6 ms·

Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

41 points by pherk 15y ago

ck2 15y ago
Because nothing else is as massively profitable? I mean oil is insanely, massively profitable, nothing else can touch it, so why would big industry bother until they actually run out of it? BP alone made nearly $2 BILLION the same quarter they had to pay for the deephorizon cleanup That's AFTER paying for it. Normally they make close to $10 billion per quarter. Instead they can just run commercials before PBS shows telling us how they will "keep researching alternatives". Much cheaper.
- gaius 15y ago
  Because the market prefers oil, is why. And it's easy to see why: oil packs an awful lot of kilojoules of energy into a given volume. That matters whether you are a motorbike or a cargo ship. And its price per KJ is pretty low too - remember that most "electric" solutions simply burn fuel in power stations instead of in engines, and use that to charge batteries, losing energy at every step of the conversion. We will go battery/fuel cell/whatever - but the cold hard fact is, that technology just isn't ready yet.
  - ck2 15y ago
    The market prefers it because there is a 100-year head start on distribution networks and standards to the consumer for gasoline. The only thing that could compete with that is the ability to plug it into the wall yourself. But battery technology has not improved much in that same 100 years and there's no universal battery standard to swap out for a new one during roadtrips. In a half-dozen generations there will be complaints from gas station owners as they go the way of slide-rule manufacturers and have to get government subsidies to stay open.
    - mootothemax 15y ago
      Not to mention the convenience of refuelling in minutes rather than hours. If there's any sense in the world, one would hope that the existing infrastructure will complement any new energy source; we'll still need rest breaks and the odd sandwich at least, it would make sense if they could also recharge the fuel source, economies of scale and all that jazz.
    - demallien 15y ago
      Yes and no. In the medium term, we can expect hybrids to play a bigger role, whilst we wait for battery technology to cover the energy density gap. In less than 20 years, simple economics are going to force us to a solution of full electric cars for urban use, and hybrids for longer trips, with the hybrid normally being charged from the wall, but using oil-based fuels for longer trips (or when the owner forgot to charge the car overnight). That should reduce oil consumption enough to make alternate sources, such as algae-derived diesel, a viable alternative.
      - gaius 15y ago
        Hmm, the thing is tho', there isn't much upside to shifting burning fossil fuels from the engine to the power station. Sure the power station is more efficient in burning the fuel - but then you have to charge batteries too, so that efficiency goes away again. There's really not much point to electric vehicles until you can run them all on batteries charged by nuclear power.
        demallien 15y ago
        I agree, but the article was specifically talking about oil, not fossil fuels. But I don't think we're dead in the water on the electrical utility front - fusion research is finally starting to enter the final stretch before commercialisation - ITER is expected to get us to the point where we can construct the first commercial-break-even reactor: http://www.iter.org/proj/iterandbeyond http://www.iter.org/proj/iterandbeyond Actually, I find ITER as a pretty good indicator that governments around the world don't feel like they won't be hurting too much on the energy front for quite some time. If they wanted to, they could up the (in context) risible investment in fusion to get a working reactor up and running by the mid-2020s. I mean they're talking about investing about $1billion per year for the next 30 years, from the entire planet. Up that to $5billion, and you can halve the development time. They really aren't terribly concerned at the moment. On other fronts, Laurence Livermore is starting to get interesting with their inertial fusion designs: https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife/how_ife_works.php https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife/how_ife_works.php And of course nanotech may yet allow us to produce the cheap, efficient solar panels that would be needed to use solar as a baseline energy source. So no, I don't think it as being much of a risk to move car energy over to electricity, starting today.
    - demallien 15y ago
