

Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?   - pherk
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arabic/article.cfm?articleid=2648

======
angdis
I think the question is wrong. It assumes that the problem is to find a
"replacement" for oil, in other words, that all we need to do is replace the
oil and everything else will work "the same."

For whatever reason, Americans are locked in to thinking that cities should be
designed for cars and that every errand should involve driving somewhere (with
the expectation that your destination should furnish your car with a free
place to park).

It doesn't have to be that way, although I can understand why a country that
burns up 20% of global output of petroleum commuting to work everyday might
feel that we need to "replace" oil and that will "solve" the looming crisis.

There are OTHER ways of thinking about a solution that does not involve simply
replacing oil. These would include:

* Go back to human-scale cities by increasing density and diversity of housing, businesses and facilities.

* Invest in public transit infrastructure, alternative transportation modes. Mandate walkable metro-centers.

Of course, people won't change unless there's a reason to do so. What I am
saying is that "market forces" will push us towards those kinds of solutions
INSTEAD of towards an oil replacement. People will be better off if they can
adapt to this reality rather than hang on until the bitter end to the idea
that the future will involve "happy motoring" forever.

~~~
hapless
Americans _don't want_ "human scale" cities or public transit, or else we
would already have them.

I realize this is not politically correct, but I _like_ the isolation of the
suburbs. I don't want to hear my neighbors or have a grocery within walking
distance. I'm happy to need to drive to reach anything, because it means that
the hustle and bustle of commerce stays far the hell away from my home.

I hate using public transit. I spent a lot of time and money to purchase and
maintain my car, and for good reason. I enjoy the convenience of private,
personal transport that departs and arrives on my schedule. I don't have to
see, hear, or smell any fellow travelers.

Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to subsidize public transit with my tax dollars.
The hard truth is that it is primarily for the benefit of the poor. I don't
intend to use it. You couldn't pay me enough to spend two hours on a bus in
lieu of my 30 minute commute.

We won't see an end to car culture until it is forced upon us. You will have
to tear middle-class Americans kicking and screaming from their suburbs. We
have _chosen_ to live this way. The escape from the cities was hard-won, and
most people won't give it up just because gas gets expensive.

~~~
Vivtek
You've clearly never been to Europe - where quiet residential neighborhoods
coexist perfectly well with a public transit system that works.

The only reason we don't have a public transit system that works any more is
that GM was smart enough to realize there was even more money in it for them
if they bought, and scrapped, all the public transit systems in America's
smaller towns and cities. And it worked. Don't wallow in it; it's
embarrassing.

~~~
hapless
I have been to some European countries, and that's patently untrue.
Residential neighborhoods tend to contain lots of shared housing --
apartments/rowhouses with shared walls between units -- and all attendant
noise and unpleasantness.

The only residential neighborhood I ever enjoyed was when I stayed with a
family who lived as I do: four vehicles for four people, in a freestanding
home, _driving_ to the grocery daily. The major difference in our lifestyles
is that, ignoring exchange rates, they paid easily five times as much to
achieve my standard of living. I don't think they would willingly trade places
with their middle class employees, living in the crowded row housing.

To put it another way, I reject your underlying argument. Yes, hundreds
millions of Europeans have become accustomed to a lower standard of living
than mine. No, that does not mean I will happily acclimate myself to the same
standard.

~~~
angdis
"Standard of living" means different things to different people. One could say
that you've acclimated yourself to a lower standard of living by burning up
lots of time and money commuting and taking care of a car and large house.

I'll take a 900 sq ft walk-up with marble flooring and 12 foot ceilings in the
middle of Paris IN A SECOND over any sopranos-style 4000 sq ft mcMansion made
of plywood and tyvek and located 40 minutes from the nearest depressing strip
mall.

