Alcoholics Unanimous Newsletter ~ May 2006

Today oil hit $75 per barrel.  That’s a new record so it seems like a good day to write the newsletter.  I’ll talk more about the price hike below but want to get to news about the book first.

The Book:   Alcohol Can Be a Gas! Fueling a Revolution

Well, this winter has been rough on the book project.  As you know from the last newsletter our co-publisher wanted us to reduce the size from 325K words to 250K words.  We hired an editor that worked with me, and we came pretty close to reducing it by that amount.  Well, then it turns out that the publisher felt some of the things in the book were too controversial and asked that they be cut or relegated to an appendix.  Well, to make a long story short, we couldn’t agree and after coming this far with the book there came a point at which we mutually decided to part company. 

We were to be responsible for half the costs of production and of course our share of the first printing under our publishing agreement.  Now we were faced with the choice of looking for another publisher to shoulder those costs or going ahead and just doing the publishing ourselves.  We realized that the book would be delayed until sometime next year if we found another publisher due to their long lead times.  So we have gone ahead to produce the book ourselves in order to try and continue to meet our own deadline of late July. Our original publisher has offered to be the book’s distributor to the trade (bookstores, libraries etc.) 

So with the guidance of Mike Winks the book’s editor, we are steering our way through the publishing process. When last I wrote you we were doing the substantive editing.  That’s the broad strokes editing and organizing of the book. That needed to be redone once we were released from the strictures of the publisher’s wishes and needed to reorganize the book.

The book is now in the copy editing stage where the copy editor, Gayla Groom, tears apart everything I’ve written and makes it better, corrects my grammar, or kicks it back to me to rewrite.  She’s doing a great job and the book is going to be much clearer and even more effective.  This process will be going on though April and into much of May. 

The step after that is laying out the book with all the artwork.  We have fortunately found a very experienced graphic artist who knows books well.  She will have the book for a little more than a month.  Then the book needs to be proofread and corrections made.

The brilliant graphic artist, Ron Harper, who did the first book cover 25 years ago, and the Alcohol Can Be A Gas T-shirt art,  has offered to do the new cover.  I’ll send you a copy of the cover in the next newsletter.

The final step is indexing which will be a big and somewhat expensive job on this book.  Although we could have done the book without an index, it would not have been as user friendly and we think it's worth the extra thousands to have it professionally done.

Final touches then need to be done by the layout person for all the last minute stuff and then it is sent off to the printer, which will take about three weeks to print the book. We will be getting printing bids pretty soon.

We thought we were finished with fundraising for the book months ago but having the whole burden of the publishing costs thrust upon us is a challenge.  So far, there have been no delays due to shortage of funds as several people have stepped forward to lend money to the book project.

But we are not there yet.  We still need to raise money to finish the production work.  So, we need a small handful of people to put up loans of $5000 each to get this book through printing and shipped off to the book distributor responsible for handling all the sales through bookstores etc.  For those of you who don’t know, the entire book has been funded by individuals lending money to the project at 10% interest.  No institutional or corporate donations have been accepted to make sure that we have  had absolute freedom to say what needs to be said.  Please give me a call at our new number 831-471-9134 to discuss your participation in making sure our book makes it through its birth without interruption due to shortage of funds.  We’d hate for the project to stall now that we are so close.

We are looking for someone good to write the foreword for the book.  Willie Nelson has been at the top of the list as has Bill Clinton but we are open to hearing your ideas of who might bring some attention to the book by adding their foreword.  Send your ideas and connections to farmerdave@permaculture.com

Once we are through copy editing and gathering in the last of the funds we need to finish the book, we can then be certain of the printing date.  At that time we will then post a pre-publication page on our website with a special offer for those who buy the book in advance of printing.  We only need to sell a few hundred books in advance to pay for the entire print run.  So we will be counting on you folks to spread the word once we post the order page.

