Harstad, who is associate professor of managerial economics & decision sciences at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said, “Both on the demand-side and the supply-side the result is ‘carbon leakage’, which is an increase in pollution abroad relative to the emission-reduction at home.”  Carbon leakage describes the process by which carbon-cutting measures in one location cause a bump up of emissions elsewhere. The term is defined by the International Panel on Climate Change as “the increase in CO2 emissions outside the countries taking domestic mitigation action divided by the reduction in the emissions of these countries.”

Harstad claims those leakages are in the order of 5 to 25%, but they can be higher when small coalitions of special interests execute ambitious policies over longer timeframes. Though some leakage may be mitigated by trade tariffs, that only limits and distorts trade further.  Harstad asserts the answers lay on the supply side.

Harstad’s study, “Buy Coal! A Case for Supply-Side Environmental Policy”, has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of Political Economy.  The idea fits those with a desire to see a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

It seems like a new, albeit obvious, notion.  Fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas left in the ground cannot emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, so the more you buy and leave there, the more emissions are prevented.  The current administration and others are actually practicing the idea now with limiting reserve exploration and development, lease revocations, and other subtle actions to take resources out of the market.

Harstad’s explanation is a tempting and plausible concept, but the effect is more damaging because it influences fuel markets and need not be done in a large way to drive markets to higher process.
The environmentalist’s fundamental problem from adopting a “demand-side mindset” that implements policy to reduce fossil fuel consumption is that not everyone takes part. An international agreement between coalition countries to curb oil consumption would initially have the desired effect of reducing overall demand, but this will lower the price of oil, giving a strong incentive to countries outside of the agreement to buy and use more.

On the other hand, if an international agreement decides to limit oil extraction and supply, the price will go up, and the countries outside of the agreement would just produce more for export.

Harstads’ answer for the predicament is to buy up production rights in countries outside of such agreements.  Now the economics get tricky, having sold its rights to produce Harstad believes supplies would be less sensitive to price for those countries, enabling the countries limiting demand to proceed without the concern others would increase demand.  That would get to the “universal price and demand equalization”.   “The analysis shows that progress on international climate policy is best achieved by simply utilizing the existing market for extraction rights,” said Harstad.

Obviously, the idea would be wildly expensive, at risk for production rights being revoked, and for the most part impractical, as much of the world isn’t using the developed world’s property rights principles.

But that’s not to say the extremists won’t try it and achieve some success.  For consumers its not the disappearance of some reserves that matter on a production basis, it’s the production of the last few barrels each day that decide if supplies are adequate or not.  The reserves the extremists would buy up would only be replaced by other more expensive ones.

Yet the capacity of extremists to conjure up viable scenarios with theoretical public benefits and affect policy, regulations and legislation is notorious.  Their lobbying success and election influence is unassailable.

Consumers worldwide are in danger from another idea out there to drive costs higher and further stall economic development.

The reason why is the resources asteroids contain.  There will be metals of considerable interest, lots of water, and perhaps some methane. Plus a lot of what many will consider junk.  Still, with some ingenuity plus nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus as a group, space life could get to self-sustaining status and start exporting, well – practically anything.  With unlimited solar power and a gravity free work and production facility the potential for high value product production is extreme.

Moving An Asteroid Concept. Click image for the largest view.

First, on Monday Mr. Wang took note of a Technology Review piece that discusses an asteroid strike on earth about 65 million years ago.  The point is that a huge chunk of earth was blown off into space with some life aboard that’s been scattering through the galaxy ever since.  Now if life can stay viable over time and the conditions of space then seeding will occur in the rest of the solar system and a noteworthy part of the galaxy.  There is a theory suggesting life got going in the galaxy as much as 10 billion years ago with propagation getting to earth 4.6 billion years ago.  Humm, intellectual bait?

On Wednesday the first post Mr. Wang loaded was the Google founders, Ross Perot, James Cameron and some others are considering a venture (perhaps called Planetary Resources will announce its existence at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at The Museum of Flight in Seattle next Tuesday) seemingly to mine an asteroid.  With a founding list like that and a press release suggesting trillions of dollars of value paired to the Spacex lift to orbit effort with greatly reduced costs – the idea has real legs.

Wang quickly follow that with the news of the Xprize finding multiple billionaires backing an asteroid mining prize.  Peter Diamandis is expected to have an announcement ready next week as well.  So far the supposition is the Wednesday post is coupled to the Xprize announcement.  One assumes that is so, still Mr. Perot is certain to go his own way and Mr. Cameron is very likely to take off on his own as well – as just seen where Cameron was at the bottom of the deepest part of the sea. These are two guys with the character and temperament to get things done.

