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You still cannot grasp the basic concepts.

ALL the current ethanol production methods in the US do not work at scale. Switch grass was a nice dream, it failed. Sugar beets was a nice dream, it failed. All the various cellulose projects failed.

You seem to think that I am against getting off oil. You are WRONG. I have wanted us out of the middle east since the mid 1970's. We keep screwing around over there and it keeps biting us in the ass. Which has been obvious since at least the mid 70s, probably much earlier. Those who have been working towards this goal for over four decades understand your frustration. We have been dealing with it for a long time.

As for the amount of oil burned in electricity production, look at the link that I posted. Less than 1% of the electricity produced in the US was done from oil.

Yes and the reason has little to none doing with oil. It has to do with one country. One particular country. As for getting off oil (not possible anyway, petrochemicals and all that) global warming is still something to worry about regardless of one's foreign policy.

I agree that global warming is a concern but it is pretty hard to separate it from foreign policy. We share the world. If the majority of countries do not take actions to deal with global warming the efforts of the rest will have a vastly muted effect.

I think that is a matter of perspective. One could say that country was the US(probably the most valid choice overall), Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Saudi, Israel, go down the list.

While we are a long way from being able to be completely without of need of oil, if you remove using oil as a fuel there would be no need for importing it. That would also extend our supply of oil out by a few centuries.

said by Lazlow:

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You still cannot grasp the basic concepts.

ALL the current ethanol production methods in the US do not work at scale. Switch grass was a nice dream, it failed. Sugar beets was a nice dream, it failed. All the various cellulose projects failed.

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No, I grasp them. You just insist that because of that, its wrong to do it.

WRONG! Getting off oil at any price is good!

There have been tons of NEW means to do ethanol production, get on it with it. Most of these were scuttled due to the corn or some other farm group being cut out.

Same with electric generation... garbage truck right to the power plant and dump'r in !

There even was some company in Ft. Lauderdale or someplace going to dig up landfills in Broward and use some plasma something on it and burn it up for electric... get on with it.

What you refuse to accept is that I don't care that these methods might not be as efficient as say oil to gasoline is, or what not... If it means we pack up our toys and leave the middle east. so be it!

Maybe this will push for the movement to better production of ethanol, or new gas or what not... Just sitting and wishing and hoping for something better ain't cutting it!

said by Lazlow:

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You seem to think that I am against getting off oil. You are WRONG. I have wanted us out of the middle east since the mid 1970's. We keep screwing around over there and it keeps biting us in the ass. Which has been obvious since at least the mid 70s, probably much earlier. Those who have been working towards this goal for over four decades understand your frustration. We have been dealing with it for a long time.

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While you sitting around arguing about whether this or that is an efficient as oil or coal or gas, we are still doing the same crap.

said by Lazlow:

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As for the amount of oil burned in electricity production, look at the link that I posted. Less than 1% of the electricity produced in the US was done from oil.

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ANY % oil = BAD. As I posted it most likely imported from places we should just let rot! I didn't say it was some huge thing. I said it was used.. Any oil use is bad, unless you can ensure it only comes from AK or shale oil or what ever in the US or CA.

Others want all this electric stuff.... are YOU READY to FUEL THAT ELECTRIC in a SUSTAINABLE (hint it don't mean that!) WAY! ????

That's right NUCLEAR! Oh but the waste... well I've got this map of the US that shows all the places to put the waste... ...

And if you are ready... you better hurry up as Westinghouse is just about ready to collapse, and they are pretty much the goto contractor for this stuff.

You all are waiting around till the perfect solution comes about. HOGWASH!

Yeah they tried the plasma generators (another idea that sounded great) it turned out that unless you could keep them constantly running they do not work. They take a HUGE amount of electricity to fire up the plasma. Once it is up and running it is great, but they cannot be throttled. They where not able to scale them down small enough (capacity wise) to be able to use all the power.