Peak Oil and High Prices 

To put it in perspective, the gas price spike in the late 70’s was the equivalent of $87 a barrel oil today.  So we are getting close to the anger ignition point that got Congress to take some action the last time.  So why is this happening and why now? After all, the price rises after Katrina hit put the oil into the $60/barrel and up range, which resulted in record profits for MegaOilron.  They made so much profit that they had to answer for it on capital hill and were threatened with a Windfall Profits tax. They clearly are making enough money.  The prices briefly dropped back down to $2/gallon until the congressional heat was off and then they cranked the price right back up again. If you read the papers there are lot’s of stories like, "labor unrest in Nigeria interrupting oil flow", or a "worker’s strike in Chad holding up 500,000 barrels" or "investor nervousness over Iran sabre rattling".  More than a month ago,  the American Petroleum Institute (API) propaganda machine had been pumping out stories that projected the upcoming $3/gallon gasoline price was going to be due to the new Renewable Fuels Act quota requiring a certain very small amount of alcohol to be mixed with gasoline.  This of course is pure fiction since ethanol is cheaper than wholesale gasoline when you consider the tax credits, but reporters today rarely question something from API.

In reality, this price increase has been predicted for two years by the Energy Information Agency, which studies all aspects of the energy industry.  Just like the shortfall of heating oil last winter, the EIA projected a shortfall this summer of 2 million barrels a day.  That’s right, a global shortage of fuel. Was this projected due to a drop in oil availability, i.e. Peak Oil?  No, not directly. It was based on the known limits of refinery output versus expected demand for fuel.  As we discussed in the last newsletter, over the last 15 years oil companies have closed 50 refineries of a variety of sizes in the United States.  This borders on criminal given the massive tax breaks the industry receives.

But since oil production has already crested there’s no point in putting a new multi-billion dollar refinery on line when it won’t ever operate at full capacity.  So a year or two of not having enough refinery capacity actually makes MegaOilron more money due to the run up in prices rather than selling more fuel for less money. In a couple of years the refinery output will be equal to the lowered production levels as oil picks up speed on its long slide into oblivion.

But reserve capacity to produce oil is barely above the refinery capacity at this point.  There’s no real elasticity anywhere in the system.  You can predict one of two disasters to happen near the start of summer since the Hurricane season doesn’t start until later.  One likely scenario is damage to a pipeline attributed to terrorists.  How tough is it to shut down a pipeline?  Take a look at this photo taken in the United States a few years ago when a disgruntled man shot a 75 cent hunting rifle bullet into the Alaskan pipeline.  Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spewed out of this tiny hole before pressure in the pipeline fell enough to repair it.

There are literally more than 100,000 miles of pipeline all over the world.  Damaging any of them shuts them down for days as was the case for this pinprick in the Alaskan pipeline or weeks if a pumping station is bombed. 

Hole shot in the Alyeska Pipeline in Alaska. 

(Photo by Charles Welch)

Work of a terrorist? Hardly.  A disgruntled American vented his anger by shooting the pipeline with a common hunting rifle. This shut the pipeline down for days and spilled a large quantity of toxic crude oil.  Pipelines in Columbia and Iraq are routinely damaged and shut down.  We can expect more of this sort of damage in the years to come.

The other scenario that seems to happen when supplies are at their tightest, is a refinery explosion which shuts down the works for some weeks while it is repaired and prices go through the roof. Look for one of these two events near the start of the summer driving scene. 

            So if there’s not enough oil, who is going to go without their share? Many of you have heard me tell the Peak Oil, prophetic story of the Ag Minister of Gabon, calling up Joe Bob, his Houston oil supplier and complaining of being shorted on their tractor fuel order.  Then of course the minister offers to pay more to get what he needs for his nation’s tractors. Then the Ag Minister of Ghana calls Joe Bob, after he is shorted and so on.  Well a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to Ag College contacts in Ghana and lo and behold, they were already paying $3.50 a gallon for gasoline on the Ivory Coast while we were still paying $2.71.  Bangladesh is also being shorted on oil. So the rolling shortfalls have already begun ahead of the EIA’s predictions for this summer. 

