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So it’s been pretty tough this week, as Faithful Reader might imagine, and we’re dipping our toes gingerly back into the blogging sea tonight.

Nevertheless, we’re all about doing the right thing here at Left-Handed Complement, and in that spirit we’re recycling some of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s favorite electrons. And, with nearly 470 fresh daily posts in the past 16+ months, the recycling process has an exceptionally rich vein to mine.

I hereby stop apologizing for resuming our observance of the prime directive of blogging: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!

And, I’m guessing that most of you weren’t here nine months ago. As one of my favorite paper publications used to say as they flogged unsold back issues: “If you haven’t read it yet, it’s new for you!”

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, originally posted November 13, 2007, and with a woman vice presidential candidate, more germane than ever, titled “mm193: Fuel without oil, or corn.”

MUDGE’S Musings

It’s been an ongoing theme (here, here and here) at Left-Handed Complement: the pandering, wrong-headed concentration on corn derived ethanol as the U.S. main alternative to Saudi (and Nigerian, Gulf of Mexico and North Slope) petroleum to fuel our transportation system.

This past weekend, the NYTimes featured a fascinating look at non-corn alternatives to powering our SUVs.

For years, scientists have known that the building blocks in plant matter — not just corn kernels, but also corn stalks, wood chips, straw and even some household garbage — constituted an immense potential resource that could, in theory, help fill the gasoline tanks of America’s cars and trucks.

Mostly, they have focused on biology as a way to do it, tinkering with bacteria or fungi that could digest the plant material, known as biomass, and extract sugar that could be fermented into ethanol. But now, nipping at the heels of various companies using biological methods, is a new group of entrepreneurs, including Mr. Mandich, who favor chemistry.

The conceptual problem with ethanol from corn has always rested in the strong suspicion that the energy required to process corn to burn in one’s automobile exceeds the yield of energy so created.

Ethanol from corn is a political hot button, especially for all of the presidential campaigners prostrating themselves before Iowa’s farmers — isn’t it high time to divest this country from its inappropriate emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire in the primary process?

You don’t see Georgia influencing election trends, and yet:

In Georgia alone, enough waste wood is available to make two billion gallons of ethanol a year, Mr. Mandich said. If all that material could be captured and converted to fuel, it could replace about 1 percent of the nation’s gasoline consumption.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Fuel Without the Fossil – New York Times

Obviously, there are some very bright people working hard at solutions, made increasingly economically attractive as the baseline of comparison to petroleum-based fuels persists in climbing inexorably toward $4/gallon.

And, corn-based or not, it looks like ethanol is going to be the end result of all of this chemical creativity, since it’s ethanol that has the Congressionally mandated tax credit.

MUDGE used to believe that the fuel cell guys had the answer, but what with the way the real world works, I can’t see corner hydrogen pumps popping up in many neighborhoods in my lifetime. So chemically derived ethanol will have to do.

Good to see U.S. innovation persists. Like the current IBM advertisements proclaim, it’s easy to say, and so very much more difficult to actually do.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Robert Paul Van Beets | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’S Musings

If biofuels make any sense at all, and the jury is still out on that one outside the White House, and the state of Iowa, ethanol made from sugar cane rather than from corn has already been shown to be far the better choice.

First, a review. We have discussed this topic many times:

A prime source of sugar cane, that, if developed, would become the third largest source of ethanol after the U.S. and Brazil, is a mere 90 miles from our shores, in Cuba.

One of the last vestiges of the long since over 50-year Cold War is the United States’ odd non-relationship with the nation of Cuba.

One more good reason to lift the embargo on Cuba

Let’s seize the potential of the nation’s sugar-based ethanol — before China beats us to it.

By Joe Conason

July 18, 2008 | Listening to the mouthpieces of the oil industry on talk radio and cable television — as well as in the Bush White House — one gets the impression that we must start drilling in America’s coastal waters immediately. If only we unleash the oilmen to explore and exploit, then the price of gasoline will start to fall, the scheming petroleum cartel will collapse, and the United States will be independent once again. And if we don’t unleash the oilmen, then the Chinese communists will siphon off all the oil from the coast of Cuba before we can even launch a rowboat into the Caribbean.

None of that is true, of course. Producing oil from new offshore wells requires decades, and even when those resources come online they will have little impact on world prices, according to the government’s own studies. Fouling our shores with clots of tar will bring us no closer to freedom from foreign oil in the near, medium or long term.

