Two issues are dominating the political agenda today. Greenhouse gases including all aspects of fossil fuels and the war in Iraq.

The common thread in this has to do with oil.

What are we all going to do? Petrol prices: a rip-off. Electric cars never worked. Public transport, well, no one lets it work. Someone once said:

"they were not the solutions they promised to be, the answer was here all the time..."

OK, you can stop the Evita Peron lip sinking now...lol...

We actually export ethanol cars motors from Australia to Brazil. Does that hit you like a brick like it did to me when I read that? We are already making them in Australia, but our Governments and Corporations have neglected to legislate the use of ethanol friendly car motors in Australia.

We could be using cars with up to 80% to 100% ethanol ability. All we need are the engine modifications, or the engines built to Brazilian specifications. The fuel will come from our sugar cane in Queensland, canola oil in NSW and Victoria. Even corn, wheat, and possibly eucalyptus leaves can be used to make ethanol.

Last year, a Queensland inventor found a way to almost double the efficiency to produce ethanol in refineries wasting less, and making better fuel. So it is cheaper to produce now. Why are we waiting?

We don't need the oil from the middle east. Let's end this night-mare right now and start our own direction. In Australia we have all the oil we need in ethanol.

Good grief saintfletcher! Haven't you read a single article concering the end of cheap oil? Also known as "Peak Oil" although I prefer not to use the term peak oil, as it tends to conjure up all sorts of doom and gloom. Maybe you're simply doing a bit of stirring and if so, then you've got me hook, line and sinker. However, I'll try to explain simply just why your idea won't work. What you're attempting to do I surmise, is to keep your current lifestyle in an age of ever increasing fuel costs, ie: keeping on with "business as usual." Keeping our enormous and ever growing fleet of private cars on the road. Forget it right now!
I don't have exact statistics, but to convert all the feed stock you mention into ethanol fuel, would service something like just 2% of private and commercial transport on Australian roads. You badly underestimate just how much crude oil the World uses. Eg: The energy contained in just one barrel of crude oil = 250,000 hours of physical labour. And here's the real rub...To grow the feedstock in the first place, you'd need all of the arable land we have and Australia doesn't have much arable land. And while it's true that certain plants can be grown for fuel oil in remote locations, it would use so much more fuel to cultivate, plant and harvest them, not to mention the water requirements. The equasion is very negative. There's mountains of stuff about this on the WWW. When it comes to growing plants to feed the auto industry or growing food to feed the Nation after cheap oil is gone for good, then I know which way it will go. Look it up. Sorry saintfletcher, but very soon we'll all be walking, growing food locally and living a much simpler lifestyle than the wasteful one we live today and I can't wait!

The problem with biofuels:

http://ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1169519086

Excellent link freediver. What we need to be doing is asking serious questions of Government and the biggest question of all is just what they intend to do once oil demand far outstrips supply? Even John Howard himself recognises that "Peak Oil" as it's popularly called, will become a serious problem by year 2050 at best. Most World experts on the subject are looking at a date much sooner than that. Popular conjecture is between 2010 & 2016. In the meantime, we'll see fuel prices rise significantly as the Chinese & Indian manufacturing economy eats into oil reserves at an ever increasing rate. Certainly, Bio-fuel will take a small role in offsetting the problem, as will solar, geothermal, wind and other forms of renewable energy, but even though the Government recognises the looming problem, it does very little to address it in a timely manner. My guess is that they can't allow the general population to know what's waiting around the corner, caused largely by our addiction to their growth policies and over population to fund it, but that's another discussion subject in itself. Eventually, we'll be forced by nature to give up out decadent ways. The trick is to crash with as soft a landing as possible. The longer we leave it, the harder the bump at the bottom. If the experts are right and "peak oil" happens before 2027, then we're in for one hell of a fall. It takes 20 years to implement new technology, but one thing is for sure. We'd all best get used to walking and learning to work the land with sustainable organic methods. Failure to do so will result in starvation and death on an unimaginable scale. The World population has exploded beyond all expectations since the discovery of oil. It's only the enegry in oil that's allowed it to happen. Forget trying to keep a car on the road. The coming crises will be a struggle for survival, yet there's so many who fail to recognise the looming dangers.

There is vast research into alternative fuels taking place world wide, and yes, it is a shame that Australia is not taking a bigger role. As for there not being enough biomass, the United States already throws away nearly enough biomass each year to meet its liquid fuel needs. Rather than see biofuels as a means of denying food to the world, they may well become a saviour, as the non-fuel byproducts can include clean water, animal feed and fertiliser. And by combining biofuel production with effluent treatment, they offer the opportunity for multiple uses of the same infrastructure.

