You don't even have to convert coal to methanol... When you consider how much energy is used by many manufacturing processes, to name but one major energy using sector, converting them from, say natural gas or oil would make a huge dent in overall energy usage.
I don't know about North America, but where I came from - the UK - everyone, domestic and industrial - used coal gas. The method of creating coal gas it extremely simple, and while it was known to be a dirty process, especially its storage, which was done in huge low pressure dome-like structures called "gasometers," I'm pretty certain that nowadays we could do much better in that respect. And I'm reasonably certain that coal gas could be produced relatively inexpensively; just a hunch. The gas was also quite poisonous - containing a high proportion of carbon monoxide, but that was not reckoned to be a problem by those who used it, which was just about everyone. The main problem, as I believe we all know, is that the "green crowd" don't want us burning ANYTHING, so the proposal to dig up coal and use if for ANYTHING will be met with fierce resistance, mostly by bigmouths. P. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: vortex <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 10:23:04 AM Subject: Re: [VO]: Economic models Well, I ordered the book based on the less than enthusiastic (first) review on the Amazon site. The economic ideas seems rather logical, but perhaps too idealist and remote for use in actual decision making, as opposed to practical solutions to present problems. Speaking of practicality - has any economist ever done a computer model of whether - and most of all - at what price the USA would be better off, as a last resort to eliminate out reliance on Arab oil, by converting our massive coal supplies to methanol ? Let's say we can supply 30% of our needs in the USA with domestic oil. We definitely have the coal resources, and the technology to supply the other 70% with coal-based methanol, but it would be at a higher cost. How high a cost is doable? Can we factor in the cost of being less dependent on our sworn-enemies as part of the formula ? If oil is at $80-100 per barrel, and and the equivalent energy from coal based methanol costs $150 - then by the time we could build 20-50 large conversion plants in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska etc. the price of OPEC crude would be even more. But Catch-22 - in so doing, the increased supply of oil on the world market would force the price of that crude back down. So our economic competitors (China) become prime beneficiaries. Nevertheless - this is such an attractive proposition from a number of different perspectives (eliminating the temptation of Oil-Wars) that it is surprising that one of the Candidates has not jumped on it. Jones Lawrence de Bivort wrote: > Eric Beinhocker examines a new model for economics in THE ORIGIN OF > WEALTH: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What It Means for Business > and Society. Pretty provocative and it may answer Richard’s criterion. > > Good weekend, all.
