Renewable Energy

The May issue of Scientific American is built around the theme, "Boundaries for A Healthy Planet," and there are lots of interesting articles, coordinated by leadership from the Woods Institute of Stanford University. On the subject of ethanol, the authors write,
"The explosive growth in the production of ethanol as a biofuel is greatly aggravating nitrogen pollution. Several studies have suggested that if mandated U.S. ethanol targets are met, the amount of nitrogen flowing down the Mississippi River and fueling the Gulf of Mexico dead zone may increase by 30 to 40 percent. The best alternative would be to forgo the production of ethanol from corn. If the country wants to rely on biofuels, it should instead grow grasses and trees and burn these to co-generate heat and electricity; nitrogen pollution and greenhouse gas emissions would be much lower."

Although there are some promising indications from cellulosic ethanol, I find it hard to see how a large scale cellulosic ethanol plant is going to work economically. Growing the feedstock on marginal land, harvesting and transporting it to the plant, producing the fuel and transporting it again would seem to be very expensive and perhaps not net energy efficient. We'll have to wait and see until Biogen's process or some other comes up to commercial scale.

ExxonMobil is committing funds to researching biofuel production from algae, but this is just moving beyond the lab bench phase. Biofuels may supply some proportion of transportation energy demand, but alternative energy, including biofuels, as a percent of total energy demand will just be above a marginal share by 2030, according to ExxonMobil estimates and those of other groups.

For power generation, hydrocarbon fuels will still be dominant over the ten year horizon, unless nuclear plants come on line in large numbers, which is nigh impossible in the political environment. Natural gas as a feedstock has potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to the current mix of fuels.

On the subject of wind energy, I find an ironic connection between the discussion about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the approval of a large scale offshore wind farm near Nantucket. Operating in coastal or deep ocean waters is immensely difficult. The offshore oil industry regularly overcomes operating issues in a harsh and hostile environment for men, equipment and machinery. The BP accident, like the Toyota incidents, seems to lack details on what exactly went wrong and why the well seems to be spontaneously bringing forth oil after so long. It seems like the gusher Jed Clampett found by shooting his gun into the ground. We need to know more, and again our press coverage is abysmal.

Back to my point, the laying of cables and the building of support structures for a large scale wind farm will be no picnic. The externalities imposed on fisherman, recreational boaters, and other users of the waterways are not known yet. Servicing the giant blades will not be easy either. Whether it's offshore oil, or offshore wind, there will be costs and risks. With the long history of offshore oil and gas production, we know and understand these generally, but we'll learn by doing for the wind farm, and expect to find the Commonwealth of Massachusetts complaining about the project some years down the road.