So, what is really holding back the research and application of alternative fuels?

[Schadenfroh]

I mean, we have everyone arguing over the middle east and alaska oil drilling. What is keeping back application of alternative fuel sources? I know that the initial cost of implementing alternative sources of energy is higher than just paying the $50 a barrel, but, i dont see how we can continue on the downward spiral of oil in the next 50 years.

 

[Ryan]

Honda is perfecting it's fuel cell program, and they're leading the front with Hybrid vehicles - we're moving in the right direction, but more incentive from the government would be great

 

[Spencer278]

The fact that the only fuels that are viable at all are coal, nucks, and oil, and hyropower. Other then those what fuels do you propose we use?

 

[Pliablemoose]

We'll need massive infrastructure changes to facilitate any change from the status quo.

Energy costs will have to increase significantly to justify the investment in infrastructure to support the change.

I'd like to see a massive federal program similar to the space race to develop alt fuel vehicles & to assist with the infrastructure changes necessary.

How far away is your nearest hydrogen source & is it open to the public?

Alternative Fuel Station Locator

Nearest hydrogen refuling station with public acces is 830 miles.

 

[Spencer278]

Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
We'll need massive infrastructure changes to facilitate any change from the status quo.

Energy costs will have to increase significantly to justify the investment in infrastructure to support the change.

I'd like to see a massive federal program similar to the space race to develop alt fuel vehicles & to assist with the infrastructure changes necessary.

How far away is your nearest hydrogen source & is it open to the public?

Alternative Fuel Station Locator

Nearest hydrogen refuling station with public acces is 830 miles.

In the whole nation there is only one marked public access. Hydrogen will never replace oil. Gas simply has better energy density they hydrogen and to produce hydrogen requires the use of other longer carbon chains.

 

[BDawg]

I think it's the stonecutters.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: rbloedow
Honda is perfecting it's fuel cell program, and they're leading the front with Hybrid vehicles - we're moving in the right direction, but more incentive from the government would be great

are fuel cells an alternative energy source or an alternative energy transport mechanism?

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: BDawg
I think it's the stonecutters.

Who controls the British Crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who kills off the electric car, who makes Steve Gutenberg a staaaaar?
We do! We doooooo!

 

[biostud]

If we didn't need oil we didn't need to in the middle east.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Topic Title: So, what is really holding back the research and application of alternative fuels?

Haliburton, Bush, Saudi's, Oil/Gas Co's, GM, Ford, Dodge, etc etc.... shall I go on???

Don't forget we had to take Iraq because Saudi Arabia has a lot less Oil left than public being led to believe. Saudi Arabia is said to have pumped 90% of the Oil under their territory while Iraq still has 90% left.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: rbloedow
Honda is perfecting it's fuel cell program, and they're leading the front with Hybrid vehicles - we're moving in the right direction, but more incentive from the government would be great

That's tricky.

Currently, fuel cell vehicles arn't being produced in the numbers that demand requires. What a senetence. The supply can't meet the demand, so incentives are fruitless at this point. I kinda like the idea of taxing gas more so and putting the extra money towards alterneative energy research. Maybe with Kerry.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I'm convinced that "dense" capacitors will replace batteries. They are already in PDA's and laptops and otehr smaller devices. As Capacitors get smaller and smaller, they will hold more and moreenrgy with less and less weight. Eventually, I can only imagine everything will be 100% electric. The trick is gettting a 100% renewable energy source that can meet hte demand. That's wind-maills, solar panel, tidal generators. Things like that.

Also making things more energy efficient is key. Like light bulbs. The new LED bulbs are the future in my opinion. VERY efficeint. I've actually seen them at work and i was shocked at how bright htey are.

The future is good. But policy changes are required to make this happen. If neccessity is hte mother of invention, it will happen, but the government needs to step in and accelerate the innovation.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: biostud666
If we didn't need oil we didn't need to be in the middle east.

Not to be ironic, but Bush is for big industray and big oil. See the conflict ?

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: rbloedow
Honda is perfecting it's fuel cell program, and they're leading the front with Hybrid vehicles - we're moving in the right direction, but more incentive from the government would be great

Hybrid cars and fuel cells are completely separate.