The doomsayers might like to look at some of the advances in renewable energy, including this article on algal biodiesel, where the algal feedstock can be grown in areas with a minimum annual rainfall of 50 mm.

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47237

Ethanol is not the only solution. I can see that from the article: thanx Fester. Good to see the discussion going. It works in Brazil, but there has to something else in the mix. There is no one solution to all of this.

I once mentioned that Solar Thermal Power stations can offer all the energy needs of Sydney. We already have a model in Lidell. There are other ways to generate energy. It was get the right mix, energy can be a solved puzzle.

We can go solar in the city. It will only take 3 years to build the power stations needed for the whole city. The Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, Chris Haris likes this idea:

http://www.chrisharris.org.au

Again, this is only one alternative, there will need to be a mix of a few. If electrical power can use less CO2, then maybe we can bring back the idea of electric cars, hybrid cars, and hydrogen cars. There is no point in having these other cars unless the power is low in Co2 emissions.

Naturally, public transport including light rail and more trains need to be built in the cities.

What ever we do, we need to think sooner rather than later. I can't see us all living on hobby farms in Potts Point when we work in Ryde. Lets have a reality test here. We can use more ethanol, less fossil fuels and look at other alternatives

We will be using oil for the forseeable future. Hybrid cars, electric cars, hydrogen cars, ethanol cars. All baloney.

Producers and manufacturers are the ones who call the shots, not politicians or we plebians.

If we ever do see viable alternatives, we will be ripped off as usual. There has to be money - lots of it - before any alternative to oil will be used.

As for the supposed harm we humans are doing to the atmosphere, forget it. Even if we stopped all harmful emissions right now, the current gases will still be around for another 1,000 years, according to the lates scientific relevations.

Because of all these things, and the nonsense we get from "experts" and politicians, I don't give a stuff about any of it.

Goodness me Saintfletcher have you got the bull by the teat !
With ethanol it really does come down to eat or drive.
In the US the ethanol industry is already forcing up the price of food.
They have something like 100 ethanol plants and another approx
150 being built.
Electric cars are totally viable, right now, but you will use them for
short trips such as a daily trip to work, say 80 to 110 Km trip.
You can charge them over night or during the day from a solar bank.
However that would be a bit expensive, but possible.
If the whole Australian wheat harvest was turned into ethanol it
would supply just 5% of our cars. It is too silly for words.

However see these letters; EROEI you will see them a lot more in coming years.
Energy Returned On Energy Invested, what it means is that for ethanol
you have to put in between 0.8 to 1.4 barrels of oil equivilant of
energy to get back 1 barrel of oil equivalent. Not real smart.

However I did see some encouraging figures for sugar cane where it
came up at about 1.7 EROEI. It would have to be grown in the north
and there is the rub. It has to be tankered south at great cost.
You can't put it through pipelines due to corrosion.

For the first time I saw an ethanol tanker on the road yesterday.

Electric cars are the solution for the majority of our personal transport needs. Electric motors are around 90% efficient compared with internal combustion engines around 30% efficient no matter what the fuel they use, petrol, ethanol, diesel etc. Internal combustion engines produce a lot of heat and exhaust on the way. If battery technology for electric cars evolved at the same rate as batteries for mobile phones who knows what the range could be 500 or 1000km?? or how fast they could be charged.

@ pmikke, thank you, this was what I was trying to say.

Electric cars produce CO2 emissions at the moment. This is because the electric power is from dirty coal power stations.

Replace most of the dirty coal power with solar thermal power stations, wind and other power which are being proposed by the Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney changes the equation:

http://www.chrisharris.org.au

"Internationally, SHP is growing quickly. A 6.5 MW plant was announced by the President of Portugal on July 7, and several joint ventures are under negotiation in the 20–50 MW range and a new US company will start up in 2007 (2). The US affiliate company of SHP will commence to build a 180 MW power station in 2007, then proceed to build a 1 GW station."

"Most investment in these solar thermal power stations is overseas where they have operated for some 20 years. Spain, Portugal, China and the United States have or are building solar thermal power stations."

---

Ethanol adds value to farm produce, lowers dependence on oil imports, and it gives out less CO2 emission. The US is way ahead of us. We can't run out of food, we have too many free trade treaties. Brazil isn't running out of money because it runs on ethanol. We just need the new sugar cane double cycle technology for more efficiency.

The US is working it out.

Electric cars will use clean power. Ethanol, hybrid cars, can use clean electricity with ethanol.

