Energy independence: Only a methanol hybrid away
Natural gas today, methanogenesis tomorrow?
Time to get serious about natural gas
A new report out of MIT suggests that significant reductions in CO2 emissions and foreign oil consumption are achievable using natural gas to replace coal, while converting natural gas into methanol for transportation.
While natural gas could have a huge impact on reducing CO2 emissions from coal-generated electricity, it would not have the same impact for transportation, but hybrid technology could change that.
Based on a two-year study, MIT found that natural gas could play a leading role in reducing CO2 emissions by replacing old, inefficient coal plants. Likewise, while the study found that natural gas offers possibilities as a transportation fuel, it’s role would be limited because of the excess costs in converting gasoline vehicles to run on natural gas. Instead, MIT suggests that natural gas could be converted into methanol to reduce foreign energy dependence, although CO2 emissions would be unchanged.
Of course, couldn’t methanol-fueled vehicles coupled with hybrid technology help reduce CO2 emissions, while also advancing battery technologies?
Moreover, methanol could be a great path towards fuel cell vehicles and the organic production of methanol via methanogenesis, for instance. In addition, natural gas electrified plug-in vehicles would also be much cleaner than coal-powered plug-in vehicles.
And, while natural gas might not make sense in the personal transportation industry (although I’m sure there are many in South America that would disagree) something like the Pickens plan – with its focus on large, cross country transportation – might make sense. Plus, such a plan could also be coupled with a very basic natural gas-reformatted-into-hydrogen fueling infrastructure as well.
None of this means that natural gas is the future. It is not, but the US alone has enough natural gas to power up for 100 years – providing significant amounts of time to develop nuclear, solar, wind, etc, while reducing CO2 emissions and foreign oil consumption. Oh yeah, and jobs.
Furthermore, natural isn’t just a fuel, it’s a technological enabler. For example, a stronger focus on natural gas would push the coal industry to make massive investments in coal sequestration, for instance, if the coal industry wants to try to compete with natural gas. Likewise, a significant focus on natural gas could help develop different types of fuel cells, and make wind and solar power more cost-effective through more efficient base-load cycling. And, ironically, natural gas could itself one day be replaced by organically produced methanol generated from methanogenesis.
Ultimately, natural gas can be about much more than natural gas, and a strong move towards natural gas might actually lead to a technological breakthrough that crushes the need for natural gas as a fuel, and that might be its greatest quality.
“While the new report emphasized the great potential for natural gas as a transitional fuel to help curb greenhouse gases and dependence on oil, it also stresses that it is important as a matter of national policy not to favor any one fuel or energy source in a way that puts others at a disadvantage. The most useful policies, the authors suggested, are ones that produce a truly “level playing field” for all forms of energy supply and for demand reduction, and thus let the marketplace, and the ingenuity of the nation’s researchers, determine the best options,” notes GreenCarCongress.
“Level playing field”. I love that. Neither the government, nor the distinguished scientists at MIT – or anywhere else for the matter – can predict the evolution of technology.
While some might argue that cap and trade would be the perfect solution for a “level playing field”, I couldn’t disagree more. Cap and trade would be a porkfest, possibly the biggest ever – that’s simply the way Congress does business, regardless of party, and we the people should already know that. If carbon is the key, then a carbon tax is the only way to sleigh the pig.
Unfortunately, however, a carbon tax might be even less popular than cap and trade these days. Thus, America is between a rock and a hard place.
So, why not give natural gas a serious try? Or, why not at least give natural gas the kind of “level playing field” that not just Boone Pickens has spent years calling for, but now also MIT? Minimally, it seems, a stronger embrace of natural gas would be a significant first step towards a much more “level playing field.”
Sorry the above post was so poorly written. Should have corrected before sending.
Tom G.
Hi Larry:
Good post, I really like this part of it. “In other words we might get 90% out of dirty coal but “clean” coal might actually only “net” us 40%.”
I truly wished we were at that level. For example, a typical coal power plant uses 3 parts of heat energy to produce 1 kW of electricity or heat energy [equivalent Btu's/kW]. Natural gas is a little better at about 40% efficiency. While this is about twice as efficient as an ICE we are still wasting a tremendous amount of energy in our country. Something on the order of 40-70% depending on what type of power plant we are talking about.
What this means is that our current energy supplies of electricity WASTE about 66% of every thing we put into them. Coal, nuclear, natural gas, geothermal – all about the same. Why is this you ask and what can we do about it.
We burn coal to heat water, it turns to steam, the steam turns a turbine, the turbine turns a generator, the generator powers pumps, valves, transformers. Make sense right – much like your example above of the negative effect of clean coal and the CCS process.
What can we do about this waste? Well quite a bit really. We can conserve which if you think about it is like free energy + 66%. Of course we are doing a very good job of that today are we. What we need is for electric rates to hit $.25/kw in the lowest tier.
