Energy

[Lloyd Danforth]

It seems pretty simple to me.
The Governments can:
End all 'Farm Welfare', Encourage, or get out of the way of Farmers to grow Bio-diesel Feedstock. Then, reduce the regulation concerning  building of Bio-diesel plants.
Has anyone ever seen anything on how much of a dent this would make in the for Dino?
Somewhere along the line we should get rid of the laws that require we use Ethanol.

[Roycerson]

No laws that require ethanol in Oklahoma.  Most gas stations have with or without only but some have with on one pump and without on another.  Seems to be about a fifty fifty split.  Apparently that's something you can change at the state level.

[KBCraig]

EPA requires oxidizers in some areas. That's how MTBE wound up in the water supply.

[Pat McCotter]

We used about 35 quadrillion BTU petroleum in 2009.

We would need about two billion acres of rapeseed production to replace all of that petroleum BTU.

We have about two billion acres of land in the US (not all arable.)

[Lloyd Danforth]

I never thought Bio would cover al of the energy requirements.  I just wonder if every acre where Bio feedstock could be grown economically, was utilized how much would it help?  would it replace the liquid fuel used in trucks and trains?

[MaineShark]

You need to also use the cellulose content of the rest of the plant, to make it close to viable.  Either as a fuel, directly, or as a feedstock for a bioconversion to mixed alcohols (which is substantially more efficient than the multi-step process using yeast to make ethanol).

And fixed installations (eg, home heating) need to use unconverted fuels, as much as possible.  In vehicles, where weight is a factor, carefully-produced fuels of uniform energy density are fairly important.  A fixed installation, where weight is all but irrelevant, can easily use more-complex technology to allow fuels to be used with minimal processing, improving the overall efficiency of the process.  For example, a car might run on alcohol produced from wood fiber, whereas a home heating system can run on pellets, or even wood chips (better, because the processing is minimal, even compared to pellets).

Joe

[Russell Kanning]

who knows what would happen if the government got out of the way