            Not coincidentally, MegaOilron is simultaneously floating stories about how much oil equivalent we have in Rocky Mountain Oil Shale, which they can convert to petroleum.  Of course this wouldn’t be economically possible if it weren’t for the high price of petroleum.  From an environmental standpoint oil shale production of petroleum would be a disaster of Herculean proportions.  Of course that was said about tar sands as well. Oil companies now talk about Canadian Tar Sands as “conventional oil” production now, with the US and China fighting over who gets to buy up the production from our Northern neighbor.

Tar Sands

Illustration by Sarah Janoovsky

Large quantities of natural gas are burned to inject heat into the tar sands to liquefy the kerogen, a tarlike precursor to petroleum.  Once liquefied it drains into a porous layer of rock from which it can be pumped to the surface like crude oil.

These two energy sources burn huge amounts of energy (currently natural gas) to heat the tarry or stony petroleum precursors so they can be recovered for refining.  It means that gasoline made from these horrible alternatives will be responsible for putting between 4-20 times as much greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere compared to just burning petroleum gasoline in our cars. There are serious proposals out there to use nuclear energy to provide the heat for these hellish projects.

 In the case of oil shale, huge amounts of water are sprayed on burning shale to capture the oily vapors for refining, leaving massive quantities of highly polluted water to be disposed of. The fly ash, from burning oil shale to extract its petroleum, fluffs up and will fill virtually every canyon in several states around the mining area.  The ash is actively toxic for more than 2500 years  during which time nothing will grow on it. All this time it will be leaching carcinogens,  heavy metals, and mutagens back into the water table.

The solution to our energy woes is not more gasoline. We have to replace it with something that won’t make life on earth impossible due to runaway global warming.  As you know, one significant answer is alcohol fuel.

Alcohol from Cellulose 

Speaking of alcohol and the news, the last few months since the last newsletter have been chock full of stories in favor of alcohol fuel instead of bashing it. This is unprecedented since the early 1980’s. GM is openly advertising their Live Green, Go Yellow campaign to promote their flex fuel cars.  Ford starts seriously advertising their flex cars this week.  George Bush in his State of the Union address admitted the US was addicted to oil and also gave a brief nod to alcohol fuel being one way of overcoming the addiction.  He specifically said he supported alcohol from cellulose. 

Well that has put the venture capital folks into a frenzy trying to figure out how to invest in cellulosic alcohol.  There has been some progress on making ethanol from cellulose, which is plant fiber, as opposed to starch as in corn, or sugar as in sugar cane.  All three carbohydrates are actually made of sugar but cellulose is tens of thousands of sugar molecules tightly bound together in fibers. To make alcohol from it is necessary to break that woody material down into liquid by breaking apart all that sugar. 

The Department of Energy has been pursuing a path of reducing the cost of cellulose enzymes on the theory that the high cost of enzymes to break down the cellulose was what was holding up economic cellulose conversion to alcohol.  They have succeeded in bringing the price of the enzymes down using genetically modified bacteria to produce it.

But for enzymes to work they have to be able to physically contact the cellulose to cause it to break apart.  In reality, that means you have to do something drastic to reduce the wood chips to the equivalent of dust.  So what’s holding things up now is trying to figure out how to do this pretreatment economically so the enzymes can go to work.  All the methods so far are pretty energy intensive and that means pretty expensive. 

Now alcohol has been made from wood for more than 100 years without enzymes using either what’s called weak acid hydrolysis or strong acid hydrolysis.  Hydrolysis is the breaking (lysing) of the hydrogen bonds that hold the sugar molecules to each other.  In fact paper pulping is an example of partial weak acid hydrolysis. The reaction happens at hundreds of degrees and at high pressure. In paper pulping the reaction is stopped before too much of the wood is turned into sugar and the cellulose is in the form that can be used for making paper.  The waste liquid from paper mills is chock full of sugar.

