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[CookinFlat6]

While waiting for spankee to reply (might have connectivity issues) lets look at the Google claims

Given Google's investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency and electric vehicles, it shouldn't surprise you to hear that the company is testing a new system from Cool Planet Energy Systems that is being pitched as a way of producing high-octane gasoline through a carbon-negative production process.

ah yes, back to the maths - a carbon negative PRODUCTION process, but when the fuel is burnt what happens to the carbon that is stored in every plant???

The Google test car, called the GRide, has already used the biofuel fuel to travel more than 2,400 miles -- meeting California's low carbon fuel standard eight years before schedule, according to Cool Planet.

In the Google test, the car using the Cool Planet biofuel was virtually identical in emissions testing to the control vehicle. The big pitch by Cool Planet is the impact on fuel production.

Ah yes, when used in cars it still emits carbon

[Hammer278]

Unfortunately, anyone can only take so much until they respond in kind.
I focussed on Cookin' because that's how he ALWAYS responds to ANYONE
who doesn't agree with him.

As for making me look stupid, don't kid yourself, just because I choose to
walk away from childish comments doesn't mean I've run off with my tail
between my legs. Someone has to take the high road and it's obviously
not going to be him.

By the way, since you seem to think you know me so well, what is my "own type"?

I'm not interested in debating with you. Bottom line is, you've managed to make another lame sideshow of yourself. No need for you to be a moral police on this forum when the moderator Cookin was debating it was fine with it, and another moderator who's been following is also fine with what's taking place. We have more than enough moderators without you needing to judge if Spanked is being bullied or not, are you his momma by any chance? Him, his 'wife', F2004 might be his bro, so you're his momma? Maybe his whole family tree is in here, who knows. But point being, you turning someone else's debate into your own sideshow is a real pain, especially since it screws up the flow of the debate.

[spankyham]

So lets get this straight again

You're not satisfied with the sandwich-board you want to add some highlights
1) every litre of biofuel created as per my previous posts creates negative emissions -

And when we burn it in our ICE car what happens then Spankee?

Never mind about how bad your reading and math skills are.

Biofuel removes 1 unit of GHG in creation

ok so far so good

Biofuel takes 0.575 units of GHG to create and use

:doh: 0.575 units to create NOT TO USE AS FUEL BURNT IN THE CAR

0.85 units of GHG have been removed from the atmosphere......GHG in the atmosphere are now LESS than they were before the biofuel was used

No they are not, WHEN BURNT AS FUEL YOU NEED TO ADD THE EMISSIONS

You really need to read things first dude.
The figure in my example .575 units to create and use is accurate. So even you can understand it, that is the amount of GHG emitted back into the atmosphere after you've made the biofuel and burned it. Did you get that? You need me to say it again?

I've posted the source, but here it is for you yet again (Dr Bob Holmes - Newscientist issue 2894) ...
Now lets consider the impact of the use of each barrel of this fuel in conventional internal combustion engines. For each 2 tonnes of CO2 extracted by the algae in the production of the biofuel, it takes 700Kg to produce the biofuel (energy consumed in the manufacturing process) and, burning that biofuel will release another 450Kg. The remaining 850Kg stays in the residual of the process which can then be used in the construction of concrete of other permanent locking uses. Meaning, for each litre of this biofuel used, you are decreasing the amount of C02 in the atmosphere.

Time for you to change the topic yet again. Perhaps a another pronouncement, F1 dust in a couple of years? The earth really is flat? We need to remove all the oxygen from our planet while we are removing all the carbon

[CookinFlat6]

Lets look more closely at the carbon footprint of biodiesel

Biodiesel is a fuel that can be used in any diesel powered vehicle. It is biodegradable and non-toxic. Biodiesel is a fantastic way of reducing your carbon footprint as it only releases the carbon dioxide that the plants absorbed whilst growing, therefore there is no negative impact on the carbon cycle.
.

