T. Boone has recently met with both presidential candidates about the plan. They have no choice now, but to take the former oilman seriously. Energy policy is a huge issue this election and the Pickens Plan website has over 4 million visitors. They’ve got to act interested!

Not only do the candidates take the plan seriously, a national poll shows that most (almost three quarters) Americans believe that it’s possible to completely cut dependance on foreign oil within 10 years. Interesting enough though most Americans have no faith in COngress or the Senate to allow the plan to succeed. Shocking.

It’s not easy to lease a new FCX Clarity

I just saw that the 2nd of only 200 people to receive the world’s first automobile engineered specifically for hydrogen fuel cell power will be Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband. She hasn’t starred in anything I’ve enjoyed since she did a very memorable strip tease in that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Does anybody remember what it was called?

I’ll dance in my underwear for a FCX Clarity!

Is that what it takes to be allowed the opportunity to pay $600 a month to lease this car? A strip tease for a future governor? If so, most of us stand little chance of ever driving one. At least now I understand why they’re only leasing them in Southern California.

Hydrogen Filling Stations Please!

Unless you live in Washington DC, New York State, or Southern California you’ll probably only be able to see the FCX Clarity on youtube. Hydrogen is getting cheaper and the amount of filling stations and infrastructure will expand, but when? I want one now!

Two weeks ago a Penn State research team supported by a DOE grant found a way to produce hydrogen directly from solar energy using nanotubes in a photoelectrochemical diode. This means that the energy from the sun is directly stored in the form of hydrogen. Depending on the cost of the arrays, once they’re being manufactured, this could mean some super cheap hydrogen.

Just over a week ago Global Hydrogen Inc. reported that they could produce hydrogen for $2.47 per kg. using higher efficiency electrolysis generators. Surprising enough the industry average for hydrogen production is about $3.57/kg. To put that in perspective the Honda’s new FCX Clarity runs between 60-70 miles on a kg of hydrogen. So now, instead of paying $10 to drive 200 miles, you can go 300. Cheap!

An MIT researcher did something, everybody pay attention!

I’m very shocked by the lack of attention heaped on the Penn State research team and Global Hydrogen, it seems their developments went largely unnoticed. I guess they should of included a photo of themselves looking intelligent, yet rugged, like MIT researcher Daniel C. Nocera.

It’s not that his findings aren’t significant, they certainly are. Platinum costs around $2000 an ounce and is the main expense in both electrolysis equipment (makes H2O just H and O) and hydrogen fuel cells (generates electricity by letting H and O come back together). Basically the MIT team found a way to do it with cobalt and phosphate which are, compared to platinum, practically free.

Where do I fill up the FCX Clarity that I can’t purchase?

Unless you live in California, Washington D.C. or New York State you have to enviously watch other prople fill up their fuel cell vehicles, but not the FCX Clarity they’re still testing the first 100 production models in Southern California.

While watching remember that it only costs $10 to fill it up and then quickly compose a scathing letter to your state legislators demanding hydrogen filling stations!

Shia Agassi and Israel’s Better Place Project have a plan to take over the roads with electric cars within a couple years. They’re borrowing from mobile phone service’s business models.

The car you see below will be so ubiquitous that you will not only be able to charge it all over Israel, but you’ll even be able to quickly swap your drained battery with fully charged one to keep you on the go. How much will these cars cost? Nothing!

At least that’s the plan. According the Shai Agassi, the electric car service should be able to afford to give the cars away for free so long as customers agree to a service agreement for six years. In the same way that mobile phone services charge per minute, they’re going to charge for battery changes and electricity.

It’s going to be very exciting to watch and see if the electric car services proliferate as quickly as mobile phone services did. I’m betting they take off even faster.

I haven’t spent a great deal on research as an individual, but it doesn’t take a team of mathematicians to realize that there’s a gold mine of energy in the Saharan desert. I often get bewildered looks from friends, and the occasional stranger, when I try to tell them that North Africa could quite easily be the wealthiest region in the world. According to Arnulf Jaeger-Waldau of the European commission’s Institute for Energy, just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts would be enough to meet all of Europe’s energy needs.

That doesn’t seem so difficult now, does it?

Problem #1: Photovoltaic cells or turbines?

Right now there’s debate between photovoltaic cells or turbines powered by steam created by an array of mirrors. Personally I’ve never been a fan of the turbine technology, it just seems like a dead end. Photovoltaic cell technology on the other hand is constantly being improved. New breakthroughs involving nanotechnology make photovoltaic cells a much more exciting choice. Steam and turbines … BORING!

Problem solved for 45 billion Euros

Problem#2 Distrubution via high voltage cables? Why not hydrogen?

There are a few reasons I don’t like the direct cable to Europe. First, they would limit Saharan nation’s power export markets to European countries that are connected to the “supergrid,” instead of being able to sell their power to the highest bidder. Second, what happens when a massive dust storm reduces electricity across solar farms in the Sahara? Both problems could easily be solved by using hydrogen to store and distribute power effectively.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing something from Greg Blencoe’s Hydrogen Discoveries Blog on the subject of infrastructure soon enough. I’d be very interested to know how the energy lost on a DC line from the Saharan Desert to Paris stacks up against transportation of hydrogen via pipeline or canister.

The idea of a European supergrid powered entirely by renewable energy is exciting in itself. It’s hard to believe such a radical departure from traditional power distribution methods has won support from political leaders like Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown. Let’s hope they don’t bungle it!