The Xprize piece has some fascinating information.  Wang links out to the post this Thursday on a Wired article about a four day workshop investigation the feasibility and requirements of capturing an asteroid and locating it close up as a base for manned missions.  Now, this is a grand idea. Moving an asteroid is a huge undertaking; never has a celestial object been moved by mankind, but it’s not an impossible one. A recent study at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has already shown possible feasibility to move a small asteroid, with a mass of ~10,000 kg, deep into the Earth’s gravity well – even as low as the orbit of the International Space Station.

Thursday’s post also has a link to Professor John Lewis’ discussion on “Asteroid Exploration and Exploitation”.    By all means, please have a look at the pdf.  While 29 pages might seem large the text is huge and the graphics occupy a lot of space.  Its fact packed and a very fast read – except for the moments of astonishment like:

One small sized near earth asteroid (NEA) is Amun #3554.  Its 2000 meters in diameter containing about 30 times the total amount of metals mined over the course of human history that is worth something like $70 Trillion dollars.

Lewis also has a brief word on the legal regime prospects with a sensible offer not far from the coda used for promoting the internet, “keep your laws off my asteroid!”, a lot like the “keep hands off the internet” that is still holding tenuously for free countries here on earth.

Lastly the hard part – there hasn’t been a large discovery of nitrogen, the about 80% of the air we breath and an crucial part of plant growth for food.  The water is abundant, with oxygen, carbon and the trace elements so nitrogen is going to be a problem.  Yet is can be ‘mined’ on earth, cooled to a liquid and transported up.  It would be grand to find a bunch of it though.  It would be worth the effort to bring some in.

A side point offered in the Lewis’ presentation is from 100 meter sized asteroids (400,000) to one kilometer sized (1,000) about 30% are going to hit the earth over time.  Of course the impacts are spread over multiple millennia, but mining them to nothingness is preferable to worrying or plotting ideas on how to move them.

Your humble writer will back Lewis with the thought, “We cannot afford a centrally controlled, duplication free government dominated effort.”  The Xprize and all the private efforts are the leadership for the free world and free men and women for the economy of the future.  Billions of us could live “out there” with little risk as the problems are discovered and solutions found.

Yet there will be loss, of capital, lives and injury.  But we’ve seen one smallish asteroid is worth about 5 years of gross domestic national product.  In five years here on earth the losses are considerable as well.

There’s stuff out there, worth getting, processing and for making life, business, society and culture.  It’s our destiny; let’s get on with it.

William C. "Bill" Ford, Jr

“If we do nothing, we face the prospect of ‘global gridlock,’ a never-ending traffic jam that wastes time, energy and resources and even compromises the flow of commerce and healthcare,” Ford said in a statement before giving a keynote address at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. “The cooperation needed between the automotive and telecommunications industries will be greater than ever as we prepare for and manage the future. We will need to develop new technologies, as well as new ways of looking at the world.”

In many urban areas and in all large ones the problem of gridlock is already here.  The number of vehicles in the world is climbing and can be expected to climb at an ever-accelerating rate for the foreseeable future.  This will be a major problem that can only get bigger, sixty percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2030, and there will be as many as an astonishing 2 billion cars on the road.

Many metropolitan Americans and lots of urban dwellers worldwide, China in particular, vividly understand the roads are close to and sometimes past their saturation point.

Most of the major carmakers are researching connected vehicle technology, which would use GPS, wireless and radar technology to ease congestion, increase safety and save time.  All of those will save on fuel use and money.

Research is showing the only way to ease congestion is with vehicle-to-vehicle communication. One eye-opener is a German study that found just five cars per thousand communicating with one another could significantly reduce gridlock.  One probably would have an advantage being one of the five.

Many experts in the auto industry are reported to believe that developing intelligent vehicles and semi- or even fully autonomous vehicles could be tools against congestion.  But that is a kind of driver control system.

Add to that a somewhat suspect assertion from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who’s alleging connecting our cars could address as many as 4.3 million crashes, or about 80 percent of accidents that don’t involve intoxicated drivers.  That may be optimistic in view of the competency of drivers in general.

Mr. Ford, who is a “Ford” after all offered his company’s “Blueprint for Mobility” as an example of the kind of thinking looking for answers. The blueprint highlights the need for smarter transportation infrastructure including “intelligent” cars that communicate with each other and with the road via wireless networks. Such advancements will require cooperation between the automotive and communications industries, which is why Ford took his message to the world’s largest mobile communications conference.