And that tale about the Chinese drilling off Cuba is a hoax designed to gull the public into supporting the repeal of laws that restrict offshore drilling. But the phony Cuban oil story raises a pertinent question. If we really want to free ourselves from the death grip of the oil-exporting countries, maybe we should lift the embargo on trade and investment in Cuba.

Tiny Cuba’s potential as a military threat was always solely embodied in its client status of the Soviet Union; once that entity dissolved, only political pandering to the rabid exile community in South Florida has sustained the embargo that has left Cuba with its oddly photogenic collection of vintage 1950s American automobiles, and little else of economic substance.

But sugar cane has always been at Cuba’s agricultural heart. And Brazil has shown the world (outside the U.S. where its own sugar lobby has successfully blocked importing cost effective Brazilian sugar and sugar based ethanol) that sugar is a much more efficient source for the manufacture of ethanol than is corn.

One more good reason to lift the embargo on Cuba | Salon

Further, while some of our own links above make it clear that using corn to create fuel may be distorting food prices and causing global starvation, sugar from  cane is far less important (qualitatively) to the food supply; its empty nutritional calories might as well be repurposed toward internal combustion engines.

As Joe Conason makes his case in Salon, sugar ethanol is one more good reason to normalize the Cuba-U.S. relationship. And the Miami exiles could console themselves by taking advantage, as could the rest of this country, with less costly, less politically dangerous, fuel for their commutes.

And what cigar smokers remain in this non-public smoking era would finally be able again to directly and legally import those other greatly desirable Cuban agricultural assets, their H. Upmanns and Cohibas.

Seems like a win <cough> win to me.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

As food prices rise around the world, evidence that the biofuels initiatives are the cause keeps becoming clearer. As the entire issue of petroleum alternatives has become most pressing, the relationship between the diversion of food stocks to fuel stocks has been guessed at, but there have been few firm numbers of the impact.

Today The Guardian seems to have found the smoking gun.

First, a review. We have discussed this topic many times:

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

Aditya Chakrabortty | The Guardian, Friday July 4, 2008

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Hope you didn’t skip over that number. Not the U.S. government’s smug claim that biofuel production only contributes 3% to food price increases. 75%.

Fuel from plant material is definitely a promising approach to the manifest need to find alternative transportation fuel sources. But, the diversion of food crops, and the prime soil devoted to food crops, for conversion to fuel is magnificently wrong, as many have been warning us for some years now. And the outlook for many millions has become dire.

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

George III’s corrupt administration has killed two birds with this one. Biofuels has passed the political test for a viable alternative to petroleum, so his Texas oil puppet-masters are able to dodge the worst of the outcry against skyrocketing gasoline prices.

And most politicians on the national stage of both parties just love subsidizing those Iowa corn farmers.

The Bush administration has tried to pin all the current food price angst on increased demand for both oil and food on India and China, but this World Bank report says, not so fast!

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.”

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

And of course, the entire analysis that posits corn based ethanol as a greener alternative to petroleum energy is flawed.

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis | Environment | The Guardian

Environmentally acceptable, reasonably priced and food-supply-neutral fuel from plant materials is viable. Unfortunately, subsidized ethanol from Iowa corn and Illinois soybeans is none of those things.

Perhaps the fallout from this World Bank report will shed some needed light on this topic, before more millions starve.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

We have written appreciatively on the topic of working from home (most colorfully, courtesy Stanley Bing, here; more philosophically, here).

Telecommuting is a fancier term. Telework is the jargon chosen by Stephen Barr of the Washington Post, reporting on a bill working its way through Congress to permit federal employees to do so.

Telework Bill Cleared by the House

Federal Diary | By Stephen Barr |Wednesday, June 4, 2008; Page D03

A bill that would permit many federal employees to telecommute at least two days every two weeks was approved by the House yesterday on a voice vote.

Under the bill, federal agencies would be required to create and implement policies to enable eligible employees to work from home or away from their regular office as long as telecommuting did not hamper their performance or interfere with agency operations.

Telework advocates and union officials have been pushing for expanded telecommuting programs in the government for two years, and the House action enhances the chances of Congress sending a bill to the president this year.

Similar legislation has been approved by a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, but a committee report has not been released, a step needed before the bill can come to the Senate floor. There are some differences between the House and Senate bills that will have to be resolved, but a compromise is likely because the concept of expanded telecommuting in the government has drawn substantial bipartisan support.

