Coal in a hard place.. expecte to produce < 30% of electricity by end of decade

Mike you have the wrong lobby. It is the corn ethanol lobby, not oil. The lobby has e10 and e85, they don't want methanol which is less expensive to compete. Methanol is more corrosive, which means flex fuel vehicles need to be made differently, but not much more expensive. They did a trial in california when natural gas, and therefore methanol was more expensive. Methanol has been used as race fuel. It would work well in a high expansion engine like in the prius as well as turbo charged engines. It would require blending to be as convient and reduce its corrosive nature. A M20 or M25 blend would greatly reduce ethanol use though.

 

Burning methanol has a near invisible flame, and is greatly more toxic than ethanol.
These safety issues are reduced once blended with gasoline. The gas adds color to any flame, and is already toxic, but they are there to consider as blends favor it more.

 

We have gone quite far afield from coal use. but.....

M85 as you say does have a colored flame, and helps engines start versus M100 in cold weather. Methanol is more toxic than ethanol, but it is less toxic than the gasoline we are currently using, and E0-E85 or any blend is toxic. We are burning the stuff, not drinking it. E85 and M85 increase NMOG with cold starts versus E10, which is why I was suggesting M20. M20 will only have you go 92% as far as gasoline, but should cost at least 10% less, and reduce oil use by 13% substituting natural gas or some renewable. A car made for M20 should be able to handle E25 also, and should not be much more expensive to make than current vehicles, but may needed more expensive pollution control to meet CARB's SULEV. Methanol blends decrease carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides but will likely increase NMOG at cold start and evaporative emissions compared to pure gas.

 

China and India have good strong motives to limit global warming, just like the rest of the world. They want to save their agricultural areas and coastal cities and prevent tens of millions of refugees, both internal and those driven out of neighboring countries. China is installing non-fossil energy faster than is any other country, and India is developing thorium-fueled nuclear power.

 

Except as a replacement for MTBE, I don't want ethanol in gasoline. Methanol can be made cheaply now that natural gas is cheap. That won't remain so if it becomes the main choice for blending with gasoline. Even without a major price increase we will likely start seeing the same price trends as diesel during the winter when transportation and heating fuel demands compete. We'd be better off expanding the infrastructure in order to replace heating oil with natural gas for home heating.

While we could produce methanol with fermentation, we could also do so with butanol. It has a higher energy density and is less toxic then either ethanol and methanol. Some companies have increased the yield of it to the levels of ethanol from the same feedstock.

 

Not "mismanaged" it's pure Bonneville Power Authority trying to kill off wind power or any alternative to the salmon and environment killing dams. Lots of water and snow pack and Bonneville should be spilling water (not via turbines) which greatly increases salmon survival. The wind power is capable of making up difference but BPA has three goals, make money, kill wind power and kill salmon and the environment and pursues those goals ruthlessly.

 

If we convert coal plants to natural gas (a good thing as long as fracking is banned, uses too much fresh water an even more valuable resource in warming planet), the US will not be exporting any natural gas but will be importing. Even at current trends, US will be net importer in about 10 years. The facilities US needs to build would be NG importing facilities but low NG prices have stopped those also.

Best for US to cut energy usage by 50% to match Europe and Japan, eliminate coal (about 45% of US electric) and use natural gas, solar, wind. US could easily meet science goals of 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050.

On China, China uses 1,695 kg equivalent of oil in energy per person while US uses 7,051. Before US lectures China on energy use, it needs to get to China levels of per capita energy use. China also leads US in non-fossil fuel technology and industry. US leads China in total CO2 production over last 50 years (the cause of global warming) so has a much larger "debt" to pay in the form of lower CO2 emissions.

 

There is no excuse that 39 years after the oil embargo there is still large amounts of heating oil used in the north east. There is only one region of the country that still uses heating oil, which should be telling that there has been politics involved. There has been plenty of time to build natural gas infrastructure to the area. One thing doesn't have much to do with the other though.

