Remove the biofuels sale obligation on oil companies on the basis that it is nanny state!! At a stroke, destroy investor confidence among biofuel producers.
Rush to repair the damage by offering biofuel producers a fat taxpayer funded subsidy. Producers decline to uplift the subsidy, of course, because (competitively priced) biofuels are just too much bother for oil companies now that the legal obligation on them has been removed.
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That was ridiculous…
Bio-fuels will be a big industry but only after oil trades consistently higher, we should get a headstart though, we can be a big producer with our wood cut offs, suitable land for Jatropha and livestock excrement…
Biofuels are a waste of time (ie, the world’s maximum production would be a drop in the bucket) until we succeed in genetically engineering microbes to digess timber. That said, with peak oil production still in 2008 at present, we should be having the discussion about alternatives (well, we should have started the process about a decade ago…)
Bio fuels can replace about 25% of current fuel use according to studies I’ve seen, given how much we waste currently that isn’t really a drop in the bucket…
The microbes you talk about have been developed, Iogen Corporation has a big trial plant under construction, might not get it here as the microbes are GM:
http://www.iogen.ca/cellulosic_ethanol/what_is_ethanol/process.html
How about solar stuff? I have a solar powered torch, why not a solar powered car?
Battery issues…
Put wheels on your torch Spud.
ROTFL
@JMH Nice, I hadn’t seen that.
What about those who argue that biofuels remove the production of certain crops (corn) from food and food based product) for oil creating a shortgae of the former?
This is the most stupid of Labour policies and deserved to be undone. Bio-fuels are a complete con and have led to increased food prices and destruction of forests. Please tell me that Labour will use this as one of their election planks?
There is s much that is wrong with bio-fuels at every level. I am disappointed and saddened to see that Labour want the poor people of the world to starve to death.
I’m with Monty on this one – there are some really spectacularly bad things about biofuels that you need to address instead of touting them as a climate change solution. The one already mentioned by Monty is that in some countries deforestation is taking place to make room for biofuel crops – so no carbon offsetting there. In others, biofuels are being produced at the expense of (or in the case of corn) instead of food – leading to food price escalation in some developing countries. In the US the biofuel imperative has been used to prop up the farm subsidies regime, which surely contradicts some of labour’s free trade objectives. The objective – carbon reductions – is right; the solution (biofuels) is wrong.
Monty the world is running a food surplus it’s just that it isnt shared… I know you were being facetious.
That’s a defeatist attitude Monty…
There is plenty of land currently unused that is suitable for Jatropha, plenty of wood cuts currently being unused and faeces, it really depends on when you think peak oil will happen…
@Monty – excellent point about starving people.
Yes monty you’re quite right. I recall years ago listening to a Dutch biofuel expert who made precisely the same point – years ago.
It’s something for some reason many people aren’t aware of and therefore don’t consider.
In their headlong rush to save the planet, they’re actually killing people by forcing them to starve to death.
Sad, isn’t it.
Monty et al make a valid point but not a relevant one in the NZ context. We have a cost curve for various biofuels and the technology to make a start. That is not to say that electromotive power won’t also have a place but a battery powered train truck or plane does seem a long way off. My original point was that the seven sisters will not lift a finger unless obliged. It is not in their interests, broadly.
“My original point was that the seven sisters will not lift a finger unless obliged. It is not in their interests, broadly.”
Personally I think we need to go nuclear, straight away. Pebble-bed reactors are safe, don’t imbalance the grid and modular.
It’s either that, or start burning the coal. Which is it to be?
jesus “the seven sisters”… Pete this is the second decade of the 21st century. The seven sisters haven’t been seven since at least the mid 90s and the concept itself is almost 50 years old. If that’s still shaping your thinking then no wonder Labour’s strategy is a mess.
The reason they won;t lift a finger is because it doesn’t make financial sense for them. You just don;t get that they are largely ambivalent about the source of fuel they sell. Chevron will sell crude to BP and buy gasoline from Shell if there is a margin.
What drives them is the money they can make. Make it profitable for them and they will do it. But your ideas are all cost and no benefit, with the expectation that they will rush willingly to transfer their shareholder cash to biofuel producers.
“but a battery powered train truck or plane does seem a long way off.”
Sorry but you are in dreamland. You haven;t even got electric cars on the road, where the power/weight issues are easier. It will take a decade or two for them to penetrate the market just as hybrids have yet to make a dent more than 10 years after going commercial. How can you possibly say battery powered train trucks aren’t a long way off? It’s lala land stuff.
Insider you are a funny poster, I think Pete stated perfectly clearly that
which you actually agree with in your comment
Except that you say Pete doesn’t get it, when in fact your comment matches his.
You;ve had too much sun. Or you don’t get it. Or something.
Then Pete says that powered train trucks are a long way off, you agree with him and then say he is in dream land?
What are you doing exactly? Just randomly throwing words together irrespective of meaning?
Specifically, you say this
when Pete actually said they do seem a long way off:
You do know people on this blog can read, right? And scroll around to see if your comments on other posters make any sense?
Your credibility evaporates like a bad smell when you do stuff like this.
Just a helpful hint.
The seven sisters only produce 12% of petroleum daily, they are largely irrelevant long term as they are in long term liquidation…
Solar does not depend on Batteries as we still have a grid to feed. Biofuels give us flexibility which may be crucial. They are not a replacement for our greedy oil appetite.
All Nact is doing is feeding oil companies and reducing our independence as a result.
The present structure of wealth capture by a small group using energy as a commodity will change. Any shock in supply or price whatever the cause, brings chaos for the masses. Having electricity in private hands looks to be a very unwise move in the longer term.
Look at the US bankers who took all and then more, the Govt has to bale them out and we are all still paying world wide and will go on paying interest to for the greed and uncontrolled largess
But all that did show many things. The one they are not talking about is the crucial. Disregarding the media hype daily about markets.
The resources of the world have been heavily plundered and are going to increasing in costs from rising energy prices, scarcity of material supply, greatly increased competition for them by increased demand and growing scarcity. All the easy stuff has gone.
There are limits on all but iron and the energy it takes to process the ore will limit supply. Recycling is generally very energy intensive, particularly with aluminum.
Even uranium has a limit of supply but its use for energy may well be reduced as the true legacy of the waste is accepted. Think of what a 10,000 year half life means. Thats 400 generations.
What a mortgage you want to give your descendants just for wasteful luxury and ignorance.
We live wastefully and squander resources leaving a depleted world and sorry mess for future generations.
reid
Your option about one or the other, nuclear or coal really means that you have not looked at the situation.
The only long term answer is reduction in energy use as well as moving away from an energy intensive food production and distribution.
The fact that our system of economics can collapse so easily is not a reason to leave things the way they are or even think of long term solutions along present flawed economic lines.