$12 Gas and Rationing? Possible, Says Expert

At $12 a gallon gasoline many other fuels would be less expensive. The first that comes to my mind is natural gas, but electric (batteries and charge power), alcohol, butanol, oil from coal and others would be competitive.

I would like to see research regarding competitive price points for other technologies.

 

No more implausible than the Chevy Volt!

 

Interesting discussion-
My thoughts on the subject -
First solar has its merits buts let's not forget the dense urban centers- New York, Chicago for instance. Where is the real estate to supply anywhere the needs of the populace in these areas? We need to think on a global focus with solar part of the solution, conservation part of the solution, newer technology (like geothermal heat source) and a return to nuclear power. My costs in New Hampshire (on a geothermal system) have become quite low since the much of the electricity is supplied by nuclear power. We need a clean safe nuclear power now and we should all work toward that mutually beneficial goal. Then we can use electric cars for commutes up to say 50 miles and hybrids for other travel.

On the subject of the price of gas - I too thought that there was a lot of speculation driving up the price of oil. We all have noticed how (at least here) how the price of diesel is higher than gas for the first time in memory. This was explained this morning on NPR (I believe) through the fact that diesel consumption over the past few years has risen significantly (somethnig like 25% over the last 3 years worlldwide) and gas has not risen nearly so much. Hence the refineries are trying to mazimize their profit refining diesel and home heating oil. Right now in MA, the price of diesel fuel is about $5 and gas about $4. The final conclusion was that once gas got to be about 10% higher in cost than diesel, then then imbalance would be corrected. THis tells me at present (baring a significant consumption reduction) that we are lookking at gas in the near future well over $5/gal.

 

has anyone figured out yet how

Sustainable Development http://www.state.gov/g/oes/sus/ and

http://www.sdp.gov/


ties perfectly with U.N.'s

Agenda 21
http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/usa/index.htm
and how Biodiversity, climate change (previously known as global warming) and control of resources, including energy, food and water, as well as deinstrialisation of the West, regional governance (loss of national sovernigty)

all tie together?

all we need to do is look around us.

yes, days of cheap gas are gone, for good.

within 10 years i think that gas prices will be at least doubled, maybe even tripled.
that is why i believe that $15 a gallon of fuel is more of a predictive programming than someone's pipe dream.

this will change the society as we know it, nothing will be the same any longer.




"AGENDA 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by
every person on earth... Effective execution of AGENDA 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society,unlike anything the world has ever experienced — a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources."

— Environmental activist and attorney Daniel Sitarz

Amerikan Expose | Agenda 21 / Sustainable Development
you SHOULD reead it, it is YOUR life that will be changed by it.

 

and, i am afraid we have seen nothing yet:

How non-U.N. afilliated American researchers see Local Agenda 21:

There's nothing local about Local Agenda 21. Local Agenda 21 is the programme for a supra-national government.

Community Developments in Washakie County, Wyoming by Niki Raapana, March 18, 2004. This page is devoted to showing local residents tools for taking back their communities and identifying Local Agenda 21 facilitators in their backyards. (We lived in Wyoming after we left Seattle, so we were able to witness the community developers act in a rural setting. Quite different approaches. Now we live in rural Alaska where it's just beginning to be introduced. Think we should start attending their "meetings?")


Non-afilliated also means non-grant funded. Invest in poor American anti-communitarian writers and researchers:

The real agenda: Communitarians quietly (and illegally) balance U.S. laws in favor of the global sustainable developers. Our "new" law endorses free trade economics, promotes a quasi-religious blending with ideologies, and is based in ancient mysticism. The "moral" communitarians think they're above U.S. law. They ignore the fact that all changes to the U.S. Constitution must be pre-approved by 3/4 of the fifty united state's legislatures. Based on the available evidence, the ACL finds the entire Communitarian policy agenda is treason against the people of the United States. Our goal is to expose the Communitarian philosophy used by Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Greens, and bi-partisan Third Wayers. We want every voter in the world to recognize communitarian laws, buffer zones, players, policies, and "logic."

What is Communitarianism? Communitarianism is the over-all system used by the ruling elite to govern the globe in their emerging Supra-national World Order.
Communitarian "thinking" can be categorized into 11 primary disciplines: Philosophy, Law, History, Ideology, Religion, Natural Sciences, Politics, Education, Public Policy, Economics, and Social Theory. The ACL will (someday) reformat this entire site according to each of the above categories. Early ACL "explanations" of communitarianism show how hard it's been for us, as untrained writers, to introduce the main topic of communitarianism without getting lost in its hundreds of thousands of sub-topics (The Balance of Man, What the Communitarians Stand For, What in the World is Communitarianism?). Our interest in Etzioni and the communitarian system of law began when we learned about Community Policing. Dr. Etzioni led private "debates" to limit American's privacy. (Dr. Amitai Etzioni April 2003, under revision)


ACL: Agenda 21

 

I have read that refineries are reducing gasoline production in favor of diesel and exporting it by tanker. Good for them but not for us.