Most of the methods of making ethanol have not failed due to efficiency issues but due to technical issues(cellulose being a prime example). A lot of things work on the small scale but just do not work when you scale them up. The main offender on efficiency is corn. It uses more oil(the thing you want to reduce) than it saves. Ethanol in the US is pretty much as far as it is going to go. The technology to produce it just does not scale. It works fine in a 500 gallon batch but fails when you try to scale it up to a 500,000 gallon batch. Just too many variables to control at scale.

There is a good reason that most of the major power manufactures are investing heavily in both wind and solar. That is also one of the (not the only) reason that they are building natural gas plants rather than coal plants. Natural gas plants take hours to go from zero to full output(good match to solar/wind). Coal plants take days.

Nuclear is ok, as long as it is not the old style rod plants (think china syndrome). The newer style pellet plants essentially cannot melt through the floor. Essentially the radioactive material is encased in a ceramic material that can withstand the high temperature of the radioactive (un cooled). The problem being is nobody wants to live next to a nuclear plant and we refuse to update our power grid. The disposal of the radioactive pellets is also much safer. The radioactive material is "locked" in the ceramic material and there is virtually no way to contaminate ground water(a major issue with rod material). IF I remember correctly Westinghouse stuff is all rod based, which virtually everyone world wide quit building plants for twenty (plus) years ago.

Like I said before; a lot of us have been trying to gain some traction on this for a very long time. Other than electric transport probably the best solution is to switch the national building code to force all construction to be energy neutral. Closed loop ground heat source is about as efficient as it gets for heating and cooling. Well insulated with low loss windows should be mandatory. The 1% oil burners you are so concerned about are almost exclusively used to make electricity during cold spells when homes are using a lot of the natural gas that is normally used to generate electricity. Get the homes off of natural gas and on to ground source and the 1% goes away.

said by Lazlow:

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Like I said before; a lot of us have been trying to gain some traction on this for a very long time. Other than electric transport probably the best solution is to switch the national buil

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You keep posting this, but yet its every thing I post, well its not as efficient as existing something, this either, or that one, or these either...

You are sitting around waiting for the "perfect" replacement....

As for plasma and keeping it fed, I don't buy that... Plenty of garbage in the US to feed it... Excess power... tie it in to the grid better, and oh ,maybe develop storage tech... See... you work the problem! Not just scribble.. oh... thats not THE SOLUTION, so skip it...

Working on these newer techs will resolve the problems... Gas and coal plants have become extremely efficient at the operations. Were they when they came about??? Hardly....We worked the tech to do more with the same amount of fuel. and not just go, meh. its not "THE solution." And Hint... my family has built and or designed probably 80%+ of the coal or gas fired electric plants in the US in the near past. as well as the coal mines that fed them... from the mining to the prep plant to the rail loader ....

So lets work on the tech.... so we only getting x% more ethanol, to replace x% gasoline means less oil imported... Improving the tech to make it work better... etc.. Just going nope, not efficient, move on...

You seem to love electric everything, and guess what solar is the MOST INEFFICIENT THING ON THIS PLANET or universe! Its improved tremendously from its creation and sitll has a long way to go... I am not saying throw it out... I'd put up solar just to get rid of the idiots from the local elec company (not for any "greenie weenie nonsense). Based on your idea solar would have been left in the dust decades ago. We worked it to make it actually sort of passable... The same can be done for ethanol, methanol, plasma, cold fusion, what ever...

As for nuclear... I really don't give a hoot about which tech is used, and nor do I recall Westhinghouses tech v. some one else.. There is only like two places that do this, Westinghouse and I thought Siemens or Krups??? But one especially the DE was getting out??? As DE stupidly is shutting down their plants... Westinghouse is practically owned by Thompson? Alactel or some FR conglomerate as that was / is their prime customer for now.. I know of several engineering firms which pretty much got rid of all their nuclear energy divisions to design with Westinghouse etc.. this stuff. They were the big firms like R&S, B&V... there was a slight glimmer a while ago, that the greenie weenies again snuffed out... sighhh...

