These battery breakthroughs may not happen nor could new energy sources like geothermal. I also doubt whether internal combustion engines are on the way out. They may be thermodynamically inefficient but they are cheap and reliable. Liquid hydrocarbons like jet fuel will always be needed for high power-to-weight applications. I doubt whether Australians in the outer suburbs are ready for the cost or inconvenience of small electric cars or even plug-in hybrids.

I agree that biofuels create as many problems as they solve. That includes ethanol, biodiesel from animal and vegetable fats including algae, even methane biogas which I think will be on tonight's 'Top Gear'. None show any sign of making more than a token replacement of oil based fuel. We could possibly get away with making small amounts of fuel from coal provided coal wasn't used for anything else. That fuel would be just for aircraft and reserve tanks in plug in hybrids. The best alternative to liquid fuels for Australia appears to be natural gas. Yet we are flogging it overseas as fast as possible and offering billions to coal generators to switch to gas. I'd say we are about to see a major transport upheaval in the next few years.

You say "Electricity is far more efficient and very much cheaper to use than petrol or diesel, even at present prices."

But two-thirds of the fuel energy is wasted at the power station. At least existing hybrids reduce transmission and battery storage costs.

If there were any serious move to phase out dirty coal electricity I might see this sudden passion for electric cars as useful, but it seems very misguided in our present situation.

Can you substantiate the claim that electricity is far cheaper?

There is a simple short-term way to reduce our oil use. Drive smaller vehicles and drive them less. Most people on the streets are clearly oblivious to global warming, driving their large safari vehicles around paved suburbia.

Geoff Davies is correct, if you consider the generation of electricity, an electric car produces more CO2 per km than an equivalent petrol car. This would not of course be true if the power was generated by renewable or nuclear.

Some biofuels are worthwhile, typically the anaerobic digestion of household waste to generate gas. This reduces the volume of landfill and produces fuel from products that would otherwise be discarded.

However, the other fuels use precious resources for minimal benefit.

For reasons of production simplicity, (including simplicity of separation from the substrate), the ability to recycle nutrients and its non-competition with food production, local production of biogas from animal and plant wastes/byproducts is probably the best biofuel option (in terms of costs and energy profitability too) but this was not taken up in the article. Trucks can be run using current technology on compressed natural gas (or biogas).

Did I miss it or was there no reference to peak oil? It isn't a case of why we don't need them, its more to do with how we will keep agriculture surviving.

I cannot see how (at present) a farmer on 10,000 acres would use electricity - presumably solar sourced - to fuel tractors and other machinery, never mind the distribution of goods and inputs to the farm.

However the full extent of biodiesel potentials was not mentioned. Agreed that ripping out rainforest to plant palms in SE Asia to provide diesel to Germany is nothing short of lunacy, but there other scenarios.

I have been involved in algal biotech and I will say that to get from low volumes to production - look for example at Hutt Lagoon in WA on Google maps. This project is fully operational and has functioned since the mid 80s when we started with the smallest pond you see.

I am confident that algae is the most promising biofuel option because it doesn’t compete with food production, can be grown in saline water, and produces 10-20 times the oil produced by other crops. At a current a $12/Kg it has a way to go but at $1/Kg it competes.

And here's the rub for the economists. We need to create fiscal environments where biodiesel will be "economic" - we need to SAVE AGRICULTURE not leaf blowers. My experience tells me that there are several lines of research that can be followed right now.

No need to be so dismissive Mike Pope.

The author mention that France produces its electricity needs without fossil fuels. The author does not mention that the reason is that France produces about 80% of the need using nuclear technology. Does he think nuclear is a four letter word? With latest reactor designs there is sufficient fissionable fuel for 50,000 years.
Using all the grain and sugar produced worldwide for biofuel production would produce a minute proportion of the liquid fuel now consumed and everyone would starve. The argument is not complex.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel and is therefore limited and should be conserved to maintain populations in sub-arctic climates although that can also be achieved using steam or hot water circulation from nuclear stations.
Hot rocks do not show much promise. The steam temperature and pressure tends to be very low and to fall over time.
Electric vehicles with a range of 150-200km and a short recharge time should be the aim.
I drive a hardly distinguishable hybrid and find it excellent.

