Ethanol is a croc, a band aid solution that assists with keeping consumers at the pump and driving a once marginal industry back into the black.

alternative sources such as water powered engines will be a solution when they can work out how to make sure we must only use their water.

There is no gloom and doom here, we are on the verge of an energy shift like no other, but not until people stop driving cars and profits start to decline will there be the need for alternates to hit the market, there needs to be an opportunity for growth and re establishing marketshare.

In the mean time, lets ditch these silly alternative options as they are pathetic attempts to solve the problem, that actually take more science to produce than things such as water powered engines.

Realist

We need to look at ALL alternatives while shifting from nonrenewables across to sustainable fuels.

Until then, it is reasonable to consider the addition of ethanol (to petro) while we make the transition.

Therefore, to dismiss something as "a crock" is not helpful, as yet hydro-cars are not economically viable. Until we have such technology up and running we need to do everything we can to preserve remaining fossil fuels.

The author needs to learn his subject before writing such useless junk. We already have a viable biodiesel industry, requiring no scientific or huge set up costs. You don't need to use large tracts of land, or denude forests, our native plants and weeds like wild radish produce twice as much oil as commercial food products. It's about control and economic power, nothing else. Another ploy to make out they're looking at alternatives, but doing nothing.

Engines running on water's the way to go, I saw one back in 1976 in Eden NSW. In 1966 I had a ride in the Pritchard steam car in Melbourne which got hundreds of kilometres on 1 lt of kerosene, was silent, fast, had no gears and took less than 1 minute to warm up. Pritchards invention was bought out by the ford motor company and disappeared. The bloke who had his engine running on water straight from the tank, showed his engine to prospective developers and the local federal liberal member. He was found dead 3 weeks later, from supposed natural causes at 28, yet the autopsy was never released, his engine and drawings vanished, whilst the family were at the funeral.

You'll find this is the case with any invention taking control away from automotive and oil cartels, ike the vaporising carburettor, giving more than 100 per lt petrol, Webber took that over and it disappeared. The average cars today are less efficient that 50 years ago, yet lighter and more technologically advanced. How come.

Nothing will change, you either get of your butts and get into biofuels, or go down with the economic ship as its oil fuelled bloatedness sinks under the greed of its controllers. Butanol is much better for petrol replacement and produces a few by products including ethanol.

Biofuels offer many benefits without the pollution, land degradation and are economically sound. Nothing will be done, oil cartels control governments with their huge donations and offers of cushy jobs after retirement. So the people have no chance of getting a better form of energy

The Great Barrier Marine Park Authority might get steamed up over the touted increase in cane farms in its vicinity.
And the suggestion of successful, continuing, production of cane from degraded land, sans fertiliser, deserves itself being fertilised with a heap of skepticism.

The ethanol 'miracle' in Brazil needs to be seen in perspective. Not only do they use sugar cane rather than grain but they have more hectares of good land per person, much of it ex-rainforest. They also have relatively fewer cars which tend to be compacts and they also have good domestic oil production. I doubt whether Australia could replace more than 20% of its current petro fuel use in the form of the favoured two biofuels biodiesel and starch ethanol.

The big unknowns are cellulosic ethanol, butanol, compressed biomethane and Fischer-Tropsch derived biofuels. These could easily overtake the current two biofuels but it could take 10-20 years. An interesting exercise would be to video the traffic on your street then compare the same scene in say 2015. Things are going to be tough for a while yet.

Author comment:

It would be nice to get some serious response, along the lines of the posting by Scout.

Realist simply asserts that ethanol is a 'croc' without any justification or reference to a vast literature. While we wait for 'water powered engines' it might be helpful to know just what is to be used to get the world off fossil fuels. And what exactly is the 'once marginal industry' referred to?

The Alchemist continues his/her line of personal abuse as a substitute for argument. This post seems to endorse biodiesel, which I was at pains to endorse myself. As for continued control by the automotive and oil cartels, I thought that one of the most attractive features of biofuels was that they provide an opportunity for new players -- such as farmers' coops -- to enter the fuel game.

Colinsett refers to the Great Barrier Marine Park, which is now being used to ward off any proposed shift in land use in Queensland -- including one such as sugarcane for ethanol where the fertilisers would be recycled from the waste produced by the ethanol distillation -- a self-enclosed process.