If you make new cars able to burn M20 and E25, and all the cars in brazil can burn E25, it will not add much to the cost of a new car. That will allow for substitution of methanol, ethanol, and butanol blends.

butanol simply is more expensive right now. I doubt it could ever get to the levels of methanol. Currently the great bulk of butanol comes from oil. They may be able to produce it less expensively in sugar countries like brazil In a renewable fashion it has the same problems as ethanol. Methanol can be produced from natural gas, but also land fills, and celluistic stock, it is wood alcohol. That makes methanol by far the least expensive to produce in a renewable fashion, but.... it isn't now because of the price of natural gas. It should stay less expensive than those other fuels. t-butanol because of its low vaporization perhaps will be used more in summer blends.

 

But there is economics which is the same reason natural gas is used in newer homes (more in the South and Southwest) vs. the older homes in the Northeast and Mid-West. It is not in the home owner's financial best interest to pay to convert to natural gas. It is in the US national interest and a program of economic incentives to convert, to put solar hot water heater's on roofs, to make homes more energy efficient is justified and necessary. But that is opposed by oil companies and those who feel a national policy on energy is "socialism".

But for climate change, environmental damage via extraction it would be best to eliminate the coal mining and coal plants first. Switching power generation to natural gas, solar, wind and then converting the homes to electric vs direct burn fossil fuel of any kind, is the way to go. Home solar panels for electric and hot water heating even in latitudes like Boston and Seattle can pick up 40% of home energy needs.

 

That is simply false. The only place a large percentage of homes and businesses use heating oil is the north east. 80% of heating oil is used in this region. In 2011 payback was about 5 years, now it is even shorter. As furnaces need repairs the payback is even shorter. The reason there is so much heating oil is lack of access to natural gas, and this has in many cases been over seen by the utilities in those states, and should have been fixed decades ago. The problem was quite obvious. Heating oil is subsidized for the poor in the north east because it is so expensive and people simply don't have access to natural gas.

Solar water heaters have long been subsidized. Today they make virtually no sense compared to solar PV. The main use of solar water heaters are for the rich to heat their swimming pools. Getting access to natural gas is very slow in the north east, and that has been a problem. Finally some new lines are going into NYC.

Have you been reading the thread. Economics are switching from coal in the US, but the ROW is using more coal every year. If the US used 0 starting tomorrow, ghg would still likely grow by 2025.

Natural gas for home heating is one of the most efficient least polluting things that you can do. In texas there is a great deal of electric heating, since people don't use much heat, and they don't need to run the lines. This uses more natural gas than if they heated directly with the natural gas.

 

This company has a dual fermentation process that can use cellulistic feedstock for butanol.
http://www.butanol.com/
When using corn, they get the same yield in butanol as ethanol fermentation does. Being less corrosive, butanol can be mixed in at the refinery and pumped along the existing gasoline pipelines. As opposed to being trucked everywhere.

Any idea on the amount of the hit on fuel economy a methanol blend will have? It only has about two thirds the energy of ethanol. Increased fuel use can negate cost savings. I know a flex fuel engine can be made to make the most of the fuel, but the flex fuels available now don't. So expect any methanol engine won't either.

 

We had potential to get natural gas, but that project wanted TIFs to build through towns serving a total of 85k population with a possibility of adding service to another 15k. Instead, the winning bid, which doesn't require TIFs, is from Iberdrola (via Iberdrola USA via Central Maine Power via Maine Natural Gas) and will be limited to serving Augusta. Then they'll think about expanding.

Basically, a much smaller investment starting with the largest of Central Maine's cities which is liable to mean very slow rollouts (if ever) to areas with smaller, lower density populations. I suspect we'll move out of our house before we get NG mains.

Certainly for large swaths of Maine population density is a big factor. When you consider that there's a large NG pipeline running across the state to transport NG from Canada to Massholia, I'd expect that had the economics been more favorable years ago the infrastructure would have been developed much earlier.