      Oh, and whilst we are on the subject, Does anyone here have their favourite theory for where the next big advance in energy tech is going to come from? Personally I'm surprised by the lack of government investing in nano-tech. Battery tech, fuel cells and solar panels all seem like prime candidates to benefit from a better understanding of how to construct materials at the molecular scale.
      - gaius 15y ago
        What can you do with "nanotech" that you can't do already? Bear in mind the scale that CPUs are manufactured to now.
        demallien 15y ago
        Well, I've noticed that solar panel design is starting to head that way - most of the latest and greatest stuff coming out of that corner of research is about using exotic nanotech to produce better panels. Battery technology can also stand to benefit, allowing for higher energy density batteries, and potentially reducing our dependence on lithium. Or how about a space elevator, that makes space-base solar cells a viable solution for base energy generation? These are just a few guesses about how nanotech is likely to help, based on current research results, but there are no doubt other avenues of use of nanotech that I haven't thought of / aren't aware of that are relevant in this context. What we really need is a better capacity to model the properties of materials designed at nano-scale. Sadly it's the sort of research that has trouble attracting investment because it's too far away from an actual product. But if we ever get to the point where we can use genetic algorithms to search for materials having specific properties, that would turn the world on it's head.
        saulrh 15y ago
        A lot of our nanotech is still in the micro domain or dealing purely with chemicals. A CPU's fundamental organization is too small to be seen without a really, really good microscope, nanomedicines currently only deal with germs and minor changes to their environment, and so on. We have yet to touch the macro domain. For example, nobody has built a car body out of carbon nanotubes so far, and just imagine what would happen if someone found a way to make photovoltaic cells self-assemble on boards dipped in a vat.
  - divtxt 15y ago
    Oil is like finding an underground vault full of batteries of vastly superior energy density to any electric battery you can make. How are you going to compete with that?!
    - eftpotrm 15y ago
      That would be coal; oil adds the property that they vanish completely (from the user's perspective anyway) when they're flat, so you've got zero disposal issues.
- deleted 15y ago
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- deleted 15y ago
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- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Your comment explains why the oil industry doesn't bother looking for alternatives, but fails to explain why everyone else doesn't.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  And arguably, as it gets less scarce, it gets more profitable, so the economic incentives for the big players all go the wrong way. The problem with hoping that little players will change that is that oil has a massive, massive distribution infrastructure already in place that no energy startup could hope to match.
anonymoushn 15y ago
We (the people involved in making decisions on behalf of politicians and the people who buy IP for tech that greatly improves energy efficiency so they can prevent everyone from using it) would rather keep using oil. If we (people more generally) wanted to, we could do this - http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667 http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667
nickff 15y ago
The answer to the why we have not found an alternative is simply that we value volumetric and mass energy density, and this graph on Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_density.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_de... shows that gasoline has both of these, along with good resistance to premature ignition, and other favourable ignition characteristics. The solution will not be in finding something new, which is superior in every aspect to oil, but instead to be willing to sacrifice in some areas, (maybe volumetric energy density and total thermal efficiency,) in order to find an achievable solution. Using a plentiful energy source (nuclear?) to perform hydrolysis, and distributing the hydrogen as a fuel seems like the most likely endgame to me, but the material properties of hydrogen are not favourable to storage and small scale use.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  A vivid demonstration: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CCwQtwIwBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiS_2JD5whRY&rct=j&q=secret%20life%20machines%20gasoline&ei=OimsTZeNEJLpgAfYjtDzBQ&usg=AFQjCNGhtg-VCMRmqZl9iOezLSCXOBkkVQ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&v...
- ericb 15y ago