Again, gasoline price will reach a price that encourages an alternate fuel. I'm hoping for butanol from cellulose because it is a great fuel for the existing fleet, but even alcohol might be a reasonable, especially for fuel cells. Hydrogen storage seems to difficult to me, catalyzing is not so bad and the carbon released is not from a trapped source like oil.

 

Solar is not a matter of real estate. The great thing about Pv solar is that it is transportable through the existing grid. Look at all the building roofs, shopping malls, power poles etc. that now exist. It is a quite simple mater to tie disaggregated supply sources (Panels) into the grid to use where they are not practical. Not a 100% solution for obvious reasons, but couple that to plug in hybrids that can sell back to the grid as well as buy from the grid and you have gone a long way to solving some of our problems.

As for Nuclear: If you can find a safe, LONG TERM, and I do mean long term storage for waste, perhaps I could embrace Nuke, but until it is proven to me that my ancestors won't be poisoned, I don't think it fair to expose them to the risk. We have left them enough problems to clean up.

$5.00 gas may seem cheap in the future, just like it did at $.28.9 did when I was a kid. We need to go forward with a new mind set. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the classic definition of insanity.

Icarus

 

I agree that $5/gallon will seem cheep. THe main point regarding nuclear is that the public doesn;t understand the whole issue of risk acceptance. I would much rather live next to a nuclear plant that a coal or natural gas plant. Between the emissions and the safety issues from a fossil fired plant - give me a nuclear plant. Note that 3 workers were recently killed here in MA at a steam explosion from a boiler at a fossil plant. The plant operator stated that there was no way that any inspection would have found the problem. In the mean time we are generating scrubber sludge, CO2, coal ash and a mirad of other items that I think need to be greatly reduced. These safety issues if one looks closely at risk managment (probabilities) are significant and make the nuclear option look very attractive. One problem that the nuclear industry had was they were always trying to state how safe nuclear was rather that provide a real world risk analysis. The turning point occurred at Three Mile when people saw that there was some risk - as there is in living.

 

If you really study the solar/wind power technology in existence right now, the technology is available for solving our problems now. (I thought otherwise till I did my homework over the last year.) Here are some points to think about:
1) Tremendous savings are possible applying energy conservation steps at home and work. It's easier to come up with methods of reducing needs than building unsustainable plants.
2) Concentrated Solar Power plants have been running for 15 years and have all the bugs worked out. The only missing element is integration with thermal storage systems for day/night operation....and this is not an exotic technology, just not a widely implemented technology yet.
3) The transition to wind, concentrated solar, and PV solar is hampered by the legal and cultural mind sets that any power plant must be a massive centralized system with huge water reserviors close by.
4) After the WPPSS debacle, the real limitation on nuclear plants is not safety or waste storage (which is a showstopper on it's own). It's that the financial institutions that need to provide the mega-billions in loans are not lending at all. Power plants that do not provide a return on investment for over a decade are money losers compared to local wind farms that provide a good ROI within a couple of years.

 

With all due respect,,,, I agree that in the day to day, living next to a Nuke plant is safe than a coal or gas fired one. We all should know how bad coal is for all the environment, but you missed my point. A nuke plant can be made to operate safely (Three mile island, Chernoble not withstanding) but,,, and this is a huge but that hasn't been solved, the waste output from a nuke plant is dangerous for 10s of thousands of years! It has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction that the waste can be safely stored over those millenium. As you said, you feel safer next to a nuke plant, but what about your great great,,,,,grand children? Is it fair to burden them with more crap to deal with than we already have? Wouldn't it be wiser to begin to change our behavior now to preclude this danger? I'm lucky,,,I have no kids so I don't have to worry about them, but I do have friends and they have kids. It is just a continuation of the selfishness that we have lived high on the hog for so long we don't want to give any of it up.

My entire premise, in all these discussions is that we can continue to live comparativly high on the hog, without significant sacrifice, IF we make some subtle changes to the way we regard energy and the environment. We have borrowed a great legacy from future generations and we owe a little something to them. I'm not a granola eating, birkenstock wearing prius driving egghead who advocates going back to the cave. (I wear haflinger felt clogs, eat raison bran, I work with my hands, and OH! I do drive a prius!

Icarus

I guess I am a liberal as well.



Icarus

 

There is a company that says they can manufacture alcohol from cellulose for $1.34 a gallon. Even if it were to take twice as much fuel, which it wouldn't, their cost would be $2.68 for the same mileage. Your cost would be less than $4.00 a gallon for the same mileage, much less than $12 a gallon.

Link

Green Car Congress: Verenium Commissioning Cellulosic Ethanol Demo-Scale Plant; Targeting Cost of $1.34/Gallon

 

I noticed your post on several threads but I'll only respond once.