I guess you do not mean it, however, this sounds a bit confusing:

"France, generate nearly all their electricity needs without using fossil fuels"

France generates nearly all of it electricity with nuclear, which is much more harmful than fossil fuels, and OTOH nuclear fuel supply will come to an end even before fossil fuels. One third of fuel for nuclear power plants comes from atomic bombs, and once that is finished many plants will have to be switched off.

Australia would be in a position to generate all electricity for transport and more by solar or wave energy, maybe wind as well. Desertec will be build in Europe, and they are now extending the activities to Australia, see http://www.desertec-australia.org/

It keeps coming up that we should go nuclear but I have a problem some one can help me I am sure.

As I understand it will take 20 years to build our first plant, and how many do we need?
Can we build them fast enough?
And do we have the resources to do so?

What plants are commercially available, or even in the next decade? So that uranium lasts 50,000 years, fusion is 50 years away and may be always 50 years away.
Generation four ,do not exist, and prototype is 10 years away and when can we start building one?

How much uranium is their?
And of course there is peak uranium some countries have already run out.
Will we have the oil for shipping?

And we have not solved the waste disposal.

Diverting waste to bio-fuels - is that not used for other purposes, eg. compost or landfill with methane extraction?

PeterA, The beauty of biogas is that you still have your phosphate etc. left after gas production from agricultural wastes and this can be recycled back into agriculture.

"Renew" - what are the phosphate requirements of production of biodiesel from algae? What level of recycling of nutrients is possible?

In Australia, compressed natural gas provides a medium term alternative to petrol and natural gas provides an alternative to coal. Gas is not renewable but it's relatively abundant in Australia and is cleaner than either petrol or coal. Gas seems the most likely way we'll go in the short term while more sustainable options are sorted out.

Mike Pope’s article digs itself into a ditch at the very beginning:
“Biofuels come in two basic forms: ethanol produced from agricultural crops such as sugar or grains and mostly used as a partial replacement or additive to petrol; and biodiesel derived from animal fat or vegetable oils produced by plants such as safflower, rape or palm oil.”

Biofuel does not necessarily come at the expense of Agricultural production; and it need not be from the algae mentioned. Before writing the article, it might have been appropriate to get more up to speed on the issue. A start would be accessing information on the CSIRO initiated project, continued by Barney Foran, of producing methanol from vegetation via pyrolysis. This project is a multi-function approach dealing with three issues: provision of fuel for Australian transport, providing employment for communities in decline, and remediating degrading landscapes – and, in total, carbon-neutral. Providing the economic ratbags don’t keep us growing forever in numbers, this probably has the potential to provide for whatever proportion of our transport needs Australia wants it to adopt.

There are pluses and minuses whichever way we proceed in transport fuels; and a multi-pronged approach seems essential.

“Importantly, these batteries can be rapidly recharged, in the case of vehicle batteries within minutes” the author says.
Now that is quite a bit of energy en-route from one place to another – enough to push half a tonne of stuff from Sydney to Melbourne. So much, so soon, that it is close to an explosive rate.
I hope that safety factors have been adequately addressed. The old petrol bowser seems a friendly companion compared to the excitement of being nearby during a re-charge and having any appreciation of potential for mishap.

I have read, on I think the Oil Drum, that the efficiency from mine to
wheel is significantly better than oil well to wheel.
Try a search on the oil drum I think you will find it about a year ago.

I just don't believe a charge in minutes. The cables would be so thick
you might need two or three people to plug them in.
Work it back from the ampere/hour at say 415 volt if your heavy charger
was built in, or if not at say 110 Volt DC if not.
It is in the thousands of amps.