Lets catch up and do something positive, prosper, sign the bloody Kyoto treaty, and we'll even get more trade...

http://www.ethanol.org

Saintfletcher;
I followed the link to Chrisharis. I had read something previously about the solar thermal system.
It seems that there is still a long way to go to provide for a week of overcast weather in winter, for it to be a base load supplier.
After all a sign on lifts that say between May and October if it is overcast in Moree do not use this lift, grin.

However our real urgent problem is liquid fuels and not global warming.
The first and cost free step governments could take would be to adapt
the Australian Design Rules to suit electric cars. It is ridiculous
that none of the electric cars in production overseas can be registered here.

No Government in Australia, or anywhere else in the Western World will allow the production and use of electric cars for personal transport for several reasons. Firstly, what would happen to the exobitant profits of oil companies if they can no longer rip a hole in your income at the pump? And what about the car manufacturers themselves. They've spent a hell of a lot of time, money and effort in convincing the various Governments into passing legislation which forces certain levels of pollution reduction in motor vehicles. This is mainly obtained by way of fuel injection using complex control modules which can only be repaired and tuned by the selling dealership. No more savings by using home repairs. And parts cost a fortune. A simple ignition control module on a Benz cost over $4,000 for a tiny component no bigger than a cigarette packet. That's why I sold mine. Every thing you did to it cost a minimum of $300. It's after sales services and parts where the manufacturers make a killing. No such thing with the electric car. No ongoing maintainance, little to go wrong, no silly cam belts every 100,000k's.....the list goes on, a point made by the great John Howard at one time in relation to EV's. He was heard at some stage to point out the unemployment electric cars would cause society due to their lack of servicing requirements.
Whilst algal biodiesel sounds promising, you'll be waiting for a very long time before you see commercial production of electric cars destined for Australian roads.

Don't worry they will have no choice. It will be electric cars or else walk.
When demand exceeds supply do you think that the overseas owners of our
oil companies are going to to let their Australia subsiduries out bid
them on the market ?
No way, that will mean our available oil will fall by 50% immeadiatly.
Why do you think the government is subsidising gas installations in cars ?
They obviously have been reading the submissions to the Senate enquiry.

I agree with you to a point Bazz, but only up to a point. Once we get to a situation whereby demand is outstripping supply to the degree of which you mention, it will be much too late to implement the general use of EV's. By that time, unemployment levels will soar and only the very wealthy could hope to replace fossil fuelled personal transport for electric types. Any available oil supplies will be held by Government for emergency use while the rest of us will walk or ride a bike. Also, the chooks will come home to roost in relation to credit card debt and people will loose the shirts off their backs. They won't have money to be buying new cars no matter what they run on. Imagine all the people of low socio/economic standards trying to cash in their old fuel guzzlers and switch to EV's. Won't happen I'm afraid. Besides, most components of EV's use oil in their basic manufacture. There simply won't be enough spare oil available to replace our current personal transport requirements.
The time to act is now, but our current Government is too gutless to implement any sort of plan that will let us down softly. It's dithering about now trying to show the population it's got a plan, but Howard knows only too well that to push too far will be the downfall of the Coalition. No other party will fare any better. The end of cheap oil is a momumental problem that will see the end of financial prosperity as we know it today. Bazz, I'd love to be able to buy an EV right now. I'd do so immediately, but I'm quite certain it's not about to happen any time soon.

Yes Wizard, you might well be right about the financial side of it all.
Except that if gas can keep things going long enough to make the
transition to electric cars we might just get away with it.
The big problem will be the banks, they may well go broke shortly after
the airlines.
I asked three investment fund managers what they were doing in the way
of due diligence to examine the vulnerability of their investments to
oil depletion and basicaly got errrr well err the analyists take that
into consideration.
They don't have a clue. I think it is a good bet to invest in energy
companies and arable land around big towns or cities.

The EV1 cars in Southern California that were being sold by GM is a sad story. There was a documentary about this called "Who Killed the Electric Car".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

In this film, there are interviews with Hollywood actors like Mel Gibson and others who were really annoyed when GM recalled all their EV1 cars. GM claimed that there was no demand. People really fought to keep their cars because they liked them so much. The rest were crushed for recyling. There is a photo of these beautiful new cars in piles ready to be crushed are on this site.

The oil barrens have amazing power over any plan, and will sabotage at any opportunity. Apparently Governor Scwarzeneggar was against the destruction of the EV1 cars.

The only problem I can see with EV1 cars is that the electricity is still being generated by dirty coal power stations.

Strategically, they are good to get us out of the oil crisis and out of the middle east.

At end of the day is all economics.

IF you can produce an electric car with four or six seats, with a drive range of 300+km between recharge, marketable at under $25ooo you will get a million orders in Australia.

People would buy if the cost of the charging was less than or equal to their savings from not buying petrol.
The quality cars could follow later...

