[Swiftwater Gazette] Bioelectricity May Outperform Ethanol

[Bill Effros]

Why is petroleum not considered a biofuel?

B.



Michael D. Weisner wrote:
> This morning's biofuel read: 
> http://www.ciw.edu/news/bioelectricity_promises_more_miles_acre_ethanol
>  
> I support nearly anything to get us away from more ethanol based fuels.
>  
> Mike
>  
>
>
>   Bioelectricity Promises More 'Miles Per Acre' Than Ethanol
>
> Thursday, May 7, 2009
>
> *STANFORD, CA *- Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to 
> petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce 
> them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to 
> expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we 
> maximize our "miles per acre" from biomass? Researchers writing in the 
> online edition of the May 7 Science magazine say the best bet is to 
> convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. They 
> calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion 
> engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would 
> deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of 
> crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to 
> mitigate climate change.
>
> "It's a relatively obvious question once you ask it, but nobody had 
> really asked it before," says study co-author Chris Field, director of 
> the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. "The 
> kinds of motivations that have driven people to think about developing 
> ethanol as a vehicle fuel have been somewhat different from those that 
> have been motivating people to think about battery electric vehicles, 
> but the overlap is in the area of maximizing efficiency and minimizing 
> adverse impacts on climate."
>
> Field, who is also a professor of biology at Stanford University and a 
> senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, is 
> part of a research team that includes lead author Elliott Campbell of 
> the University of California, Merced, and David Lobell of Stanford's 
> Program on Food Security and the Environment. The researchers 
> performed a life-cycle analysis of both bioelectricity and ethanol 
> technologies, taking into account not only the energy produced by each 
> technology, but also the energy consumed in producing the vehicles and 
> fuels. For the analysis, they used publicly available data on vehicle 
> efficiencies from the US Environmental Protection Agency and other 
> organizations.
>
> Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the 
> transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the 
> energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based 
> energy crop. For example, a small SUV powered by bioelectricity could 
> travel nearly 14,000 highway miles on the net energy produced from an 
> acre of switchgrass, while a comparable internal combustion vehicle 
> could only travel about 9,000 miles on the highway. (Average mileage 
> for both city and highway driving would be 15,000 miles for a 
> biolelectric SUV and 8,000 miles for an internal combustion vehicle.)
>
> "The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially 
> when compared to electric vehicles," says Campbell. "Even the best 
> ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to 
> overcome this."
>
> The researchers found that bioelectricity and ethanol also differed in 
> their potential impact on climate change. "Some approaches to 
> bioenergy can make climate change worse, but other limited approaches 
> can help fight climate change," says Campbell. "For these beneficial 
> approaches, we could do more to fight climate change by making 
> electricity than making ethanol."
>
> The energy from an acre of switchgrass used to power an electric 
> vehicle would prevent or offset the release of up to 10 tons of CO2 
> per acre, relative to a similar-sized gasoline-powered car. Across 
> vehicle types and different crops, this offset averages more than 100% 
> larger for the bioelectricity than for the ethanol pathway. 
> Bioelectricity also offers more possibilities for reducing greenhouse 
> gas emissions through measures such as carbon capture and 
> sequestration, which could be implemented at biomass power stations 
> but not individual internal combustion vehicles.
>
> While the results of the study clearly favor bioelectricity over 
> ethanol, the researchers caution that the issues facing society in 
> choosing an energy strategy are complex. "We found that converting 
> biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for 
> two policy-relevant issues: transportation and climate," says Lobell. 
> "But we also need to compare these options for other issues like water 
> consumption, air pollution, and economic costs."
>
> "There is a big strategic decision our country and others are making: 
> whether to encourage development of vehicles that run on ethanol or 
> electricity," says Campbell. "Studies like ours could be used to 
> ensure that the alternative energy pathways we chose will provide the 
> most transportation energy and the least climate change impacts."
>
> ###
>
> This research was funded through a grant from the Stanford University 
> Global Climate and Energy Project, with additional support from the 
> Stanford University Food Security and Environment Project, The 
> University of California at Merced, the Carnegie Institution for 
> Science, and a NASA New Investigator Grant.
>
> # # #
>
>  
>
> View the graphic here <http://www.ciw.edu/ethanol_v_electricity>
>
> Listen to the audio interview with Chris Field 
> <http://videos.ciw.edu/achilles_movies_download/chris_field_interview.mov>
>
> Video feature from Stanford News Service 
> <http://videos.ciw.edu/achilles_movies_download/chris_field_stanford_interview.mov>
>
>  
>
> /*Follow us online!
> Twitter:* twitter.com/carnegiescience <http://twitter.com/carnegiescience>
> *Facebook:* Carnegie Institution for Science 
> <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/Carnegie-Institution-for-Science/69118604016>/ 
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> SwiftwaterGazette mailing list
> SwiftwaterGazette at mailman.theswiftwatergazette.com
> http://mailman.theswiftwatergazette.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/swiftwatergazette
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.theswiftwatergazette.com/pipermail/swiftwatergazette/attachments/20090514/48ba7cb0/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 33725 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.theswiftwatergazette.com/pipermail/swiftwatergazette/attachments/20090514/48ba7cb0/attachment-0001.jpe