We can also cut down on the number of steps involved in the process used to create electrical energy. For example, using natural gas to heat our homes requires 4 less steps than using that same gas to create electricity. Another example, if we can find inexpensive ways to store energy from variable energy sources like wind turbines and solar we will be many steps closer to the original source of the energy we need as you described.
This whole process is not will understood by most people. They just want their lights to turn on when they flip the switch. We have electrical gadgets by the millions for the sole purpose of entertaining us. Energy has been so cheap in the U.S. no one really cared.
Unfortunately much of that cheap energy is coming to an end – or is it? Depends on who you believe and your profit motives.
I could write a book about why renewable energy is really our only hope. It is the only thing that can provide the amount of energy we will need for future generations. I don’t care what you do to coal, it will never be clean. I don’t care how many economizers, recuperators and designs you try, a natural gas power plant it will every reach the 100% efficiency level you talked about.
Your bud
Tom G.
any energy that is not extractive in a native form…
fossil fuels, solar, wind tides.. not sure about Nukes…
but another that “converts” – and needs energy in the conversion – obviously needs to yield at some level higher than one-to-one.
So.. take something like ethanol or hydrogen and ask – how we get them?
We have to derive them from states other than natural and that means we need to use energy to create energy.
Obviously if the conversion is less than one to one – we lose.
Carbon Sequestration is a sort of backwards version of this.
We take an extraction fuel and we “process” it into another form and in the process of doing that – we expend energy to “sequester” it and at the same time we expend extra energy to sequester – we reduce the net BTUS from the initial state.
I.E. – “Clean” Coal derived from dirty coal requires additional energy and the net output is less than if we just used the dirty coal.
In all of these cases, where does the extra energy to do the conversion come from?
It’s sort of like an internal combustion engine. There is no such thing as an internal combustion engine that is 110% efficient.
The goal is to make it as efficient as we can – but at the end of the day, we know that it won’t even be 100% or close to it.
I assert – that we have the same problem with converting fuels..
In other words we might get 90% out of dirty coal but “clean” coal might actually only “net” us 40%.
In other words we just cut our 100/200 year supply of coal – in half.
Same deal with hydrogen and ethanol.
for every unit of hydrogen or ethanol how many other units of energy are required to convert them from their initial states?
Hopefully everyone can take a few minutes and go to this website. Those of you who get HBO, how was the movie?
Tom G.
http://gaslandthemovie.com/screenings
“rationalize our own lack of willingness to do this …by blaming others..including the government for not “doing something”.”
Well, I’ve drastically changed my lifestyle since 9/11, significantly reducing both my carbon and oil footprints. My mileage, for instance, is less than a quarter of what it used to be, and making that change was very difficult, but in the long run, it’s been rewarding. I’ve actually found that I don’t miss driving at all, and when I have to drive, I hate it.
In terms of blaming the government, i’d argue that essentially that is the key to this whole debate. I’d argue, based on the MIT study and much other data, that the government tries to pick winners and favorites whenever they try to do something based on politics, power and money. In my opinion, MIT is against this. Instead, the government should be getting out of the way and only focus on fair and safe regulations for nuturing competition.
Technology is, for lack of a better word or phrase, moving at the speed of light. It is simply beyond the comprehension and capabilities of Congress to manage the future and predict technological winners. Keep it clean and fair, that’s the best that can be asked of the government, otherwise it’s all Orwellian.
First, carbon sequestration wasn’t put forth by either me or MIT as a plan, but as a requirement for coal to compete with natural gas if there was a level playing field. However, TODAY, the current administration is moving forward with a plan, EVs for instance, strongly based on coal power, much of it old dirty coal power. That’s our plan today, and the Obama administration believes very strongly in the potential of carbon capture. In some ways you could say that Obama is betting a big chunk of the farm on it. Tell me for instance, why is Obama desiring to spend $10 billion on deployment cities today for EVs? Won’t that mean that people are then charging their EVs during the day, during peak hours? Wasn’t the point of EVs until a supergrid was developed to charge late at night and early in the morning?
Where is that new power going to come from? New solar power plants? Let’s not worry, Congress will pass a cap and trade plan that will resolve all our issues and there is no need to worry if we all just bark along?
Second, there has been a revolution in natural gas in only the last 2-3 years because of newly invented horizontal drilling techniques. That is simply a fact that can be verified far beyond MIT. Likewise, I’ll bet that had the Colorado pipeline been finished, those shortages in the past would have been limited. Again, but that was before horizontal drilling. Likewise, MIT did investigate the potential environmental damage from the fracturing caused by horizontal drilling and compared to other fuels, and that is no reason to not to have a level playing field. The environmental damage can be mitigated and is still probably far less damaging than the competition.