WHY DO WE WANNA RELEASE CARBON STORED BY NATURES HISTORICAL PROCESS FOR TRANSPORT???????? THATS THE PROBLEM WE HAVE WITH OIL

IF THE CARBON IS STORED IN THE PLANT THATS GOOD - ITS NOT ADDING TO THE PROBLEM -

TODAYS BIOFUELS STILL ADD CARBON - they are just better than oil because THE PRODUCTION CAN BE CARBON NEGATIVE

SOLAR CHARGED ELECTRIC CARS ARE BETTER BECAUSE THEY BYPASS THE PLANT AND DRAW SUN ENERGY DIRECTLY INTO TRANSPORT ENERGY WITH NO(grey energy blahblah) ONGOING CARBON RELEASE

[CookinFlat6]

For each 2 tonnes of CO2 extracted by the algae in the production of the biofuel, it takes 700Kg to produce the biofuel (energy consumed in the manufacturing process) and, burning that biofuel will release another 450Kg.

HOW CAN A PLANT ABSORB 2 tonnes of CO2 and release 450KG WHEN BURNT????

That is the most thing ever heard where is the proof that this is the case for TODAYS biofuels??

This source

I've posted the source, but here it is for you yet again (Dr Bob Holmes - Newscientist issue 2894) ...

clearly states that

LIHD biofuels are carbon negative because net ecosystem carbon dioxide sequestration (4.4 megagram hectare−1 year−1 of carbon dioxide in soil and roots) exceeds fossil carbon dioxide release during biofuel production (0.32 megagram hectare−1 year−1)

( + x carbon emitted in production - y carbon absorbed in production + z carbon released when burnt) does not equal zero emission, and definitely not negative net emission - it equals positive emission because the carbon absorbed WILL ALWAYS BE RELEASED i.e y carbon absorbed = z carbon released (whenever and wherever)

ONLY when the carbon emitted is captured - Only in 12 places round the world in true negative carbon schemes - CAN it ever be negative carbon for driving around in cars

UNLESS THE CARBON IS CAPTURED AT THE EXHAUST PIPE WHICH IS NOT POSSIBLE TODAY

where is the missing (problem to be solved) carbon gone????

[CookinFlat6]

Lets look closeley at Dr Holmes
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628941.600-biofuel-thats-better-than-carbon-neutral.html

Biofuel that's better than carbon neutral

10 December 2012 by Bob Holmes
Magazine issue 2894. Subscribe and save

THE green sludge burbles away quietly in its tangle of tubes in the Spanish desert. Soaking up sunshine and carbon dioxide from a nearby factory, it grows quickly. Every day, workers skim off some sludge and take it away to be transformed into oil. People do in a single day what it took geology 400 million years to accomplish.

Indeed, this is no ordinary oil. It belongs to a magical class of "carbon negative" fuels, ones that take carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it away for good. The basic idea is fairly simple. You grow plants, in this case algae, which naturally draw CO2 from the atmosphere. After you extract the oil, you're left with a residue that holds a substantial portion of the carbon. This residue is the key to carbon negativity. If you can store the carbon where it won't decompose and return to the air, .

At that point you have to pay to read more

So there is a FUTURE SOLUTION to the non magical bit of the emitted CARBON

AND THIS MAGIC SOLUTION DOES NOT MENTION LAND USAGE


Yet this is Spankee's 'proof' that TODAYS BIOFUELS REMOVE carbon from the atmosphear as you drive and are better than electric

[CookinFlat6]

Spankee says TODAY we can drive around using biofuel that reduces carbon in the atmosphear and is therefore better than electric which adds each time you drive

You obviously don't get the negative emissions calculation. I've given you the numbers in my earlier post. Put simply, for each 2000kg of carbon the algae consumes (takes out the atmosphere) to create biofuel, 850kg is permanently removed from the atmosphere. Using this biofuel, we will reduce carbon in the atmosphere If we only go to zero emissions, we leave the atmosphere damaged.
Zero isn't good enough, we need to reverse at least some of the damage. Using algal or perennial grass biofuel turns us negative on co2 in the atmosphere.

If we look at what we have right now, nothing is at zero emissions. Remember most electricity generated "right now" is from fossil fuels plus the incredibly dangerous nuclear option. So each time you drive your electric car you are contributing/adding to the co2 in our atmosphere, plus giving the world the added problem of how to dispose of mountains of highly toxic batteries.

spankee says lets keep ICEs there is no downside to biofuels and it is available NOW

ICE's could be run on biofuels. And biofuels can be carbon neutral (in fact they could be carbon negative).