Oh the waste of potential for China Syndrome..... Well as I shared before I have a plan for the waste... and depleted uranium makes great ammo! M829

Nothing short of doing it you super duper perfect way is plausible... Well we probably be in the dark waiting for that 100 years ago in electric generation and distribution.

Its not important if its 1% oil use for electric or if these are main line gen or peakers, its that oil is used and that the oil is likely imported. If you ensure its 100 from AK or CA shale oil or what not.. fine.

Getting a sound energy policy to REMOVE IMPORTED OIL from the middle east and other whack a doodle countries RU, former RU's, is the goal.... Going nope, not ethanol, nope not that either.. nope..... nope... nope... Well whats left???

Solar, inefficient as ethanol... its ONLY IMPROVED BECAUSE we worked it! Not walk away from it like you want with anything else.

I'd much rather we go down some dead ends and rabbit holes and get rid of things than just go like you nope, nope, nope, nope....

Maybe 100% ethanol is not the answer to gasoline.... I personally don't think that has been determined, especially since BR can do it... If some backwater no place can.. the US can't??? HOGWASH!

So if you and all these "others" are so keen to get oil out... then quit going nope, and starting going YES or even MAYBE! Geez.

"Maybe 100% ethanol is not the answer to gasoline.... I personally don't think that has been determined, especially since BR can do it... If some backwater no place can.. the US can't??? HOGWASH!"

I keep explaining why BR can do this and you just cannot comprehend. To generate enough ethanol from sugar cane for the US you need an area greater than the the size of the state of Texas that can grow sugar cane. The US does not have one tenth that area that is capable of growing sugar cane. Basically you need jungle/ swamp conditions to grow sugar cane. BZ has lots of those types of acres the US does not. Sugar can makes lots of sugar per plant, thus its name. You need sugar for the yeast to make ethanol.

The problem with using corn to make ethanol is that you use more oil to grow the corn than you save by using ethanol. Which means you are not reducing your oil imports. Corn has essentially no sugar but it does have a lot of starch. IF you heat up cracked corn in water (mash mix) and add enzymes (malted barely) the starch will be converted to sugars. Even then there is far less sugar in corn than there is in sugar cane. From that point on the process is basically the same as it is for sugar cane, but that extra step takes LOTS of energy.

If you go back and read what I wrote about nuclear you will see that I am all for it. There are essentially no serious technical issues with using it. There are two political issues with it. First convince somebody to allow you to build a plant in your back yard, virtually nobody wants to live close to a nuclear plant. Second you can build the plant out in BFE but that would mean building updating our power infrastructure. Even without a remote nuclear plant our power infrastructure has needed to be repaired/updated since at least the 1980s. Just like the rest of our infrastructure it has done nothing but get worse. Nobody is will to pay for it. If you think that you can fix either of these two problems, go for it. Get it done. It would be a monumental accomplishment.

We have been seriously chasing ethanol for over forty years. Being a raised on a farm I, vastly more than most, believed in it. Between research and subsidies we have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into it. We basically are at the same place that we were with ethanol forty years ago. We have just found a ton of things that do not work. Keep in mind that ethanol production has been around since the time of the Pharaohs. Improvements to the technology have been refined over the centuries. Now look at photo voltaics(solar) it has been under development (basically) since the space program. The price per KW of solar has VASTLY steadily decreased. Just in the last decade solar has gone from a specialized use form of energy production to generic use form of energy production. That is why I am behind solar, it works and it is improving. Same thing can be said about wind power.

I find it telling that I gave you an easy, technology available, way to remove the 1% of oil that is being used to make electricity and that you are so concerned about gets the following response:

"Its not important if its 1% oil use for electric or if these are main line gen or peakers, its that oil is used and that the oil is likely imported."

I have repeatedly told you that I agree with you that we need to stop importing oil. Why do you say you want to but everything you do indicates that you do not?