http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/126243 ... trih5yj6eqTwenty-First CenturySnake Oil: Why the United States Should Reject Biofuels as Part of a Rational National Security Energy Strategy
Captain T. A. “Ike” Kiefer
About 1200 AD in the coastal region of the Andes in what is today northern Peru, the Chimu Empire faced a severe water shortage during a prolonged drought. In a flurry of public works activity that greatly stressed the royal treasury, the government embarked on a crash program to construct a 50-kilometer canal to bring water to the people. Construction was started simultaneously on several parallel routes in hopes that one of them would pay off. A great expenditure of labor was made to erect sections of aqueduct as high as 30 meters and to waterproof miles of earthen trenches with tile. However, the evidence is that this grand waterworks project never delivered water to the capital city of Chan Chan. Modern surveys of the ruins have found a fatal flaw that doomed the work - the canal route has segments that run uphill.
Unfortunately, there are similarities between Chimu engineering and the current reckless pursuit of biofuels. Both were begun without a proper survey of the terrain and obstacles, both have taken approaches that attempt to defy unyielding physical laws, and both have expended prodigious resources without achieving their goals. The Chimu tried to make water run uphill in defiance of the law of gravity. The US government and military are trying to make energy run uphill in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics. There is a set of talking points trumpeted almost daily in the press to justify biofuels as an essential part of US energy strategy. Some prominent figures and pundits argue that biofuels will increase our domestic supply of transportation fuel, end our dependence upon foreign oil, reduce military vulnerabilities on the battlefield, and generally improve national security. Biofuels are further promised to reduce fuel price volatility, reduce polluting emissions, reduce greenhouse gases,and even stimulate the economy. These arguments all fall apart under scrutiny. The promise and curse of biofuels is that they are limited by the energy that living organisms harvest from the sun. They suffer from a fatal catch-22: uncultivated biomass produces biofuel yields that are far too small, diffuse, and infrequent to displace any meaningful fraction of US primary energy needs; and boosting yields through cultivation consumes more additional energy than it adds to the biomass. Furthermore, the harvested biomass requires large amounts of additional energy to upgrade it into the compact, energy-rich, liquid hydrocarbon form that is required for compatibility with the nation’s fuel infrastructure, its transportation sector, and especially its military. When the energy content of the final product biofuel is compared to all the energy that was required to make it, the trade proves to be a very poor investment, especially in consideration of other alternatives. In many cases, there is net loss of energy. When energy balance (energy output minus energy input) across the full fuel creation and combustion lifecycle is considered, cultivated liquid biofuels are revealed to be a modern-day attempt at perpetual motion that is doomed by the laws of thermodynamics and a fatal dependence upon fossil fuel energy. Biofuels’ promise of energy security also proves to be an illusion as their price is more volatile and supply less assured, being subject to the economic and political vagaries of both the international energy markets and agricultural markets, as well as the whims of weather.
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