Using this process for making alcohol fuel use is unpatentable because it’s been around so long, so the venture capitalists haven’t shown much interest in it.  But it works, produces alcohol cheaper than the current price of gasoline, and doesn’t use any genetically modified organisms. Although the process is more expensive, the raw material is really cheap compared to corn. I mean how much can grass clippings be worth?

I did some experiments, for a couple of weeks, based on one of the processes discussed in the book, with my friend Eric Lang. It was made possible by a small grant from Paul Robbins, a longtime supporter.  We started with cotton balls and then moved on to a couple of different Ag wastes. 

I’m stuffing cotton balls into a high temperature/high pressure reaction chamber. Afterwards Eric and I filled the chamber with a weak acid solution.

     You can see the cotton ball

     beginning to dissolve in this

     early trial

After a few minutes at hundreds of degrees F and hundreds of pounds per square inch pressure, the cotton completely dissolved into this coffee colored liquid.

On the lab scale we were able to reduce the cellulose in these materials to liquid and even fermented a bit of it to see if there was any sugar in it.  You can see in the photos that when the cellulose dissolves it turns into a black liquid about as dark as coffee.  We plan on working on this more this summer to try and perfect machinery that will do this efficiently on the small scale.  The only way it is done now is in huge high-pressure reaction vessels, and all the research into cellulose conversion is focusing on the large scale.  We would like to make it possible for the average farmer to do this with corn stalks, sawdust, waste paper, and other cellulosic wastes.  We have every reason to expect success based on our initial lab scale tests.   We are about to seek grants to refine the work we began.

Sweden and Alcohol

Virtually overnight Sweden implemented a system of E-85 pumps across their entire country.  Its now possible to be within range of alcohol while driving anywhere in Sweden.  Sweden is aggressively pursuing a path to freedom from fossil fuels that is unmatched anywhere except Brazil. They want to be nuclear and petroleum free by 2020.

Engineers for Saab (owned by GM) have come out with a special version of the Model 9-5, in Sweden, that has an advanced flexible fuel engine.  Unlike US engines which are nothing more than gasoline engines that can be made to run on alcohol, the new Saab engine has been engineered to be able to take advantage of alcohol’s cool burning 105 octane characteristics.  At the heart of the system is a variable pressure turbocharger.  Turbochargers use exhaust gas to spin a turbine air compressor that pumps pressurized air into the engine.  This is one way of imitating having a high compression engine, since the pressure is greatly increased when the engine squeezes already pressurized air.  The car has a knock sensor, in reality a small microphone, that listens to the engine for pre-ignition, also known as pinging.  When it hears the first inaudible pings it reacts by retarding the ignition timing and reducing the turbo pressure.  What this does for alcohol is permit the car to run at very high compression when using E-85 and lower compression when running on a higher proportion of gasoline.  This engine was one of the winner’s of this year’s Popular Mechanic’s innovation awards.

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/gbr/tpl/mag4/art20060315/htm/route-saab-9-5-biopower.htm

This is the forerunner of engines of the near future.  The Saab engineers also took advantage of alcohol’s engine cooling effects.  Gasoline engines, when they accelerate, pump extra fuel into the engine, not because the engine demands it but because the excess fuel’s evaporation is necessary to cool the cylinder during acceleration.  But alcohol does not need this extra cooling effect so the Saab injects only what the engine needs and no more.  What all this adds up to is that when all the driving is averaged out, the 9-5 engine produces the SAME mileage on both gasoline and alcohol.  US Flexible fuel engines experience a reduction in mileage since they do not take advantage of alcohol’s qualities.

The 9-5 is just the start of GM/Saab’s thinking.  Check out this web link to Saab’s Aero X, the first alcohol-only 400 hp potential production sports car. The fact that an automaker is already planning on producing a post petroleum car excites me to no end.  That’s an end to denial about Peak Oil. To see more about this car go to: 



http://autos.aol.com/article/future/v2?id=20060303153909990001 

So I talked to the guys at IPD who specialize in souping up Volvos about the 9-5 and they laughed.  They said “Volvo went with a ping controlled turbocharger in 1995, this is nothing new.  The Volvo 850 turbo from those years did just what you say the Saab is doing.”  Well a couple of weeks later I’m at a contra dance and talking to Tom, a friend of mine about this and he says, “You’re telling me this because you know I have an 850 Turbo, right?” Well Dang. 

