Posted on 07/10/2012 5:21:03 AM PDT by thackney
The head of the Institute for Energy Research today beseeched congressional leaders to investigate Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ decision to conduct test exercises using expensive alternative fuels this summer.
Thomas Pyle, president of the industry-funded IER, said the move shows “the Obama administration is squandering limited national defense dollars on a political agenda.”
“With huge reductions in resources for national defense already under way, wasting taxpayer money on biofuels costing ten times as much as conventional fuels makes no sense,” Pyle said in a letter to the heads of the House and Senate oversight and defense committees.
Pyle’s letter comes amid heavy congressional criticism of the planned Naval “green fleet” test exercises, set to begin with an aircraft carrier and other vessels later this month in the Pacific Rim.
In preparation for the carrier strike test, the Navy spent $12 million buying 450,000 gallons of alternative fuels. That works out to just under $27 per gallon, but as noted by Reuters, the final cost is about $15 per gallon after blended 50-50 with petroleum.
Such alternative fuel purchases would be banned in the future under legislation that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year as part of a Department of Defense authorization bill. That measure would bar the Defense Department from buying biofuels that cost more than conventional fuel.
For the biofuels industry, Mabus’ plans to wean the Navy off conventional supplies create a potentially lucrative marketplace, powering the Pentagon’s ships, planes and tanks. Supporters note that while the cost of advanced biofuels may be high now, those would drop along with a ramp up in production and demand.
Same as man has very little to do with global warming. We are a factor but a very puny one when it comes to CO2 output. You are making the same mistake. Duplicating natures process to make oil from algae will take trillions upon trillions upon trillions dollars of exotic apparatus, bulldozers, drying ponds etc etc. Man cannot deal with these colossal to the nth degree inputs, these colossal to the nth degree masses the way nature can over millions and millions of years
What you propose is much smaller project than digging up Mt Everest and reassembling it in New Delhi India. Think in terms of mass mass mass multiplied by millions x millions of years plus heat and pressure...This is how nature turns algae into oil
These algae projects are a bonanza for cynical scientists to milk billons in Federale funding from the idiots in Congress whom are mostly liberal arts majors and affirmative action women and blacks without an ounce of common sense science education in them
You are making the same mistake. Duplicating natures process to make oil from algae will take trillions upon trillions upon trillions dollars of exotic apparatus, bulldozers, drying ponds etc etc. Man cannot deal with these colossal to the nth degree inputs, these colossal to the nth degree masses the way nature can over millions and millions of years.
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Actually the technology is much much closer to being ready for prime time than you know. But much of the best work is not government funded. In fact, imho a russian investment house is helping to fund the best one which imho is Joule energy. They have a production plant in New Mexico currently that expects to produce diesal for 1.20 a gallon and when they scale up to volume — they say they can get production costs down to .60 a gallon. They’re backed by the best brains in the biz. Here’s a google search of them.
http://bit.ly/S0r3WZ
Joule energy might have something good going on. I went to your link. Their method does not involve processing, drying out millions of tons of goopy messy algae. We shall see
Critical comments on joule
Comments were negatively speculative just as the article was positively speculative.(see below) Best to hold off judgement until there’s more data available later this year or early next.
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Joule says its systems could produce 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol a year on an acre of land, for as little as $20 per barrel-equivalent of diesel and 60 cents per gallon of ethanol.
Since 2010, the company has been operating a pilot plant in Leander, Texas, where it is testing ethanol production. It plans to break ground this month on a larger-scale demonstration facility in New Mexico, with a goal of beginning commercial production by late 2012 or early 2013.
“Scalability and efficiency are open questions, but the concept is great,” says Darlene J.S. Solomon, chief technology officer at Agilent Technologies Inc. A -0.54% and an Innovation Awards judge.
Yeah its the methodology that looks like its a winner.
This article gives the real implications of Joule which are altogether huge—if true.
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/07/09/how-joule-may-turn-biofuels-upside-down/
btw much bigger in the energy sector is what’s happening with thorium. The background on that story is just stunning.
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| US NAVY $44/gallon BIOFOOL |
| US AIR FORCE $59/gallon BIOFOOL |
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