  I think a switch to electric makes the most sense. It can piggyback off our existing infrastructure, and in an engineering sense, it is only "loosely coupled" to whatever manner we use to create the electricity.
  - Schultzy 15y ago
    What do you mean by "loosely coupled"? Are you saying that the electricity flowing into Volts and Leafs hitting the market doesn't really come from a polluting source or merely that it doesn't have to? ...or am I missing your point completely?
    - hackerblues 15y ago
      There are three components. Generation -> Grid -> Homes and Business It is possible to change the type of generation without having to change the way electricity is taken out of the grid to power things. This makes it easier to make changes in the type of generation. Changing from coal to solar to nuclear just involves making a new connection between the power plant and the grid. Everything else then just works as normal. By contrast, if we converted energy into "Dragon Tears" instead of electricity we would need to lay down a whole new Dragon Tear distribution network so that people could use that energy. Then, a scientific break through occurs and we are able to use the much more efficient "Unicorn Blood". But now we have to rip out the Dragon Tear distribution network and install a new Unicorn Blood network.
ig1 15y ago
It has, biofuel companies are even hotter than startups which huge amounts of money getting pumped into them. As the price of biofuels drop and the price of oil rises it's inevitable they'll cross-over and people will start buying biofuels because they're cheaper.
- runningdogx 15y ago
  How are biofuels viable as a replacement for oil in the quantities our current lifestyle demands? They can't be produced in the same quantities that oil can be, and producing them requires farmland, so food prices go up. stats and graphs: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-production.html http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-production....
  - ig1 15y ago
    Simple Answer: We can't produce oil (we discover it), we can produce crops. We're pretty good at it. Complex answer: If demand for crops goes up then farmers can grow more crops. Although it's hard to see if that's happening right now as corn ethanol subsidies and corn import taxes completely distort that market. If you want to produce corn ethanol you buy domestic corn as you can get US gov subsidies for it, you don't get those subsidies if you use imported corn, so naturally US produced corn ends up disproportionately in fuel production. Also it's worth noting that DDG is a byproduct of corn ethanol production, and DDG is used as animal feed. So it's misleading to think that corn used for fuel production is pulling it completely out of the food chain.
  - icegreentea 15y ago
    By hoping that algae based biodiesels and cellulosic ethanol production get figured out. Airliners and aircraft manufacturers are throwing more hope behind biodiseals now, since once you can get algae producing that, it's just one step away from them making jet fuel. And there -really- isn't a replacement for jet fuel. Ethanol just doesn't cut it.
rms 15y ago
Reluctance to adopt nuclear batteries.
angdis 15y ago
I think the question is wrong. It assumes that the problem is to find a "replacement" for oil, in other words, that all we need to do is replace the oil and everything else will work "the same." For whatever reason, Americans are locked in to thinking that cities should be designed for cars and that every errand should involve driving somewhere (with the expectation that your destination should furnish your car with a free place to park). It doesn't have to be that way, although I can understand why a country that burns up 20% of global output of petroleum commuting to work everyday might feel that we need to "replace" oil and that will "solve" the looming crisis. There are OTHER ways of thinking about a solution that does not involve simply replacing oil. These would include: * Go back to human-scale cities by increasing density and diversity of housing, businesses and facilities. * Invest in public transit infrastructure, alternative transportation modes. Mandate walkable metro-centers. Of course, people won't change unless there's a reason to do so. What I am saying is that "market forces" will push us towards those kinds of solutions INSTEAD of towards an oil replacement. People will be better off if they can adapt to this reality rather than hang on until the bitter end to the idea that the future will involve "happy motoring" forever.
- roc 15y ago
  That's pretty much it. Our infrastructure and assumptions are built on the existence of oil. Its ease of transport, its energy density, its relatively low costs. And there is no alternative with all those features. So you need to address those assumptions before you can see where it's going. Which is why we should probably stop spending 10x as much subsidizing commuting over transit. Because most of those suburbs are probably not going to recover from this housing crash. Growth economics allowed us to waste money building, zoning and living that way. But it's not going to work anymore. Not for nearly as many people.
- hapless 15y ago
  Americans don't want "human scale" cities or public transit, or else we would already have them. I realize this is not politically correct, but I like the isolation of the suburbs. I don't want to hear my neighbors or have a grocery within walking distance. I'm happy to need to drive to reach anything, because it means that the hustle and bustle of commerce stays far the hell away from my home. I hate using public transit. I spent a lot of time and money to purchase and maintain my car, and for good reason. I enjoy the convenience of private, personal transport that departs and arrives on my schedule. I don't have to see, hear, or smell any fellow travelers. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to subsidize public transit with my tax dollars. The hard truth is that it is primarily for the benefit of the poor. I don't intend to use it. You couldn't pay me enough to spend two hours on a bus in lieu of my 30 minute commute. We won't see an end to car culture until it is forced upon us. You will have to tear middle-class Americans kicking and screaming from their suburbs. We have chosen to live this way. The escape from the cities was hard-won, and most people won't give it up just because gas gets expensive.
Duff 15y ago
Easy. Oil is an awesome fuel for energy generation, especially distributed generation. In the 19th century, it was awesome enough for people to go to sea for months at a time slaughtering whales and rendering their fat to provide light to homes. As someone who grew up in the country and got to spend lots of my childhood quality time splitting logs and hauling wood around, I have to tell you that the day the oil-fired boiler was installed in my house was a happy day. That said, I think people take advantage of a good thing. I work in a downtown city center and live about 5 miles away. $5/gallon gas means about $60/month to me in direct costs. My co-workers live an average of 20 miles away, with a 15% living over 75 miles away. That's insane!
ry0ohki 15y ago
"The same legislation passed in the 1970s to force increased fuel efficiency, for instance, has brought no new innovation to U.S. vehicle fuel consumption in two decades" I disagree with this. We've seen hybrids, pure electric and much more efficient normal engines created in the past 20 years with things like cylinder shut-off, etc. If someone from 1970 saw a Toyota Prius it would seem like something straight out of the Jetsons.
- tobylane 15y ago
  What US laws have had an effect on the Prius? Japan just cares more, in the right ways, such as nuclear power, future technologies.
  - ry0ohki 15y ago
    CAFE laws probably to some extent.
    - chadgeidel 15y ago
      IMHO - CAFE laws "encouraged" the move to Trucks and SUVs as they were categorized differently and, as such regulated differently. No, I don't have a link at hand. Sorry.
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    The multi-thousand dollar tax credits that made purchasing one cost-effective certainly drove its initial popularity (it's the only reason my sister bought one). Even after the credits shrank to a level where a prius is no longer a cost-effective purchase, there are still U.S. laws (state and federal) which incentivise purchase of a prius (or other hybrid). For example, a disproportionate number of hybrids are driven in the greater DC area. A big reason for this is because the state of Virginia allows hybrids to drive in carpool lanes with only one person (this may have changed--last I read there were lawsuits underway to challenge this policy). For people who live in the DC area, deciding where to live can involve some serious number crunching: the farther you get from the beltway, the less you will need to pay for housing, but the more you will need to pay (in time and money) for your commute. Buying a hybrid gave you a free pass to cut your commute time almost in half, allowing you to live farther away and save on housing.
lwhi 15y ago
Oil is a natural solution to storing energy. Solutions provided by humankind are nowhere near as advanced as evolved natural processes.
euroclydon 15y ago
Innovation didn't create oil in the first place, at least not human innovation. You might as well ask why innovation hasn't replaced the Sun or water or air.
tobylane 15y ago
There's more money in stifling it than researching it.

