Stephen Rees’s blog

The Nightly Business Report is doing a series this week on this issue. Since we have been around this mulberry bush several times, there may be those who read here who will want to watch

Tuesday - GM crops to increase production of ethanol from corn

Wednesday - ethanol from sugar cane in Florida

Thursday - ethanol from woodwaste

Friday - methane hydrates (frozen fossil fuel from the sea bed)

Check local listings for times - but it is usually 4:30pm on KCTS (cable 27 where I am)

On the opinion page this morning Ian Thomson, president of both the B.C. and the Alberta Biodiesel Associations, makes the case for the province’s plan for renewable fuels to comprise five per cent of all diesel and gasoline sold in B.C. by 2010.

He notes that elsewhere governments are having second thoughts about this type of commitment, mainly due to the undeniable crisis in food shortages and high prices. Mr Thompson says that their analysis is “simplistic”

global food price increases are the result of a complex mix of factors, including supply and demand, trade policy, tariffs, political instability, and global energy costs.

Which while true neatly avoids the explanation that demand for some crops, and for more land, to supply the demands for biofuels is one of the big changes recently. The link between corn prices and the demand for ethanol in the US as a fuel additive is directly linked to the high prices of corn products in Mexico. That is an old story. But still true. The wider impacts of the demand for palm oil and clearance of forests has also been around for a while. As has the calculation that some biofuels can take more energy to produce than they provide, and the consequences of current farming practice results in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

This is not to say that all biofuels are evil. They could be created from waste products. There is a lot of used frying oil out there that could be recycled this way. A lot of yellow grease that is currently exported as unfit for human consumption here - that probably ends up being eaten by very poor people in third world countries. I do not know if we are doing them any favours with that trade, but somebody is making a lot of money out of our care and other’s neglect of standards of cleanliness. Forest products could probably produce ethanol - but currently it is foodgrains that are used, not switch grass, straw or sawdust.

And even if he is right, which seems to me unlikely but we will let his case stand for the sake of argument, the needs of hungry humans should override those of the automotive business. That means right now we have to back off legislated biofuel mandates until we can get this market stabilised, and concentrate on getting people fed, not SUVs producing a little less ghg.

Because the other feature of biofuels is we are currently treating them as a way to carry on behaving as we have done. Just like the use of hybrid drives on huge trucks that are only single occupant passenger vehicles, and whose only freight hauling role is some bags of groceries, or some 2×4s for a rare home improvement project. We need above all to reduce the number of vehicle kilometres travelled as that is what is driving up the demand for fuel - despite improvements in vehicle efficiency and fuel standards. We keep building freeways and low density, unwalkable suburbs. Poor people around the world should not be expected to pay for our self indulgence or refusal to face facts.

I hope you do not think I am being lazy just passing things along. And irritated because you have already yourself seen them in your own in box because you subscribe to the same email lists I do.

But this is very important and very relevant. I have already slammed Metro for the way it is conducting its consultation for the Sustainable Region Initiative - though how you can have Gateway and sustainability in the same plan beats me. And we have also been talking about how much energy we just throw away “leaving money on the table”.

So here is a press release from EcoJustice that was not on their web page last time I looked but may be by the time you read this. (It was forwarded to the lrc list by Ned Jacobs)

By Jim Boothroyd
Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund)

Did you know that city engineers are advancing a plan that would allow the
polluting Iona sewage outfall ­ at the mouth of the Fraser River, and at the
heart of a major environmental lawsuit — to continue spewing toxic sewage
for another 22 years?

Or that your civic authorities are timid about embracing proven technologies
that would allow Vancouver to “harvest sewage” to fuel fleets of buses, heat
whole neighbourhoods and produce profitable sources of fertilizer? (See
example at end of article)

Well, it’s true ­ and now is the time to tell them to look to the future and
clean up their act.

For the first time in five years, Metro Vancouver (the old GVRD) is
reviewing its plans for liquid and solid waste management and is holding a
series of public consultations to hear what you have to say. This is your
best opportunity to ensure that the changes coming down are the best for the
region for the long-term. Please consider taking part.