The problem with biofuels is fertiliser. You won't have crop rotation
so you will use fertiliser, probably from natural gas, which we are
flat out flogging to the Chinese !
The politicians have to be really stupid !

No, electric cars will come, not because they are inefficient but
because there will be nothing else that will fit the economic model
that we will be living under.

To illustrate how stupid the politicians are they are planning an
extra airport for Sydney !
The IATA group at Copenhagen is talking of 60% growth in aviation
over the next 20 years ! Talk about off with the fairies !

renysol

If you look at the environment and human safety, nuclear is many times safer and environmentally friendly than coal.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html

Similarily that there is a shortage of nuclear fuel is also a myth. With newer reactors there is sufficient for thousands of years.

Shadow minister says Similarly that there is a shortage of nuclear fuel is also a myth. With newer reactors there is sufficient for thousands of years.

Please point out where there are commercially available newer reactors and when could one become on line in Australia, perhaps by 2050.

Peak uranium is when?

It may be all the existing (and proposed) nuclear power stations (life times are 40 years and can be rebuilt for 80 years) would use all the available fuel before Shadow ministers newer, generation 3 and 4, are commercially available if ever.

India and China are planning on a very large number of nuclear power plants and they will all be using existing technologies.

Last night I asked some energy guys in Europe about those PBMR nuclear reactors, however, they don't exist. It is hoped they will exist one day.

I lived near such a research reactor, the THTR in Hamm in Germany when that 'inherently safe design reactor' surprisingly broke down in 1986, releasing radioactivity, and consequently has been buried under 5 metres of concrete in 1989.

So those telling us about thousands of years of supply should be so honest and also tell us that they are talking about hopes, not reality.

What is wrong with renewable energy? Anybody doubting that Australia could be supplied with electricity including cars from concentrated solar power, wind and wave energy?

I have a friend, now retired, who was THE expert on nuclear reactors
in Australia and he tells me that with the reprocessing techniques now
available, all the waste can be reused for an extremely long time to
the point that the residue has very low activity.

Now I know no more than that about it all. I think peak uranium
production is not that far away and it would I imagine put a limit on
existing style plants because of their economic lifetime.
However the peak is the production or uranium not the use and reuse
of it, that could be a very long time.

I have not seen him for some time, so I don't know his recent opinion.

Renysol and PeterA,

Please google the CANDU reactors of which there are 6 presently running for a decade or more.

Their requirement for much lower levels of enrichment and the ability to use lower quality reprocessed waste enables at least 10x the amount of energy to be produced per ton of natural uranium.

Also the existing reserves are based on what can be mined at $80 per kg (or 0.05c per kWhr) for which there is 30+yrs supply at 100% of the worlds electricity supply with 1970s reactors.

If the price is increased to $160 /kg, the reserves increase 10 fold again.

So with existing technologies that can be installed by 2020 there is no shortage in reality for 1000s of years.

This should be sufficient time for the Gen IV and thorium reactors to come on line which will increase the energy capability by orders of magnitude again. (India will have a test thorium reactor on line in 2010)

The intrinsically safe reactors are still under development, but use similar fuel to existing reactors. Their purpose is completely different, to provide smaller safer power supplies to far flung communities and save on distribution costs. Existing designs are functioning, but not at a viable cost (yet).

Here's a good debate on fast reactors from BraveNewClimate (there are 45 comments)

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/12/04/clean-future-in-nuclear-power/

As I noted above, here in Australia, natural gas can tide us over in the short to medium term until nuclear or other sources become viable (including compressed natural gas for cars)

Mike,
A good discussion but a few points could be added.

Natural gas will be used a lot more and the world is gearing up to exploit it. There is talk of a 'gas OPEC'. This will compete with electricity.

Another source of fuel is to use what we have frugally. I know 'frugality' is a dirty word but frugality will stretch existing supplies of oil a long way with least pain. (Until Peak Oil really hits)
cheers