 

Coal can be gasified (instead of burned) and then go for power (IGCC) or methanol or Fisher Tropsch to liquid fuels. Methanol in turn can be converted to gasoline. These are proven commercial clean coal options. But expensive. All of the above can be done much cheaper with nat gas. Currently US military is spending ($$Billons?) on bio-liquid-fuel options under the premise that national security is jeopardized by reliance on petroleum liquids. If that premise is true we must urgently move beyond petroleum for liquid fuels (BTW I am not sold on the premise) but then liquid fuels from coal + gas makes sense and has long history of global commercial practice. I think we shoud probably build some. But just about every option is way more expensive than nat gas, so will require national security or other political justification, which we are good at.

 

I wish the Picken's plan included getting nat gas distributed for home heat in the Northeast elsewhere. As far as infrastructure lack, part of the problem was national energy policy discouraging/banning new nat gas uses from approx 1975-1987, under the premise that nat gas supplies were running out. Some people say actually there never was shortage of nat gas but that the pipeline regulations were a quagmire preventing distribution. Both of my northeast residences in NJ and VA were built during the nat gas ban, so they had oil heat. However, after the ban was lifted we were able to retrofit for gas in the 1990's timeframe. I wanted to poll my neighbors to see if anyone still on oil but I don't think so. In other words, nat gas is under-utilized in USA due to the past policies. Now we are seeing some catch-up by nat gas of course.

 

And a small percentage overall for US, just 8% use oil, while 70% of those are in the NE that means 6% of domestic heating oil consumed in NE which is home to 20% of US population. The overall numbers are low. All due to older homes, costs of running gas lines in addition to putting in gas heaters. Government credits are $500 out of $5 to $10K to put in gas. In older homes it can be a major project. Even with a five year pay back for the lower costs of $5K there's just no economic incentive to do it with any immediacy. It is slowly being done as homes are renovated which is why so few, even in the older NE, still use oil.

No more than gas or electric or water/sewer is subsidized for the poor if they can't pay bill.

As with conversion to gas, not by much and not enough to garner mass conversions. Solar hot water is probably the most cost effective use of solar as hot water is about 30% of utility use. Would have been a great green jobs project during the Great Recession for government to pay for installation, big boost for manufacturers, lots of jobs building and installing, less energy use overall, reduced utility bills for millions. Likely why GOP and energy companies were so against it.

To the issue reducing coal use, reducing electricity use by off loading home utility to solar electric and solar hot water, insulating the homes, using more wind and solar power plants. Since US is close to being net natural gas importer, there's only so much natural gas conversion we can do before importing that vs. oil. Better to import a cleaner fuel than a dirtier one though.

 

Over 25% of those in the north east have oil heat, add in alaska and there are virturally no homes that have gas line nearby that use heating oil. And it is over 80% of the homes not 70% that use heating oil are in the north east. This is huge, and its because of what those states have done. Anyone that hasn't done it by now should be thinking about it. Heating oil costs over 3 times more than natural gas. Why don't people convert in the north east? State reguators have stood in the way. In rural areas every state helped run phone lines, but these states in the past have opposed natural gas pipelines. Slowly has been a snails pace. Pennsylvania and New York have finally started stepping up and people in those states are converting as fast as gas lines can be run. One of the costs is getting rid of the old leaky oil tanks. That is right, in many areas you are allowed to have a leaky oil tank as long as you use oil heat, but switch to natural gas and you need to clean up the pollution. Where is the sense? Why are you allowed to pollute the land as long as you are being a bigger polluter of the air. Poor regulation.

Absolutely false. Most working people get no energy subsidies in 41 states, but there is a $5B/year federal assistance program set up for heating oil.

You keep making up your own facts. Solar water heaters make absolutely no sense today, and do not save anywhere close to 30% of your bill unless you are an idiot and have an inefficient electric water heater and use a ton of water. Where do your made up facts keep coming from. Solar water heaters often have had a 30% subsidy. It would have created jobs if the government paid for everything, and we would have gotten nothing in return. Idiotic. Here PV is subsidized over 60% but you need a home. Heating or airconditioning are large consumers of power. The natural gas in my stove and hot water heater are small compared to my electric for air conditioning.

