I contend that, as a good businessman, Khosla understands this and is trying to benefit from it. The car companies don’t want electric cars because they require less maintenance and don’t make the owner beholden to big oil, which is bad for profits. Khosla sees this and realizes that if he can get you to buy a car that makes you beholden to him for twenty years, it will be very good for business.

Big Oil, biofuels, and hydrogen - all these fuels keep you beholden to a top-down corporate hegemony which concentrates profits upward and out of local communities. When people own their own power (solar panels) and can plug their car into them, the money stays with them in a bottom-up economy with greater income parity and a better chance for long-term economic growth.

But as this distributed wealth can’t be captured as easily, its much harder to fund with venture capital. Hence, Khosla.

http://biopact.com/

You wrote that the Prius is not a typical hybrid. It is the best hybrid by far. Have you driven any of the G.M. or Ford hybrids. They come in many sizes from compact to SUV and I’d bet with your growing reputation as a guy who can assess a car, you’d be welcomed for test drives. Here’s something the politicians could do right now, use the money now being spent on automobiles by all branches of government at all levels to buy American made hybrid vehicles. Start right now. The next vehicle bought by any state, local or federal agency must be an American Hybrid. Keep buying them until they run out.

2) We really, really, really need to address two issues well, ignoring all the too-and-fro over current (dumb) ethanol subsidies, which after all, started with a whole lot of other (dumb) subsidies for corn, for such things as high-fructose corn syrup and feedlot beef.
This is what Iowa says they & US do with corn [ignoring the sales pitch]:
http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_3.html

3) Issue 1: cars are *relatively* easy to fix. I have no doubt I’ll be able to get decent PHEV and EV vehicles I like in just a few years, and as fuel prices go up (one way or another), they’ll be encouraged more, and if CA and co ever get past the EPA, that will help.

But, I just don;’t know what to do with Class 8 trucks, or bigger tractors, or combines, or ships, in the long-term, i.e., after oil gets very expensive. I don’t know how to electrify a John Deere combine with 400HP & a 300-gallon diesel tank. Maybe these things disappear?

From EERE, we have:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ office_eere/ pdfs/ figure2_oil_use.pdf
but maybe you’ve got a better one.

When I look at that one, I see good news and bad news:
Good: cars & (some of) light trucks is low-hanging fruit that we can go after with PHEVs and EVs.
bad: I don’t know what to do with the heavy trucks, off-road, and shipping. I’m not sure how much of the light truck space is light trucks actually used to haul things.

Anyway, for better or worse, US agriculture is pretty energy-intensive, although direct energy use is lower than I’d have expected offhand:

http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL32677.pdf

4) Issue 2: farms again. Regardless of all the calculations, as an old farmboy, I observe that farmers have long dedicated acreage for fuel, if that made any sense. Farmers are notorious for wanting independence. I grew up on farm that had been in the family since ~1840. We reserved some land for trees for firewood. Of course, for a while in the late 1800s, our farm had an oil well and that was the best cash crop Farmers really, really hate fast jiggles in their costs.

Even assuming that the dumb subsidies go away, if gas and diesel get expensive enough, and especially if fuel prices gyrate, it will get overpoweringly attractive to be growing first corn for ethanol, to have a cash crop that tracks fuel prices, and if any kind of cellulosic becomes plausible, especially if it works with less fertilizer (which we know will get more expensive), they’ll certainly do that.

As long as it isn’t worse for the climate, and even if it’s just more predictable, I find it hard to believe that the Mid-West won’t be growing some biofuels. To be honest, if the subsidies go away, I’d rather they grow biofuels than use more oil, or worse CTL, and in any case, some of the uses of the existing corn seem pretty negative to me. Farm subsidies have long encouraged awful effects.

Old Amish allocate some land & crops to support horses, because otherwise, their overall revenue would go down, so that hay = biofuel

This isn’t to be in the middle of arguments with Vinod, and I haven’t worked on a farm for a long time, but I think there are some relevant farm-psychology issues here. Farmers already have to figure out how to deal with more expensive fertilizer.