Third, many deals, especially recently, have been worked out with the ethanol and coal industries, BUT NOT natural gas. Why? Politics? Pork? Ignorance? Why are we so against natural gas, yet so willing to continue down our current OBVIOUSLY flawed path? Where does coal and ethanol take America that is so much better than natural gas in the interim? Again, if we’re bridging to solar and wind power, natural gas is a better bridge because of more flexible load cycling. So, doesn’t that alone make natural gas a worthy competitor of coal?
Is perfect solution the only way out now? Isn’t that just burying our heads in the sand, as we have been for the last several decades? How many 100’s of billions has the US invested in our corny-economy I wonder? Yet, after decades, what has really been accomplished?
Again, the point is a level playing field. MIT is not suggesting a total embrace of natural gas, ESPECIALLY at the expense of other options. That is EXACTLY what MIT is arguing against. MIT is simply arguing that we establish a level playing field. If we do that today, based on the technological capabilities of today, we’ll find that natural gas is in many cases a much better resource than ethanol or coal, for instance.
That doesn’t mean its perfect, but it could be a bridge.
More important, creating competition between ethanol, coal and natural gas, for instance, might push breakthroughs such as methanogenesis, cellulosic ethanol, or carbon sequestration – as well as many other possibilities. Lack of competition means there is more reason for big business to accept the status quo Fed handouts.
That’s the point. We can have viable competition today that offers a big impact both today and tomorrow.
In my opinion, playing politics is the worst thing that can be done today. Technology has proven over and over and over and over that it regularly defies everyone, supporters, skeptics, scientists and naysayers, especially today’s technology, which is so advanced it is greater than the sum of its parts. We cannot predict the future.
Only fair competition can nurture such an environment, and we certainly do not have that today. Instead, we’re content to guzzle foreign oil, coal and highly subsidized ethanol until the energy wizard grants us a fairy tale solution.
Where to start…..
carbon sequestration CCS – a scam? perhaps
natural gas fracking? an environmental threat? perhaps
Nuclear Power – an environmental threat? for sure but perhaps along the lines of one chance in a million but when it happens, really, really bad.
So bad, that we have a special law that exempts all damages over 10 billion dollars to the companies involved and we the taxpayers will pay for the rest.
what happens when you inject carbon gas into water? does it create carbonic acid (you know the stuff most of us drink but we call it “soft” drinks)?
I don’t see us dropping all fossil fuels and dropping back to sun, wind, tide power only – overnight – worldwide.
It has to be a transition.
That means none of the intermediate choices are going to be damage-free.
so we end up with Sophie Choice dilemmas.
Is “fracking” more risky that deep sea oil drilling more risky than Nukes more risky than CCS?
The problem that we have in my humble opinion is that we don’t like any of the choices particularly …..
Could you power your home and your car from solar right now?
I think you could if you don’t live in a multi-family shelter – i.e you live in a home.
You could spend 50K (or more) and festoon your residence with solar panels in exchange for a new SUV and big screen TVs and college for your kids, etc.
You could make your own “mark” on the issue by actually living what you say you believe in.
Most of us have that choice.
And Most of us choose to NOT pay the equivalent of $10 a gallon for gasoline and 30 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity …. and most of us….
rationalize our own lack of willingness to do this …by blaming others..including the government for not “doing something”.
I’ll stop here and ask how folks feel about by last sentence.
I am usually a big supporter of stuff coming out of MIT. But I encourage everyone to follow the link above “new report out of MIT” and read the report. It is really shocking coming from a bunch of people I consider to be smart.
You know, I am just getting really tired of reading about how natural gas is going to save the day. We can always find some answers in history.
First is was the wonderful new technology called Carbon Capture and Sequestration [CCS]. We even had this new marketing campaign called “clean coal”. I have visited coal plants and they are not clean. You can go to many website and the general consensus is that CCS and clean coal are never going to work cost effectively in our lifetimes.
Then there was our natural gas shortage about 4 or 5 years ago – remember? Natural gas hit $7.50/thousand cubic feet. Here we are just a few years later and now all of the sudden we have enough for our transportation system for 92 years. Not only that we will have enough for most of our electricity generation. I am really beginning to think a lot of people are smoking a lot of funny smoke back at MIT. We might have enough natural gas to support our 18 wheel trucking fleet but I don’t see enough for everything else talked about in this report. When you read the report you will find phrases like “substantial uncertainty”. That my friends means they really don’t have a clue if it will work or not. Did they go talk to individuals who already have had their ground water polluted by shale fracturing?
There is only one way that I know of to stop adding more carbon to our air – stop BURNING the darn stuff. If you believe in global warming this report should make you mad as h… If you think global warming is a bunch of bunk, then you should still be mad for being lied to and for people who have nothing better to do than to pollute your air, water, lakes, and generally screwing up our planet.
There are answers to our energy problems. We seem to be so darn busy trying to find more carbon to burn up we overlook energy technologies that can work.
This post is long enough for now. Maybe more later.
Tom G.