Spankee now does a search on the tinternet

Firstly, you need to stop thinking of zero carbon emission engines - step outside of that box. Think about carbon as a fluid element that exists in many states. The atmosphere, plants etc. Our current problem is that we have changed the mix/balance of where CO2 is. Too much in the atmosphere, not enough in plants.

Now you're outside that box this will make sense - current algae production creates 2.5 barrels of oil per hectare per day. (Dr Bob Holmes - Newscientist issue 2894) That rate would replace the total world consumption of crude oil (~90Mil barrels per day) in an area a quarter the size of the Libyan dessert. Of course we could need/use less land because we don't need to do this all on land - there is a US company proposing using floating ocean based pens for the algae farming.

Spankee has paid to read Dr Holmes future projections

Now lets consider the impact of the use of each barrel of this fuel in conventional internal combustion engines. For each 2 tonnes of CO2 extracted by the algae in the production of the biofuel, it takes 700Kg to produce the biofuel (energy consumed in the manufacturing process) and, burning that biofuel will release another 450Kg. The remaining 850Kg stays in the residual of the process which can then be used in the construction of concrete of other permanent locking uses. Meaning, for each litre of this biofuel used, you are decreasing the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. Pretty neat hey.

Spankee now uses his numbers which he wont link the source to BECAUSE it is a FUTURE POSSIBILITY, (" never mind they wont notice because I am a moderator and I created a rule saying no arguing with mods hehe")

If the US company can get the floating farms working then that 700Kg should come down. This would be due to the natural wave motion of the ocean stirring the algae which currently takes energy (a part of that 700Kg). This would quicken the reversal of some of the damage we have done..

spankee says lets dazzle em with some uncorroborated sales figures while they are reeling from my force of my intellect

Pity all those words can't hide the fact that the Duracell cars sales are heading south while ice is heading the other way.

spankee thinks - Lets hit em in the solar plexus by rubbishing nuclear chagerd electricity - they wont notice there have been many many more oil spillage and disasters

Mind you, even based on the wrong bio matter its tiny compared to the area effected by electricity generated from the super safe nuclear power from one accident at one plant Mind you, its only been a "few years" and the radiation is still rising and being found in tuna in the pacific. You could visit that haven of safe/clean energy, which stands as a testament to how clean it really is - just don't stay longer than 20 odd minutes or you'll die.

Now lets show em how clever I am

Corn is a relatively inefficient base for bio-fuels, it is however convenient.

Yeah, they love listening to a real einstein like me

spanky, you've hit the nail on the head:

Now I have dazzled them, I can get back to my original statement which I have now proven not to be incorrect - well I have WON!!!!!!!

In moving to hybrid we are transferring from a plentiful and renewable fuel source (food for the ICE) to one of the rarest and most finite commodities on earth ... to make the shiny hybrids that salve the conscience of the sheep-public.

Yeah, Im the man - have it!!!!!!!

The move to this new F1-hybrid has nothing to do with being green or saving the planet or even about the renewable food for ICE's - its all about suiting some of the production car industry and making F1 suit their business model.

hmmn, everyone is laughing

[racechick]

I think I must be missing something here. Spanky, are you and the scientists you quote saying we can produce biofuel without creating any emissions and we can then take this fuel to run a car and no emissions come out of the exhaust pipe? Because I don't believe that.

And even if that could happen what about the irreparable damage done to the world in the name of biofuel? I mentioned Indonesia earlier . Precious rain forests lost at the rate of A FOOTBALL FIELD A DAY! Rare plants and endangered animals lost. Indigenous populations removed from their homes. This to produce palm oil. And the Co2 released during this process places Indonesia third behind China and USA for greenhouse gas release. What about all that in the name of biofuels? That is our beautiful planet spoilt for ever. We may have lost plants with healing powers we never even yet realised .

So even if this bio running car magically didn't put gasses out its exhaust pipe when it ran, the above damage is now done and can't be undone. Not very green at all I'd say.

[CookinFlat6]

Spankee, you are been asked a question by RC on the public forum, please come and answer on the public forum, thank you

[LRW]

I think I must be missing something here. Spanky, are you and the scientists you quote saying we can produce biofuel without creating any emissions and we can then take this fuel to run a car and no emissions come out of the exhaust pipe? Because I don't believe that......

