I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1198 Location: England
Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 1:39 pm Post subject: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
"It would be foolish to commit to an enterprise that depends on air freight," said Richard Gilbert, a consultant for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
"The beginning of the end of the aviation (industry) is close upon us."
......
....Mr. Gilbert talked about his long-awaited peak oil study last week ....
.... "The future is in electricity," said Mr. Gilbert ....
Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 5:03 pm Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Virgin To Do Aviation Ethanol?
Quote:
Ever on the lookout for a marketing opportunity and bucking the status quo, Richard Branson, head honcho of the Virgin group, has announced his next likely venture: Renewable Jet Juice. "We are looking for alternative fuel sources. We are going to start building cellulosic ethanol plants (to make) fuel that is derived from the waste product of the plant," he said. "It is 100 per cent environmentally friendly and I believe it's the future of fuel, and over the next 20 or 30 years I think it actually will replace the conventional fuel that you get out of the ground." Currently there are four airlines under the Virgin banner, which gives a fleet of close to 100 aircraft, using about 700 million gallons (2,650 million litres) of fuel annually.
So one can understand why Richard might be keen to “replace some or all of that (with ethanol)" in the next handful or so years. Virgin do have some other environmental initiatives on the go, but most are just the usual good governance, like recycling office paper and toner cartridges. However their British trains do use 'reverse thrust' traction motors to brake, which apparenting generates electricity for national grid supply, as a side benefit. More eco Virgin bits here. The ethanol piece via ::ABC Online
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 7:38 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Wildwell wrote:
Your homework tonight is to find out how much land is required to fill one 747.
Thank you. But sir, I prefer to do the exercise for an Airbus A380, because I'm European and because it's the world's most fuel efficient passenger jet and more fuel efficient than most small efficient passenger cars. Is that okay? Fine, thx.
Here we go:
The plane's fuel consumption is 2.9 liters (0.76 gallon) per passenger per 100 kilometers (60 miles) - beats most cars, beats almost all American cars.
It carries 555 passengers. Take a 10,000 kilometre flight from Paris to Tokyo (6000 miles), and you have a total consumption of: 160,950 litres (42,520 gallons).
Now we're using ethanol, so we're increasing that by 20% (because the energy content of ethanol is lower than that of jetfuel). So we need around: 193,140 litres (51,020 gallons).
How much cellulose ethanol does a sugar cane field produce? Around 15,000 litres (4000 gallons) per hectare.
193,140 litres divided by 15,000 litres is: 12.876.
Finished, sir: you need approximately 12.876 hectares (31.82 acres) of sugarcane to fill an A380 which will carry 555 passengers from Paris to Tokyo.
Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Posts: 1126 Location: Central Texas
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 8:05 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
lorenzo wrote:
Wildwell wrote:
Your homework tonight is to find out how much land is required to fill one 747.
Thank you. But sir, I prefer to do the exercise for an Airbus A380, because I'm European and because it's the world's most fuel efficient passenger jet and more fuel efficient than most small efficient passenger cars. Is that okay? Fine, thx.
Here we go:
The plane's fuel consumption is 2.9 liters (0.76 gallon) per passenger per 100 kilometers (60 miles) - beats most cars, beats almost all American cars.
It carries 555 passengers. Take a 10,000 kilometre flight from Paris to Tokyo (6000 miles), and you have a total consumption of: 160,950 litres (42,520 gallons).
Now we're using ethanol, so we're increasing that by 20% (because the energy content of ethanol is lower than that of jetfuel). So we need around: 193,140 litres (51,020 gallons).
How much cellulose ethanol does a sugar cane field produce? Around 15,000 litres (4000 gallons) per hectare.
193,140 litres divided by 15,000 litres is: 12.876.
Finished, sir: you need approximately 12.876 hectares (31.82 acres) of sugarcane to fill an A380 which will carry 555 passengers from Paris to Tokyo.
Well now lets continue the math and get some additional multipliers in there.
How many flights are currently made per day? Anyone have a source for those data?
There were 11,000 flights on US carriers in 2005, carrying 745.7 million passengers.
From that same source:
Available Seat-Miles(in billions): 1,016.4 (2005).
Let's assume that all those 1 trillion passenger miles were all carried out by A380s.
That is: 0.0126 gallons per mile times one trillion = 12.6 billion gallons of fuel.
>For ethanol, add 20%: 15.2 billion gallons of ethanol needed.
>1618 gallons of cellulosic ethanol per acre of sugar cane
>total amount of sugar cane land needed to fuel all American airtraffic: 9.3 million acres, that's 3.8 million hectares.
>Take the DRCongo's arable land: 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of which 1% is currently being used for food; that leaves you with 99 million hectares, of which you need a mere 3.8 million for sugar cane. That's very feasible.
Conclusion: a small patch of land in one single country, the DRCongo, can fuel all American air traffic.
Joined: Nov 24, 2005 Posts: 743 Location: The ever shrinking wilds of Norway
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 9:09 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Lorenzo
Have you ever calculated the combined landmass needed for supporting our society by today's standard by alternative energy? And how do you plan to fertilize the soil on the field to make sure it isn't depleted?
Though you may have some good points you seem to lack an understanding of the world as a whole. Greed and short-sightedness will never allow the ideas to be introduced on the massive scale that is needed. And certainly not in time.