Taswegian seems to agree that biofuels have a significant future. Ethanol from sugarcane is obviously only the beginning -- but the post-fossil fuel future has to start somewhere.

Ethanol from biomass may be part of the solution, particularly if it can be drived from waste that is otherwise not used/recycled. But it can only be part of the solution and is probably best seen as a short term transitional strategy.

Among the many technologies under development, one of the most interesting in my mind is described on the site http://www.changingworldtech.com/ . The idea of petrol/diesel from garbage and other organic waste seems very attractive. I have been following the site for some years and they have recently updated it with a lot of new information. As the company has progressed to at least one scaled up test plant the process has to be at least a reasonable commercial risk. Plants in large cities and alongside large processing plants provide the dual benefit of producing a liquid fuel end product and at the same time solving the very difficult (and very fuel hungry and often very greenhouse gas producing) problem of garbage disposal.

If we are to replace fossil fuels with renewables, we need to be very much more ingenious than simply converting large tracts of land to growing bio-mass (though that may be part of the short term answer). Using garbage in various ways (the above process, methane recovery etc) could also be a useful part of the answer.

The current energy debate does not pay enough attention to the very large scope for greater fuel efficiency. Certainly this is a longer term strategy as it can only proceed at the speed at which cars are replaced, but we should be doing more to encourage hybrids, small relatively inexpensive electric cars for shopping trips and commuting, and similar changes through differential rego fees and similar incentives.

The debate doesn't give enough attention to the fact that, while other fuels can be developed to run cars, fossil oil is an invaluable and almost irreplaceable feedstock for the vast range of plastics on which our society depends. It's another argument for developing a whole range of partial solutions simultaneously, while we work towards a more comprehensive long term solution.

Not a mention of algae as a biofuel source, yet there is currently a huge amount of research in process. The following article [ http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34239 ]details one research project which predicts a biofuel yield of 10,000 to 20,000 m^3 per square kilometre per year from algae. Compare this with soya(50), mustard(130) and palm oil(610). With such potential it is no wonder the ethanol industry is so keen to heavily lobby the government for subsidies before any of the algae projects get more advanced. The last examples of governments picking winners I can think of was that glorious attempt to establish Queensland as a world leader in magnesium alloy and shale oil production. What success stories they were!

We need to consider all options… and we need to greatly improve efficient usage.

And yet again we are well into a debate on this type of subject without any mention of the third really big factor – stabilising the whole size of our society, economy and demand for all sorts of resources.

If we are unsuccessful in finding viable alternatives, we won’t have to worry too much about this factor – it will take care of itself – in a very unpleasant manner. But with the current entrenched continuous growth mentality, if we are successful, we will be facilitating continuous rapid expansion of everything human, which is just going to accelerate us into the next crisis.

For goodness sake, let’s not just think about how we can fuel our future, but how we can do it sustainably – and that means planning for limits to growth (expansion)

John, I didn't personally attack you, you presented an article with no substance, just like others in the past. I would've thought one of the educated elite, would have the proper knowledge of their subject. A short investigation could've given people something to actually debate, like why governments aren't doing anything and what their plans are.

Currently there's no restrictions for making biodiesel, but in the next couple of years excise will be introduced and you may need a refinery licence to produce it, plus the requirements associated with petro/diesel refining. Our enquires show governments have no intention of issuing any new licences so producing co-op's won't be possible. Seed oils will have to be processed by multinationals, removing any advantage in price because of transport, refinery and distribution costs. We're not allowed to make ethanol or butanol unlicenced.

This keeps fuel in the hands of the lib/lab junta backers, disenfranchising the people again. As for requiring fossil oils for plastics etc, seed oil does that efficiently with less pollution and non toxic waste, increasingly seed oil derived products are taking over from fossil oil.

Its not what can be done, but what the elite refuse to allow us to do, so they can maintain control. The proper approach would be locals growing and co-op processing in their area, using cropping, native plants and algae. You can grow a number of crops per year on the same plot, rejuvenating the soil and getting oilseed for production. Add algae dams, forest seed harvesting and you've a viable and sustainable fuel source. This would create jobs making for environmentally sustainable agriculture. If you include local solar, wind, hydro and biofuel power generation, you get a sustainable environmental friendly society. Cities can produce both fuel and power from its waste lowering costs and becoming sustainable

This won't happen as the elite agenda is to keep all commodities and energies in corporate control. We need to cease immigration, development and land degradation, concentrating on providing a fully sustainable society, not the current destructive elitist greed one.