Ford’s viewpoint has a certain appeal, although all the ideas are in gestation, at least the Ford view suggests keeping more autonomy for the driver.

In an interview with London’s Financial Times Ford said vehicles should be seen “as pieces of a much bigger, richer network.” Specifically, cars of the future could rely on 802.11p WLAN, which is reserved for Vehicle-2-Vehicle. In the near future, connected cars would communicate with one another and with central traffic monitoring stations that could send warnings about congestion, construction and accidents to in-car navigation systems.

Holding on to driver autonomy might not be possible looking further into the future.

Semi- or fully-autonomous vehicles will allow for smoother traffic flow and fewer accidents. Already, projects such as Europe’s SARTRE road train trials are proving that cars following closely at safe speeds can maximize highway capacity and reduce congestion. And MIT researchers developed a mathematical model that can predict which cars will run red lights, which can be used to warn other Vehicle-2-Vehicle connected cars.

There is a certain appeal to the connected self-operating car.  Even outside the congested areas, the choice to relax and let the connected computer do the constant attention and corrections has great appeal.

On the point though, no solution will prevent congestion forever, nor can they be as efficient as well-run public transit systems for moving large numbers of people efficiently.  We doubters suggest implementing the technology to create networked vehicles will require an almost unattainable level of global standardization and cooperation with substantial amounts of money both for the community and the vehicle operators.

Some very cool efforts are already underway. Volvo has successfully tested semi-autonomous “road trains,” and next year Germany will launch real-world tests of connected car technology using vehicles from three carmakers.

One might hope Mr. Ford is right.  The implication, or metaphor is we’d be driving like data moves on the Internet.  That idea would give us choices from calculations that have real time information on what is where, going where, with what’s in the way and forecasts built up over time that would apply to the circumstances.

Driving in congested urban areas is already densely controlled, it might not be government or systems now, rather it’s just the intensity of individual choices being made by the thousands of drivers per second.  Sometimes it’s a wonder anyone gets anywhere. Then again, it’s a marvel to see a time-lapse video.

But there is a limit to how tight the congestion can get before there isn’t any room to move.  Urban folks better hope a lot of political types and city planning folks get on a good path and soon.

Wireless Dynamic Car Charging Graphic from Stanford. Click image for the largest view.

The team follows research work from 2007 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology getting magnetic resonance to light a 60-watt bulb.  That experiment demonstrated that power could be transferred between two stationary coils about six feet apart, even when people and other obstacles are placed in between.

The MIT team researchers even created a spin-off company named WiTricity that is developing a stationary charging system capable of wirelessly transferring about 3 kW of electric power to a vehicle parked in a garage or on the street.

But Stanford has proposed a design published in the journal Applied Physics Letters that would transfer up to 10 kW of electrical energy to a coil 6.5 feet away with an efficiency of up to 97%.  One can imagine the groans in Massachusetts.

Both the new company WiTricity and the Stanford team are building high-efficiency wireless charging systems using magnetic resonance coupling that wirelessly transmit large electric currents between metal coils positioned a little less than or about 2 meters apart. The long-term goal of this type of research is to develop an “all-electric” highway that wirelessly charges the cars and trucks as they cruise down the road.

Magnetic resonance coupling transfers power with two copper coils tuned to resonate at the same natural frequency. The coils are placed a couple meters apart with one coil connected to an electric current that generates a magnetic field, which causes the second coil to resonate. This magnetic resonance results in the transfer of electric energy through the space between the first coil and the receiving coil.

The WiTricity design for power transfer efficiency depends on the relative sizes of the power source, capture devices, and on the distance between the devices.  Maximum efficiency of the WiTricity design is achieved when the devices are relatively close to one another, going past 95%.  WiTricity has secured partnerships with automobile manufacturer Toyota and electrical component manufacturer Delphi.

Across the country at Stanford, (Isn’t competition great?) Shanhui Fan, an associate professor of electrical engineering, and his colleagues wondered if the MIT system could be modified to transfer 10 kW of electric power over a distance of 6.5 feet enough to charge a car moving at highway speeds.

Working with computer models the team set out to determine the most efficient way to transmit 10 kilowatts of power to a real car.