41 points by pherk 15y ago

ck2 15y ago

Because nothing else is as massively profitable? I mean oil is insanely, massively profitable, nothing else can touch it, so why would big industry bother until they actually run out of it? BP alone made nearly $2 BILLION the same quarter they had to pay for the deephorizon cleanup That's AFTER paying for it. Normally they make close to $10 billion per quarter. Instead they can just run commercials before PBS shows telling us how they will "keep researching alternatives". Much cheaper.

gaius 15y ago
Because the market prefers oil, is why. And it's easy to see why: oil packs an awful lot of kilojoules of energy into a given volume. That matters whether you are a motorbike or a cargo ship. And its price per KJ is pretty low too - remember that most "electric" solutions simply burn fuel in power stations instead of in engines, and use that to charge batteries, losing energy at every step of the conversion. We will go battery/fuel cell/whatever - but the cold hard fact is, that technology just isn't ready yet.
- ck2 15y ago
  The market prefers it because there is a 100-year head start on distribution networks and standards to the consumer for gasoline. The only thing that could compete with that is the ability to plug it into the wall yourself. But battery technology has not improved much in that same 100 years and there's no universal battery standard to swap out for a new one during roadtrips. In a half-dozen generations there will be complaints from gas station owners as they go the way of slide-rule manufacturers and have to get government subsidies to stay open.
  - mootothemax 15y ago
    Not to mention the convenience of refuelling in minutes rather than hours. If there's any sense in the world, one would hope that the existing infrastructure will complement any new energy source; we'll still need rest breaks and the odd sandwich at least, it would make sense if they could also recharge the fuel source, economies of scale and all that jazz.
  - demallien 15y ago
    Yes and no. In the medium term, we can expect hybrids to play a bigger role, whilst we wait for battery technology to cover the energy density gap. In less than 20 years, simple economics are going to force us to a solution of full electric cars for urban use, and hybrids for longer trips, with the hybrid normally being charged from the wall, but using oil-based fuels for longer trips (or when the owner forgot to charge the car overnight). That should reduce oil consumption enough to make alternate sources, such as algae-derived diesel, a viable alternative.
    - gaius 15y ago
      Hmm, the thing is tho', there isn't much upside to shifting burning fossil fuels from the engine to the power station. Sure the power station is more efficient in burning the fuel - but then you have to charge batteries too, so that efficiency goes away again. There's really not much point to electric vehicles until you can run them all on batteries charged by nuclear power.
      - demallien 15y ago
        I agree, but the article was specifically talking about oil, not fossil fuels. But I don't think we're dead in the water on the electrical utility front - fusion research is finally starting to enter the final stretch before commercialisation - ITER is expected to get us to the point where we can construct the first commercial-break-even reactor: http://www.iter.org/proj/iterandbeyond http://www.iter.org/proj/iterandbeyond Actually, I find ITER as a pretty good indicator that governments around the world don't feel like they won't be hurting too much on the energy front for quite some time. If they wanted to, they could up the (in context) risible investment in fusion to get a working reactor up and running by the mid-2020s. I mean they're talking about investing about $1billion per year for the next 30 years, from the entire planet. Up that to $5billion, and you can halve the development time. They really aren't terribly concerned at the moment. On other fronts, Laurence Livermore is starting to get interesting with their inertial fusion designs: https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife/how_ife_works.php https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife/how_ife_works.php And of course nanotech may yet allow us to produce the cheap, efficient solar panels that would be needed to use solar as a baseline energy source. So no, I don't think it as being much of a risk to move car energy over to electricity, starting today.
  - demallien 15y ago
    Oh, and whilst we are on the subject, Does anyone here have their favourite theory for where the next big advance in energy tech is going to come from? Personally I'm surprised by the lack of government investing in nano-tech. Battery tech, fuel cells and solar panels all seem like prime candidates to benefit from a better understanding of how to construct materials at the molecular scale.
    - gaius 15y ago
      What can you do with "nanotech" that you can't do already? Bear in mind the scale that CPUs are manufactured to now.
      - demallien 15y ago
        Well, I've noticed that solar panel design is starting to head that way - most of the latest and greatest stuff coming out of that corner of research is about using exotic nanotech to produce better panels. Battery technology can also stand to benefit, allowing for higher energy density batteries, and potentially reducing our dependence on lithium. Or how about a space elevator, that makes space-base solar cells a viable solution for base energy generation? These are just a few guesses about how nanotech is likely to help, based on current research results, but there are no doubt other avenues of use of nanotech that I haven't thought of / aren't aware of that are relevant in this context. What we really need is a better capacity to model the properties of materials designed at nano-scale. Sadly it's the sort of research that has trouble attracting investment because it's too far away from an actual product. But if we ever get to the point where we can use genetic algorithms to search for materials having specific properties, that would turn the world on it's head.
      - saulrh 15y ago
        A lot of our nanotech is still in the micro domain or dealing purely with chemicals. A CPU's fundamental organization is too small to be seen without a really, really good microscope, nanomedicines currently only deal with germs and minor changes to their environment, and so on. We have yet to touch the macro domain. For example, nobody has built a car body out of carbon nanotubes so far, and just imagine what would happen if someone found a way to make photovoltaic cells self-assemble on boards dipped in a vat.
- divtxt 15y ago
  Oil is like finding an underground vault full of batteries of vastly superior energy density to any electric battery you can make. How are you going to compete with that?!
  - eftpotrm 15y ago
    That would be coal; oil adds the property that they vanish completely (from the user's perspective anyway) when they're flat, so you've got zero disposal issues.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Your comment explains why the oil industry doesn't bother looking for alternatives, but fails to explain why everyone else doesn't.
Vivtek 15y ago
And arguably, as it gets less scarce, it gets more profitable, so the economic incentives for the big players all go the wrong way. The problem with hoping that little players will change that is that oil has a massive, massive distribution infrastructure already in place that no energy startup could hope to match.

