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From Guest Blogger Tom Grant: Worth a Second Look — Green Algae

As fossil fuels become scarcer and more expensive, research continues to discover a means of producing energy from renewable sources. One challenge in this quest is devising a means to create sustainable energy in large enough quantities and economically enough

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From Guest Blogger John Cadogan: Ethanol — It’s a Gas

A war of rhetoric has erupted in the USA over Washington’s plan to compel refiners to increase the proportion of ethanol in gasoline. Carmakers are warning owners against using ethanol blends higher than 10 per cent, saying warranty claims might

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Posted in Biofuels

The Dubious Practicality of Algae as Fuel

In response to my skepticism on biofuels, frequent commenter Cameron Atwood asks, “What are your thoughts on the current scalable potential of algae fuel?” My concerns about algae are not theoretical, but practical.  Yes, the little guys provide the potential

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Alternate Fuel Vehicles — Cool Monthly Newsletter

I have some small level of input into the creation of Jon Lesage’s newsletter on alternate fuel vehicles; I participate in a monthly conference call with perhaps 7 – 8 other people.  As a consequence, I’m always anxious to see what

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A Young Person's Work with Algae as Biofuel

A friend asked my opinion on this high school kid’s experimentation with algae as biofuel. Friend:  Hmmm. Craig: Well, this IS exactly what algae researchers are doing…  And it DOES have promise, IMO.  Friend: It certainly would give us a

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Biofuels and Electric Transportation

Glenn Doty’s calculations in the comment on my piece on biofuels and electric transportation compare the costs of energy from solar PV and bioethanol.  This is a very good way of looking at the subject.  I thank Glenn, as always,

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More Cars Are Powered by Biofuel Than Electricity — But Why?

My friend and colleague Tom Konrad of AltEnergyStocks.com comments on my piece on biofuels: (The efficiency of PV) is still 10x better than biofuels, but the capital costs of all those solar panels are probably much more than costs of

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Biofuels' Dubious Efficiency

Frequent commenter from the U.K. Gary Tulie writes on my piece this morning concerning creating biofuels from sugar beets: … the efficiency of photosynthesis to energy stored in biomass is at the very best in the 3 to 5% range – and

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Biofuels – Can They Scale?

I may have mentioned that my wife bred race horses for many years, and her interest in the subject wound us up in a fairly rural area of California. As I like to do on weekends, I took a long

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Posted in Biofuels

Note on Synthetic and Biofuels

I just published a short post on the article: U.S. Air Force Report to Congress Bashes Navy’s Biofuels Program in which I mentioned that I find the people who presume to tell the U.S. Navy how it should be planning to defend our

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