Shanhui Fan explains the problem, “Asphalt in the road would probably have little effect, but metallic elements in the body of the car can drastically disturb electromagnetic fields. That’s why we did the APL (computer model) study – to figure out the optimum transfer scheme if large metal objects are present.”

The Stanford team created computer models of systems with metal plates added to the basic coil design.  Using mathematical simulations, postdoctoral scholars Xiaofang Yu and Sunil Sandhu found that a coil bent at a 90-degree angle and attached to a metallic plane can transfer 10 kW of electrical energy to an identical coil 6.5 feet away.

Fan and team members Xiaofang Yu, Sunil Sandhu, Sven Beiker, and Richard Sassoon recently filed a patent application for their wireless system.

Next up are plans to test it in the laboratory and eventually try it out in real driving conditions. The researchers also want to make sure that the system won’t harm, interfere with, or affect drivers, passengers or the dozens of microcomputers that control steering, navigation, air conditioning and other vehicle operations.

The team has started discussions with Michael Lepech, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, to study the optimal layout of roadbed transmitters and determine if rebar and other metals in the pavement will reduce efficiency.  Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) and his group are involved to be sure that the remaining 3% is lost as heat and not as potentially harmful radiation.

Both the MIT firm WiTricity and the Stanford team are way out in front of the technology.  The SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) taskforce on wireless charging and positioning of electric vehicles isn’t yet working up an on-road dynamic charging specification, even though a wireless charging and positioning of electric vehicles standard is expected to come with a final draft later this year.

Before everyone gets excited these technologies have quite a way to go.  The level of efficiency now looks very good.  The concept seems feasible.  But these kinds of ideas are going to be road-building projects and consume large amounts of copper.   Then one wonders how to bill the user.  Dynamic charging is a grand idea, and looks like it will work, but we’re quite a way from rolling on the highway and driving unlimited distances.   But it sure is appealing idea for the future.

Battelle/R&DMag has it that R&D funding growth will largely be driven by the Asian economies that will see an increase in spending of nearly 9%. North American R&D will grow by 2.8% topped by European R&D that will grow by about 3.5% even with Greece, formerly one of the world’s top 40 R&D spenders, expected to have no increase.  Worldwide growth remains strong and stable in the aftermath of the global recession.

Worldwide R&D by Nation 2012. Click for more info.

Still the largest economy the U.S. growth of 2.1% is leavened against a reported and suspect 2% inflation rate.  Taken at face value the growth is a miserly 0.1% and if inflation were counted more fully and accurately the growth would disappear.  That puts the U.S. in the same league as Greece.  The U.S. breakout Battelle/R&DMag uses looks like this:

• U.S. Private Industry will spend by far the largest amount with a projection of $279.6 billion in R&D in 2012, up 3.75 percent over 2011.
• U.S. Federal Government spending will reach $125.6 billion in 2012, a decrease of 1.16 percent.
• Academia in the U.S. will spend $12 billion on research in 2012, up 2.85 percent over last year.
• Non-profits will increase spending in 2012 by 2.7 percent to $14.5 billion and other government entities in the U.S. will round out total R&D expenditures by increasing 2.72 percent to $3.8 billion.

Beyond the national competition the Funding Forecast offers an insight on expectations.  The trend is climbing for more economic results in commercial outcomes.  Several years ago, only 10 percent of U.S. industries calculated return on investment (ROI) from R&D efforts, but the newest data from the surveys, which has become a part of the forecast, now indicates that 40 percent measure that figure.

Martin Grueber, Battelle Research Leader and co-author of the report said, “ . . . industry isn’t the only sector under the ROI microscope. There also are increasing demands that public sector R&D investments show real economic and policy outcomes.”

Of the top 50 firms worldwide 18 are in the U.S., where manufacturing R&D is the dominant role.  Getting to information that has a personal impact like output, products and jobs is a challenge faced by both U.S. firms and the government.  But there is wide agreement that technology collaborations are important to growth with many manufacturers planning on increasing collaborative activity such as knowledge sharing, shorter development cycles and the availability of proprietary technologies.

The survey respondents identified the top three ways government could help support manufacturing R&D as: providing tax credits to companies with active R&D programs, supporting academic R&D in manufacturing and increasing technology transfer support from U.S. national labs to industry.  That sounds like, let us keep our money, keep academia pushing the boundaries and knock down the bureaucratic barriers to get technology out into the economy.

The forecast looks at several industries and the full forecast can be downloaded.  For us the energy and fuels area is the prime interest.

