There is little doubt that Amory Lovins is beginning to outnader Nader as the country's no.1 charlatan. In a recent interview he describes how everything will work better without electricity and how softheaded energy sources are "cheaper, faster, surer, safer, and better for jobs, the economy and the environment." No evidence, of course, just constant repetition.
"People would drive even more in their cars than they do now," continues the Wonderboy, having fired himself into a fit of oral diarrhea. "The cars would be just as big, but they would be very efficient and they would run on alcohol."
There are, alas, gasoholics even among the honest and the sane. They are, however, badly mistaken.
Yes, cars can be run on alcohol. In pre war Czechoslovakia, the potato lobby pushed a law through parliament requiring automobile fuel to be 20% alcohol. To make alcohol from corn is a popular idea in Iowa and Nebraska, too, but it makes little sense. Never mind the economics, never mind the technology (gasoline is simply a better fuel): The idea is inept because it takes more energy from fossil fuels to grow the corn and operate the distillery than is contained in the resulting alcohol. That emerges from simple numbers confirmed by every expert.
For example, Prof. P.J. Reilly of Iowa State University's Dept. of Chemical Engineering gives the following figures: One bushel of corn will produce 2.6 gallons of ethanol, at an energy cost of about 375,000 BTU. But when you burn those 2.6 gallons of ethanol, all you will get is 218,000 BTU. As usual, the Wonderboy has recommended a source of gigantic energy waste. One would still waste energy, though a good deal less, if the corn were burned in a boiler without going to the additional trouble of distilling alcohol from it first.
But do not cars in Brazil run on fuel that is in part alcohol?
Indeed, they do. Brazil expects to produce almost 1 billion gallons of alcohol by 1980, and by 1981 it is hoped to run cars on an ethanol/gasoline mix containing 20% ethanol.
The difference is that Brazil's alcohol is made from sugar cane grown with low energy input, and methods to distill alcohol from wood and plants growing wild in the Brazilian jungle are now under study
All one need to do to achieve such results in the US is to turn much of it into jungle.
Lovins seems to be working on that, and with considerable success .
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Vol. 6, No. 2
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 6 Issue/No.: Vol. 6, No. 2 Date: October 01, 1978 03:51 PM Title: Ruining the promise of solar energy
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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