Gimmick like computer speed control based on drivers licence and matching fingerprints from your new Australia Card would allow 80 kph limit on P plate drivers.

Hello everyone...

The answer is already here so put your orders in, only...
you'll have to go to the US to pick it up and bring it
home because they don't export Tesla cars - how unfair!

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

Why isn't someone building them in Australia?

xjodiex, the Telsa is one sexy looking car. Darn, aint life unfair?

I'll have 6 of those please, and one for my mother ;-)

Brazil has some more immediate solutions for an oil crisis. We have the sugar cane farms, more refineries are being built, we only need a few more. With more demand on sugar, maybe John Howard could go back to the US while W Bush is still in Government to reconsider the section of the US and Australia FTA to include sugar. Both countries are going to be using lots of sugar very soon. Good thing it rains up north. Lucky Sugar farmers.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0417-23.htm

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1007/p05s01-woam.html

The Tesla is in fact built on a Lotus chassis.
Of course it is left hand drive.
There is a company converting cars commercially in Sydney.
It is Blade Electric Vehicles. I suspect pretty new on the scene.
I saw one of his very professional conversions at the Elecric Vehicle
Ralley a couple of months back. Have a look at
www.bev.com.au
It was a converted Toyota and cost about $20,000.
It had a 240 volt plug in the petrol filler and the batteries were in the engine bay and
under the back seat.
He had a trailer with a petrol generator and extra batteries for interstate trips.
It is a dream if you think you will get 300km for around $20,000.
The batteries to do that would cost nearly that much.
Other than conversions there is a real design problem with electric
cars as a realistic design cannot meet Australian Design Rules.
This is what happened to the Indian Reva.

Oh I forgot,
The US is not using sugar cane but maize for ethanol
and the demand is causing riots in Mexico because of the increase
in totilla prices caused by ethanol plants outbidding food processors.
It was a news item on BBC last night.

Why is the US using corn when they have plenty of sugar? If they signed the full FTA with Australia to include sugar, they would have plenty.

Market forces should balance this one out. They'll grow more corn and sugar: supply and demand.

A nasty glitch it is, but the market should work it out.

Maybe we should think about exporting corn to Mexico, once the drought is under control (if)...

I can see why water is key to all of this working to grow more in this country.

Actually saintfletcher the US doesn't have plenty of sugar, most of their sugar comes from sugar beet and most of their sweeteners (like in coke etc) mostly come from corn , i.e. high fructose corn syrup. Corn is cheaper to produce over there due to good rainfall especially in the midwest. The standard water issues that Australia has do not apply there. Sugar was not included in the free trade agreement for various reasons, not the least of which was the protection of the US sugar industry and also the encouragemnet for our industry to diversify cropping systems.

Thats right saint fletcher, the US is too far north for largescale sugar production on that scale anyway.
There are two problems with using maize, first the EROEI is not very
good, around 0.8:1 and they will have to devote too big an area, at least
the size of two midwest states to ethanol production and forget about
corn flakes for breakfast.
To attempt to do more than supply a small proportion of their car fleet
is impractical. There are some problems with soil depletion also.
Also they are starting to feel the effects of peak gas so there will be
a restriction on fertiliser availability.

Cornflakes for breakfast or drive to work, their and our choice ?
The politicians simply do not understand. There are plenty of sources
which go into this ethanol problem quite deeply.
Sugar cane and palm oil seem to have the best EROEI although they are not good.

Have a look at this;
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_06/b4020093.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Sorry it is so long. There are problems looming everywhere with ethanol.
This is just on article I came across this morning.
In it there is also some quoted saying all is loverly.

We are not looking at the fuel needs for America. We should stick to the topic of Australia's interest, not the interests of the US.

We put our own interests in second place too often and wonder why we always get the thin end of the wedge in trade deals.

Sugar cane is the strongest fuel for ethanol. Like it or not, Australia is going this direction anyway. We are running out of options and don't have much time to play debating games.

So many agendas, so little action, the earth's global warming seems relentless. What are we supposed to do? Trust the corporate world?

Saint Fletcher;
Note what I said, there are problems looming everywhere with ethanol.
We need to take note of what is happening everywhere.
Many of the soil problems the US will run into, we will have in spades.

If we don't take note of solutions and problems everywhere we will only
repeat their mistakes.
Did you hear about the problems in Indonesia with Palm Oil ?
No, well I won't tell you, you can go and make the same mistake.

There are no easy solutions and ethanol may just end up being a fuel
for emergency services. The rest of us will just have to get what we
can where we can, because I don't think any politician will be game
enough to promise petrol rationing until people get sick and tired of
sitting in 2km petrol queues.