In our field of interest, energy-related research sponsored by U.S. manufacturers and technology providers will reach nearly $6.7 billion in 2012, up 23.1 percent from 2011. Global spending by energy-related companies will grow by 7.8 percent to reach $17.9 billion in 2012.  Over a third of the world R&D total will come from the consumer of a quarter of the energy market, and a big chunk will be provided by Big Oil.

Top US Energy R&D Investors 09 to Q3-11. Click image for more info.

In the meantime a “review panel” commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) identified key R&D areas where DOE program and investment can play a significant development role, including several in which the DOE historically has underinvested. Those areas include both energy supply and demand and relate to both stationary power (deploying clean electricity, modernizing the grid and increasing building/industrial efficiency) and transport power (deploying alternative hydrocarbon fuels, electrifying the vehicle fleet, and increasing vehicle efficiency).

Top Energy Technology Research Areas Worldwide 2014. Click image for more info.

The review panel calls on DOE to maintain a mix of analytic, assessment and fundamental engineering research capabilities in a broad set of energy-technology areas, all the while seeking to balance more assured activities against higher-risk transformational work.  The panel’s report acknowledges that R&D efforts must be relevant to the private sector.  But there is a tension between supporting work that industry doesn’t – the long-term nature of basic research – and the urgency of the nation’s energy challenge.

That’s the paradox facing the granting bureaucrats and the private sector.  It obviously can’t be all one or the other.  Where the balance lies will be different for anyone looking.

It comes with some relief that there is a “raise” in store for the energy field, and a good one beyond the inflation rate.  There are a few policy and budgeters out there that grasp the importance of reliable energy and lower costs to consumers to drive a healthy economy.

Printed copies of the full R&D Funding Forecast report will be available by request Jan. 3 by contacting Sandy Walker at (614) 424-7619 or at walkers@battelle.org.

The variance comes from ExxonMobil being in business where careers, investors and consumers have to live with the results.  As the world’s largest free and independent petroleum company ExxonMobil has the most careers, largest amount and number of capital holders and countless consumers.  With investment planning running over a decade and money at risk in the hundreds of billions of dollars in such time frames, what these folks think matters to everyone.

To no great surprise the forecast calls for more worldwide energy use through 2040 by 30%.  Natural gas is expected to grow, and surprisingly coal is expected to decrease on a long trend down.

Catch this brief statement – Demand growth would be more than 4 times the 30% projection without the expectation of efficiency gains.  Obviously some consumers are going to do better than others and the hint in case it’s missed is, efficiency gains are going to be crucial to one’s economic welfare.

Global Fuel Mix By Decade ExxonMobil. Click image for the largest view.

On that point ExxonMobil is noting that steep improvements in personal transport are going to be vital as hybrids push the new car efficiency to 50 mpg.  The sooner one own transport gets there the better off over time one will be.

The Outlook mentions horizontal drilling and fracking reservoirs.  By 2040 the high tech natural gas production should clear 30% of the total consumption.  That’s cause to pause on the hysterics about the technology.  30% is a huge marginal percentage, meaning a loss of the technology would drive prices astronomically higher.

ExxonMobil isn’t just looking at petroleum because a tiny bit of oil and a substantial amount of natural gas goes to electric power generation.  Here is where the numbers truly surprise and are due a great deal of thought. ExxonMobil is projecting that global electricity demand will rise by 80% through 2040 in national economies for living standard improvement and consumers will switch to electricity from other sources such as oil, coal or biomass. By 2040, four out of every 10 units of energy produced in the world will be going toward the production of electricity.

Even at that 80% rise the Outlook foresees coal use to start shrinking and natural gas use to increase dramatically to over 30% as well.

Depending on one’s viewpoint good or bad, ExxonMobil points out that nuclear power use could well double by 2040 in nations worldwide.  One might think that the U.S. would do very well from a national security and economic standpoint to get moving on less dangerous and less expensive nuclear power options.

The projection for 2040 holds that more than 15 percent of the world’s electricity will be generated by renewable fuels – solar, wind, biofuels, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric power. The fastest growing of these will be wind, which will increase by about 8% per year from 2010 to 2040.

The brightest point is ExxonMobil’s calculations suggest that as the world personal vehicle fleet doubles the total fuel use will be essentially flat.  Against that is commercial use, trucks, planes, ships, and trains’ energy demand will grow 70%.  The Outlook is calling for 30% more oil production to keep up.

