American Ingenuity on Oil’s Replacement

I’ve said it before on many posts on this site. The end of the strangle hold on America’s energy needs is nearing the end of the beginning. All of those back yard inventors of a better mouse trap when it comes to our fuel needs are coming out of the woodwork and the ones serious enough to believe in it will be successful.

One of the things I find interesting is that many of these backyard chemist, biologist, and guys that know how to work a mean wrench have on thing in common, not one of them thinks they will replace the Exxon’s of this world but they sure as hell will put a dent in their billion dollar profits year by year. And as these combined technologies all grow over time then the likes of Exxon will be the mega giant corporations that dared to think it was irreplaceable. Read more on this great article from Popular Science and Amanda Schaffer in the latest issue…

I’m watching this image on a computer screen at Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, California, where one of the founders, biologist Jack Newman, is giving me a tour. The genetically manipulated E. coli before me are highly crafted units of industrial production, which Amyris is using to turn sugar into novel versions of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel—in other words, the fuels on which the world already runs. Amyris is one of a handful of young biofuel companies putting a brilliant and weird twist on the future of green. It’s betting that, with the help of bacteria, the long-term answer to our gasoline woes will actually be . . . gasoline.

Because as it stands, the main alternative to petroleum, ethanol (a type of alcohol), is fraught with problems. It can’t be pumped through current infrastructure because it tends to corrode pipelines. And according to University of Minnesota economist Jason Hill, even if all the corn grown in the U.S. were converted to ethanol, it would replace only some 12 percent of the 146 billion gallons of gasoline we use every year. Cellulosic ethanol—fuel produced from the cellulosic matter contained in plant stalks and stems rather than from seeds—would solve that problem, but the technology to produce it on a large scale is still a way off. Plus, ethanol simply isn’t as energy dense as petroleum-based fuels. - Popular Science

One of the things I find very warming to the spirit is that this research isn’t coming from the United States Government or sponsored by XYZ oil company. It’s coming from American’s with an attitude, American’s with a spirit and sense of what is right and what is wrong. It’s coming from a displaced sense of the American way of life. For the last eight years we as a people have been jerked around by circumstances beyond our control and if you know anything about Americans, we hate being told that the price of our greatest energy resource is beyond our control. That’s a tough pill to swallow and we American’s tend to hate having anything shoved down our throats. Even when it comes from within our own nation with the people we allow a free market to dictate prices.

This is an Energy Revolution and it is starting in garages, chemistry labs, brain storming sessions, and with individuals sick and tired of having the money they earned spent on fuels to run our vehicles or buying a gallon of milk for their families. That is an argument that will never be won when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of brilliant minds working today all across America to pretty much chuck the Middle East and all OPEC nations the bird.

This countries energy needs will pretty much be self reliant in twenty to thirty years. It’s not going to be easy and it isn’t something that can happen overnight or from any one technology. It will happen with one advancement at a time. Think of it as a slow strangling end to imported oil much like the horse and buggy day.

One last quote from the same Popular Science piece…

Before I leave, though, he shows me a painting he keeps in his office. It’s of a little boy leaping from one cliff to another across a chasm. The boy’s arms are stretched out. His head juts forward. “He isn’t even looking at the edge. He’s looking beyond the edge,” Reiling says. “He’s 100 percent committed to that jump. That’s what you’ve got to do when you’re going after something.”

You have my best wishes on success Amyris!

Papamoka

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Screw You OPEC and Wall Street!

With the never ending rise in the price of oil comes the never ending desire of Americans to find a better way. Some months ago I wrote a piece on the strangle hold that OPEC has on not just America but the world. In it I mentioned that the last stage coach was probably the best built carriage in the world but the combustion engine eventually put it out of its misery.

American’s can be a funny group of people. We are not well liked around the world for many reasons and one of them is our arrogance or intolerance of anyone saying “It can not be done!” Screw you, or some other creative twist of the English language is usually replied in return. Not in the board rooms of our nations corporations but in the barns, the sheds, the garages of Americans that know that IT can be done!