Originally posted by: Spencer278
In the whole nation there is only one marked public access. Hydrogen will never replace oil. Gas simply has better energy density they hydrogen and to produce hydrogen requires the use of other longer carbon chains.

Gasoline might have higher energy density than hydrogen (though IIRC, they don't), but hydrogen fuel cells are three to six times more efficient. ICE enginces are horribly inefficient. Fast moving parts lead to irreversibilities which lead to loss of efficiency. Plus, there are hundreds of ways to get hydrogen gas. Getting it from long HCs is just the easiest way right now as it's basically a byproduct of alkene/alkyne production.

Originally posted by: ElFenix
are fuel cells an alternative energy source or an alternative energy transport mechanism?

Fuel cells run off alternative fuels.

Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004
I'm convinced that "dense" capacitors will replace batteries. They are already in PDA's and laptops and otehr smaller devices. As Capacitors get smaller and smaller, they will hold more and moreenrgy with less and less weight. Eventually, I can only imagine everything will be 100% electric. The trick is gettting a 100% renewable energy source that can meet hte demand. That's wind-maills, solar panel, tidal generators. Things like that.

Also making things more energy efficient is key. Like light bulbs. The new LED bulbs are the future in my opinion. VERY efficeint. I've actually seen them at work and i was shocked at how bright htey are.

The future is good. But policy changes are required to make this happen. If neccessity is hte mother of invention, it will happen, but the government needs to step in and accelerate the innovation.

Widespread use of these alternative power sources could have unforeseen consequences on the environment. Basically, you're taking kinetic energy or radiation energy and transforming it into electric potential energy. This means that energy is lost from the environment. Maybe widespread solar power is the key to reducing global warming. Tidal generators have not become widespread because they've been demonstrated to skew the ecosystem around them - the wildlife depends on the flow of water for life, and it necessarily decreases the flow by trapping some of the energy.

Fuel cell research is a lot further along than most people realize. I'm painfully aware becaues one of my old fossil professors used his research in them for every example in class. :roll: Basically, the biggest thing holding back fuel cells is that traditional hydrogen fuel cell membrane material (Nafion®) has problems working with more raw fuels like ethanol and methanol. Thus, reformer reactors are being used to attempt to isolate the desired fuel from the available fuel source. This is very complicated, of course, but there is still a pretty significant energy gain from its use.

 

[ReiAyanami]

Bush is also for Apocalypse

 

[0marTheZealot]

alternatives are subsidized wholly by fossil fuels at the moment. you can't make solar panels, hydrogen fool cells, wind etc etc without massive investments from oil. and remember this, when someone says that so and so technology is profitable when oil is at 40 dollars a barrel, how profitable is it? and can it eventually sustain itself? oil has an energy to profit ratio of about 4-1 right now; it used to have a 30:1 and in some places it was 100:1. most alternatives are .7:1 (making it a loser) or 3:1 at the most. on top of that, there would need to be massive infrastructure changes to handle the alternatives. you can not simply overhaul a multi-trillion dollar establishment in a couple years. it will take a generation at least before a change happens. you don't go from hydrocarbons to solar in a week. energy isn't energy, there are different forms and ways of delivering. for example, solar, wind, nuclear fission/fusion are all completely unsuitable for transportation. you can not run your car on wind or solar power (well, this is kind of misleading, you can't run your car reliably on solar but it can be done). hydrogen is made from oil/gas so right there you are increasing our dependence on oil not decreasing it. there are two main ways of making hydrogen, oxidizing methane (natural gas) to CO2 and H2 or electrolysis to split water into o2/h2. and guess where the energy from electrolysis comes from? oil/gas/coal.

the only forseeable alternatives I can back are coal/gas. the world has vast untapped gas reserves. it is fairly energy dense and can be liquefied for transportation. coal has tons of reserves, but isnt as energy dense and also is very polluting.

 

[PingSpike]

Cost and lack of ambition. American wants it cheap and it wants it now.