The Outlook is honest enough to point out some factors that could revise the forecast dramatically.  The leading ideas are in low cost storage for wind electricity and the fact that high utilization could speed up the wind installations.  Then battery costs on a steep decline would have a major impact on electric drive personal vehicles.  Then there are breakthroughs in petroleum production in research that might make everyone’s ideas obsolete.

The ExxonMobil 2012 Outlook pdf file is only 43 graphic rich pages. It’s a written narrative more than a track through data rich statistics.  And the variance from the Energy Information Agency isn’t far off.  Its time well spent to leaf through it.

The graphic above makes clear that is only been a couple hundred year since coal got a market share start, about 100 years for oil then natural gas to take off and barely 50 years for everything else.  It takes decades for energy infrastructure to take hold and gain major market share.

The question on the technological front is and will remain for some time which technologies will earn a big chunk of the bar in future graphics.  It’s quite clear for now that those bar segments aren’t going to change much in the coming decades without some major production and infrastructure cost break throughs.

FuelChoiceNow believes the circumstances that advanced fuel companies are developing new, affordable and commercial-ready alternatives to oil, but are inhibited by unnecessary vehicle and refueling constraints that choke demand and inhibit change in the marketplace.

The case for the position is founded in reality: ethanol and natural gas are evidence of a marketplace that does not reward price-competitiveness and innovation. Both are domestically-produced fuels that are cheaper than gasoline, but have limited market access.

Brooke Coleman, Executive Director of the Advanced Ethanol Coalition and a columnist of the BioFuelsDigest, is coordinating the organization’s campaign.  Coleman notes that cars and trucks could be made to run on any blend of gasoline, ethanol or natural gas-derived methanol for less than $100 per vehicle.  He’s correct if not exactly accurate.  For some the $100 quote is low and others way under.

Coleman says, “Americans are paying $4 per gallon for gasoline while we export cheaper fuels to other countries.”  This is not refutable – US firms are planning to export natural gas in liquid form, sell ethanol oversees in a growing market, and sell coal by the shipload.  All of these products could be used in the U.S.

FuelChoiceNow has a bit of a problem with the positioning.  Some folks insist that biofuels are best, as they offer no new CO2 to the atmosphere.  But the energy security crowd is quite pleased that alternatives and fossil sources are considered fairly.

That may be from a reality of economics.  Alternatives are only small fractions of the whole scale of fuel use.  More likely is that opportunities for jobs and an economic turnaround are going to need both sources at full speed.

FuelChoiceNow sees the effort as encompassing a wide range of fuels, including biofuels, natural gas, electricity and others, while supporting the immediate deployment of technologies that are available and price-competitive now. The position of its longer-range view has something to offer those whose primary concerns revolve around carbon, and the replacement of an oil-based fleet with electric vehicles.  That could be inevitable – or not – depending on how the storage issues work out.  We may be recycling carbon for centuries.

The ‘who’ of the early backers is heavily based around biofuels producers and an influential group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.  Observers have noted that after a period of three years in which a combination of oil, food and environmental interests have maintained a counteroffensive and substantially eroded much of the fan base of alternative fuels in Washington.  FuelChoice Now seeks to draw together a group comprising all the alternative fuel technologies and thereby renew the offensive against the oil platform.

Your humble writer doubts that big bad oil is so nefarious.  They’re just self-interested and will argue with considerable credentials that the facts command that the existing industry be handled with care.

FuelChoiceNow offers four arguments for gaining support.  First is that no single technology, in the near term, has the feedstocks or manufacturing base to replace all 180 billion gallons of fossil fuels consumed for road transport in the United States, or even the substantial majority of those gallons that are imported. A portfolio of technologies, and vehicle efficiencies, will be needed to end the addiction of imported oil.  This rather counterpoints the idea of an offensive mentioned above – yet the perspective is that transition is key to an earlier point – economic security may be more important to oil company stockholders than market suzerainty and share.

The second argument proposes that new technologies – through market access and market choice – will reduce costs for the American driver, create jobs for the domestic fuel and vehicle makers, reduce the trade deficit, and keep dollars inside the US that can be used to further economic growth through domestic investment.  This point has been pounded for months by the American Petroleum Institute to deaf democrats – so wish ‘em luck.

Third is the dubious “ridiculously low price of $100 per vehicle” for a flex-fuel conversion to unlock the fuel markets.  The pitch is “That’s the cost of two fill-ups, over the lifetime of the vehicle.” Right or even wrong by 100% – its cheap and worth doing by most people.