Yr (justifiably) humble svt is a serious devotee of working from home. Faced with a sixty-mile round trip, variable weather and pervasive road renewal (two seasons in Chicago: winter, and under construction), equipped with a competent broadband connection and company issued laptop PC, I feel that I could be a poster child (okay, poster codger) for the working from home concept.

Modern technology, such as the web conferencing and instant messaging tools that I support, make it possible to collaborate with employees, vendors and clients anywhere in the world from any office anywhere, even the one over your garage.

Happy to have Congress, never, on the evidence, an expert on work of any kind (that sounds a bit like Samuel Clemens, doesn’t it?), stoop to consider such an innovation.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Stephen Barr – Telework Bill Cleared by the House – washingtonpost.com

As the story notes, Congress has awakened to the fact that corporate America is well ahead on this issue.

IBM, for example, has institutionalized the concept for many of its 375,000 worldwide employees. A truly substantial number, perhaps as many as 25%, have no office in an IBM owned or leased facility. They have space, perhaps “hotel” space, in their clients’ facilities, or they work from their home offices. At MUDGE‘s employer, our IBM support liaison works in any spare cubical found in our office three days, his own home office the other two.

IBM gets its client facing people literally in their clients’ faces, and avoids incredible amounts not spent on commercial square footage, heat, light, air conditioning, and the general infrastructure required to support an employee in the big cities they inhabit.

Many other corporations have also recognized the value of telecommuting, but most not to IBM’s extreme.

Stanley Bing notwithstanding, telework is not an engraved invitation to goof off. It allows working mothers to support both elements of that description. It allows working fathers to support their spouses in a way not previously conceived, staying home with a sick child while preparing that monthly report.

Here’s the point of today’s post headline: Not the least attractive element of working from home is that it has the capacity to save significant quantities of gas that would otherwise be expended commuting.

When it costs upwards of $60 to fill a sedan’s gas tank, potentially cutting consumption by 20% per week has the potential to become a non-trivial savings.

Multiply that by 1,800,000 civilian federal employees (if the federal workers bill makes it through the legislative process), admittedly a gross number that doesn’t take into account public facing and security workers that the bill would exclude, and national gas consumption might reduce significantly.

And the government’s example could prove influential to smaller businesses that might not have IBM’s imagination.

As a national energy security strategy, this beats ethanol by a mile.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

The more you know about ethanol as a petroleum substitute, the more there is to dislike. This has been a continuing story in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©, as you can see:

We have spent some time in this space on the subject of water, and its scarcity.

Now, the two concepts: the wrong-headed use for fuel of a key foodstuff; and the menace of the growing shortage of water in the U.S; come together courtesy of a new member of Left-Handed Complement‘s blogroll, fellow WordPress.com blog Optimal Functioning.

Ethanol and Biodiesel the Great Water Wasters

Optimal Functioning | Posted by Hans Rippel on April 27, 2008

The growing demand for ethanol, especially the soaring demand by the U.S., is an important piece of the food crises puzzle. The increasing amount of corn, soy, and cellulosic used for ethanol production are in part causing a scarcity of food supplies, which is threatening the lives of many in third world countries. Researchers have now found that in addition to ethanol production and its planned supply increases are not only a food problem but potentially an even greater cause of a water shortage problem.

Jan F. Kreider from University of Colorado and engeneer Peter S. Curtiss have found that the production of one gallon of corn based ethanol requires 170 gallons of water from growing it to converting it into ethanol and cellulosic ethanol requires 146 gallons of water. Much worse is soybean based biodiesel, which requires 900 gallons of water per gallon of biodiesel. In comparison, one gallon of regular gasoline requires only 5 gallons of water. Actually, the most water efficient fuel has been shown to be natural gas.

This nation’s farmers have a high priority claim on its water supply, but it’s downright catastrophic to pay them subsidies to deflect grain production from food to fuel, when the further processing required is so extravagantly wasteful of the living world’s one, truly finite resource.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Ethanol and Biodiesel the Great Water Wasters « Optimal Functioning

And, Senators McCain and Clinton want to stimulate fuel demand this summer by temporarily suspending the federal tax on gasoline?

How is that not a egregiously bad idea for everyone?

For example, the U.S. government would be deprived of taxes while continuing to conduct a ruinously expensive “war on terror.”

Consumers, who it appears are finally diminishing their purchases of profligate SUV’s in favor of more efficient vehicles, would suddenly be encouraged to prop up the already obscene price of gasoline by stimulating demand.