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 9:19 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Torjus wrote:
Lorenzo
Have you ever calculated the combined landmass needed for supporting our society by today's standard by alternative energy? And how do you plan to fertilize the soil on the field to make sure it isn't depleted?
Though you may have some good points you seem to lack an understanding of the world as a whole. Greed and short-sightedness will never allow the ideas to be introduced on the massive scale that is needed. And certainly not in time.
Torjus Gaaren
Hi Torjus, of course these studies have been done. Please refer to this meta-study, which studies other studies about global bioenergy potential. (If you wish, you can analyse all the analysed studies of that meta-study):
There are countless similar studies out there. The different IEA's Bioenergy taskforces made several too. For the taskforces, see:
www.ieabioenergy.com
And check especially Taskforce 40: www.bioenergytrade.org
and its studies about global bioenergy potential.
Your point about depleting soils is a fair one, but mind you, it takes decades to deplete soils if you use good crops like cassava, palm oil or sugar cane.
Moreover, man is a creature that can enhance nature too; nature is not always smart when it comes to producing biomass - there are huge swathes of land that don't produce biomass efficiently, and man can help nature here. Through genetic engineering we have create drought tolerant crops, crops that require less fertilizer and crops that grow much more biomass than they would normally do under their natural conditions.
So don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the bioenergy future will be easy to achieve, all I'm saying is that we will get there, using good planning, good policies, strong science and a few satellites.
-Its worth noting Ethanol fuelled aircraft need 50% large engines and 25% wings and a 35% increase in take off weight. Needs 15% more energy overall.
-Hydrogen planes need to be much bigger and need 28% more energy
A flight from Seattle to Washington DC needs 29 Gallons per passenger or about ½ acre of soybeans.
Total consumption is 3,709 gallons, 162 passengers @ 80% load factor. That’s 64 acres of soyabeans.
1 million gallons is about 17,000 acres.
The US fleet would require 10% of all agricultural land in the US **at a 15% blend** that’s 78% of the current soyabean market.
The conclusion is ground transport should be switched away from oil first! Which is what I said in the ‘Why is everyone down on aviation thread?’
In 1998 the total world wide consumption by aviation was 178.4 million gallons per day or 65,116 million gallons per year. Although aircraft are now more efficient than in 1998, fuel consumption is higher today because of more people flying (around 1.7 billion journeys per year worldwide).
Nevertheless taking the 1998 figure, 65,116 million gallons translates to 1,106,972,000 acres. As a comparison there are 430,000,000 acres of agricultural land in Europe.
This excludes: Growth, fuels for other transport, land for food and growing materials for clothes. And it would exclude the fuel needed for farming the crop!
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 11:13 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Wildwell, your entire calculation is flawed: soybeans are not used to make ethanol. That's a bit of basic knowledge, isn't it? How come you don't know this by now? You've been in the biofuels debate for quite a while.
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 11:17 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
I never made any mistakes; I took my information direct from a Boeing study and an oil company. You obviously didn't read the source info. While more bio fuel can be made with other crops, I merely repeated the information in the sources and added a few more of my own calculations, which you are welcome to check.
I share your optimism for alternative energy including biofuels, but one should try and shy away from too many 'back of the envelope' calculations, which was why I stuck to the information on the PDF.
Last edited by Wildwell on Sat May 06, 2006 11:38 am; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 11:38 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Wildwell wrote:
I never made any mistakes, I took my information direct from a Boeing study and an oil company.
Okay, you're right, the study mentions the worst biodiesel (biojetfuel) crop on the planet (soybeans).
So you now need to recalculate your thing, knowing these two basic facts:
-soybeans yields 50 gallons per acre
-palm oil yields 700 gallons per acre
In short, palm oil yields 14 times more biojetfuel feedstock.
Your number of acres -- 1,106,972,000 -- divided by 14 = 7,906,942 million acres needed (that's 2,8 million hectares).
Take the DRCongo once more: it has 247 million acres of land not being used (besides 247 million acres of forest).
On a map, it looks like this:
As you can see, the DRCongo is just one of the many Central African countries that could host the small biojetfuel patch of land. Just look at the size of the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, or Angola. Don't forget Southern Sudan either, a vaaaaaast area not being used either. All these Central African countries use between 1 and 5% of their arable land. The rest is ready to be used for energy crops.
But I think we can agree on one thing:
It would be criminal indeed to use the worst biojetfuel crop on the planet, namely soybeans. Truly criminal, knowing that there are many many crops out there that yield much much more, up to 14 times more.
PS: for those who think palm oil is not cold tolerant, technological advances always find a solution, to this problem too. Cold-tolerant palm biodiesel is now a reality.
http://www.mpob.gov.my/
No direct link, but check the "Update on palm biofuel" in the right hand upper corner.
Quote:
Recently, to overcome the long standing pour point problem of palm biodiesel (pour point = 15°C), MPOB has developed a process to produce low pour point palm biodiesel (-21°C to 0°C) which is suitable for temperate countries. [Information Series No. 163]
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 11:44 am Post subject: Re: Bye bye air travel (including freight)
Well all may not be suitable for jet fuel. Anyway, when you say land is not being used, what is the effect on water supply and chopping down trees (which contain a lot of CO2 absorbing potential)? What about the labour/machinery needed? Are biofuels really that environmentally freindly, especially when burn't at 35,000 feet?
Obviously bio fuels (especially palm oil and sugar cane) are interesting, but there are other factors at play and I look forward to seeing a more substitutive study.
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