The fourth is a matter of reality – China, India and Brazil are already going this way.  These countries are the rising economic powers of the 21st century and unless the U.S. reasserts its economic leadership in a massive way risks being left far behind.  An oil-only U.S. economy corralled with high energy prices and the costs of defending access to imported oil, has no hope of competing in world trade against countries that have developed superior platforms for domestic energy production.

The FuelChoiceNow effort is missing a major player in energy sources.  Coal.

Technologies that convert natural gas to liquid fuel are similar to the technology to convert coal into liquid fuel as well.  Another is compressed natural gas, already in use by fleets.

Coleman’s relationship with BioFuelsDigest has triggered a discussion of technology from Celanese Corporation (at the end of the article).  Celanese has worked on light carbon molecules for years with acetic acid – the two-carbon molecule component of vinegar that is one step away from ethanol.  Celanese can make methanol from natural gas and with syngas can make abundant ethanol competitive to $60 crude.

Celanese is headed to China because they can do business there.  In the U.S. the process would be some major “policy discussion” taking years whereas China just needs to work out the commercial details.

There’s a recession based on business regulation example for you.

Right now China is already the second largest market for ethanol.  You might want to take a few minutes out to look at the BioFuelsDigest article for a much deeper explanation.

We best keep an eye on FuelChoiceNow.  Lets hope their press releases make it this way. Here’s to wishing them some success.

The chemical market from the raw material producer to the end user all have a need for standards, the way things are described and disclosed so decisions can be made.

Chemical companies and manufacturers want to be able to select greener starting materials and use cleaner chemical processes to make environmentally preferred products. But there are no authoritative marketplace criteria to identify green, greener, or greenest. And for those who think they are green, there’s uncertainty over the best way to communicate the supporting information.

The answer is a comprehensive voluntary industry standard that enables everyone from raw material suppliers and manufacturers to retail consumers and policymakers to exchange common information in a standard format on the environmental performance of chemical products and processes.

Neil Hawkins, Dow Chemical’s vice president of sustainability and environmental health and safety puts it this way quoted in Chemical Engineering News, “There is a hunger in the marketplace for reliable, consistent, compelling information on which to base greener, more sustainable choices. Chemical companies need a life-cycle view – greenhouse gases, water, energy, renewables, waste reduction, recyclability – that encompasses all parts of the supply chain. A standard is needed that provides guidance on the different types of data required, who should be publishing the data, in what form, and in what quality, so that you end up with a robust decision-making apparatus that will allow businesses and consumers to make fair comparisons and better choices.”

Standards already exist in many chemical fields and the most likely a consumer will see is a product ecolable or warning.  There might even be a recycled content label.  But the task across the whole chemistry field isn’t complete.

To that end, the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) is spearheading an effort to create the Greener Chemical Products & Processes Standard. This standard will provide data to allow anyone to evaluate the relative environmental performance of chemical products and their manufacturing technologies.

GCI Director Robert Peoples says, “We are building a multiattribute, consensus-based standard with third-party verification that a company can certify against to say that it has a greener product or manufacturing process than a competing product or a technology that it aims to replace.”

Nearly 60 participants, including stakeholders from chemical companies, academia, trade groups, federal and state agencies, and nongovernmental organizations, are providing a balance of opinions to help establish the standard, Peoples adds.

NSF International, a global expert in standards development, is administering the process. The end goal is to have the standard issued by the American National Standards Institute. A draft of the standard is nearly complete and is expected to be released for public comment over the summer. The plan is to have final approval by the end of the year.

The basis for the strategy of “informed substitution” is based on selecting chemical products that are fully assessed, have low hazard, and provide life-cycle benefits. The effort to develop the standard comes from green chemistry initiatives already in place. A primary example is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment (DfE) program, which encourages collaborative efforts between companies and environmental groups to screen chemicals and promote use of safer materials.

The EPA’s staff develops DfE protocols for conducting screens of alternative chemicals based on threshold values for human and aquatic toxicity, bioaccumulation, persistence, and other parameters. Products that contain ingredients posing the least concern among chemicals in their class earn DfE certification and the right to use the DfE logo on the product label.

The point of “informed substitution” is to move away from using the most hazardous chemicals.  Inherent in this model is an allowance for continual improvement by obtaining more data and a better understanding of what is greener and more sustainable over time.

Stephen K. Ritter writing in Chemical & Engineering News, a journal of the American Chemical Society has a much longer version of this post available. For those of you with interest in the issues, as this writer is in sustainability, recyclability, and contaminates that will always be issues life on Earth is going to have to stay abreast of, Ritter’s article is a great place to start.  Its link rich for getting the deeper details.