A stupendously bad idea for everyone, everyone of course excepting George III’s buddies the oil companies, and those utterly pampered Iowa farmers?

The science makes it clear: ethanol and soy based biodiesel are crimes against the globe’s water supply, and their application for vehicular transportation must be terminated soonest.

The planet can figure out ways to deal with the growing cost of petroleum as fuel, for example, by driving less, and converting to renewable energy sources.

But if there’s no water, there’s no life.

Even the cockroaches would have difficulty managing.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From our very earliest days, originally posted May 24, 2007.

mm015: Welcomed back to the guild

So, it just keeps getting better…

While the webtronic world I spend much time in swoops along, I can’t help but touch base in the real world occasionally — okay, every day. Today, for example, for the first time perhaps ever in a passenger car, I paid $54 to fill up my tank with 87 octane. Ouch.

I guess I’m kind of shocked and annoyed that gasoline prices climbing toward $4/gallon haven’t created much of an outcry as yet. Maybe I should start outcrying. And while the rest of the world is smirking knowingly, and the rest of the U.S. is breathing with relief that they don’t share my northern Illinois local conditions (summer blend regulations, a key nearby refinery off-line due to a March fire), I have to feel we’ve all not seen the worst. And why so little concern?

Have “they” softened us up, so we willingly put up with the prices? Oh, yes, I’m aware of that idiotic (a word you’ll learn that I don’t use lightly) so-called one-day boycott on May 15 — what a joke! How many of those boycotters parked their cars all day and took their bicycles or mass transit? I vote none! — and some senators had a photo op the other day, but really!

Okay, so you figure that, with prices nearing historic highs (this time, inflation adjusted) the oil companies would be doing all they could to increase production to fill that demand at such profitable selling prices. You figure wrong. A story in the soon to be last week’s Business Week points out the error. Think Exxon Mobil is spending its cash, rolling in historic, capitalistically orgasmic waves, on new explorations, improved wells in mature areas, new refineries? Not at all. This titan of industrial might is spending huge wads of cash buying up its own stock. This has the paper effect of increasing the value of the remaining shares, and fully meets Exxon Mobil’s main obligation to increase shareholder value.

So, we’re back to yesterday’s theme: shareholders are probably the least important of a corporation’s stakeholders, especially the short term traders for whom these 90-day performance figures are so critical. But they’re the ones Exxon has bent over to serve, at everyone’s expense. So their conservative investment strategy becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy: fuel usage will indubitably go down in the long term due to high prices, so why invest in fuel? Of course this lack of investment leads to higher prices, ad infinitum.

Don’t get me started on ethanol — a farm-state ass-kissing boondoggle if ever there was one. It takes more energy to create ethanol from corn in this country than ethanol itself yields — your government at work, and every darned one of our potential presidents dutifully bows and scrapes in Iowa despite that fact. The cheapest ethanol in the world comes from the third world, such as Brazil where sugar cane is converted efficiently. And the farmer protecting politicians keep the tariffs on third-world ethanol unaffordably high. 300 million citizens held hostage to a couple of million farmers — how is that right?

Okay, they’re letting me back into the curmudgeon’s guild.

Thanks for indulging me.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Automotive breakthroughs – Truth, or Myth?

• Carburetors that get you 100 miles to the gallon.
• Gasoline engines that can be converted to run on water.

Myth, of course. Anyone trying to sell you stock in the latter, which seems to surface every few years, should be reported to the SEC.

Okay, those were easy ones. These next two are more difficult.

• Hybrid vehicles are good for the environment.
• Biofuels can cleanly end our dependence on petroleum.

Sorry, myths, both.

Wait a minute, MUDGE. Hybrids are the new panacea. What do you mean by casting aspersions on my two-ton+ Tahoe Hybrid ? And, biofuels, like ethanol, God’s gift to America (and the American farmer)? Of course they’re good for us!

Hybrids first. Like the name implies, they’re compromises. Part conventional gasoline engine (perhaps smaller than the size of vehicle being so powered might otherwise warrant, thus less thirsty). Part electric motor and battery. The motor and battery adds weight, and the battery has a finite life. Not certain how pleased my self-satisfied Prius driving neighbors are going to be when faced with a $3,000 battery replacement fee in a few short years.

And, it’s what happens to the spent batteries that’s really the issue. Lots of dense lead for the landfill.

But, while it lasted, it helped you burn a few less gallons of gas.