anonymoushn 15y ago

We (the people involved in making decisions on behalf of politicians and the people who buy IP for tech that greatly improves energy efficiency so they can prevent everyone from using it) would rather keep using oil. If we (people more generally) wanted to, we could do this - http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667 http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667

nickff 15y ago

The answer to the why we have not found an alternative is simply that we value volumetric and mass energy density, and this graph on Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_density.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_de... shows that gasoline has both of these, along with good resistance to premature ignition, and other favourable ignition characteristics. The solution will not be in finding something new, which is superior in every aspect to oil, but instead to be willing to sacrifice in some areas, (maybe volumetric energy density and total thermal efficiency,) in order to find an achievable solution. Using a plentiful energy source (nuclear?) to perform hydrolysis, and distributing the hydrogen as a fuel seems like the most likely endgame to me, but the material properties of hydrogen are not favourable to storage and small scale use.

mechanical_fish 15y ago
A vivid demonstration: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CCwQtwIwBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiS_2JD5whRY&rct=j&q=secret%20life%20machines%20gasoline&ei=OimsTZeNEJLpgAfYjtDzBQ&usg=AFQjCNGhtg-VCMRmqZl9iOezLSCXOBkkVQ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&v...
ericb 15y ago
I think a switch to electric makes the most sense. It can piggyback off our existing infrastructure, and in an engineering sense, it is only "loosely coupled" to whatever manner we use to create the electricity.
- Schultzy 15y ago
  What do you mean by "loosely coupled"? Are you saying that the electricity flowing into Volts and Leafs hitting the market doesn't really come from a polluting source or merely that it doesn't have to? ...or am I missing your point completely?
  - hackerblues 15y ago
    There are three components. Generation -> Grid -> Homes and Business It is possible to change the type of generation without having to change the way electricity is taken out of the grid to power things. This makes it easier to make changes in the type of generation. Changing from coal to solar to nuclear just involves making a new connection between the power plant and the grid. Everything else then just works as normal. By contrast, if we converted energy into "Dragon Tears" instead of electricity we would need to lay down a whole new Dragon Tear distribution network so that people could use that energy. Then, a scientific break through occurs and we are able to use the much more efficient "Unicorn Blood". But now we have to rip out the Dragon Tear distribution network and install a new Unicorn Blood network.

ig1 15y ago

It has, biofuel companies are even hotter than startups which huge amounts of money getting pumped into them. As the price of biofuels drop and the price of oil rises it's inevitable they'll cross-over and people will start buying biofuels because they're cheaper.

runningdogx 15y ago
How are biofuels viable as a replacement for oil in the quantities our current lifestyle demands? They can't be produced in the same quantities that oil can be, and producing them requires farmland, so food prices go up. stats and graphs: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-production.html http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-production....
- ig1 15y ago
  Simple Answer: We can't produce oil (we discover it), we can produce crops. We're pretty good at it. Complex answer: If demand for crops goes up then farmers can grow more crops. Although it's hard to see if that's happening right now as corn ethanol subsidies and corn import taxes completely distort that market. If you want to produce corn ethanol you buy domestic corn as you can get US gov subsidies for it, you don't get those subsidies if you use imported corn, so naturally US produced corn ends up disproportionately in fuel production. Also it's worth noting that DDG is a byproduct of corn ethanol production, and DDG is used as animal feed. So it's misleading to think that corn used for fuel production is pulling it completely out of the food chain.
- icegreentea 15y ago
  By hoping that algae based biodiesels and cellulosic ethanol production get figured out. Airliners and aircraft manufacturers are throwing more hope behind biodiseals now, since once you can get algae producing that, it's just one step away from them making jet fuel. And there -really- isn't a replacement for jet fuel. Ethanol just doesn't cut it.

rms 15y ago

Reluctance to adopt nuclear batteries.

angdis 15y ago

I think the question is wrong. It assumes that the problem is to find a "replacement" for oil, in other words, that all we need to do is replace the oil and everything else will work "the same." For whatever reason, Americans are locked in to thinking that cities should be designed for cars and that every errand should involve driving somewhere (with the expectation that your destination should furnish your car with a free place to park). It doesn't have to be that way, although I can understand why a country that burns up 20% of global output of petroleum commuting to work everyday might feel that we need to "replace" oil and that will "solve" the looming crisis. There are OTHER ways of thinking about a solution that does not involve simply replacing oil. These would include: * Go back to human-scale cities by increasing density and diversity of housing, businesses and facilities. * Invest in public transit infrastructure, alternative transportation modes. Mandate walkable metro-centers. Of course, people won't change unless there's a reason to do so. What I am saying is that "market forces" will push us towards those kinds of solutions INSTEAD of towards an oil replacement. People will be better off if they can adapt to this reality rather than hang on until the bitter end to the idea that the future will involve "happy motoring" forever.