Cellulose ethenol it marginally better for the environment than food base (Corn, Soy, Palm oil etc) than other bio-fuels. The problem is that is can and should be used ONLY as bridge fuel. The reason being, we don't (can't) grow enough biomass to convert it into fuel each and every year at the rate we now burn fossil fuels.

A interview with the President of The Stinson/Bullit foundation, former Dept. Of Energy under Sec., Stanford Pro in physics who's name escapes me but you can google the above to attribute or KUOW Radio Seattle afternoon show archive from ~Dec 2007 states that the earth grows ~90 Terawatts of bio-mass every year. That is all the grass, all the tree growth and leaves, al the algae, in short all the bio-mass grown a year is ~90 Terawatts. Sounds like a big number, until you realize that we burn ~16-19 Tws per year in fossil fuels. Can you imagine burning (via conversion to biofuels) 25% of all that grows each and every year? Not a lot left over to eat, not just for us, but all the other critters

As I have said, too many times before, we need to begin to change our behavior, AND embrace and extend real alternatives, solar in all its forms (wind, tides, wave action) geothermal and good hydro (preferably low impact low head hydro) and most importantly we need to stop playing the drunken sailor and stop using up finite resources like there is no tomorrow. Perhaps that is the problem,,, there may well be no tomorrow.

Every RE installer will tell you, that your cheapest RE dollar is the dollar spent on reducing the usage, be it home heating, cooling, lighting cooking water heating or industrial usage. As I have said over and over again to all that will listen, and many who won't. A good combination of conservation and alternative energy will go a long way to solving much of our problems, without the radical change in lifestyle or standard of living we seem to be so scared of.

Icarus

 

For more info:

From a DOE Biomass FAQ

 

The DOE says enough biomas for thirty percent of current consumption. Stanford professors don't know everything.

Now, lets consider that the current fleet of cars will eventually be replaced with more fuel efficient cars, in many cases, the replacements will have half the fuel consumption or even less with PHEV and EV. Cellulosic ethanol may reduce the demand for gasoline enough to at least contain the price, and perhaps with reduced consumption replace gasoline entirely.

 

You are right, that with increased efficiency bio-mass has a place. My point is that it is not THE answer. A DOE study suggesting that bio-fuels could supply X% of use has no meaning if it doesn't suggest if this is sustainable or not. We are all feeling the pain of the rush to corn based ethenol.

As to your comment on Stanford Profs. I named my source so that you (and everyone else) could follow up and read the information for yourselves!) Please give me some info about who what where your DOE source is. I thinjk you do a disservice to us all to ridicule my source because of his position rather than his information.

One of my pet peeves is people (including me often!) spouting "facts" without attribution. The only way for any of us to learn is to think for ourselves.

 

I sell Toyota's, God help us all if things do get that bad.

 

I would not be surprised if our fuel prices reached parity with the EU. We will have no choice but to adapt, that means more Prius and Yaris, less Tundra and Sequoia on the road.

How many Tundra and Sequoia are on the road in the EU. None that I could see

 

Hmmm, you can open up the first home based "EV plug in station". Bunches of cars driving up to pay a small fee to hook into your recharge station (all powered by the sun).....

 

You might want to back off the caffeine a bit, the source was in the post before the one you read, with links to the report from the DOE. I didn't take it as ridiculing your source at all, just stating a fact that professors don't know everything (believe me, I know).

I don't have a dog in the fight, I agree that alternate energies and conservation is necessary to meet our needs. I do think it is helpful to look at a variety of sources, rather than just to accept what one person (expert or not) tells us.

 

i think that having an all electric personal vehicle fleet is an excellent idea... i dont think trying to charge them all the same way is. there should be home charge and quick charge station options.

and sure right now there its not convenient for a lot of people to charge a vehicle, but if it was put in motion today, it would take several years before we were all electric anyway. putting in charge stations like parking meters would be a monumental task for sure but any major infrastructure change is and we do it frequently (at least in my area with better than normal growth, there is constant new construction and upgrade modifications being performed) in small pieces all the time.

even if one was on crack, to take the article literally is simply not an option. what he is trying to say is even under the worst of scenarios, going all electric is a win-win proposition. sure its long term, but even after the expense of converting over, adding quick charge stations (i vision them being installed at gas stations so that way the oil companies can get us coming and going) and smart "residential" charge stations that can detect the vehicle it is charging thru the plug and bill it accordingly (this prevents your neighbor from unplugging your car and charging his on your dime) add all that up and it probably wouldnt pay for more than a few years of oil.

a surcharge on "vehicle" electricity would be applied naturally (electric companies have had the technology to detect and meter this for a while now) over "residential" electricity and that money would pay to support, maintain and upgrade the system as more and more convert over. and that would suck since i now use the dirt cheap "residential" juice to power my Zenn. as soon as EV's are mainstream, the electricity will be classified as "transportation" expense and well... you know how that goes