So, let me get this straight. The payoff, even at $4/gallon gas, for the upcharge for the hybrid mechanism, is measured in decades, and the sizable batteries added to the landfills will become a significant environmental issue?

Okay, there’s always my trusty E85 burning pickup truck. That’s good, right? Using good old American corn instead of that overpriced Saudi sludge?

Turns out, not so much.

We’ve tackled this issue previously in this space.

Now, some new findings.

Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL | Published: February 8, 2008

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

So, the bad news just doesn’t stop. Turn grassland into corn pasturage: increase greenhouse gas emissions by 93 times!

Iowans cease alternating soybeans with that corn crop (to realize the sudden high prices for corn as feedstock for ethanol), and they cut down the Amazon even faster so Brazil can pick up the soybean slack. One doesn’t have to be sentimental about tarantulas and capuchin monkeys to figure out that this is a bad idea.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat – New York Times

Benjamin Disraeli, popularized by Mark Twain, had it right, of course: the three kinds of untruths: lies, damned lies, and statistics. (My blogging idol, Sandy Szwarc, discusses the distortions caused by statistical selectivity frequently; obviously it’s not confined to medical research.)

Funny if you leave land use out of the equation how wonderful biofuels look.

“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all biofuels on cropland.”

Okay, Greenies, park your Priuses and your E85s and face reality.

There are ways that might lead to cutting petroleum use. There are ways that might eventually lead to emitting fewer greenhouse gases. Recently, we’ve discussed a couple here.

But not hybrids. And definitely not biofuel.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Don’t spend much time reading Forbes any more. Guess I’ve given up the dream: to be a capitalist.

My dear grandmother gave me a gift subscription when I was 21 years old. Found it interesting and aspirational, then. The politics made little impression (and maybe in the early 70s were less obstreperous).

But, it was really business news I hungered for, rather than investment advice (I was investing in my domicile and groceries at the time). For advice on decisions made in my favorite field of battle, the business world, Business Week became my regular read, and has continued to be for more than 30 years.

Lately, I’ve (all but) graduated to The Economist (wait for it), the best magazine on the planet, and I’ll face a real conundrum when my BW print subscription expires in a few months; can I really afford both?

Can I afford not to read both regularly?

But this is about Forbes; every so often I glance into Forbes.com, and occasionally will find something I hadn’t encountered elsewhere.

So it was last week.

Diesel cars: back here to stay?

We’ve occasionally written about alternative energy for transportation:

• the wrong-headed corn ethanol boondoggle (here for example);
• hybrids (will you break even on your new Prius by the year 2023? truth in advertising – can’t find where I’ve done more than comment disparagingly about hybrid vehicles, but there’s an exhaustive analysis here);
• fuel cells (here – anyone spot the hydrogen pump at the corner station? Didn’t think so).

Forbes reminds us that there’s an existing, smart alternative, one that Europe embraced first, and still does: diesel engines for passenger vehicles.

The Other Green Engine: Diesel?

Joann Muller, 01.17.08, 7:30 PM ET

Looking for a fuel-efficient alternative to your current gas-guzzler? How about a car that gets 30% better fuel economy, doesn’t require a giant battery in the trunk or have to be plugged into the wall, and can travel 600 miles between fill-ups?

Believe it or not, automakers may have a tough time selling those attributes to consumers later this year, when a new generation of diesel-powered vehicles arrives in dealerships. Images from the 1970s–of rattling engines and tailpipes spewing black soot–are hard to shake. And, thanks to superb marketing by Toyota (nyse: TM – news - people ), maker of the Prius hybrid, Americans are convinced hybrids are the only green choice available, despite some discussion of diesel cars’ potential. (See “Day of The Diesel.”)….

But a new generation of modern diesels is on its way to all 50 states, led by carmakers based in Europe, where half of all consumers prefer diesels.

One gets the impression that today’s diesel engined vehicles are considerably more refined (the clattery noise and that black smoke were turnoffs in the 80s).

And one can’t help notice that, in the bigger retailers, the diesel pump has made a reappearance. My nearby Citgo has one; if I could only stomach supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s nationalized oil company that owns it…

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

The Other Green Engine: Diesel? – Forbes.com

Okay, diesel fuel is still a version (less refined, so in higher sales volume conceivably less expensive per gallon to purchase) of the petroleum that we’re desperate to get away from. And okay, Forbes being Forbes, it’s the BMW and Mercedes diesel models they’re apparently lusting for: capitalist tools, indeed.