In order for the alternate energy thing to work, everyone is going to have to make sacrifices in the short term. Some company with a new fuel cell car isn't just going to show up on the scene and causes 100 years of fast paced ingrained oil infrastructure to change overnight. We've already got a whole oil infrastructure in place, tons of gas cars and trucks and through sheer economies of scale, its just plain fvcking cheaper to keep doing it the same old way. In order to make this happen in any reasonably timely fashion (we're talking decades) it will take a heavy rehaul and some serious firm leadership from the top. And thats going to take lots of money right now, and it'll take quite awhile before that money starts to return on the investment.

People want it now. And that just isn't possible. So we'll continue to do the same old thing until things get really, really, really bad.

That's whats holding us back.

 

[phantom309]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Topic Title: So, what is really holding back the research and application of alternative fuels?

Haliburton, Bush, Saudi's, Oil/Gas Co's, GM, Ford, Dodge, etc etc.... shall I go on???

Don't forget we had to take Iraq because Saudi Arabia has a lot less Oil left than public being led to believe. Saudi Arabia is said to have pumped 90% of the Oil under their territory while Iraq still has 90% left.

The Iraqis may very well be lying too.

But the problem with alternative fuels is really very simple. You can't create energy. It has to come from somewhere. It takes more energy to manufacture hydrogen, or ethanol, or whatever, than you can get out of it. Simple physics. It took energy to create all those wonderful fossil fuels, too - solar energy converted to oil, coal and NG by decaying organisms over millions of years. The energy's already there, and as far as we're concerned it's free - all we need to do is get it out of the ground. That's why fossil fuels are so important. We in the US have built our economy around this "free" stored energy - and as it runs out nothing we know of now will even come close to replacing it - with the possible and very scary exception of nuclear power.

And as oil becomes more scarce and harder to obtain, you can bet Ford, GM, Halliburton, Exxon/Mobil, and all the rest will be working their asses off to develop alternative sources of power, because there's tremendous money to be made. Hopefully the free market will triumph yet again and provide us with some great new power source - soon enough to keep the US economy from crashing. There's no incentive to do much research now because fossil fuels are still fairly cheap. But that won't last long. The world's oil production either has peaked or will peak within the next few years, depending on who you ask - and demand for energy is skyrocketing as China and India become more modernized. Diminishing supply + increasing demand = very bad news for the US, whose economic growth depends on cheap plentiful fuel.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: 0marTheZealot
alternatives are subsidized wholly by fossil fuels at the moment. you can't make solar panels, hydrogen fool cells, wind etc etc without massive investments from oil. and remember this, when someone says that so and so technology is profitable when oil is at 40 dollars a barrel, how profitable is it? and can it eventually sustain itself? oil has an energy to profit ratio of about 4-1 right now; it used to have a 30:1 and in some places it was 100:1. most alternatives are .7:1 (making it a loser) or 3:1 at the most. on top of that, there would need to be massive infrastructure changes to handle the alternatives. you can not simply overhaul a multi-trillion dollar establishment in a couple years. it will take a generation at least before a change happens. you don't go from hydrocarbons to solar in a week. energy isn't energy, there are different forms and ways of delivering. for example, solar, wind, nuclear fission/fusion are all completely unsuitable for transportation. you can not run your car on wind or solar power (well, this is kind of misleading, you can't run your car reliably on solar but it can be done). hydrogen is made from oil/gas so right there you are increasing our dependence on oil not decreasing it. there are two main ways of making hydrogen, oxidizing methane (natural gas) to CO2 and H2 or electrolysis to split water into o2/h2. and guess where the energy from electrolysis comes from? oil/gas/coal.

the only forseeable alternatives I can back are coal/gas. the world has vast untapped gas reserves. it is fairly energy dense and can be liquefied for transportation. coal has tons of reserves, but isnt as energy dense and also is very polluting.

The biggest reason alternative fuels and fuel cells have a low return on investment right now is because of limited production. Ramping production up will quickly turn that around, but there isn't the demand for it right now. Infrastructure is the biggest thing keeping oil in place right now. Building plants to process other fuels is a decades-long process, and longer if we want to do it on a nationwide basis. There are only a handful of companies capable of building such plants, and only a handful of companies with the funding to build them, as they are ridiculously expensive (hundreds of millions each).

