Keith,
>People have been saying that here for five years, and elsewhere no
>doubt much longer. I'm not being sceptical, I agree with you. That
>they're so slow off the mark and it's taking them so long would
>rather tend to reinforce my scepticism of their much-vaunted and
>largely mythical super-efficiency, and certainly of their economies
>of scale. Small is more beautiful! LOL!
Lets hope that they are too blinded by their outlook on petroleum
long enough for the co-ops and local interests to take hold.
It's sometimes compared with the Prohibition (not a bad comparison,
Big Oil certainly had their grubby little fingers deep into that
particular pie). Anyway, alcohol (ethanol) was much too entrenched to
be so simply eradicated from society, people wouldn't accept it. I've
seen data that the consumption of alcohol went up by 80% - the
attraction of the illicit, and perhaps a measure of how little people
like being told by a government/corporate nanny what they can and
can't do for their own good.
I think it's too late to stop it with biofuels and probably
especially biodiesel. There are such moves afoot to control and
deter, in Australia, and elsewhere (quite swingeing, some of them),
but more likely it will simply drive the backyarders and DIY-ers -
the small guys - underground. I can see indications of that
happening. These tend to be individualistic people,
independent-minded, perhaps less a part of the "herd" than many or
most. Not so easy to push them around, or at least to make it stick.
But again, why so late? The backyarders and small-scalers have cost
Big Oil and government millions upon millions already in lost
revenues and lost taxes, and they're only beginning to notice now?
We're right under their radar sceen, and likely to remain there, no
matter how much they try to stop it. It's out of control, IMO.
Of course with the Prohibition the highly unfortunate effect was to
give a massive boost to organised crime, much like the drugs controls
(per se) have done since.
Ah well.. so we're all headed to be stinking rich kingpins of the
illicit biofuels trade, biodiesel godfathers, LOL! Anybody inerested
in an offer you can't refuse? :-)
However, the avaliable feed stocks are not enough to fulfill our
current consumption (talking both biodiesels and ethanol). So, is
it plausable that any given fuel economy of an industrialized nation
can be sustained with out a sizable infrastructure?
Current consumption of the OECD countries, especially of the US, is
out of the question, biofuels or no biofuels. See:
World energy use
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_404.html#energyuse
Hence the Biofuel list mantra, or one of them:
It's become something of a mantra that simply
substituting biofuel for fossil-fuels is no answer - a rational
energy future requires great reductions in energy use (waste), great
improvements in energy efficiency, and probably most important,
decentralisation of supply to the local level, along with the use of
all available renewable technologies in combination as the local
circumstances demand.
Not good news for big, central and top-down vested interests, eh? Add
to that what can only be described as a pure addiction to fossil
fuels and I think we have part of the answer to why they're moving so
snailishly fast.
See, eg:
http://archive.nnytech.net/sgroup/BIOFUELS-BIZ/1395/
How much fuel can we grow?
http://archive.nnytech.net/sgroup/BIOFUELS-BIZ/1801/
Re: Biofuels hold key to future of British farming
Regards
Keith
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