But it makes some sense (can half of Europe be 100% wrong?). Certainly more sense than burning food.

Wacky, but maybe brilliant, electric car

Our other alternative energy for transportation story comes from aforementioned Business Week. A curious story about an Israel-born executive who gave up the race to succeed the CEO of SAP (only the third largest software company on the planet) to create a uniquely feasible business that might create a truly viable electric car.

It’s a lengthy story, full of fuzzy personality stuff, but the hard-edged concept wowed one of the geniuses of today’s automotive world, Carlos Ghosn of Renault-Nissan, so it’s worth the read.

The Electric Car Acid Test

Shai Agassi’s audacious effort to end the era of gas-powered autos

by Steve Hamm | Autos January 24, 2008, 5:00PM EST

Just over a year ago, on Dec. 31, 2006, Shai Agassi settled into a leather couch in the office of Ehud Olmert to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister. Agassi, then a top executive at German software giant SAP (SAP), had come to pitch the idea of his native Israel reducing its dependence on oil by replacing gas-powered cars with electric ones. Olmert liked the concept but laid down a steep challenge: He wanted Agassi to raise hundreds of millions in venture capital and get an auto industry CEO on board before he would pledge his support. “You go find the money and find a major automaker who will commit to this, and I’ll give you the policy backing you need,” Olmert said….

Agassi does bring a new perspective to the alternative fuel world. The trouble with traditional electric cars is that they can go only 50 or 100 miles and then they need to stop for hours to recharge their batteries. Hybrids overcome the mileage limitations, but only by burning gasoline. One of Agassi’s unconventional ideas is to separate the battery from the car. That will allow drivers to pull into a battery-swapping station, a car-wash-like contraption, and wait for 10 minutes while their spent batteries are lowered from the car and fully charged replacements are hoisted into place. Better Place will build the service stations, as well as hundreds of thousands of charging locations, similar to parking meters….

What got Ghosn excited was Israel’s willingness to slash import taxes for green vehicles and alter domestic sales taxes in ways that would make the economics of the plan work. “This is a unique situation,” says Ghosn. “It’s the first mass marketplace for electric cars under conditions that make sense for all the parties.” As a result of getting involved, the Nissan-Renault Alliance has made electric autos a top priority. Initially, the companies expect to produce electric cars for Israel and other countries by modifying existing models, but eventually they plan to introduce new models designed from the ground up to run on batteries developed by Nissan.

The Electric Car Acid Test

An absolutely remarkable story. Can this happen? Did I pick up the April 1st issue by mistake?

Okay, totally impractical in most parts of the world, but Israel could be considered this idea’s incubator.

And, as long as no petroleum or coal is burned to generate the electricity that charges the batteries, it would be a true environmental breakthrough.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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We’ve had several occasions in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©…

…to consider the growth of the use of traditional food crops to create alternative fuel stocks – ethanol from corn is the U.S. wrongheaded approach.

Such is the triumph of our interconnected world that bad ideas from the U.S. are reproduced just as predictably as are many of our other famous cultural artifacts: rock and roll, blue jeans, cellular telephones.

January 19th’s NYTimes brings to our attention the food crisis in Asia caused by conversion of food crops to petroleum substitutes.

A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories

By KEITH BRADSHER | Published: January 19, 2008

KUANTAN, Malaysia — Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material.

Cooking oil? A cheap commodity in the west. What’s the big deal?

Cooking oil may seem a trifling expense in the West. But in the developing world, cooking oil is an important source of calories and represents one of the biggest cash outlays for poor families, which grow much of their own food but have to buy oil in which to cook it.

The focus of this story is on palm oil, until recently rather disreputable nutritionally here, but back in favor as an option to trans fats, increasingly seen as unhealthy, and even legislated against in trendy places like New York City.

Now, everyone everywhere wants palm oil. But as petroleum prices rise, and vegetable based oils are viewed as attractive components of biodiesel, palm oil is suddenly in short supply, and skyrocketing in price.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

An Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories – New York Times

The interconnectedness of the world never fails to astonish. In this instance, the result isn’t merely inconveniently high prices for traditionally low-cost commodities, it’s starvation in Asian slums.

Stranger yet the instructive example of the palm oil refinery in Malaysia, built alongside sizable palm forests, prepared to convert palm oil to biodiesel. Now frantically attempting to come up with a new plan, as its machinery was idled because the demand for palm oil as food has ratcheted up its price beyond economical use as a feedstock for mere fuel.