------
nickff
The answer to the why we have not found an alternative is simply that we value
volumetric and mass energy density, and this graph on Wikipedia:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_de...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_density.svg)

shows that gasoline has both of these, along with good resistance to premature
ignition, and other favourable ignition characteristics. The solution will not
be in finding something new, which is superior in every aspect to oil, but
instead to be willing to sacrifice in some areas, (maybe volumetric energy
density and total thermal efficiency,) in order to find an achievable
solution. Using a plentiful energy source (nuclear?) to perform hydrolysis,
and distributing the hydrogen as a fuel seems like the most likely endgame to
me, but the material properties of hydrogen are not favourable to storage and
small scale use.

~~~
ericb
I think a switch to electric makes the most sense. It can piggyback off our
existing infrastructure, and in an engineering sense, it is only "loosely
coupled" to whatever manner we use to create the electricity.

~~~
Schultzy
What do you mean by "loosely coupled"?

Are you saying that the electricity flowing into Volts and Leafs hitting the
market doesn't really come from a polluting source or merely that it doesn't
have to?

...or am I missing your point completely?

~~~
hackerblues
There are three components.

Generation -> Grid -> Homes and Business

It is possible to change the type of generation without having to change the
way electricity is taken out of the grid to power things. This makes it easier
to make changes in the type of generation. Changing from coal to solar to
nuclear just involves making a new connection between the power plant and the
grid. Everything else then just works as normal.

By contrast, if we converted energy into "Dragon Tears" instead of electricity
we would need to lay down a whole new Dragon Tear distribution network so that
people could use that energy. Then, a scientific break through occurs and we
are able to use the much more efficient "Unicorn Blood". But now we have to
rip out the Dragon Tear distribution network and install a new Unicorn Blood
network.

~~~
stoney
The problem with switching to electricity is that the electricity distribution
network has a limited capacity. Increasing the capacity of the connection to
every single dwelling would be enormously expensive (and energy consuming!),
so there are limits to how much demand can easily be switched to the
electrical network.

------
Duff
Easy. Oil is an awesome fuel for energy generation, especially distributed
generation. In the 19th century, it was awesome enough for people to go to sea
for months at a time slaughtering whales and rendering their fat to provide
light to homes.

As someone who grew up in the country and got to spend lots of my childhood
quality time splitting logs and hauling wood around, I have to tell you that
the day the oil-fired boiler was installed in my house was a happy day.

That said, I think people take advantage of a good thing. I work in a downtown
city center and live about 5 miles away. $5/gallon gas means about $60/month
to me in direct costs. My co-workers live an average of 20 miles away, with a
15% living over 75 miles away. That's insane!

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ry0ohki
"The same legislation passed in the 1970s to force increased fuel efficiency,
for instance, has brought no new innovation to U.S. vehicle fuel consumption
in two decades"

I disagree with this. We've seen hybrids, pure electric and much more
efficient normal engines created in the past 20 years with things like
cylinder shut-off, etc. If someone from 1970 saw a Toyota Prius it would seem
like something straight out of the Jetsons.

~~~
tobylane
What US laws have had an effect on the Prius? Japan just cares more, in the
right ways, such as nuclear power, future technologies.

~~~
ry0ohki
CAFE laws probably to some extent.

~~~
chadgeidel
IMHO - CAFE laws "encouraged" the move to Trucks and SUVs as they were
categorized differently and, as such regulated differently.

No, I don't have a link at hand. Sorry.

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ck2
Because nothing else is as massively profitable?

I mean oil is insanely, massively profitable, nothing else can touch it, so
why would big industry bother until they actually run out of it?

BP alone _made_ nearly $2 BILLION the same quarter they had to pay for the
deephorizon cleanup That's AFTER paying for it. Normally they make close to
$10 billion per quarter.

Instead they can just run commercials before PBS shows telling us how they
will "keep researching alternatives". Much cheaper.

~~~
gaius
Because the market prefers oil, is why. And it's easy to see why: oil packs an
awful lot of kilojoules of energy into a given volume. That matters whether
you are a motorbike or a cargo ship. And its price per KJ is pretty low too -
remember that most "electric" solutions simply burn fuel in power stations
instead of in engines, and use that to charge batteries, losing energy at
every step of the conversion.

We will go battery/fuel cell/whatever - but the cold hard fact is, that
technology just isn't ready yet.

~~~
ck2
The market prefers it because there is a 100-year head start on distribution
networks and standards to the consumer for gasoline.

The only thing that could compete with that is the ability to plug it into the
wall yourself. But battery technology has not improved much in that same 100
years and there's no universal battery standard to swap out for a new one
during roadtrips.

In a half-dozen generations there will be complaints from gas station owners
as they go the way of slide-rule manufacturers and have to get government
subsidies to stay open.