Its fair to say the standards, like it or not, are coming.  One might also hope that imports would also be subject to the standard as lead paint on kid’s toys is something that never ever should happen.

Fuels are going to migrate to more bio content.  As we’re seeing now some interesting compounds would blend and substitute fossil oil.  Many products for energy gathering an storage will use chemicals in manufacturing that should be well marked.  Human ingenuity is getting so sophisticated that some form of map about the components involved needs to be available.

The American chemical industry needs lauded for the effort and the result.  Manmade chemical compounds can be nasty, as can biological compounds.  But when industrial scale is involved the volumes and concentrations become a concern.  The safer chemical product production can get – the better.  Over time perhaps man can do better than biology.

Knowledge makes doing better possible and standards go far to spreading the knowledge and making it useable for more people to do more things.

The ACS selected 11 papers concerning materials and methods for energy production and storage (e.g., fuel cells, batteries, bio-hydrocarbon fuels and solar) from JACS and 10 papers from ES&T speak to how energy could – or should – be cleverly harnessed.

All articles will remain free to non-subscribers until the appearance of the next JACS Select. This issue is published in concert with the 2010 ACS Spring National Meeting’s similar focus on “Chemistry for a Sustainable World”.

An editorial by John Crittenden, ES&T Associate Editor and Henry White, JACS Associate Editor provides a quick summary of the papers selected for the issue.

One doesn’t see much transparency even though you’re often the taxpayer providing the money for the government’s grants.  Anytime one gets a shot a looking through the science it’s a fascinating experience.

Click the link and have a look. You may find something quite interesting.


It’s a problem that needs considered early on.  Shanz says, “Entrepreneurs often come up with ideas that can be protected, and this article lays out the pros and cons of various intellectual-property protections.  Furthermore, the paper urges entrepreneurs to weigh the time, cost and effort involved in pursuing various intellectual-property protections.”  That may be the most sage advice possible – know your options.

Schanz outlines three protections in the paper: patents, trade secrets and copyrights. Patents apply to inventions and devices. Utility patents provide legal protection of the idea for 20 years, dating from when the patent application is filed. However, when the 20 years are up, the information becomes part of the public domain. Trade secrets also apply to inventions or devices, but are protected internally, meaning that there is very little in the way of public protection. The benefit is that the idea never enters the public domain, so it can remain secret in perpetuity – a good example of a trade secret is the formula for Coca-Cola. However, if anyone else figures it out, they can legally market it themselves.

The third and of interest to this author is copyrights. Copyrights protect unique expressions, such as writing, music, art, film or design. Even elements can be a significant component of marketable products, such as the sounds and images associated with popular video games. Some people use this site’s contents for their site with an abundance of advertising to obtain an income without doing the work.  Others are students who think that copy and paste from this blog and other blogs I assume, is a fast way to a great grade.  I do appreciate the nice complementary email from teachers and professors.  So you know . . .

Schanz says, “Determining which protections best suit your needs is not a ‘one size fits all’ scenario. The options you may want to consider will vary over time. For example, entrepreneurs in a young start-up company with limited capital and resources may want to go the trade secret route until they ascertain how it fits in their business plan. But, if they have determined that the idea is valuable, they should also take steps to ensure that – eventually – it can be patented.” Schanz explains that if an entrepreneur discusses the idea with outside parties who have not signed non-disclosure agreements, the idea may no longer be patentable – it will have entered public domain.  Fair warning . . . Get a non-disclosure agreement before you show your work.

“If, over time, the start-up company has more resources available – and the concept is commercially viable – it may want to pursue a patent,” Schanz says. “The important thing is for the entrepreneur to weigh the risks and benefits of various options and make an informed decision. This paper should help entrepreneurs do that.”

The paper titled “Entrepreneurial Options for Protecting Intellectual Property,” was published in the September issue of the Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal, and can be downloaded in a pdf file. So get yours, save it to your drive and review it each few months.  If nothing else, it will save you a lot of money using your own lawyer as you’ll be much further up to speed than not having Schanz’ help in mind.

Maybe all this could backfire on a blog about energy and fuel.  But post writing and staying out in front of what’s happening, and may come in the future, depends on ideas having some capital value, which is what copyrights and patents offer.  So give the good professors paper a reading – if your idea works out, you and all of us will be glad you did.  We all will owe some thanks to Professor Schanz, the paper is after all a peer reviewed overview that everyone can use.