In the rush to pander to Midwest growers of corn and soybeans by subsidizing the use of ethanol for fuel; in the rush to protect U.S. citizens from the unhealthy effects of oil their potatoes are fried in; we initiate chains of events that results in a crisis of shortages and starvation on the other side of the globe.

Farmers, always the hardest working and often the least compensated link of the food chain, naturally seek to get the highest price possible for their output, and biofuel has supercharged demand, thus prices are higher.

Seems clear that in the rush to embrace biofuels the law of unintended consequences has landed square into the battered cooking pots of Mumbai.

Can’t cook the week’s scrap of mutton with unintended consequences.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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We’ve frequently commented (most recently here) on how often connections can be drawn from disparate news sources. It happened to us again today.

Read over breakfast this depressing story in the best magazine on the planet, The Economist:

The beer crisis | Trouble brewing

Dec 19th 2007 | ST LOUIS | From The Economist print edition

A shortage of hops threatens Christmas

JUST as the festive season gets going, drinkers in America are finding their favourite beer suddenly more expensive or even—horrors!—not available at all. Hit by price increases and shortages, many breweries, particularly the small “craft brewers” and the even smaller microbreweries, are being forced to raise prices, make do with modified recipes or shut off the spigots altogether.

The humble hop, the plant that gives beer its distinctive flavour, is the main problem. Many farmers in the Pacific north-west, where America’s hop production is concentrated, have turned to more profitable lines—especially corn, which can be made into ethanol. The decrease in hop production, put at some 50% over the past decade, has sent prices through the roof. Brian Owens, the brewmaster of the O’Fallon Brewery near St Louis, Missouri, says that the variety he once bought for $3 a pound (0.45kg) now costs five times that. Many smaller breweries cannot find what they need at any price. Industry giants like Anheuser-Busch and Miller are better off, thanks to long-term contracts. But even Anheuser-Busch has been forced to raise prices for its six-packs.

A crisis of tragically epic proportions: beer unavailable, especially the increasingly popular craft or microbrews, or priced higher due to the newly high price of hops and barley.

Yr (justifiably) humble svt is somewhat cavalier about beer, as he doesn’t drink it very often (the carbs, don’t you know), but in tough times (and they seem to be inching toward tough in these parts) one takes solace where one can, and beer is the solace of choice for many. A shortage, or a significantly higher price, could wreak havoc with the social order.

And, what’s the cause of this potential unrest? Corn.

Corn is supplanting hops and barley for many farmers, since the government has made it increasingly attractive to grow corn for ethanol, totally wrongheaded though that is — wrongheaded government! Go figure!

See some previous posts on the use of ethanol as fuel: starting here in the earliest days of this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©, and here, here, here, here.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

The beer crisis | Trouble brewing | Economist.com

Ethanol, inefficient as it is as fuel, causing shortages and price increases of one of the major food groups (for many): beer. Talk about the law of unintended consequences…

Thus corn was on my mind when we encountered this article in the NYTimes today. The European Union is once again (still?) grappling with the high intensity issue of the advisability of growing genetically modified corn.

GM foods is a topic we’ve handled quite eloquently (MUDGE’s humility gene must have gotten in the way of an X-ray machine, sorry) in a previous post. But, news is news.

And the Times is quite thorough covering both points of view. Interestingly, there’s actual science supporting both, as opposed to the recent cases where science is called into question on this side of the water and those callers into question can hardly spell the word science (guess the word doesn’t appear in the King James edition) much less accept its findings.

Both Sides Cite Science to Address Altered Corn

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL | Published: December 26, 2007

BRUSSELS — A proposal that Europe’s top environment official made last month, to ban the planting of a genetically modified corn strain, sets up a bitter war within the European Union, where politicians have done their best to dance around the issue.

The environmental commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said he had based his decision squarely on scientific studies suggesting that long-term uncertainties and risks remain in planting the so-called Bt corn. But when the full European Commission takes up the matter in the next couple of months, commissioners will have to decide what mix of science, politics and trade to apply. And they will face the ambiguous limits of science when it is applied to public policy.

Europe has embargoed seed and food products grown from genetically engineered plants for a decade; very convenient excuse for protectionist trade barriers. Now the World Trade Organization is pushing the EU for a change in policy. But the EU is pushing back, citing scientific studies counter to those presented in favor of GM food:

Ms. Hilbeck says that company-financed studies do not devote adequate attention to broad ripple effects that modified plants might cause, like changes to bird species or the effect of all farmers planting a single biotechnology crop. She said producers of modified organisms, like Syngenta and Monsanto, have rejected repeated requests to release seeds to researchers like herself to conduct independent studies on their effect on the environment.

The give and take on this is interesting.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Both Sides Cite Science to Address Altered Corn – New York Times

So it’s your scientists vs. my scientists, and because it’s science, there’s room for opposing theories. But the EU’s science has that slightly moldy odor of politics.

As mentioned in the post cited at the top, because of our employment at the time we were close to this debate 10 years ago in the U.S. That battle was hard fought, biotechnology vs. the Monarch butterfly (talk about a public relations nightmare for the suits!), and ultimately won in the U.S. by Big Ag, although as the Times makes clear, the Monarch’s well-being is still closely studied.

In the United States, where almost all crops are now genetically modified, the debate is largely closed.

“I’m not saying there are no more questions to pursue, but whether it’s good or bad to plant Bt corn — I think we’re beyond that,” said Richard L. Hellmich, a plant scientist with the Agriculture Department who is based at Iowa State University. He noted that hundreds of studies had been done and that Bt corn could help “feed the world.”

But the scientific equation may look different in Europe, with its increasing green consciousness and strong agricultural traditions.

And, if you let your farmers start to grow GM foods, it will be more difficult to rationalize the artificial protectionist barriers against other modified crops.

The hungry of the world (and there are so many!) can’t eat paper; unfortunately paper seems to be the chief crop of most of the world’s governments.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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It’s been an ongoing theme (here, here and here) at Left-Handed Complement: the pandering, wrong-headed concentration on corn derived ethanol as the U.S. main alternative to Saudi (and Nigerian, Gulf of Mexico and North Slope) petroleum to fuel our transportation system.

This past weekend, the NYTimes featured a fascinating look at non-corn alternatives to powering our SUVs.

For years, scientists have known that the building blocks in plant matter — not just corn kernels, but also corn stalks, wood chips, straw and even some household garbage — constituted an immense potential resource that could, in theory, help fill the gasoline tanks of America’s cars and trucks.

Mostly, they have focused on biology as a way to do it, tinkering with bacteria or fungi that could digest the plant material, known as biomass, and extract sugar that could be fermented into ethanol. But now, nipping at the heels of various companies using biological methods, is a new group of entrepreneurs, including Mr. Mandich, who favor chemistry.

The conceptual problem with ethanol from corn has always rested in the strong suspicion that the energy required to process corn to burn in one’s automobile exceeds the yield of energy so created.

Ethanol from corn is a political hot button, especially for all of the presidential campaigners prostrating themselves before Iowa’s farmers — isn’t it high time to divest this country from its inappropriate emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire in the primary process?

You don’t see Georgia influencing election trends, and yet:

In Georgia alone, enough waste wood is available to make two billion gallons of ethanol a year, Mr. Mandich said. If all that material could be captured and converted to fuel, it could replace about 1 percent of the nation’s gasoline consumption.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Fuel Without the Fossil – New York Times

Obviously, there are some very bright people working hard at solutions, made increasingly economically attractive as the baseline of comparison to petroleum-based fuels persists in climbing inexorably toward $4/gallon.

And, corn-based or not, it looks like ethanol is going to be the end result of all of this chemical creativity, since it’s ethanol that has the Congressionally mandated tax credit.

MUDGE used to believe that the fuel cell guys had the answer, but what with the way the real world works, I can’t see corner hydrogen pumps popping up in many neighborhoods in my lifetime. So chemically derived ethanol will have to do.

Good to see U.S. innovation persists. Like the current IBM advertisements proclaim, it’s easy to say, and so very much more difficult to actually do.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Continuing our biofuel exploration of a few weeks ago, here’s a useful analysis found at Salon.com.

Salon.com Technology | Food versus fools

Article removed at the polite request of the copyright holder

As always, our elected officials have no idea of the positive value of global trade, unless their farming constituents’ interests are protected with tariffs.

If ethanol is a key to less dependence on those “friends” of ours in OPEC, then wouldn’t it be an intelligent step to acquire ethanol from the least expensive source?

And folks, the Democrats have just as sorry a history as Republicans when it comes to nationalistic protectionism.

Michael Bloomberg, you’ve declared yourself an independent, and you are no doubt one of the sharpest knives in the capitalist block – what’s your position on this issue?

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE