Dems in Congress propose INCREASE in gasoline tax :huh !?!

[Nashwan]

Anyone know what % of our oil consumption is for electricity production vs transportation?

Very little is used for electricity generation. This graph goes up to 2004:



In 2004 the US used a total of 210 million barrels of oil for electricity generation. That fell to 115 million barrels in 2006.

To put that in perspective, the US uses about 7.5 billion barrels of oil a year, so in 2006 about 1.5% of US consumption was for electrical generation.

Even that probably overstates the case, because in 2006 the US consumed 190 million barrels of petroleum coke and 251 million barrels of residual fuel oil. Neither product is of much use apart from heavy industrial or power generation.

[gunnss]

The point was that he uses bio waste, not food. Saw grass, Kansas killer weed (hemp), wood pulp etc, stuff that grows where food doesn't. Add in all the land that is currently farmed and plowed under due to the agro subsidy's, and there is a lot of stuff available to convert in to fuel.  It is a lot like TCP, processing bio waste to make oil.   >>> http://www.changingworldtech.com/ <<< lots of tech out there that works, none of them are the total solution, but in aggregate they help.

regards,
Kevin

I still don't believe growing fuel - any kind - is a good idea. I think its flawed from the outset as it takes away food that could be used for people or takes away land that could be used to grow food for people. How may people could be fed with the food or land it requires to make 1 gallon of this stuff? How much clean water is used? The devil is in the details as we are quickly finding out with the ethanol fiasco.

[Tango]

Look at all the corn stalks that are left bafter the corn is picked. I'm sure the farmers would be willing to sell it off after its picked for some extra cash.

[BTW]

Look at all the corn stalks that are left bafter the corn is picked. I'm sure the farmers would be willing to sell it off after its picked for some extra cash.

How much fuel is the waste going to make? There's another guy who has a machine that runs on the oil waste from fast food restaurants. Sounds wonderful until you ask how much fuel would that be? Developing the technology to get oil out the Rocky Mountain shale is only years away and there's 2.3 trillion barrels of oil there - more oil than in all of the middle east. Its the largest known oil source in the world. Why don't we do that first?

[DMBEAR]

If you're anti gas and earthday is everyday, let me help you out.   I'll grab my hose and fill your tank with some golden mother nature.

[Maverick]

What I don't understand is why we don't throw some money to this guy?

http://www.butanol.com/

11% more energy per gallon than Gasoline, and fermented from waste bio stocks.

Just a thought,
Kevin

You really ought to ready your own links when you make a statement like that. Here is the conclusion from the bottom of the link.

"BioButanol is made from the same 

corn, sugar beets, sorghum, cassava, sugarcane, corn stalks, and other biomass

as ethanol yet replaces gasoline drop for drop.

It is ours - yours, mine and our neighbors’ choice what we decide to make."

When you read the butanol link you see that they talk about the amount of this version of alcohol per bushel of corn. They are only "proposing" that it would be more economical to use bio waste yet do not indicate what the waste is from or that they have actually made it from "waste". You can only grow so much from the arable land we have now. You can only force so much from an acre of land before you have to either let it lie fallow or use a fair quantity of fertilizer to boost it's production back up from being worn out.

These are FOOD products, "corn, sugar beets, sorghum, cassava, sugarcane" not waste materials. They are common in food products in many kinds of food we eat every day. The price of corn has already gone up just making plain ethanol for fuel and has had an impact across the board for all kinds of food. This is a dead end stop gap based on resources that are way to finite to support a percentage basis of use much less a 1 to 1 replacement.