My understanding of Spanky's posts...

For ever two tonns of Co2 the algae absorbes out of the atmosphere, we use 1.15tonnes to produce and burn as a biofuel. Meaning we are still extracting 0.85 tonnes of Co2.

Something like that.

But to be honest Im not sure.

[CookinFlat6]

My understanding of Spanky's posts...

For ever two tonns of Co2 the algae absorbes out of the atmosphere, we use 1.15tonnes to produce and burn as a biofuel. Meaning we are still extracting 0.85 tonnes of Co2.
.

The algae absorbes 2 tonns of co2,
we dont use what it captures to produce it, we add carbon by the process - fertilisers etc
so far we absorbed 2 tonnes so (- 2 tonnes) of carbon so far
we then emit some to produce and get it (+ something)
Where is the absorbed 2 tonnes less the something for production gone???
When we then vapourise the product where does the carbon go???
To be carbon negative would mean we when we vapourise the product, we release less carbon than than (what we stored - production)
So this must mean some carbon has magically disapperead
the magical disappeared part is promised in the FUTURE by capturing it as residue and storing it safely away leaving the fuel with no carbon - thats impossible now - except in 12 massive places round the world that are doing this real negative carbon stuff by capturing the carbon - but that takes massive resources to act as carbon sinks

Dr Holmes says in FUTURE we can take the carbon out as solid residue and use it as concrete to build things, or that we can store it deep deep in the ground
- but thats exactly what nature does anyway now, its just we dig that residue up and call it oil because it holds energy (and the carbon nature removed for us)

[CookinFlat6]

The plants remove carbon for us and store it
If we take the plant at any point and burn it - then whatever carbon it was storing WILL ALL be released - thats not rocket science at all

All the biofuel people are saying is that when they produce this plant, they USE less emitted carbon to grab it than it stores.

So the process is carbon negtive - the process to get the plant ready to burn for fuel, but when we burn it, we then release its carbon

so better to leave it in the soil, but compared to the carbon emmission required to extract oil, its better

But it is still adding when we burn - better we just leave it in the ground with its locked carbon

The clever oil indeustry argument is this - we are gonna release carbon for fuel anyway by burning something organic, so we have a process that reduces carbon overall because when we produce it, we only 'use; some of what it stored

I linked this article earlier

Biofuels are the biggest disappointment. They still emit CO2 when burned and require fertilizer, processing and transportation which all emit even more CO2. The justification for biofuels is that the growing plants take CO2 out of the air. However, plants growing on the land before planting were already capturing CO2, so only the increase in CO2 capture (if any) should be counted.

They emit when burned + they cause emission to produce vs they extracted co2 BEFORE the process
If we leave them in the ground there is no carbon emitted
If we take them out and burn them we add the production on top
The only magic would be to remove the carbon and store it (we cant destroy it)
The removal part is talked about by the oil companies like it exists - and the worlds useless idiots lap it up - we can remove and store it in massive projects using land
but for a car to capture it would mean at the exhaust
how would that work???

[CookinFlat6]

Here is the Dr holmes magic article you had to pay for

2012-12-14 18:35 | Tags
Source：http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628941.600-biofuel-thats-better-than-carbon-neutral.html?full=true

The race is on to create a biofuel that sucks carbon out of the sky and locks it away where it can't warm the planet

THE green sludge burbles away quietly in its tangle of tubes in the Spanish desert. Soaking up sunshine and carbon dioxide from a nearby factory, it grows quickly. Every day, workers skim off some sludge and take it away to be transformed into oil. People do in a single day what it took geology 400 million years to accomplish.

Indeed, this is no ordinary oil. It belongs to a magical class of "carbon negative" fuels, ones that take carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it away for good. The basic idea is fairly simple. You grow plants, in this case algae, which naturally draw CO2 from the atmosphere. After you extract the oil, you're left with a residue that holds a substantial portion of the carbon. This residue is the key to carbon negativity. If you can store the carbon where it won't decompose and return to the air, more CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere than the fuel emits.

Such carbon negative fuels are no accounting sleight of hand - they could be the most realistic short-term solution we have to curb climate change. And although it is still early days, companies like General Electric, BP and Google are putting their money behind the idea.

Every time you drive your car or hop on a plane to somewhere sunny you're adding a little more carbon to the atmosphere and bringing a global warming crisis just a little bit closer. Biofuels are one way of reducing the problem, as plants draw CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow, thereby not adding to the carbon footprint. Today, the most popular biofuel is ethanol made from corn.

In theory, such a fuel should be carbon neutral: that's to say, for every 100 carbon atoms it draws from the atmosphere, it returns exactly 100 when burned. Unfortunately, however, it's not that simple. By the time farmers have tilled the soil, poured on fertiliser and harvested the crop - not to mention the natural gas and coal burned to run the ethanol plant itself - they've used an awful lot of fossil fuel, leaving them well short of carbon neutral.

You might think the problem could be simply solved by capturing the carbon emitted during the biofuels production process. The fermentation process used to produce ethanol, for example, generates an almost pure stream of CO2 as a by-product. So, earlier this year, agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) started building the US's first large-scale carbon capture and storage project in Decatur, Illinois. It will siphon CO2 from the company's ethanol plant, compress it and store it underground nearby. It plans to store over 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually (see diagram).

However, ADM's ethanol still isn't carbon neutral: instead, thanks to all the energy costs of making the ethanol, it's likely to reduce emissions by only about 20 or 30 per cent compared with fossil fuel.

You might be able to solve the problem if you replaced all the fossil fuels used to run the ethanol plant with renewable energy. But that doesn't solve the other major issue for crop-based biofuels: they compete with food crops for land. In 2010, corn-based ethanol accounted for 8 per cent of US transport fuel, but consumed almost 40 per cent of the country's corn. If ethanol replaced all fossil fuels, it would either push food prices into the stratosphere or force farmers onto new land - most likely both. To make a dent in the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, we need to find ways around this. "The question is how many of these situations we can find without infringing on other services that the biomass or the land is supplying," says Johannes Lehmann, a soil scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

spankee forgot to tell us about the food prices bit or that the article clearly states 'we NEED TO FIND ways around this'

This is exactly why algae is so promising, notably the single-celled, blue-green variant now referred to as cyanobacteria. They grow much faster than terrestrial crops, potentially yielding 20 times more biomass per day than soybeans; their oil production is easy to ramp up through genetic engineering; best of all, they can grow in seawater or brackish groundwater on non-arable land, so they don't take land away from food production or forest (Science, vol 314, p 1598).

These qualities were especially appealing to Bio Fuel Systems, (BFS) a small company in Alicante, Spain, that uses cyanobacteria to make its "Blue Petroleum". The company's prototype plant, in the Spanish coastal desert, is piggybacked on a cement factory, which emits the CO2 the algae need to grow.

spankees algae needs to be ramped up with GENETIC ENGINEERING, and 1 small company in Spain are 'looking into it'

Blue petroleum

The numbers given to New Scientist by BFS president Bernard Stroiazzo illustrate the fraction of carbon that can be trapped by the process. To make a single barrel of oil, the algae suck a little over 2 tonnes of CO2 from the smokestack of the cement works. Not all of that stays out of the atmosphere, though. The algal cultures need regular mixing, which takes energy, as does supplying fertiliser and creating the oil through a patented process involving high heat and pressure. All the fossil fuels needed for these processes release about 700 kilogrammes of CO2. Burning the oil itself - in car engines, say - emits another 450 kg. The rest of the carbon - the equivalent of about 900 kg of CO2 - stays in the leftovers, an inorganic carbonate sludge that can be buried or mixed into concrete. "That will never go back in the atmosphere," says Stroiazzo.

well well - here are spankees magical numbers from the small firm in Spain that paid for the article
Seems someone has been telling porkies or some Enron style creative accounting - spankee didn't mention the REST of the carbon, all 900 kg of it - no wonder LRW couldn't make the numbers gell

BFS's pilot plant produces about 2.5 barrels of crude oil per hectare of algae each day. At that rate, Stroiazzo says, a system like BFS's could replace the world's entire crude oil consumption, using an area just a quarter the size of the Libyan desert. Thirty-five million hectares is a lot of land, to be sure, but not overwhelming if it replaces the 90 million barrels of oil we use each day. It is also about 1 per cent of the world's pasture area; spread over many plants worldwide it quickly becomes feasible.