I read your comments, and I think you did attack him. There are things to attack in the article, but you leave yourself open to ridicule suggesting that we can drive cars on something like water which has zero calorific value. You've chosen your nickname well!! There's about as much chance of that happening as finding the philosopher's stone.

John,

I still don't share your optimism for large scale biofuel production from agriculture -- but agree that sugar cane looks to be an unusually productive crop for the warmer latitudes. It is a nitrogen fixer too. It has been a famously land destructive crop in the past although I understand vaguely that practices make it less so now because of decreased burning. I doubt it's 'sustainable' though, especially if stalks are burnt for fuel rather than returned to soil. In Brazil it has been successful (probably only in the short term depending on how sustainable their agriculture is) in part because of lots of cheap labour. These are very serious issues which require more than our respective speculations.

Sorry to take this thread off track, but to the readers who speak of water cars. I'm sorry but there is and never will be such a thing as a water powered car. Yes, there is that story in the Scientist last week[1], and TV news reports from the US[2]. But they gloss over the fact that the energy is not coming from the water at all. In the New Scientist article the energy is stored as pure boron, a highly reactive element which oxidises when it meets water. It takes energy to purify boron in the first place and then to reprocess it once used. You'll always put more energy into this process than you get out, that's just the nature of thermodynamics.

So like hydrogen, which also does not appear in mineable quantities in nature, but must be created, these 'water-powered' cars always use something which is essentially a battery - water happens to be part of the process, but it provides no more energy than it absorbs. It's a bit like saying we're going to solve the energy crisis with rechargable Duracels.

By learning about entropy, the laws of thermodynamics, I've had insights into everything to understanding the economy to cooking my breakfast. And it helps you not get taken in by ideas such as water powered cars.

-- Adam Fenderson, http://www.EnergyBulletin.net

[1] http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/energy-fuels/mg19125621.200-a-fuel-tank-full-of-water.html

[2] http://hytechapps.com/company/press

Alchemist, you and Ludwig are quite right of course, but it's your last paragraph that is of particular importance...
"This won't happen as the elite agenda is to keep all commodities and energies in corporate control. We need to cease immigration, development and land degradation, concentrating on providing a fully sustainable society, not the current destructive elitist greed one."
Unfortunately, your sustainable model won't even begin to occur in our lifetimes. The proverbial will have to hit the fan first. Nature once kept a balance and check mechanism in place to keep humanity at a sustainable level, then they got "clever" and sought to defy nature. Oil has caused an explosion in population. Even in third World countries, oil has led to a huge increase in numbers. If one country worked to erradicate the elite/greed system and introduced sustainability, what about the rest of the World? Many poor countries breed to stay alive. This is a battle we cannot win but nature certainly will and she'll make damned sure humanity, if it still exists, will never buck the system again. Sorry John, as your heart seems to be in the right place, but there's no winners in this apart from mother nature herself. Too late to re-arrange the deck chairs now. Just hope the water isn't too cold.

From the author

While I agree that many things need to be done, including reducing overall energy usage, reducing suburban sprawl, enhancing the energy efficiency of buildings and improving local regulatory requirements, this transformation in our energy usage and social patterns has to start somewhere -- and this is where biofuels make their appearance.

Brazil is not just 'experimenting' with fossil fuel independence, it is already embarked on the journey. And in doing so it is setting a precedent for other countries to follow -- including India and China, as well as Australia. The biofuls issue can only be considered in a global setting.

This is why I emphasized the tropical belt in my article (including Brazil, India, southern China as northern Australia, as well as a lot of Africa and SEAsia) where the countries can break free of fossil fuel bondage and embark on a new energy trajectory. But certain preconditions need to be fulfilled. I'm not referring to the end of capitalism, which might be the dream of some of the contributors to this discussion, but more particularly to the dismantling of trade barriers to ethanol and biodiesel, and effectively the creation of a global free market for biofuels. This would be a huge advance on present arrangements, and help to unlock the current impasse in trade between 'South' and 'North'. At the same time, biofuels will kick-start industrial development in African and other tropical countries; will liberate them from oil import dependence (bearing in mind that India is already over 80% dependent on oil imports, a situation that has to be reversed and quickly); will drive their rural industrialization; and of course reduce greenhouse gas emissions for all of us.