We arrange to meet and we tested about 75% alcohol in his car and it ran with no problems so we went to E-95 and roared up the highway 17 grade with no leaning or power problems.  His check engine light came on but after he had it reset it never came on again once the emission system “learned” the new fuel.  Its turbo didn’t put out as high a pressure as the Saab’s so he still lost a little mileage but he certainly had a serviceable flex fuel car without having to go out and buy a new American car.  1995 Volvo 850 turbos can be had for about $4500. 

Fortune Magazine

            Conservative Fortune Magazine did one of the media pieces that have set off the positive public debate on alcohol.  Here’s a link to the article:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/14/magazines/fortune/ethanol_fortune/index.htm

Although the magazine article was on the whole pretty good there were a few inaccuracies.  My editor Mike Winks took it upon himself to send a letter to the editor and it appeared in the Fortune Online magazine.  It read as follows.

California Initiative

            The California Air Resources Board has been dragging its feet on approving the sale of E-85 at the pump in California.  Its no wonder, considering the close collaboration between them and MegaOilron stealth foundation, the Coordinating Research Council, who authored the phony study on alcohol permeation emissions last year. 

Well Vinod Khosla, former dot.com billionaire, now passionate alcohol fuel advocate, is taking them on.  Among other interesting projects he is putting up 10 million dollars to fund a ballot initiative to get alcohol fuels off to a running start in California.  At the heart of the initiative is a mandate to have alcohol fuel pumps at twenty percent of the fuel stations in California.  He’s not even gotten all his signatures yet and MegaOilron has already amped up a new organization, Citizens Against Higher Taxes, to fight his initiative.  We can expect the Oilygarchy to fight dirty, with lies, propaganda, and expensive spokesmen.  We need to stand ready to write letters to our editors every time we see one of their planted stories get print or airtime. 

The stakes are high.  If Californians start mixing 50% alcohol into their fuel at the pump just like the Brazilians did, you can expect the auto companies to come out with a high percentage of flex fuel vehicles for the new market.  After all, that’s what happened in Brazil to get the automakers off the dime.  If California goes, the whole country goes.

I’ll certainly send you bulletins from time to time on this to keep you updated on the initiative and how you can help.

GM Tri-Fuel Car

Photo by Bob FitchPhoto, www.bobfitchphoto.com



GM produces cars in Brazil that will run on wet alcohol (96% alcohol and 4% water) gasoline or natural gas.  Both alcohol and natural gas are very high octane.  Gasoline in Brazil contains 25% alcohol so it has higher octane than US gasoline as well.. This permits GM to have higher compression pistons installed on the assembly line. I visited the GM plant on my trip to Brazil.

Alcohol Mandates

            I’ll have more information for you in the next newsletter but many states are now considering renewable fuel standards that would force oil companies to use higher levels of alcohol and biodiesel in their fuels.  Several states are also passing tax benefits for both production and distribution of alcohol.  The general flavor had come from a slogan that has been circulating,  “25% by 2025” referring to a renewable fuel goal of legislation.  Minnesota has taken the lead with their 20% mandate since Universities in their state demonstrated that all fuel injected cars tested ran on 30% alcohol just fine.  They didn’t test higher levels but you’ll remember that we did do that kind of testing and showed that every vehicle we tested tolerated 50% alcohol just fine.

This news just in from Gray Shaw,  it is a pretty limited national piece of legislation but because it isn’t revolutionary it has a reasonable chance of making it through Congress.  Let your legislators in Congress know you support this one.

U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN)

Introduce The American Fuels Act of 2006 (S. 2446)

to Reduce U.S. Dependence on Foreign Oil 

Obama's and Lugar's bipartisan legislation, the American Fuels Act of 2006 (S. 2446), would take a four-step approach to reducing America's dependence on foreign oil.

