Danger in Too Distant Deadlines for Ethanol, Biobutanol, Biodiesel, Biomass and Alternative Energy

There is always a danger as we approach a long weekend such as the one we have here in the USA this weekend. That danger is that those of us who have set ourselves tasks to accomplish may be tempted to revert to those bad habits we may have had in high school (or even earlier) of procrastinating until the last minute to finish that project or study for that test that we knew was coming. I was better, I seem to recall, back in high school than I am today about avoiding procrastination. I can always procrastinate tomorrow, is my attitude.

Oh, all right, I'm not that self-righteous. But I did prepare for this eventuality this week by writing the first paragraph of this column in advance, because I knew, as usual, I would be pressed for time to complete my column on time for my own self-imposed deadline. I noticed earlier in the week that the old dictum that, "The work expands to fill the time available to do it," seems to be as true now as ever. It is almost always true for those who hold themselves to a high standard. "'Good enough, 'isn't!" So we strive to achieve the best results we can achieve given the limitation that eventually we have to face some kind of deadline.

The problem with politicians is that they always want to postpone the bill paying until the next administration or the next generation or at least past the current election cycle to ever have to balance the budget. To some extent it is understandable that because politicians rely upon raising campaign funds from existing business interests that they are not too eager to upset the applecart, as my father was fond of saying. There have been a number of conservative voices lately saying that "we can't afford" to face up to the responsibilities of the Kyoto Accords, or carbon dioxide reduction goals generally. They point out that it is gambling with the successful formula for a prosperous and growing world economy to dabble in attempting to control a climate trend. I see those arguments as shortsighted. It is more likely that since only about 30% of a barrel of crude oil actually goes to making gasoline that some of the other uses of petrochemicals will become even more economically attractive and that lessening dependence on petro sources will not only provide better energy independence and security for the USA, but if we go about this correctly, that local sources for renewable energy will achieve a degree of that same independence and security for every place that adopts the renewable fuels emphasis in their energy policy.

Recently, last Thursday, February 15th, 2007, to be precise, former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack, appeared on the Tonight Show on NBC. Tom was the first Democrat to declare his candidacy for the office of President of the United States. His appearance went a long way to getting his name known, as he himself was quite ready to admit. He endured the fact that host, Jay Leno, was poking fun at him, including multiple mentions of the fact that his entourage for the Tonight Show appearance consisted of two guys and a rental car. That is not an insignificant fact when considering that the top contenders in Democratic party are mostly planning on declining federal matching funds for their campaign to avoid being limited to "only" $150 million. The reason, however, that Vilsack was not flying high with a press entourage and a staff of dozens was at least in part because he has made a pledge to be carbon neutral in the emissions caused by his campaign activities, including purchasing carbon credits to offset any deficiency. Leno did not allow him an opportunity to bring this point to light on the show. He did mention it at a speech he made to the Commonwealth Club at lunch the same day. But what came to my attention this week, (even before I saw the clip of his Tonight Show appearance that Vilsack has on his own web site) was the fact that he has a comparatively highly detailed energy policybased mainly on emphasizing renewable energy as a centerpiece of his campaign platform.

Sadly, as suggested above, the policy planks are just weak, half-steps, with such low goals that they really represent too much latitude, making it possible to ignore the urgency of the situation. For instance Vilsack calls for 50% improvement in fuel economy for automobiles by the year 2030. That's barely 2% a year for the next 23 years. Another point he makes is that he wants to reduce overall carbon emissions from all fuel sources by 1% per year for 10 years. As if that wasn't entirely too modest a goal already, he compounds the inadequacy of this wimpy proposal with the spineless provision that the 10 years in which such tiny accomplishments need to start is postponed until 2010, such that we may get to a tiny 10% in total reduction by 2020. He also calls for a 20% reduction in carbon emissions from coal fired electric generating plants, but again, only for those built after 2010, though he at least shows some awareness of the current state of things by insisting that they also incorporate Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle or equivalent technologies.

It may sound like a strange strategy to attack the one guy whose policies seem on the right track. That would be a misguided judgment, however, since the real point here is not to allow someone who clearly has at least some grasp of the situation to start out with watered down objectives before the opposition even starts to attempt to grind them down to "reasonable" timelines and percentages. Tossing around the terms biodiesel, biobutanol, cellulosic ethanol and others is not enough. As the saying goes, shoot for the moon, and at least if you miss you'll end up among the stars.