Yes, there are all manner of new possibilities, including algae. The point about a non-fossil fuel energy future is that it is likely to be a 'normal' industry, driven by innovation and competition -- as opposed to their suppression in the 20th century oil and automotive industries. This is something we could all welcome

GrahamY, The philosophers stone is in understanding evolutionary change. I saw an engine that ran on water, it appears these people have one, and provide plans for it.

http://netmar.com/~maat/archive/watercar/h20car2.hhtm

John, “the creation of a global free market for biofuels. “

This means duopoly control for Monsanto and ADM across the world over biofuel stock. Free markets, gives conglomerates free rein to control seed oil production using economic power to suppress competition, just like they do with oil and most other commodities.

Economic capitalism's destroying the world, privatisation has led to increasing monetary imposts on people with less return and fewer services. Economic rationalism and progress is aiding the collapse of our society and infrastructure, with people working longer, fewer permanent jobs and more than 5 million real unemployed, not just those used in constructed statistics. It means what we had for almost free and owned, we now pay a lot more for and don't own it. Yet are expected to provide tax payer funds to support failing privatised entities.

Unless control of fuel and all essential services and infrastructure is in the hands of the people, things will only continue the way they are now. I don't think the people will put up with your direction much longer John, what your delusions promised haven't come to pass, except for the elite. We unnecessarily import food and other commodities to our country, whilst we plough in food crops and shut down factories. Why should we do it with biofuels, just to fill the tanks of a few super yachts.

Who'd want to destroy economic capitalism, its doing a good job destroying its self. We need a lateral approach, not more of the same failed elitist ideologies. I doubt the governent will allow us freedom to produce our own fuels, creating real competition. In a couple of years there'll be heavy taxes and licence fees, making it unviable for the small grower producer.

Achemist,water by itself is an inert compound.It will not burn to produce more energy unless the energy in it's sub-atomic particles are released thus producing nuclear energy.

To separate H2O into it's components of hydrogen and oxygen takes enormous amounts of energy.It may be a totally environmentally friendly combustion,however the energy required to separate it's components in the first place can be environmentally destructive.

There are no easy quick fixes to our energy woes.We have to diversify and be more economical in our use of energy resources.

Wildcat, you are in the right paddock: too much pussy, wild or otherwise. Whatever type of feline we consider ourselves to be, we have rabbited on too successfully.
Grand schemes for fuelling our activities on a business-as-usual basis are not worth tiddly-squat when they have been designed in neglect of the fundamental framework. That framework which is human numbers limited to what the supportive environment can bear.
As Tony McMichael commented in 2001 (Human frontiers, environments and disease)" - the modern human species has now increased 100,000 fold since the initial dispersal out of Africa. This third, ongoing, surge has occurred much faster than ever before. It may yet end up by having added and extra 8-10 billion to the pre-industrial half billion. That figure implies that we will have augmented the Earth's (human) carrying capacity by an extraordinary 10-fold to 15-fold over the past two centuries. Can Earth sustain those numbers in the long term?".
In the five years since that was written, evidence that it can't do so has grown alarmingly - except for those who choose to bury their heads in the sand of obfuscation and denial.
Quoting McMichael again "Although most demographers forecast a plateauing at around 9-10 billion later in the twenty-first century, we could yet be surprised by a much higher or lower figure. If it is the latter, one hopes that it will be because of reduced fertility, not increased mortality."
I share hopes for the latter. But they are not assisted by writers who choose to ignore the fundamental issue of human numbers which relentlessly exert increasingly debilitating pressure upon prospects for human society. Regardless of how useful might be some of the schemes they have in mind.

I have to confess to not having much knowledge about the alternatives and their impacts.

I would think it likely that the way forward would be for Australia to focus on identifying and developing energy alternatives or supplements relevant to our economic and environmental circumstances.

In some respects there seems to be a fairly competitive market in ideas between countries which would seem a our best bet for actually coming up with some viable energy future.

