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E-Flex: High-Blend Ethanol Fuel (Guest Post)
2 Comments | Posted by gimme-five in Environment, Politics
The following is a guest post by Jack. You can read his blog here. This post represents the views of the author and not necessarily the position of George of gimme-five.com. Thanks, Jack!
In another clear attempt to reduce our carbon footprint, Minister Jacinta Allan joined Caltex and GM Holden to publicize a distribution of fuel containing up to 85% ethanol across Caltex’s set of connections, including Victoria, by end of October, 2010. E-Flex, is Caltext’s ethanol based bio fuel that will hopefully cut carbon emissions down by 20% in 2020. The fuel, referred to as “home grown ” will ultimately improve Victoria’s fuel security. Ms Allan boldly states that it will also “stimulate investment in local supply.” The fuel itself has the ability to reduce carbon emissions up to 50%; this is in direct comparison to traditional fossil fuels.
The promotion of efforts like this, along with the implementation of green jobs, was all a part of Brumby Labor Government’s $175 million jobs for the Future Economy Action Plan.
Carbon Cutting projects like the example listed above provide greater sustainability. Accordingly, the introduction of ethanol based bio fuels are a step towards a more optimal supply of renewable energy. Ms Allan goes on to state that they’ll continue to work tirelessly to build a plant for high-tech ethanol production in Victoria.
Meanwhile, Doug Band and the Clinton Global Initiative continue to invest in similar sustainability projects, similar to the fleet emission reduction program in San Francisco Bay. The plan will effectively lower green house gas emissions from specific vehicle fleets of the county through fleet route optimization. In other words ESRI and the CGI are deemed responsible for developing software that will optimize fuel usage.
Both projects are a step in the right direction. With the development of things like PETE (photon enhanced thermionic emissions), and less expensive, more efficient alternative energy projects in place, the world will continue to become a more sustainable planet.
2 Comments for E-Flex: High-Blend Ethanol Fuel (Guest Post)
Author comment by George | August 10, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Author comment by George | August 10, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Shucks, I should create a guest account on this website so my comments don’t appear as “author comments”. Oh well, someday.
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles long ago, I am hesitant to get behind ethanol-based fuels. Though admittedly I have not stayed in touch with how efficient ethanol is considered these days, a few years ago there was a lot of evidence that suggested that ethanol was net-energy-negative, meaning that it took more energy to create a given unit of ethanol than that unit yielded. Moreover, and more problematically, is that even if ethanol grown with land-based fuels is used, it requires a lot of space on land. Some estimates were that if corn based ethanol were used to power all of the US transportation needs, it would require something like 98% of the land in the United States to reach this goal.
The main limit seems to be photosynthesis – ethanol relies on plants to make energy, but they can’t really absorb as much of the sun’s energy per hectare of land to make ethanol a great use of land.
But once again, I’m not quite up to date on this stuff right now. What exactly is this E-Flex stuff? Is there any new information on algae these days? I’ve always heard that was supposed to be pretty efficient.