If you look at all of the papers today, oil is and will break $100 per barrel simply because it can if the market wants to see that number. Joe Six-Pack American aka a mongrel dog of European, Asia, Africa, South America and North America descent is chucking the bird at Wall Street and finding a better and cheaper way to not only run his Chevy but your Ford and Buick as well. What is that old saying about being an American is like baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet? We need to add anti OPEC garage scientist to the list.

Over at the New York Times they have this great piece on yet many possible new fuels for your car or truck, a must read …

The Energy Challenge
Fuel Without the Fossil

DENVER — Mitch Mandich proudly showed off his baby, a 150-foot contraption of tanks, valves, hoppers, augers and fans. It hissed. It gurgled. An incongruous smell wafted through the air, the scent of turpentine.

Mr. Mandich’s machine devours pine chips from Georgia and turns them into an energy-rich gas, a step toward making liquid fuels. His company, Range Fuels, is near the front of the pack in a technology race that could have an impact on the way America powers its automotive fleet, and help ameliorate global warming.

“Somebody’s going to hit a home run here,” Mr. Mandich said. “We want to be first.”
For years, scientists have known that the building blocks in plant matter — not just corn kernels, but also corn stalks, wood chips, straw and even some household garbage — constituted an immense potential resource that could, in theory, help fill the gasoline tanks of America’s cars and trucks. - New York Times

Leave it up to American’s to screw up a really great deal by the world oil producers. They can finally afford to buy Canada and those nasty pesky American’s pull the rug out from under their futures investments. Sponge Bob and the Krusty Crab have never faced such a more evil plot from Plankton. Foiled again but this is just the beginning of the plot.

I’m not big on conspiracy theories. God only knows there are enough whack jobs out there to tell you any theory for any event that happened in the world. I think that I would have to be a total moron to think that the billions of dollars in quarterly profits from big oil companies will try their very best to squash the back yard and garage inventors trying to find a better fuel. Common sense drives my thoughts on this because billions of quarterly profits are at stake. In the news over the next decade or so will be the reports that one start up company after another with a new alternative fuel will be bought up by xyz oil or energy company. With that sale will be the burial of the technology.

Trillions of dollars are at risk if any of these back yard chemist and geniuses make a go of it. Times come and times go and with the beginning of the end of oil as the only source for energy will come a new wave of American ingenuity that comes from an angle that Wall Street and OPEC thought was a waste of time. Is the 200 MPG carburetor a myth or something that was squashed. I put myself in the shoes of the CEO of XYZ Big Oil Corporation and if my product is at risk from a new fuel then I would do everything in my power or ability to take it off the market. That would be common sense. Tens of billions of dollars in quarterly profits can and will make that possible. You can not spend ten billion dollars in profit at the local corner store so what are they doing with all that money? That is the question that nobody is talking about which worries me.

Associated Press
updated 5:53 p.m. ET, Fri., Nov. 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - When gasoline prices first hit $3 a gallon in 2005, irate lawmakers quickly assembled top oil executives for a public grilling.

Pump prices are again above $3, yet the outcry from Congress is barely a whimper by comparison — even after this week’s warning from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that oil near $100 a barrel is a serious economic threat.

The change in tone since Nov. 9, 2005 — when Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., castigated oil executives for reaping multimillion-dollar bonuses while “working people struggle” — reflects an altered landscape in terms of energy economics and politics, analysts said. - MSNBC

One of the things that I love about America is that if you put a knife to her throat, thousands of creative minds will find a way to make your blade as dull as hot butter. Screw you OPEC and Wall Street! America has brainiacs that think past your bottom line. Fueling the Chevy is more important than raping your nation for a profit. The price of gas at the pump or the price for filling your heating oil tank is not supply and demand driven, it is greed and gluttony that is setting the price. Meanwhile, Washington is silent. I’m not surprised.

Papamoka

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