Beyond Petroleum
 By Mark ForsytheThe Kansas City Post Some of my favorite classes in grad school dealt with planning for the future. "You have to plan 5, 10 and 20 years in the future for technology that doesn't even exist." That was the main gist of Technology Management. "Don't focus yourself into obsolescence." You're not a "car company" you're in the "personal transportation industry." You're not a "telephone company" you're in the "communications business." In 1997 we had a guest lecturer from Sprint. He was the Chief Technology Officer. The person responsible for plotting the future of the company. That was right about the time that cell phones were becoming ubiquitous and I even had a couple of friends who did not have land lines. I asked the lecturer if hypothetically our communications infrastructure was completely destroyed, would he start building wireless towers or start digging trenches and rebuilding Sprint's optic fiber network. "Lay fiber" was his immediate answer. "Wireless technology will never have the bandwidth to support communications needs. We're going to run fiber to every home in America. We'll always depend on optic fiber." He's no longer Sprint's CTO and I haven't seen a commercial touting Sprint's long-distance "pin drop" fiber network in years. A couple of years back I noticed BP filling stations popping up around town. I began to see commercials saying "BP. Beyond Petroleum." BP of course is/was British Petroleum. The "Beyond Petroleum" ad campaign really struck a chord with me. Here was a company that perhaps was acknowledging that maybe we won't always be taking fossil fuels out of the ground and setting them on fire. Perhaps there are other forms of energy to be explored. Cleaner. Cheaper. Better.  Some state governments are getting into the act. Rather than wait for energy companies to divert course and begin to move to other forms of energy, some progressive states are passing legislation to encourage them to do so. Recently the state of Maryland amended its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) which requires the state's utilities to produce 1,500 megawatts of solar energy by 2022. The bill will require 0.005% of the state's electricity supply to be generated from solar starting in 2008 - increased incrementally each year until reaching the required 2% by 2022. Is it any coincidence that the corporate headquarters of BP Solar is located in Maryland? I know our current governor's brother is heavily invested in the ethanol industry. Coupled with the powerful agricultural lobby it seems Missouri will remain singularly focused on ethanol. I am not convinced that trading one volatile price fuel source for another is the way to go. Oil prices swing with the whims and wars in the Middle East. Ethanol prices swing with the whims of the weather.  We cannot continue to have tunnel vision when it comes to planning our energy future. Maybe ethanol will be a success (I don't think so) but should that preclude exploring other sources of energy? Missouri has sunlight.  Missouri has wind. Missouri has flowing water. Missouri could have hydrogen. Diversification is the key. Hopefully our leaders in Jefferson City will have some vision and encourage multiple forms of alternative energy. After all, it's cheaper to get sunshine than moonshine. |
posted by Mark at 7:42 AM
Comments on "Beyond Petroleum"
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Brent said ... (9:54 AM) :
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Jason said ... (12:12 PM) :
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Eric said ... (12:14 PM) :
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Mark said ... (12:40 PM) :
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KC Sponge said ... (1:09 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (1:20 PM) :
post a commentSeriously, if everyone converted over to ethanol, we couldn't possibly, as a country, produce enough corn to support our fuel needs. We'd likely end up supporting our fuel habit by importing Sugar Cane from Brazil (Brazilians are 30 years ahead of us in Ethanol production and use Sugar Cane to make it, not corn as we do).
At the end of the day, it doesn't make sense to spend the fuel/resources necessary to grow/harvest the corn, make the ethanol (or worse, ship in the product) when other technologies that are more sustainable are out there. Ethanol, in my mind, is 1970s technology. We can do better.
Meanwhile, the real solution is to actually just consume less...sadly, that doesn't seem like an option to most.
Popular Mechanics website has a ton of interesting articles about alternative fuels.
The following article touches on the premise of Mark's post. The nuclear industry has recently been reguvinated due to the global warming debate. This is after a long drought due to scary 3 mile island and chernobyl accidents. There is a lag in the research to improve the technology, compounded by the fact that the currently operating nuclear reactors will be reaching the end of their service lives in 20 years or so.
The Next Atomic Age
Hydrogen often considered the most likely alternative. Interesting bit about researching solid-state storage of hydrogen fuel. Check out bottom of page 3 for a table that shows what it would take to produce the estimated need of 150 million tons of hydrogen anually.
The Truth About Hydrogen
A couple of interesting new approaches...
Underwater Wind Turbines Tap River Energy
Pond-Powered Biofuels: Turning Algae into America's new Energy
There is an article in this week's Time magazine about Reykjavik, Iceland. The capital city supposedly gets 100% of its heat and 40% of its electricty from geothermal power (volcanoes bring molten rock relatively close to surface). They talk about how clean the air is there. Iceland engineers are currently helping China tap geothermal energy. Incredible stat...last year China added 102 gigawatts to its electrical grid - roughly twice the total capacity of California. About 90% of that came from coal plants. China plans on having 110 gigawatts of geothermal by 2010, out of 2.7 million GWh total.
Bottom line, unfortunately, is that there are major obstacles/restrictions with each of the proposed alternatives. Ulitmately, it is going to take a patchwork of numerous fuel sources to allow the US to rid its dependence on oil. Along with, as Brent says, consuming less.
I think Missouri does have some hope. Tom Carnahan's wind farm company has one farm up and running in northwest Missouri and another on the way.
The rush of Missouri farmers to ethanol is about economic survival. US farm policy has decimated family farming in its drive to build up corporate farming. Small farmers are desperate and ethanol *seems* like a godsend for them.
For the Republicans, ethanol is a cheap and easy way to throw a bone to the farmers without actually fixing the broken ag policy.
I think we're all going to have to undergo a fundamental change in how we perceive power distribution. Most green power sources are site-based, meaning you don't have one giant plant generating electricity and transmitting it across miles of copper. I think the power of the future will be combinations of solar, wind and yes even hydrogen fuel cells for an individual home or perhaps a neighborhood. City-wide blackouts will become a thing of the past.
That's why you don't see public utilities like KCP&L rushing to embrace alternative energy. There's no obvious way to make money off of energy that individuals can produce for themsleves.
The first time I remember BP's popping up was in high school - the were doing a promotion along with the release of the Flinstone's movie (yeah, THAT great cinematic masterpiece). I thought that BP stood for BamBam and Pebbles - (you'll have to forgive me - I grew up in Orlando, FL, where cartoon mascots are the way of life) - but I thought it was funny that this gas station would use a family that ran it's car on foot power. They were cutting edge even then. . .
It is just an ad campaign so that americans disassociate BP with british petroleum and associate it with something more positive.
BP has one of the most despicable records, save Shell oil, of the way they handle third world drilling.
Their colors are green and yellow but it is just commercials to get people to pay the extra nickle for major oil company gas vs spot market gas station gas. Shell uses the myth of superiority of product instead.
I noticed you left out nuclear power. I think it is time people exercise their phobias from Carter-era America and examine the possibility of the new pebble-bed nuclear power plants that are being used by countries like France.
Go NUCLEAR.