Speaking of stars, Mitt Romney, son of former prominent presidential candidate George Romney, and governor of Massachusetts, has tossed his hat in the ring on the Republican side. Overshadowed at first by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Arizona Senator John McCain, Governor Romney is a new shining light on the conservative side because, in spite of a history of rather liberal positions, he has adopted a more neo-con, and social conservative friendly point of view. On the abortion issue, he has been a pro-choice candidate in a clearly and firmly pro-choice state. Lately, however, he has become a right-to-lifer, but at the same time sidestepped a very pointed question from George Stephanopoulos on his This Week program on Sunday (Feb. 18, 2007). George set him up by saying that if life begins at conception is it not taking a human life to either perform or receive an abortion, and therefore, Mr. Governor, what legal penalty would be required for either the pregnant woman or the doctor performing this taking of a life. Suddenly Governor Romney was tap dancing insisting that it was a states rights issue and that individual states need to decide the question for their own citizens. Mitt Romney apparently has, at least in his own mind, handled the question of how his religion advises his potential position at commander-in-chief, but George was not about to take it easy on the candidate. He pointed out that as a matter of faith; Mormon doctrine says that Christ will return to rule on earth for a thousand years. With that well-known doctrine a matter of record, what kind of message, George wondered, would Moslems throughout the world take from America electing a member of the Mormon faith, like Romney, to the Presidency? Romney had said earlier in the broadcast that he would not make a speech, like John Kennedy did during his campaign, that consistent with the constitutional grounds for separation of church and state, in which Kennedy asserted that "no pontiff" would dictate to the American President.

Nor was Stephanopoulos the only one to be tossing faith-based hot potatoes in Romney's direction. Bill Maher, of HBO's Real Time who, as he says himself, "I think all religions are cuckoo," pointed out that although the Mormon faith holds that North American Indians (Native Americans, if you prefer) are one (or more) of the, "lost tribes of Israel," which has been shown, through comparative genetic studies, to be plainly not a fact. I don't hold Governor Romney's religion against him. Indeed, I have found that genuinely sincere Mormons are among the kindest and gentlest people I have encountered as a group. But I also have always felt that the rather condescending and paternalistic attitude of the official Mormon doctrine toward Native Americans to be offensive. It is a doctrine that comes directly from Mormonism's roots, but it smacks of the elitist colonial attitudes of Southern whites to Negroes. This all-too-nineteenth-century attitude is due for a whole hundred years of adjustment to update it to the realities of the twenty-first century.

The Pacific Northwest is becoming, or has already become, a hotbed of renewable energy enthusiasm. The receptivity of communities in the area is by no means one which stops at the Canadian border either. The British Columbian city of Nanaimo is taking steps to reduce carbon emissions because of a startling statistic. According to what I have read, they discovered that 63% of the carbon dioxide pollution in the Nanaimo district is being caused directly by the city's buses.

The Nanaimo Bulletin reports on it's web pages (dated Feb. 17,2007), "The RDN’s fleet of buses is responsible for 63 per cent of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by the region, a number the RDN intends to reduce as part of its Community Climate Change Plan." They already burn low-sulfur diesel, but they are going to try to do better. Meanwhile Pamploma, Spain is switching to a 100% biodiesel fuel policy for their buses.

Rumor has it that Daimler is looking for a buyer for Chrysler. I have long held a sort of a grudge against them for one simple reason dating back to 1961. They developed a turbine engine prototype car, flashy styling (a convertible as I recall, although I may be romanticizing it in my memory) and it ran on "anything" from "peanut oil to perfume" according the article I read about it at the time in Popular Mechanics (or possibly Popular Science) magazine.



I am still pretty annoyed over that failure of vision on the part of Chrysler executives. On the other hand, I am in no hurry to see Chrysler go down the drain. I think that the other rumor circulating the General Motors is considering buying the foundering rival could be a very good idea. Another colossal lack of vision on the part of executives at GM led to dumping the Oldsmobile brand and (effectively almost) all of the dealerships. Absorbing the Chrysler brand, and their engineering division, which is at least capable of having some degree of vision (as evidenced by their turbine car almost 50 years ago) could be a real boost for GM.

Lastly, for today's ramblings, I am presently planning on driving to Las Vegas, to the PowerGen Renewable Energy and Fuels conference, which, for me is only about 1 tank of gas away, but I am considering trying to duplicate the demonstration that I told you about a few weeks back of running an older model Buick on butanol or some butanol mix for this trip (starting March 4 or 5). If some biobutanol maker would like to "sponsor" a tank worth of their product, for me to use on this trip I would be interested in talking to them. I have no interest in "sacrificing" my old pal "Lisa LeSabre" on the altar of scientific experimentation, so I would certainly want some assurances of quality prior to pouring some potentially lethal gunk in the "gas" tank, but I would be happy to pass along my report on the viability of the direct switch to a biobutanol product or butanol blend to my readers.

love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson