Giving Up On Biofuels

Every new industry is chock-a-block with startups, and every new industry goes through at least one shakeout. A lot of computer companies have gone bust. I guess the end of the computer age is here too?

The fact is we have reached peak oil, and from this point forward any increase in demand will result in rapid price hikes. Oil will never again be cheap, and never again be price-stable. It will be an expensive fuel with extreme and growing price volatility until the end of time. Or actually until it is no longer used as a fuel.

Those biofuel companies that survive the shakeout will be doing quite well ten years from now.

 

Is anybody making money on biofuel without Solyndra-scale subsidies?

 

I have no doubt bio-fuels will replace petroleum.

But, I am also sure that won't be in the next 10 years unless there is a significant breakthrough in the next year or so (5 to 10 years is the time between breakthrough and commercial availability).

Right now, nothing is close, even in Europe where fossil fuel are taxed heavily, and alternatives are subsidized heavily.

 

Looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The price breakthrough won´t come on the biofuel end, it will come on the fossil fuel end.

 

That is why the MMGW crowd can't get public support. Your goal is to save the world, and don't care the cost - "the cost of energy must necessesarily skyrocket"!

 

Oh dang, you're so right. It will be too expensive to save the world, so I guess we'll just have to curl up and die as we wait for civilization to collapse.

Brilliant planning.

OR: Whatever country figures out how to go fossil-free first wins the 21st century. I want America to win. Why don't you?

 

You have no idea how much alternative energy will cost. You have no viable alternatives.

Photovoltaic is now effectively free (via solar leasing plans). Yet, there is no rush to solarize the US. Why is that?

If that country goes fossil free by increasing their cost of power significanlty, how exactly do they win?

 

Fossil fuels are non-viable in the long run, because they're running out. It's renewables, it's nuclear, or it's nothing.

The price of renewables generally is pretty well known. We know how much a wind turbine costs, and how much energy it will generate in a given location. Same for solar panels. Meanwhile, you have no idea how much gasoline will cost next month, or next year.

Leases are free? In what universe?

Britain won the 19th century by being first to switch from wood to coal. The US won the 20th century by being the first to switch from coal to oil. We now have two choices: we can allow the market price of fossil fuels to rule country, and be finally forced to buy somebody else's technology when fossil fuels reach the stratosphere. Or, we can develop and deploy alternatives ourselves, and have the rest of the world buy our stuff when that price point is reached.

It's a choice between being a world leader and being rewarded for it, or continuing to be a pay-through-the-nose nation to those who provide us with energy.

 

Peak oil is a scam perpetrated by the oil Cartel and big money movers like George Soros.

So-called 'renewables' will be controlled exactly the same way oil is now, by a few big-money entities and the government if we continue on the same path of fake oil shortages.

They supply the solar equipment and you pay them once a month for use and maintenance. The systems they are leasing only use grid power when needed. The claim is that your net energy bill (lease cost + utility bill) will be lower than without their system in place. Therefore it is 'free.'

These systems have not really caught on as of yet and their claims are difficult to prove.

Fossil fuels would be much cheaper if we allowed to drill and construct new refineries. However the government and the big-money hedge funds that buy and sell the same oil over and over BEFORE it gets to the pump, keep the 'peak oil' lie alive. You have been duped.

A world leader would access all its natural resources and USE them WHILE researching new energy sources until one is perfected then, when (and if) the oil truly runs out, alternative energy would already be in place because the MARKET will demand it...

 

If the price is pretty well known, what is the price of renewable transportation fuel? Or, even the renewable fuel suitable to fill in the gaps left by solar and wind?

Please re-read what I said. You save more on your electric bill than you pay on your lease.

Coal was better than wood, oil allowed personal transportation. At best, alternatives can be as good as.

As far as being left behind because of costs. Alternatives enter the market, the demand, thus price, for oil, will fall. Even more so, if the oil companies want to delay the entry of alternatives.

 

More total bullshyt. I doubt you even understand what "peak oil" means. Once again you've been bamboozled by the oil corps self-serving propaganda.

The fact that oil prices have been at record highs for the last six years but production has been flat would indicate that we have already passed the 'peak'.

Peak oil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, projected reserves and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells. In order to understand physical Peak oil, the growing effort for production must be considered. Physical Peak oil occurs earlier, because the overall efforts for production have increased in the past few decades.[1] [2]

The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to be applicable to the sum of a nation’s domestic production rate, and is similarly applied to the global rate of petroleum production. Peak oil is often confused with oil depletion; peak oil is the point of maximum production while depletion refers to a period of falling reserves and supply.

M. King Hubbert created and first used the models behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970.[3] His logistic model, now called Hubbert peak theory, and its variants have described with reasonable accuracy the peak and decline of production from oil wells, fields, regions, and countries,[4] and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical logistic distribution curve (sometimes incorrectly compared to a bell-shaped curve) based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.

Some observers, such as petroleum industry experts Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons, predict negative global economy implications following a post-peak production decline—and oil price increase—due to the high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agricultural, and industrial systems on the low cost and high availability of oil. Predictions vary greatly as to what exactly these negative effects would be.

Optimistic estimations of peak production forecast the global decline will begin after 2020, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.[5] Pessimistic predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred,[6][7][8][9] that oil production is on the cusp of the peak, or that it will occur shortly.[10][11] Production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2004 at 74 million barrels per day, and greater records reached since then represent only small increases that are failing to keep pace with demand from growing countries, such as China and India.[12][13][14][15] Throughout the first two quarters of 2008, there were signs that a global recession was being made worse by a series of record oil prices.[16]

 

Why don't you quit insulting folks Livefree? What's the matter? Can't make an argument without spewing hateful rhetoric? Do you think that does your position any good?

Where do I start with you? Record high oil prices have absolutely nothing to do with peak oil and everything to do with not allowing oil exploration and drilling. So called 'peak-oil' is a scam to keep market from being free enough to set its own prices based on supply and demand. Supply is now set by the Cartel and environmentalists that will not let refineries be built and orchestrated a moratorium on drilling.

President Obama is a main culprit in his refusal to roll back all of his executive decisions. Yes, he is opening up drilling in the Gulf again but not to the levels it was before. It is purely political because he knows he is 'dead meat' if gas prices go up any more.

The billions of dollars in hedge-fund money buys and sells the SAME oil over and over again BEFORE it becomes available for YOU to pump in in your gas tank. This falsely inflates the price of oil even more.

Go get educated and wash your mouth out with soap.

 

Saying you've been bamboozled is just a statement of fact, not an "insult". Once again, you seem very confused about the meaning of words.

Those are your delusions and rightwingnut myths but they have nothing to do with reality.

 

Cool, knock your socks off. When you have it figured out first, then we can look at but don't come for my wallet beforehand.

There is no other sustainable energy as of now to replace fossil fuels, none that will work on the scale we need them to. Artficially raising the costs of fossil fuels to fit an agenda is wrong. When you come up with a source of energy that can take the place of FF's, the world will listen, untill then, we have deaf ears.

 

Depends on their agenda, maybe it isn't what they profess it to be.

The MMGW crowd keeps screaming deniers are the problem. As if raising the cost of energy will magically make alternative energy sources appear. Europe raised prices, and saw minor improvements on existing technologies.

 

We're pumping more oil now than ever before. There is a glut on the market. In a REAL market, prices should decline but, the 'peak oil' lie pervades the media trumpeted by sycophant so-called 'environmentalists' who serve as useful idiots to guys like George Soros, world governments and the hedge-fund managers who control trillions of dollars of over-valued oil and who are not telling you or have actually forgot that it was they in the first place who created a shortage where none existed.