But there are a few more factors to consider. Though they are not selling the oil yet, cost will likely be an issue: BFS's equipment is by no means cheap. The polycarbonate tubes that house the cultures cost upwards of $1 million per hectare, and stirring the algae requires large amounts of electricity. This is likely to push the cost of algal biofuel to at least $5 per litre, according to a2010 International Energy Agency report.

Ah, whats that? downsides, well I never!!!

To stay solvent, BFS sells its high-value algal by-products as nutritional supplements, such as omega-3 fatty acids. While this may work in a nascent biofuels industry, demand for nutritional supplements will falter when the products flood the market, and anyway it doesn't get to the heart of the problem.

Other companies are trying to do that, though. Algae Systems, near San Francisco, suggests cutting costs by culturing its algae in the ocean, in 25-metre plastic bags floating near the shore. The bags keep the algae at the surface, where the light is most intense, and natural wave action does the mixing. The firm plans to pipe in nitrogen-rich wastewater to fertilise the algal growth.

Algae Systems is now constructing a pilot plant covering several hectares in Mobile Bay, off the coast of Alabama, which should be operational early next year. If all the component processes work as well as they have in the research lab, the result should be carbon-negative fuels, says company president Matthew Atwood. This fuel should be able to undercut fossil petroleum prices within three or four years, he adds.

The FUTURE result SHOULD be carbon negative fuels??? oh hold on , there is an however

However, they will need to solve another problem for algal biofuels: fertiliser. Algae are gorge on expensive nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. At relatively small scales, wastewater from cities and croplands can easily supply these, as in Algae Systems's design. But scale up and there simply isn't enough wastewater to go around. "Human nutrient loading is simply not sufficient," says Stefan Unnasch, an energy analyst and engineer at California consultancy Life Cycle Associates. "You put more in your car every day than into your toilet." Indeed, producing even a tenth of the US's liquid fuel from algae would consume more than the entire US supply of both nitrogen and phosphorus, according to calculations by Ronald Pate, an algal biofuels specialist at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico (Applied Energy, vol 88, p 3377).

ah so this fairy tale is not feasible on the scale electric is?? lets find out more

Researchers may some day find a way to solve the nutrient problem by extracting and reusing nitrogen and phosphorus from the algal residue, but the biggest difficulty to scaling up is more intractable: how do you get your hands on all that CO2? Even if algae-growers could tap every last smokestack in the US, that would only be enough to produce about 75 billion litres of algal biofuel per year, according to Pate's calculations. That's less than 10 per cent of the world's current transport fuel needs. Moreover, tying biofuel production to fossil-fuel-burning industrial smokestacks merely wrings a second round of energy out of CO2. "This just postpones emissions," says Jonas Helseth, director of Bellona Europa, an environmental foundation based in Brussels, Belgium.

As yet, this problem has no robust solution. A few companies are developing technologies to extract and concentrate CO2 from the air. Global Thermostat, based in New York, has patented a process that uses chemicals and low-temperature waste heat - about 90 °C - to capture CO2 from a stream of air. Its pilot plant has been operating near San Francisco for more than a year, and a second is on the way, says co-founder Graciela Chichilnisky. The company has already signed an agreement to supply its technology to Algae Systems and is in talks with several other algal biofuel companies, she says.

So for spankees calculations to work, you need your car parked by an industrial stack or you need to extract the C02 from the stream of air - back to carbon sinks attached to the exhaust
ok, so they gave us the pie in the sky, now sell us the dummy please. whats that? back to corn???

Biofuels franchise

Solve these problems, and algae may yet be vindicated as the most promising path to carbon negative biofuels. But until then, a less glamorous method is poised to take off.

The cheapest, most low-maintenance feedstock for biofuels is waste biomass, such as the cobs and straw left over after corn harvest, perennial grasses such as giant miscanthus, or dead trees. This raw material has been used to make ethanol, but its efficiency has been stymied by the difficulty of breaking down the materials. Cool Planet Energy Systems, based just north of Los Angeles in Camarillo, California, has found a better way to process it. It has developed a variant of a process called pyrolysis, in which heat, pressure and catalysts convert the biomass directly into the hydrocarbons found in gasoline, diesel oil and jet fuel. This means the company's fuel can be mixed into regular gasoline to reduce the overall amount of fossil fuel, or in other words, it lowers the carbon intensity of the gasoline.

