How soon will alternatives to oil become widely available?

Big Phil · Post by **Big Phil** » 2005-09-14 07:34pm

Every pseudo-scientific magazine rag, science journal, and traditional magazine (aka: Time) comes out periodically with stories about futuristic fuels: Ethanol, fusion power, hydrogen, etc. Each of these are designed to replace our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal.

What sorts of technologies are likely to become available in the next 20 years? And will the be cost-effective, or will they be like ethanol (which requires oil to create it)?

What are the odds of the development of cheap synthetic fossil fuels?

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-09-14 07:35pm

Biofuel, from trees will be economically feasable when oil his... I believe it was $80 a barrel.

As to whether any of it will be implemented outside of theory, I believe we'll start as soon as the last drop of Oil is used up.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-09-14 08:06pm

The alternatives already exist (ethanol or hydrogen). They are energy storage mediums, not energy sources like you think. To fully become independent of oil, we need to be rid of fossil fuel fired powerplants. That means nuclea fission or, hopefully, fusion for producing our energy needs. Technically, ethanol comes from plant matter and so is fuelled by the sun, but even then we'd still have power stations running off oil and coal or gas while our cars use green ethanol.

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2005-09-15 09:16am

MRDOD wrote:Biofuel, from trees will be economically feasable when oil his... I believe it was $80 a barrel.

As to whether any of it will be implemented outside of theory, I believe we'll start as soon as the last drop of Oil is used up.

I actually think it would be implemented sooner since the methods of finding out the exact amount of oil left on the planet are fairly inaccurate IIRC.

There is also bio-diesel (short for converting diesel engines to run on cooking oil) - I keep hearing that providing bio-diesel for one car takes up about as much space as the fields needed to provide food for a single draft horse.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2005-09-15 05:01pm

Fossil fuel? Either when we get economic fusion power or when we deplete the natural gas and coal reserves sufficiently (hundreds of years even allowing for massive increases in consumption).

Even after oil becomes pricey we will still be using it. The extraction costs for a Saudi crude are on the order of 2 dollars a barrel, all high prices will do is institute a ceiling and divert surplus demand to alternatives (like say converting oil burning electric plants to nuclear). Sure we might not go dredge up oil shale if we come up with a cheaper way to make biodeisel (i.e. do some GE on trees, sugar cane, or whatnot), but nothing will have a lower cost than Saudi crude and the like.

As far as technology some feasible ideas in a 20 year timeframe include:

GE for greatly increased sugar/lipid content to make ethanol/biodeisel more economic.

More mass/volume efficient hyrdogen storage. Metal hydrides can store big loads of hydrogen - the system just weighs too much. Gas tanks can store big loads of hydrogen - the system is just far too large. Metal organic frameworks, hydrogen bonding polymers, or maybe some screwball beryllium/lithium hydride will make hydrogen storage far more economical.

Better nuclear technology everywhere along the fuel cycle. More efficient reactors, cheaper storage/reclamation of waste, and lower maintenance plants. Really given the age of most nuclear plants nuclear will either improve or die.

What are the odds of the development of cheap synthetic fossil fuels?

Nil. We burn these suckers because they give off energy, making them from non-fossil fuel sources requires a large input of energy. Biological sources are a possibility, however the land requirements, labor inputs, and other assorted issues make those exothermic sources uneconomical. If you want synthetic gasoline, everything I know points to making it from coal or maybe natural gas.

We've already had two major economies substatially convert to synthetic petrol products. However that was WWII Germany where they had no other choice (real prices estimates are well over 100 a barrel, but given a war economy economic data is throughly hashed) and South Africa which was being embargoed by half the planet. In both cases it took virtually no time for virtually the entire synthetic fuel industry to collapse once global oil trade resumed. Both used coal conversion and both were quite costly.

I can see no economic situation which would favor the production of synthetic fossil fuel (as opposed to just converting one into another) which wouldn't even more greatly favor switching to non-fossil fuel. The world simply has too much coal.

The Original Nex · Post by **The Original Nex** » 2005-09-15 06:33pm

Dispite all of the possible alternative fuels out there, I think it will a very long time before the gas and oil companies allow (or are forced to allow) the wide-spread establishment of stations for alternative fuels.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-09-15 10:50pm

Unless the oil companies are the ones funding them.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2005-09-16 01:10am

Dispite all of the possible alternative fuels out there, I think it will a very long time before the gas and oil companies allow (or are forced to allow) the wide-spread establishment of stations for alternative fuels.

BS. Energy companies, who happen to own the oil companies, are the ones researching the alternatives. Anyone who comes up with a viable alternative has a licence to mint money. They are in oil to make money, but they know that at a certain demand they run out of marginal capacity and anyone with an alternative is in position to make massive amounts of money. Disruptive technologies are well known in business, and virtually all the major plays (BP, Shell, etc.) figure it is better to be the disrupter than the disrupted.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-09-17 04:51pm

I think it will a very long time before the gas and oil companies allow (or are forced to allow) the wide-spread establishment of stations for alternative fuels.

The gas and oil companies sell more than just gasoline for cars. Losing the Almighty Gas Station to an alternafuel isn't going to assassinate them, despite what some Greenpeace wacko spam messages might say.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-09-17 04:54pm

I'm sure you can find a bike shop close to where you live. If not Wal-Mart will do.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-09-17 07:16pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:I'm sure you can find a bike shop close to where you live. If not Wal-Mart will do.

You can get a horse for only about 2,000 USD

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-09-18 12:39am

Sea Skimmer wrote:You can get a horse for only about 2,000 USD

But not at Wal-Mart.