The only good thing to come from soaring oil prices is that they have spurred innovator/investors, successful in other fields, to move into clean energy with a mad-as-hell, can-do ambition to replace oil with renewable power.

Breifly, Shai Agassi is pushing a innovative electric car opperator network, called Project Better Place. The idea is to offer cheap, mass produced electric cars with a network of recharging outlets and even battery exchanges. Those services will be offered in scaled plans for consumers like your mobile phone company with distance instead of minutes. It’s catching on, Gordon Brown is pledging a few quid to make Britan “the European capital for electric cars.”

What about those of us that live in big countries?

T. Boone and the Pickens Plan, on the other hand, is firing at the same target with different ammunition. He too realizes that America’s $700 billion a year addiction to foreign oil is very large monkey to carry on our backs (it’s late, I can’t stop with the imagery). A nationwide electric car operator network as effective as the one proposed by Shia Agassi’s Project Better Place is just not going be an easy sell. He didn’t become a billionaire by ignoring straight economics in favor of lofty ideals.

In a nutshell, the Pickens Plan aims at adding a ton of energy created by enormous wind farms to electrical power grids. The added wind energy should then allow us to shift our ample natural gas resources away from electricity generation into transportation. Every time I think of Pickens and his plan I picture him smirking as he draws a cigar to his lips with his leather gloved hand and telling the nation how he loves it when a plan comes together.

True, natural gas is a fossil fuel that adds CO2 to the atmosphere, but it’s a lot cleaner and cheaper than gasoline. It’s also not so difficult to have existing cars fitted for CNG, at least not here in Thailand (where I’ve been residing for the last several years).

Here at Replacing Oil we think that hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles are the way forward. However, if I had to choose between the Pickens Plan very likely materializing during the Obama Administration or a hazy hydrogen future (despite it’s obvious posibility), I’ll take the Pickens Plan. He’s got enough money and political attention to nudge the lumbering behemouth that is America’s transportation system in the right directions. Just don’t expect Gordon Brown to discard their blossoming EV ambitions for Wind and Gas. The relationship just isn’t that special anymore.

I’m not sure how much my Replacing Oil blog had to do with it, but this has got to be a major kick in the pants for the McCain campaign. No wonder he looks like a deflated balloon every time he gets in front of a crowd and tries to straight talk about the energy crisis.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska and the offshore waters of the outer continental shelf will remain safe from oil exploration and drilling. I don’t want to get into it here, but we all know how much regard the Bush administration has for overwhelming public opinion.

The good news is this despite an incredible amount of misinformation about biofuels especially ethanol and other alternative energy technologies. Americans still believe that replacing oil is no longer a choice. Hopefully Obama can stop promising how he’s going to “remake the world” long enough to read the Pickens Plan and form a more concrete alternative energy technology policy.

By the way the pool we are referring to was conducted by he Washington DC research firm, Belden Russonello & Stewart. you can download a PDF of the telephone survey here.

There’s something about being a billionaire that gets people to listen, perhaps the wads of cash bulging out from under his ten gallon hat. Honestly, I’ve never seen Pickens in a ten gallon hat, but It’s hard to imagine a Texas oilman in anything else. Even conservative columnist Cal Thomas is excited about his plan and it’s ability to bridige the divide between parties.

While we are a bigger fan of microgeneration than Pickens’ multi-billion dollar wind farms, we’re very excited here at Replacing Oil with the amount of attention being drawn to the botton line of alternative energy rexources in the United States. The great plains states have enough wind to churn out more power than all the oil off the shore of Florida (I really don’t have the numbers to back that up, but it sounds about right). From both economic and environmental perspectives wind farms are a very safe investment. Hopefully when Obama takes office in less than 6 months, we can quit banging our heads against the wall trying to get Washington to listen to reason.

China is the worlds largest producer of rice and as a result has about 230 million tonnes of rice waste to dispose of each year. The huge amount of straw burnt each year is actually a significant contributor to China’s pollution problem. Most farmers burn the straw after harvest releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air.

The problem with creating biofuels from rice waste

Rice straw’s complex cellulose structure and lignin components make it difficult for microorganisms to break down into biofuel. Until now, researchers have been soaking the straw in an alkali solution to begin the breaking down process for the fermentation microbes.

Although soaking the straw in recycled chemicals and heating it works, it’s not a practical sollution for any large scale biofuel production. The process is simply too expensive and dirty.

Why burn it if you can make fuel from it?

A rice waste to biofuel solution?

Li Xiujin, environmental engineering professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and his team of scientists have found a cleaner way of kick starting the degradation process. Instead of soaking the leftover rice straw they’ve treated it with small amounts of an alkaline solution containing sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The treatment has resulted in a 64.5% improvement in methane yield, but no mention yet of ethanol production.

Will rice waste be a real biofuel solution in the near future?

Biofuels like methane could be used in farm equipment used to plant and harvest rice , but not without a cost to individual farmers. Government subsidies to farmers for fitting their farm equipment to use compressed biogas, produced from their own rice waste, would be a huge step in solving both rising fuel/food prices and air pollution. However, building pipelines and pumping stations for delivering biogas to the average consumer just isn’t going to happen.

Ethanol from rice waste presents a much more promising future for China’s, and the worlds, renewable fuel production. The infrastructure is already in place and we’ve already seen how effective it is at lowering existing fossil fuel demand and in turn prices. A practical cellulosic ethanol from rice waste program in China would help alleviate much of the world’s skyrocketing fuel price woes.