~~~
demallien
Yes and no. In the medium term, we can expect hybrids to play a bigger role,
whilst we wait for battery technology to cover the energy density gap. In less
than 20 years, simple economics are going to force us to a solution of full
electric cars for urban use, and hybrids for longer trips, with the hybrid
normally being charged from the wall, but using oil-based fuels for longer
trips (or when the owner forgot to charge the car overnight). That should
reduce oil consumption enough to make alternate sources, such as algae-derived
diesel, a viable alternative.

~~~
gaius
Hmm, the thing is tho', there isn't much upside to shifting burning fossil
fuels from the engine to the power station. Sure the power station is more
efficient in burning the fuel - but then you have to charge batteries too, so
that efficiency goes away again. There's really not much point to electric
vehicles until you can run them all on batteries charged by nuclear power.

~~~
demallien
I agree, but the article was specifically talking about oil, not fossil fuels.
But I don't think we're dead in the water on the electrical utility front -
fusion research is finally starting to enter the final stretch before
commercialisation - ITER is expected to get us to the point where we can
construct the first commercial-break-even reactor:
<http://www.iter.org/proj/iterandbeyond>

Actually, I find ITER as a pretty good indicator that governments around the
world don't feel like they won't be hurting too much on the energy front for
quite some time. If they wanted to, they could up the (in context) risible
investment in fusion to get a working reactor up and running by the mid-2020s.
I mean they're talking about investing about $1billion per year for the next
30 years, from the entire planet. Up that to $5billion, and you can halve the
development time. They really aren't terribly concerned at the moment.

On other fronts, Laurence Livermore is starting to get interesting with their
inertial fusion designs:
<https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife/how_ife_works.php>

And of course nanotech may yet allow us to produce the cheap, efficient solar
panels that would be needed to use solar as a baseline energy source. So no, I
don't think it as being much of a risk to move car energy over to electricity,
starting today.

~~~
ck2
NIF is a well designed/funded scam to do weapon research, it will never have a
consumer benefit.

~~~
mchouza
I would not say that NIF is a scam, as they are quite open about their
priorities: <https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/>

------
euroclydon
Innovation didn't create oil in the first place, at least not human
innovation. You might as well ask why innovation hasn't replaced the Sun or
water or air.

------
anonymoushn
We (the people involved in making decisions on behalf of politicians and the
people who buy IP for tech that greatly improves energy efficiency so they can
prevent everyone from using it) would rather keep using oil.

If we (people more generally) wanted to, we could do this - <http://market-
ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667>

------
lwhi
Oil is a natural solution to storing energy.

Solutions provided by humankind are nowhere near as advanced as evolved
natural processes.

------
rms
Reluctance to adopt nuclear batteries.

------
ig1
It has, biofuel companies are even hotter than startups which huge amounts of
money getting pumped into them. As the price of biofuels drop and the price of
oil rises it's inevitable they'll cross-over and people will start buying
biofuels because they're cheaper.

~~~
runningdogx
How are biofuels viable as a replacement for oil in the quantities our current
lifestyle demands? They can't be produced in the same quantities that oil can
be, and producing them requires farmland, so food prices go up.

stats and graphs: [http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-
production....](http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-
production.html)

~~~
ig1
Simple Answer: We can't produce oil (we discover it), we can produce crops.
We're pretty good at it.

Complex answer: If demand for crops goes up then farmers can grow more crops.
Although it's hard to see if that's happening right now as corn ethanol
subsidies and corn import taxes completely distort that market. If you want to
produce corn ethanol you buy domestic corn as you can get US gov subsidies for
it, you don't get those subsidies if you use imported corn, so naturally US
produced corn ends up disproportionately in fuel production. Also it's worth
noting that DDG is a byproduct of corn ethanol production, and DDG is used as
animal feed. So it's misleading to think that corn used for fuel production is
pulling it completely out of the food chain.

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tobylane
There's more money in stifling it than researching it.