Coal can currently be converted to an oil substitute (via coal liquefaction). If this process becomes more widespread, then the US has more 'oil' reserves than the entire ME. We have a completely astronomical amount of coal here that has barely been tapped. Problem is, again, the cost of change of building these liquefaction plants.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: 0marTheZealot
alternatives are subsidized wholly by fossil fuels at the moment. you can't make solar panels, hydrogen fool cells, wind etc etc without massive investments from oil. and remember this, when someone says that so and so technology is profitable when oil is at 40 dollars a barrel, how profitable is it? and can it eventually sustain itself? oil has an energy to profit ratio of about 4-1 right now; it used to have a 30:1 and in some places it was 100:1. most alternatives are .7:1 (making it a loser) or 3:1 at the most. on top of that, there would need to be massive infrastructure changes to handle the alternatives. you can not simply overhaul a multi-trillion dollar establishment in a couple years. it will take a generation at least before a change happens. you don't go from hydrocarbons to solar in a week. energy isn't energy, there are different forms and ways of delivering. for example, solar, wind, nuclear fission/fusion are all completely unsuitable for transportation. you can not run your car on wind or solar power (well, this is kind of misleading, you can't run your car reliably on solar but it can be done). hydrogen is made from oil/gas so right there you are increasing our dependence on oil not decreasing it. there are two main ways of making hydrogen, oxidizing methane (natural gas) to CO2 and H2 or electrolysis to split water into o2/h2. and guess where the energy from electrolysis comes from? oil/gas/coal.

the only forseeable alternatives I can back are coal/gas. the world has vast untapped gas reserves. it is fairly energy dense and can be liquefied for transportation. coal has tons of reserves, but isnt as energy dense and also is very polluting.

They can run cars and hybrid cars off the electricity made from wind generators and as electricity is moveabe. So is ethanol and soy diesel. I can't link to them, but studies done have shown that most people are willing to pay more for clean energy and wind generators are as clean as it gets.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004

Originally posted by: biostud666
If we didn't need oil we didn't need to be in the middle east.

Not to be ironic, but Bush is for big industray and big oil. See the conflict ?

Considering that the world economy has been based on petroleum for decades now, no, I don't see the conflict. What I see is someone thinking myopically short-term and attempting to place blame on an individual they despise in a rhetorically partisan manner instead of considering the historical, economic, and global aspects of petroleum.

Until OUR appetite changes, until we as a whole begin to move away from oil and begin purchasing alternative fuel sources, it's not going to change a bit. Stop pointing fingers at Bush and point them into the mirror. It's our job to send the message to our politicians and we are not doing that.

 

[0marTheZealot]

you lose energy everytime you change energy, this is a fundemental law of thermodynamics. converting coal to oil will result in less energy than using the coal straight. the reason converting it to oil is useful is because you can't run a big rig on coal.

alternatives don't magically increase their EROI when scaled up. you simply have to scale up higher to keep the money flowing. if it took 100 oil plants to power a city, it'll take 10x that in solar power or wind power to power the same city. the eroi si the same but the energy produced is equal to oil, it's just you need much more. the good thing about renewables is that if the eroi is above 1, it can essential pay for itself. logistics may prevent the implementation.

 

[Gravity]

BMW and others make nice hydrogen powered vehicles. However, to change over from petrol to hydrogen is a bigger task than we think it is.

I'm all for banning gasoline at some point and biting the bullet for a year while we convert. Of course I can bike to all the places I need to go so althought it's good for me, prolly bad for you.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit
They can run cars and hybrid cars off the electricity made from wind generators and as electricity is moveabe. So is ethanol and soy diesel. I can't link to them, but studies done have shown that most people are willing to pay more for clean energy and wind generators are as clean as it gets.

Wind generators aren't practical for every region though. We require a consistent supply of power, and wind just doesn't do it for most of the country. Plus, the sheer number of wind mills that would be required to replace even a small coal plant is astronomical.

 

[Infohawk]

We live in a plutocracy and oil has money so oil remains the core of our energy policy.