As some of you may know, I am writing the renewable diesel chapter for a book on renewable energy. My submission is due at the end of July. The chapter is well underway, but I have a nagging feeling that I am forgetting to address something. So, I wanted to share the outline I have, [...]
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Jatropha Curcas 
I have written a few posts in the past about Jatropha curcas, a tropical shrub with the potential to make an important contribution to our fuel supplies. (See here and here for previous essays concerning jatropha). While I believe that the present status of jatropha has been exaggerated, I believe the potential is enormous. I [...]
Algal Biodiesel: Fact or Fiction?
The following is a guest post by John Benemann. John has many years of expertise in biomass conversion, and previously co-wrote a guest piece on cellulosic ethanol. On the subject of biodiesel from algae, he literally wrote the book.
I originally wrote an article over a year ago in which I mentioned the potential of algal [...]
High Oil Prices = High Biofuel Prices
You know that forever I have beaten the drum that high fossil fuel prices would make biofuels more expensive due to their poor EROEI. If you are unfamiliar with the argument, it is essentially that most biofuels have very high fossil fuel inputs (and thus a low energy return). That simply means that when fossil [...]
Ethanol, Biodiesel, and Food Prices
The following story from Bloomberg caught my eye today:
Ethanol Drives Up Food Commodity Prices
Some notable excerpts:
Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) — Global ethanol production is driving up prices for food commodities, from feed stocks such as sugar, to meat, said Datagro, Brazil’s biggest sugar-industry forecasting firm.
U.S. production, forecast to increase more than 70 percent by 2012, will [...]
Congress Kills a Biofuel Project
If we are to seriously encourage a move to biofuels, incentives are going to be required because the economics of biofuels just can’t compete with petroleum (regardless of what Vinod Khosla thinks). Eventually depletion will cause petroleum to become very expensive, and then the economics of certain biofuels (especially those with the best energy returns) [...]
Biodiesel’s Green Diesel Nightmare
I have been saying this for months, and others are starting to realize the same thing:
Renewable Diesel: Biodiesel’ s Nightmare
I first heard of this process last October at an NREL presentation (they called it “Green diesel” and could not identify COP as the oil company they were dealing with,) but details remain sketchy. The fact [...]
The Prospects for Algal Biodiesel Dim
As I noted in my earlier essay More Reality Checks for Algal Biodiesel, I initially had high hopes for the idea that we might make significant amounts of biodiesel from algae. A few years ago I read Michael Briggs’ essay Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae and thought he put together a compelling case that algae [...]
The Future is Solar
I have done a lot of research lately into various alternative diesel technologies as I was working on my renewable diesel chapter. One thing that became very clear to me is that the world will not be able to displace more than a fraction of our petroleum usage with biofuels. I already knew that this [...]
My Top 10 Energy Stories of 2007
First, thanks to all who contributed ideas. You may have an entirely different opinion on the most important energy stories. Feel free to share it. Many of these stories were contributed by various readers. Comments by readers are italicized. If you want to know who wrote what, you can see the entire comment thread here.
Here [...]