered why in the @!#$ would he even bother buying it IF he found any
SunfireN2o wrote:Heres a good read.........article
Interesting read... They list each and every single expense relating to converting corn to ethanol except the gasoline used in the pizza delivery guy's car. But this article assumes that the only product made will be ethanol, which isn't true.
Here's an article I found which lists all the products created from the production of Ethanol :
The other opinion on Ethanol production
from the link above wrote:Ethanol Production
Each bushel of corn can produce 2.5 gallons of ethanol fuel. Only the starch from the corn is used to make ethanol, leaving the protein and valuable co-products for other uses. For example, that same bushel of corn can also produce: 1.5 pounds of corn oil, 12.4 pounds of 21% protein feed, 3 pounds of 60% protein gluten meal, and 17 pounds of carbon dioxide (used for carbonating soft drinks and other beverages).
Manufacturers utilize increasingly sophisticated technology to convert the starch to sugar. This sugar is then fed to yeast which converts the sugar to ethanol. It has been argued that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than is gained in the conversion process. Nothing could be further from the truth. On average, there is a 33% net energy gain, or more than 25,000 BTU's, while the industry's best plants produce an 87% net energy gain.
I'm not saying one source is more reliable than the other, but at least look at all sides before making a decision.
Mass ethanol production is in it's infancy right now, like mass gasoline production would have been in the 1920's. I'm sure most people regarded cars in the 20's as a joke, you couldn't get fuel anywhere and horses were faster cheaper and less offensive. We're at the same crossroads now, but with fuel choices.
Ethanol production will improve in cost efficency with time. Right now E85 is priced comparably to regular unleaded, that fact alone should speak the loudest to the cost of producing gasoline vs ethanol.
Ethanol burns cleaner and corn can be replanted. There are hurdles right now because it hasn't been used by the masses, but it's the best alternative to gasoline today.
I just twitch when I think about driving a battery operated car. Imagine it's 7:30am, you have to be at work at 8am. You forgot to plug in your car, it now goes 6mph. You can't just stop at a service station to "fill er up", it takes too much time to charge the battery. Welcome to my personal hell.
.
John Wilken
2002 Cavalier
2.2 Vin code 4
Auto
Corn, and other grains used to produce ehanol use fertilizers. Fertilizers are made by heating a enormous amount of natural gas in a controlled environment. That gas could be used as some sort of fuel.
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Pimentel estimates that in corn-growing, nitrogen fertilizers alone use the equivalent of 80 gallons of gasoline per hectare.
.....straight from the article posted above.
Estimates show that the repeated amount of distillation processes the grains must go through use more energy than what is used to produce the corn (or whatever else).
The government is also subsidizing the pice at about 3 billion dollars a year. Ethanol has never been sold at market price. The government pays the difference.
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last night at 9:30pm gas was 2.06, I drive by that same station today at 12:30pm and gas was 2.36... what kind of bull@!#$ is that? I want to hear people talk about that @!#$.
That's nothing. yesterday gas here was around $1.97 a gallon first time since early fall and this morning some stations jumped their price to $2.49 a gallon.
Back on Topic. I give ethanol fuel about 10 years before it catches on nationwide maybe even less time than that. Toledo already has one Ethanol filling station and thier prices are sometimes lower than gas prices. Michigan should have a ethanol plant up and running sometime this year or next year and I wouldn't doubt some other midwest states like Iowa build one or more as well.
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your feedstocks produce 2 major by-products: Food-meal (which can be sold for animal feed enrichment) and carbon-dioxide (which has industrial and beverage applications), which is better than the sludge and PCB's that are left over from the distillation process of oil (particularly in North American refinaries).
I agree, I'd rather have ethanol byproducts lulling around than the smelly @!#$ that's left over from Oil refineries.
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Ethanol production will improve in cost efficency with time. Right now E85 is priced comparably to regular unleaded, that fact alone should speak the loudest to the cost of producing gasoline vs ethanol.
That is only because the government subsidizes the cost. I too agree that down the road ethanol will have a larger impact on our next fuel source, but it will be awhile. They need to find a way to better way to produce it.
I am aware of the by products of ethanol, but some reason I think the government will have to step in and force companys to use the byproducts for the good that they can be used for, some reason I think us lazy Americans will tend to just let it go to waste.
one of the by products of ethanol production is distiller grain. protein enriched grain that sells at half the cost of natural grain.
Approximately one-third of grain usage in the production of ethanol in modern plants is recovered as distillers grain.
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Creative Draft Image Manipulation Forum:::
BIODIESEL
vote for hillary
anywhosit. Many people keep forgetting that you can get a VW tdi that gets near 50mpg today, and not have to worry about replacing batteries. It actually costs less to run than the hybrid..... *SHOCK* *GASP*
Volkswagon is laughing at everyone on this because their TDI diesel engines kick everyones ass, and there not ugly smelly dirty like every other diesel on the road.
You Decide
-Chris
now the optimum would be biodiesel PLUS electric hybrid and get probably upwards of 70+ mpg
i think we need to make more new diesel cars.
however doing that does nto solve the millions of gas cars on the road. so we need to simultaneously be developing ethanol fuels for use in those autos until eventually people make the switch to a more efficient fuel source than gas/ethanol. which would be electric and or biodiesel.
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Creative Draft Image Manipulation Forum:::
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vote for hillary
Cough ...Barf....Cough.................