Earlier this year, researchers at Google - one of the company's investors - road-tested a blend of 5 per cent Cool Planet fuel and 95 per cent gasoline in its GRide cars at its headquarters in Mountain View, California. The mix reduced the carbon intensity of gasoline by 10 per cent, says vice-president Mike Rocke, meeting California's 2020 Low Carbon Fuel Standard eight years early.

Better yet, carbon gets sequestered. Along with fuel, Cool Planet's pyrolysis process yields large amounts of biochar, a carbon-rich compound that resembles charcoal. Instead of burying this residue deep underground like ADM or mixing it into cement, however, Cool Planet returns the biochar to the soil.

This has several advantages. It does not depend on the presence of suitable geological formations, and it is easier to transport. Best of all, the biochar enriches the soil and enhances crop yields because its high surface area helps hold water and nutrients. "It's like a molecular sponge," says Rocke. Lehmann, a biochar expert, says the stuff can persist in the soil for centuries, which qualifies as carbon sequestration as set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

That's not the only trick that makes the biofuel carbon negative. Instead of wasting fossil fuel on transporting the biomass to a centralised factory to be made into fuel, Cool Planet will build 400 modular units, each capable of producing between 40 and 200 million litres of gasoline per year. These will use whatever biomass is available within about a 50-kilometre radius. "Wherever the biomass is, we're going to roll out these plants," says Rocke. "They're like a Starbucks."

Cool Planet's process only returns half the carbon to the atmosphere and stores the other half as biochar, making the fuel what Rocke terms "100 per cent carbon-negative". To break into the market, however, the company plans to make a version that is 60 per cent carbon-negative, storing only about a third of the carbon in the plant matter. At this sweet spot, Rocke reckons the company should be able to sell its fuel for about 40 cents a litre.

To date, the research facility has produced only a few thousand litres of fuel. However, a pilot plant - bankrolled by investors including Google, BP and GE - will start operation near Los Angeles this month, producing nearly a million litres per year. And within 20 years, they intend to build 2000 of their modules, enough to supply about 10 per cent of the world's current liquid fuel needs.

Cool Planet's results are encouraging. In 2007, the IPCC reported that for the world to escape catastrophic climate change, carbon emissions would have to begin declining by 2015, with an 85 per cent reduction by 2050. We haven't even started.

Since we can't seem to keep the CO2 from entering the atmosphere, we're left with only two ways to avoid trouble. We could embark on grand geoengineering schemes to cool the planet, all of which bring huge risks of unintended consequences (New Scientist, 22 September, p 30). Or we could try to pull some of the CO2 back out of the atmosphere, one car trip at a time. "Even if carbon-negative biofuels turns out to be just a bit player, they will have done at least a little to reduce carbon emissions," says Lehmann. "It's a no-regret strategy."

Bob Holmes is a consultant for New Scientist

We cant seem to keep Co2 out by using biofuels or oil????
So all spankees stuff comes from FUTURE visions once the original problems are solved???

NOT TODAY

NOT TOMORROW

ELECTRIC IS TODAY

"Even if carbon-negative biofuels turns out to be just a bit player, they will have done at least a little to reduce carbon emissions," says Lehmann. "It's a no-regret strategy."

A no regret strategy???? when your useless idiots are out campaigning against electric on the back of your future manifesto???

CASE CLOSED

[racechick]

Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Cookie, I have a much better understanding of it now. Not viable is it.
Full marks to the companies and scientists for giving it a go, and I'm sure there will be a place for these fuels, but even the pro biofuel experts can see there are still more problems than solutions. And the destruction of rain forests is in my opinion unforgivable.

Meanwhile electric car technology is advancing quickly and UK households are already being given free charging points in their houses in anticipation of mass production of these cars.

[darwin dali]

Meanwhile electric car technology is advancing quickly and UK households are already being given free charging points in their houses in anticipation of mass production of these cars.

They're still paying for the electricity though, aren't they?