roc 15y ago
That's pretty much it. Our infrastructure and assumptions are built on the existence of oil. Its ease of transport, its energy density, its relatively low costs. And there is no alternative with all those features. So you need to address those assumptions before you can see where it's going. Which is why we should probably stop spending 10x as much subsidizing commuting over transit. Because most of those suburbs are probably not going to recover from this housing crash. Growth economics allowed us to waste money building, zoning and living that way. But it's not going to work anymore. Not for nearly as many people.
hapless 15y ago
Americans don't want "human scale" cities or public transit, or else we would already have them. I realize this is not politically correct, but I like the isolation of the suburbs. I don't want to hear my neighbors or have a grocery within walking distance. I'm happy to need to drive to reach anything, because it means that the hustle and bustle of commerce stays far the hell away from my home. I hate using public transit. I spent a lot of time and money to purchase and maintain my car, and for good reason. I enjoy the convenience of private, personal transport that departs and arrives on my schedule. I don't have to see, hear, or smell any fellow travelers. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to subsidize public transit with my tax dollars. The hard truth is that it is primarily for the benefit of the poor. I don't intend to use it. You couldn't pay me enough to spend two hours on a bus in lieu of my 30 minute commute. We won't see an end to car culture until it is forced upon us. You will have to tear middle-class Americans kicking and screaming from their suburbs. We have chosen to live this way. The escape from the cities was hard-won, and most people won't give it up just because gas gets expensive.

Duff 15y ago

Easy. Oil is an awesome fuel for energy generation, especially distributed generation. In the 19th century, it was awesome enough for people to go to sea for months at a time slaughtering whales and rendering their fat to provide light to homes. As someone who grew up in the country and got to spend lots of my childhood quality time splitting logs and hauling wood around, I have to tell you that the day the oil-fired boiler was installed in my house was a happy day. That said, I think people take advantage of a good thing. I work in a downtown city center and live about 5 miles away. $5/gallon gas means about $60/month to me in direct costs. My co-workers live an average of 20 miles away, with a 15% living over 75 miles away. That's insane!

ry0ohki 15y ago

"The same legislation passed in the 1970s to force increased fuel efficiency, for instance, has brought no new innovation to U.S. vehicle fuel consumption in two decades" I disagree with this. We've seen hybrids, pure electric and much more efficient normal engines created in the past 20 years with things like cylinder shut-off, etc. If someone from 1970 saw a Toyota Prius it would seem like something straight out of the Jetsons.

tobylane 15y ago
What US laws have had an effect on the Prius? Japan just cares more, in the right ways, such as nuclear power, future technologies.
- ry0ohki 15y ago
  CAFE laws probably to some extent.
  - chadgeidel 15y ago
    IMHO - CAFE laws "encouraged" the move to Trucks and SUVs as they were categorized differently and, as such regulated differently. No, I don't have a link at hand. Sorry.
- lucasjung 15y ago
  The multi-thousand dollar tax credits that made purchasing one cost-effective certainly drove its initial popularity (it's the only reason my sister bought one). Even after the credits shrank to a level where a prius is no longer a cost-effective purchase, there are still U.S. laws (state and federal) which incentivise purchase of a prius (or other hybrid). For example, a disproportionate number of hybrids are driven in the greater DC area. A big reason for this is because the state of Virginia allows hybrids to drive in carpool lanes with only one person (this may have changed--last I read there were lawsuits underway to challenge this policy). For people who live in the DC area, deciding where to live can involve some serious number crunching: the farther you get from the beltway, the less you will need to pay for housing, but the more you will need to pay (in time and money) for your commute. Buying a hybrid gave you a free pass to cut your commute time almost in half, allowing you to live farther away and save on housing.

lwhi 15y ago

Oil is a natural solution to storing energy. Solutions provided by humankind are nowhere near as advanced as evolved natural processes.

euroclydon 15y ago

Innovation didn't create oil in the first place, at least not human innovation. You might as well ask why innovation hasn't replaced the Sun or water or air.

tobylane 15y ago

There's more money in stifling it than researching it.