I agree with John that ethanol and other biofuels can play an important part in the future energy mix. Certainly ehtanol is not the answer to all the problems known to man, but John never said it was. I hope we can farm the cane sustainably and I hope the higher labour costs don’t significantly reduce the energy returned over energy invested ratio if the idea is tried in Australia. I’ve also heard that ethanol powered cars don’t run as well in cold climates as warm. Which is not a big issue in Brazil. I also agree that stabilising population would be a much bigger step towards sustainability, but John does not dispute that in his article.

I still have a lot more confidence in an idea that can produce 15 billion litres per year in one country than other ideas, that have yet to prove commercially and environmentally viable. That doesn’t mean shut the door on new ideas. We need them all, but let's give ethanol its due.

Thanks for taking part in the forum John. It is appreciated, but what is the story on the dark 1950’s black and white horror movie photo?

Could someone please supply us with some information regards our natural gas contract with China which was signed well before the oil crisis.

How much per litre are the Chinese paying?
Is the price indexed to reflect current market prices?
Can we elect to terminate the contract?
What are the penalities for us if we default?

I bet the bureaucrats have sold us short and virtually given our gas away.We will be soon paying 60c a litre for natural gas and I bet the Chinese will be paying close to 1c a litre.

Our Govt has become very silent on this supposedly whizz bang deal which has us obligated for decades.Why sell it so cheaply when we can simply supply our own needs and have a higher living standards.It could certainly reduce our balance of payments deficit.We only have enough for 50 yrs,so why flog it off cheaply?

When it comes to business,the Chinese just run rings around us,"The lazy stupid white trash of Asia."

John and others

Part One

The arguments on what constitutes a short-term-viable or long-term-sustainable solution to mankind's oil gluttony do not take sufficient account of the financial, ecological and lifestyle impact of whatever solution or combination of solutions are pursued.

In future, as we wean ourselves off oil/gas energy we will turn to many substitutes, such as biofuels and wider use of coal, solar, wind or nuclear powered electicity. Based on my research I discount hydrogen and water totally sources for cheaply and safely extracting energy.

We will never again experience a fuel that is as easy to obtain, as safe to transport and as simple to exploit as fossil oil.

Biofuel is possible only in a limited way. Think of the massive amounts of energy required today by modern and emerging societies. It must surely be apparent that the land requirements across tropical regions, replacing cropping land, pasture land or indigenous vegetation will cause major disruptions to ecologies and/or food supplies. Those hurdles will not be overcome without a great deal of tension.

The energy extracted from biofuels, relative to energy inputs, will be far less productive than our experience with cheap oil. Electrical energy can be cheap - but not as potent or as portable as oil
Less energy output will mean more cost per Kw. Inevitably this will lead to long term inflation , with Central Banks challenged to contain it.

Part Two

In the end, we will all have less fuel to do what we have become accustomed to and less money to spend on what we enjoy. Over time economic productivity will decline, unemployment will grow and new economic structures will emerge. One effect will be that, as we will not be able to travel as freely as we do today, we will become closer to local communities. In a similar effect, local food production will grow again too. We will no longer import Californian oranges and won't need to fear imported bananas. Of course, other countries will not be able to import Australian wine, beef or grain as the costs of ocean transport escalates. I would suggest that with the rising lost of natural gas, from which ammonia fertilers are made, we will be lucky to pay for the fertiliser we need in this denuded continent to grow grapes, beef and grain for local consumption.

The real question to me is not what will be a replacement to fossil oil, but how will society adapt to the ructions we face over the next 10-30 years, as our economies and lifestyles return to energy consumption patterns charcterised primarily by the low availability and higher cost of oil type fuels.

How will the overleveraged middle class cope with rising costs? How will our disadvanted lower class cope as unemployment cycles back up again? Never mind the technology, who is working on the economic models that will enable Australians or other western countries to maintain satisfactory living standards as the energy bell curve - steeper on this side of 'peak oil' - slides down again.

I am neither economist nor sociologist, however it seems no more than common sense that our economic, social and political leaders need to acknowledge openly that the cheap energy centuries are over and that the 21st century will be a period of change unlike what we and our recent ancestors experienced. Like global warming, the sooner we prepare, the better off we will be.