The legislation would spur investment in alternative fuels by increasing the production of cellulosic biomass ethanol (CBE) to 250 million gallons by 2012. And it would also create an Alternative Diesel Standard that will require 2 billion gallons of alternatives diesels be mixed into the 40 billion gallon annual national diesel pool by 2015. This proposal is modeled off the Renewable Fuels Standard, which has proved successful in increasing ethanol production and use.

It would require the U.S. government to lead by example and increase access to alternative fuels by requiring the government to allow public access to alternative fueling stations located on federal government property and by requiring that only clean buses be eligible for federal cost sharing.

The legislation would help increase consumer demand for alternative fuels by providing a short-term, 35 cents per gallon tax credit for E85 fuel and by providing automakers with a $100 tax credit for every E85-capable Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) produced.

It  would also create a Department of Defense "fly-off competition" that would encourage private sector companies to compete to find the most energy efficient alternative fuels for defense purposes.

Finally, the legislation would create a Director of Energy Security to oversee and keep America focused on its goal of energy independence. The Director of Energy Security would serve as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, the National Economic Council and the Homeland Security Council. To track this bill, go to the following link.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=main&bill=s109-2446 

To see a complete list of legislation that has been proposed around alcohol fuel in the last year you can go to the following link.  Its clear that some of Congress is trying to forward the renewable fuels movement while the administration with its overall control of government has been frustrating these efforts. 

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/subjects.xpd?type=crs&term=Alcohol%20as%20fuel

Alcohol Prices

             Our efforts to get an alcohol station going in Santa Cruz have been slowed down by the move of our office as well as the continued high price for ethanol.  Why is ethanol running around $2.50 per gallon when it only costs 90 cents to make? You’ll remember in the last newsletter,  I talked about the now disgraced, Tom Delay, working ceaselessly to get a federal liability exemption for MTBE. That would have protected oil companies and their officers against lawsuits for groundwater contamination by MTBE.  He failed, so now oil companies, faced with certain liability for MTBE spills and leaks, have quietly phased it out and are not using it in gasoline.  After years of battles to try and get it banned all it took was the unmistakable proof of it being harmful and no legal protection from lawsuits to make it go away.  After all, oil companies can’t claim that the MTBE in your well came from someone else.  Amazing. 

But demand for alcohol to replace it has been quite stiff, and although the industry is just keeping ahead of the demand as more alcohol plants open and go online, the price they can get for it stays high.  Remember that although the oil companies buy it for $2.50 they get to take 61 cents per gallon off their taxes for using it, which makes it cheap for them.  There’s also the undeniable fact that there isn’t enough fuel being produced by the world’s refineries so alcohol becomes, if nothing else, something they can add to their witches brew that keeps up the volume for sale.  As I’ve said before, the producers should sell it for less if it’s going to be sold for E-85, in order to expand the market in the long term.

            To follow the projected price of alcohol you can go to this link at the Chicago Board of Trade which tracks ethanol future’s contracts. 

http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1754,00.html

 

The Alcohol Can Be A Gas Website ~ Web Designer Wanted

            Our website is way out of date and needs a lot of work.  We are in need of some expert help updating our website,  replacing our shopping cart with  user friendly software, and working with us on how to get the site better recognized by search engines.  Every organization would like to have a volunteer for this, but if that elusive volunteer can’t be found; we’d be thrilled if we can find someone who’s really good and would like to work on the site at a reduced rate.

 Closing

            It is heartening to see the positive press and proposed regulation to speed our transition to alcohol.  But history has shown us that MegaOilron has reversed alcohol’s progress time and time again.  They’ve already got much of the public thinking that this summer’s gas prices will be alcohol’s fault. There’s still a lot of work to do in educating the public so they won’t be fooled again.  I can’t think of a better time for Alcohol Can Be A Gas! to come out and assist all the efforts currently being expended to see our transportation system fueled by renewable energy. Thanks once again for all your encouragement and various forms of support.