Paving Way for Smart Ideas
By DE BUEGER, John
As if the price of petrol hadn’t soared enough lately, Clark & Co intend to amplify the agony by applying two extra levies — to fund regional development and bio-fuel research. As the justification for these doesn’t appear to be overburdened with intellectual rigour, it isn’t surprising John Key doesn’t agree.
Given that the high fuel prices are here to stay, traffic growth will slow — building more roads is pointless.
As for taxing bio-fuels, one would have thought this was well covered by petrol tax — particularly given that the virtual doubling of fuel over the past 18 months has equally increased the GST take per litre.
Despite the hype, synthetic and bio- fuels are the fuels of the long-term future.
It is a pity that most current bio-fuels are more an unmitigated disaster, rather than the nirvana of energy efficiency. Some need more diesel to produce than the energy they contain, some drive up food prices due to corn being turned into gas guzzler fuel, and some are the end products of tropical rainforest destruction — and also have a huge carbon footprint due the peat burn-off in the existing swamps.
To make sense of it all, the main point to note is that there is bio-fuel and bio- fuel.
Current bio-fuels are the products of simple fermentation, or derivatives of natural oils.
For example, in Brazil a huge industry has evolved to convert sugar cane into alcohol. This is blended into petrol. As the crushed spent cane-stalks are burnt to power the whole process, from an energy balance point of view, Brazilian gasohol isn’t a bad idea.
Likewise, using spent oil from fish and chip shops in diesel engines has to be better than pouring it down the drain.
The same can not be claimed for fuel derived from American corn. Instead of ending up on the dinner plate, huge quantities are fermented into alcohol. The process of growing, harvesting and conversion requires almost as much fossil fuel as if it never took place. To make enough fuel to fill the tank of the average SUV just once requires the amount of corn that would to feed one person for a year.
The driver for this absurdity is a “green-subsidy” paid to corn growers who “make the US less dependent on imported oil” — another of George Bush’s brilliant ideas.
Bio-diesel derived from palm oil is little better. Palm oil plantations are a cancerous mono-culture that have replaced tropical rain forest, and are driving the majority of species that previously lived there into extinction. After collection, processing and shipping, the energy balance is marginal.
Getting rid of the SUVs in the first place would make more sense.
Little wonder that European politicians are having second thoughts about both the morality, as well as the practicality, of setting mandatory minimum percentages of bio-fuel.
On balance, the sole redeeming feature of first-generation bio- fuels is that they pave the way for much smarter ideas. There may be lingering doubts about global warming, but there are no question marks over peak oil, resource depletion, and the sheer necessity to switch to sustainable energy.
Unless you want electric cars powered by nuclear power plants, there is no long- term alternative to bio-fuel (in fact, there probably is no long-term alternative to bio-fuel anyway, because mass adoption of a worldwide electric car fleet would lead to worries over peak uranium).
It is in the realm of second and third generation bio-fuels where there is room for hope — and particularly for oil importing countries with low population densities like New Zealand.
It was a relief to learn that the government is funding basic research into several bright ideas aimed at utilising the vast amounts of cellulose from fields and forests that are wasted every year — burnt, dumped, buried etc.
Converting corn stover, or sawmill off- cuts into transport fuel isn’t technically easy, but this where the advances that will really make a difference can be expected. There are four technologies that can be adopted — fermentation, gasification, pyrolysis and dissolution under heat or pressure. They all have their pluses and minuses.
It has been calculated that if trees were planted on one million hectares of marginal hill country, and if the enzyme conversion/ fermentation route research under development proves commercial, New Zealand could reduce oil imports to virtually nil over a few decades.
Gasification and pyrolysis both involve heating the bio-mass to produce varying quantities of three products — carbon char, an oily feedstock and a combustible gas. The resulting carbon footprints depend on the process chosen, and only time will tell at what oil cut-off price each of these process routes become viable.
The days of cheap petrol are over, and if this ushers in an age of fewer boy racers, V8 bogans and gas-guzzling urban assault vehicles, that at least is positive.
Meanwhile, while Clark & Co are pondering tax breaks, they might care to consider the justification for clawing from us nearly twice the GST on petrol they got a year ago.
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