Here you go, huge solar water heating subsidies.
Solar Hot Water (CSI-Thermal) Program

The bulk of people that have taken advantage of solar water heating subsidies do it to heat the water in their pools. My cousin in california got 50% subsidy, but he only heats water for showers, washing and his hot tub.

If you don't want to heat a swimming pool or hot tub, solar PV provides a much bigger bang for alternative energy buck. Solar water heaters require electric back ups, and use almost as much electricity as a electric heat pump water heater. If you are a purist and don't want to use natural gas for some religious region to heat your water, PV+electric heat pump water heater means that we should stop subsidies for the losing technology of solar water heaters for single family homes.

geothermal is efficient. electric thermal heat is inefficient, this is best done with natural gas. what world do you live in that you want to burn oil to heat homes, then put inefficient solar water heaters everywhere. What do you want, a huge tax to subsidize others to heat more swimming pools. North america will export large quantities of natural gas soon, why not use it here?

 

....when we converted we just had the cost of a new nat gas furance which was not too expensive, and 90% efficient (vs. 65% for oil) so payback was very good not to mention oil furnace was old anyways. Of course, we were dependent on gas company running the gas lines to our house.

 

Yes...a low number by any measure considering only 8% in US have oil heat. As others have noted the issues with older homes, older infrastructure and running gas lines are the reasons. Higher subsidy by government is the answer since it is in national interest to cut oil use but not in homeowners personal financial interest.

Best way to go would be electric since the homes have that and no need for digging gas lines. Then add solar hot water panels and a couple solar PV panels to reduce utility power needed, weather proof the home to further lower energy needs and then convert the main utility power to natural gas vs. each home. Also add wind power and solar to the utility end of the mix. The off shore wind power farm in Massachusetts for example.

You seem to have confused some facts. Hot water is typically 30% of homes utility bill. A solar hot water heater will likely reduce that by 30-70% depending on weather, so it would reduce the total utility bill by 10% to 20%. Payback on this is not good for homeowner but it is in national interest to cut US energy use and cut oil and coal use in particular so a near 100% subsidy on this would be big economic boost in industry and jobs with good macro economic help by cutting US oil and energy imports.

 

That 8% is concentrated mainly in the north east and alaska. States in the north east need to get with the program and run gas lines, and actually not make cleaner gas regulated more environmentally than heat oil. People will naturally change over quickly if those state governments were not in the way. HOw in the world can it be in a homeowners interest to have oil heat. That's just dumb.

The best way is to run gas lines. Electric heat is much less efficient. Again read bellow, solar hot water is a really dumb idea.

Can you site a source for the 30%? Likely when you look it up, you will find it wrong.
Where Does My Money Go? : ENERGY STAR
It varies regionally but how about 14% for average according to energystar. If your paying 30%, its probably time to get a more efficient modern water heater.

Solar water heaters cut zero, zilch, nada imported oil. They have an extremely small payback in jobs, worse than military spending, and are one of the worst uses of alternative energy spending. People put them in today out of subsidies or ignorance. Or if they are rich and want to heat a pool.
quick googling for a recent article why they make no sense

Solar Thermal is Dead | GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

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Bottom line a pv + efficient heat pump water heater saves more energy for the same costs. Solar thermal is a 70s idea, that made sense for some back when technology was less mature than today, but never made sense without subsidies. Now its simply a huge waste of resources that people like for sentimental, not environmental reasons.

 

So we're going to burn an expensive fuel (natural gas) which could be economically adapted for direct use in transportation in stationary devices that could be fueled with a cheaper fuel (coal) in order to undergo the losses in transmission so that the energy can be used in transportation while exporting the cheaper fuel to our economic competitors so that they can burn it in unscrubbed power plants - saving them even more money allowing them to add vast numbers of vehicles to their fleets without worrying about advanced pollution controls...
Annnndddd this makes sense how?