Statistics and Eye Candy

The Environmental Leader daily had a good summary of some market research that was done to identify consumer's perceptions on "green" terms like "energy conservation, energy efficiency, demand response, smart energy, and clean energy".

Below are some highlights of adjectives that tested well with the parent word, with positives (>50% agree) in black, negatives (>30% agree) in red.

Energy efficiency

• easy to use
• forward looking
• fun
• futuristic
• reliable
• smart
• valuable

Smart Energy

• forward looking
• fun
• futuristic
• reliable
• smart
• valuable
• visionary
  

Clean Energy

• expensive
• forward looking
• fun
• futuristic
• reliable
• smart
• valuable
• visionary

Demand Creation

• annoying
• authoritative
• boring
• expensive
• old fashioned
  
• unhelpful
• unpopular

It is good to note that "smart energy" and "energy efficiency" have no strong negatives associated with them and that "fun" is present in most of these lists. "Clean energy", is perceived to be expensive and "demand creation" is just plain negative.



In lighter news, Verdier is keeping the dream alive with a next generation, solar-powered Westfalia. Take 60's ideals and merge them with high-technology and you get a beautiful $69,000 camper.

As pretty as it is, it seems they haven't actually built one as their site is mainly comprised of computer-graphics; before sinking that much cash into something I know I'd like a generation or two on the road so any bugs could be worked out.

Feedstock and Scaling

The Oregonian wrote a pretty good article on Imperium on Tuesday touching some of the larger questions about biodiesel surrounding scale. The US uses a lot of fuel; biodiesel is better, but damn you have to grow a lot of oil producing crops for it.

Using a recycled product, as we all know, is great for biodiesel production but there is a very limited supply of it. Originally, Imperium was going to lean heavily on palm oil for feedstock, but due to negative publicity, backtracked and now are primarily using Canadian Canola. While I was under the impression that Imperium wasn't going to be using any palm oil, it seems otherwise:

'Tobias says the company will buy only palm oil that is sustainably produced. Imperium is a founding member of an international roundtable that's trying to come up with the appropriate criteria, but has struggled to do so.'

I have no idea what could be considered "sustainable palm"... in fact, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what would be considered "sustainable anything", but that is another discussion entirely.

A little perspective on market scale

'Even Imperium's 100-million-gallon plant will make just a tiny dent in U.S. diesel use, which totaled 64 billion gallons in 2006.'

Running at full capacity and offtake, Imperium's facility will offset 0.64% of the US's diesel use. If using soy exclusively, the crops for Imperium's plant would take up 'an area of 2.5 million acres, or about 68% of the Willamette Valley'. The environmental impact of such a venture would undoubtedly be significant; mono-cultures are never good for the surrounding ecosystem, fertilizer, pesticides, water, etc.

As a comparison, soy produces about 50 gallons of oil per acre, Canola produces about 100 and algae-based biodiesel is projected to create 250 times more gallons of oil per acre than soy [12,500 gallons per acre] according to the dubious Wikipedia.

It is obvious that biofuels are better, but is also obvious that if we don't pay attention to where our biofuels come from and how they are produced, we could wind up with a whole new set of issues. It would benefit us all to also support conservation and increased fuel economy: 50% increased fuel economy translates to 50% less fuel used. Reduced fuel consumption will help everything, including increase the percentage of biofuels that are being used.

Grease is gold; Ethanol market saturated

Over the weekend there was an Oregonian article on "Grease Wars", outlining the market shift of used cooking oil being waste to wanted. SeQuential-Pacific got a few mentions and Tyson got a quote.

It is a little off topic, but there is one snippet in the article that is sure to result in some sort of legal action:

"I have so much oil," said David MacKay, owner of a Northeast Portland fish house, Halibut's. "If they don't take it, I'll dump it on the grass."

In light of the falling ethanol market, Pacific Ethanol is losing some of their biggest investors, the Gates Investment Fund. The falling ethanol market isn't coming as much of a surprise; I'm not entirely sure why the big money is pulling out of functioning plants.

Fuel has an inelastic demand curve - we use a lot of it and there is a ceiling to how much we can use. If too much is produced, we won't be able to use it all.

There was so much buzz around ethanol that everyone with a spare $10m started invested in plants. Industry insiders knew that at some point there was going to be too much supply and some of these plants opening wouldn't be able to get off-take agreements and therefore go belly up.

The only potential negative of all of this is if it stifles cellulosic ethanol research, much like cheap oil in the early nineties stifled algae-BIODIESEL research.

Net effect - once again supply-demand economics wins the day and more alternative fuel is available. Also once again, there are no silver bullets to kill the looming werewolf of all our problems and people are writing reactionary news articles.