Biopact is advocating using biofuels for the North, produced in the South, as a way of bringing development to the South. That’s a very different agenda than solving global warming.

It is important to recognize that even when (1) biofuels are possible, and (2) small use of some biofuels may have small greenhouse gas benefits (i.e. they are good, locally), that does not imply that biofuels can replace fossil fuels. The question is one of public policy. Shouldn’t public policy be focused upon things that are steps in the right direction? Some biofuels may be good in small amounts, but they are still a dead-end detour because they cannot scale up to replace our fossil addiction. With very optimistic assumptions, it would take 318,309 sq.mi. to grow enough switchgrass to produce cellulosic ethanol (not corn!) to power U.S. passenger vehicle travel in 2050. In comparison, using conservative assumption, it would take only 4,973 sq.mi. of Concentrated Solar Power to do the same thing for a fleet of battery electric vehicles. The latter is feasible; the former is not. Cellulosic ethanol is 64 times the land area. There is no synergy between cellulosic ethanol and electric transportation. Cellulosic ethanol is a dead-end; go that way and all you do is waste time.

To put this in perspective, the world currently uses about 400–420 exajoules per year from all sources. In the yead 2050 CE, with a population of about 9 billion assumed, a reasonable guess is a consumption of about 800 exajoules per year. Providing about half this via bioenergy appears feasible. Obviously the most economic methods should be used first.

Regarding global warming issues, bioenergy is essentially carbon-neutral, that is, does not add more fossil carbon to the active carbon cycle. Using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) techniques and firing with biomass, the result is carbon-negative.

Also, when I looked up the report, Table 1 gave a range of 40-1100 EJ with 1100 EJ being “most optimal”. I am not sure where the 1.4 ZJ you cited came from, but note the 40 EJ lower bound is enormously lower. Should we bet on being able to be closer to the 1100 than the 40?

One must also consider the conversion efficiency from different forms of energy to others. Biomass energy is not directly usable; it needs to be converted to a fuel like ethanol or to electricity. This is typically 30-60% efficient. Fuels like ethanol need to be burned, and this is only 30% efficient again.

To generate the projected 0.9 ZJ in 2050 from sunlight, it takes only 3 ZJ of of 3850 ZJ (0.08%) and 30% efficient CSP or PV. To generate 0.9 ZJ of electricity from 1.4 ZJ of biomass requires essentially 100% of earth’s crop land and 64% efficient power plants. Coal power plants are 30-40% efficient today.

0.08% of the Earth seems like a better starting place to me.

Finally, let me quote from biopact.com for the rest of this comment:

Critical issues include:
* Competition for water resources: Although the estimates presented in Table 1 generally exclude irrigation for biomass production, it may be necessary in some countries where water is already scarce.

* Use of fertilisers and pest control techniques: Improved farm management and higher productivity depend on the availability of fertilisers and pest control. The environmental effects of heavy use of fertiliser and pesticides could be serious.

* Land-use: More intensive farming to produce energy crops on a large-scale may result in losses of biodiversity. Perennial crops are expected to be less harmful than conventional crops such as cereals and seeds, or even able to achieve positive effects. More intensive cattle-raising would also be necessary to free up grassland currently used for grazing.

* Competition with food and feed production: Increased biomass production for biofuels out of balance with required productivity increases in agriculture could drive up land and food prices.

http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2008/03/ethanol-e85.html

“But there are some problems with increasing ethanol blends. Ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, so increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline will likely result in lower fuel economy. Increasing standard fuel blends from zero to 10 percent ethanol, as is happening today, has little or no impact on fuel economy. In tests, the differences occur within the margin of error, about 0.5 percent. Further increasing ethanol levels to 20 percent reduces fuel economy between 1 and 3 percent, according to testing by the DOE and General Motors. Evaluations are underway to determine if E20 will burn effectively in today’s engines without impacting reliability and longevity, and also assessing potential impact on fuel economy.”

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