All meetings run from 6:30pm to 9:00 pm and include time for you to ask
questions of the engineers in charge ­ they’ll even give you coffee and an
oatmeal cookie.

Tues., April 22, North Vancouver (Capilano College);
Wed., April 23, Vancouver (Library Square);
Tuesday April 29 , Coquitlam (Executive Plaza Hotel & Conference Centre);
Wed., April 30, Maple Ridge (Maple Ridge Arts Centre & Theatre (The ACT);
Tues, May 6, Langley (Newlands Golf and Country Club).

For details, go to http://www.georgiastrait.org/?q=node/730

One last thing: if you lived in Stockholm, Sweden, this is what managing
your waste would look like. One of your many sewage treatment plants would
treat both sewage and kitchen waste producing biogas for fifty buses, rising
to two hundred in a few years. The plant would have a Business Development
Manager who sells biogas from her plant, as well as providing cooking fuel
for the nearby community of Hammarby Sjöstad. Energy recovered from sewage
by heat pumps would provide heat and hot water for a total of 80,000 homes.
The energy and material would loop between the plant and the community
mimicking nature’s closed cycles.

An approach to managing waste that is based on integrated resource
management and built on the idea of smaller distributed plants rather than a
few large ones is happening in other communities around the world,
protecting our environment and providing a sustainable source of energy.

The question is whether we¹re ready to bring that thinking here.

For more information on resource recovery from waste:
http://www.georgiastrait.org/?q=node/567

I note that none of the meetings is scheduled for the fourth largest city in BC and the home of both the offending Iona Beach and Lulu Island Sewage Plants

This sign is at Garry Point Park where I have often seen children paddling despite the warning. It is about two miles downstream from the Lulu Island outfall.

Guardian

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a comprehensive review of the policy on biofuels as a crisis in global food prices - partly caused by the increasing use of crops for energy generation - threatens to trigger global instability.

It is also becoming noticeable here as the price of rice and pasta have been rising. Of course in wealthy countries like ours it is unlikely to cause widespread social upheaval. The article also notes that the environmental benefits of some biofuels seem to have been overestimated.

Biofuels, hybrids and electric cars are not the solution but could be a useful transition mechanism. Sadly, too many see them as a way to keep on trucking. We do not seem to be able to comprehend the extent of the change that is going to have to happen - here - now.

Barbara Yaffe, Sun

That is not a name I associate with this kind of opinion piece. I must admit I ignored this story yesterday. It did not seem to me to add anything we did not know already.

But it seems that is not what she has been reading. Instead it is

Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil, by Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl, is one of the most thought-provoking books to cross my desk in a long while.

And that book was launched some time ago. Now I thought that the key message in that book was that technological change could deal with the problem - it certainly seemed to me to dwell on developments in that area. But Professor Perl was giving it a much more political spin yesterday.

The Pacific Gateway Strategy, Heathrow’s fancy new Terminal 5 and other “boondoggles” demonstrate society’s reluctance to smell the coffee, Perl observed in an interview this week.

“There’s going to be some steep learning curve for political leaders who are largely unprepared to deal with the impending transport revolutions. Techno-fantasies and wishful thinking will have to give way to reality-based planning.”

Ms Yaffe also noticed the electric car commitment in Israel, which so far as I recall has not actually been reported in her paper. Which is not about technology at all, but policy. The real shift is that a known commodity has to be got to market quickly, and that needs a different marketing strategy - and governments can help by using the power of taxation. The Israeli government is going to tax internal combustion engine cars heavily and maintain that over time, while raising all car taxes (including electric vehicles) but keeping the advantage for electric, in order that there is no revenue loss. The clever bit is the response by the people who can make and sell the cars, batteries and battery quick change operations. And I suspect that the Israelis would have done that in any event simply because the oil is still controlled, by and large, by their sworn enemies. Rather in the same way that the old South African government had to develop an oil from coal program.

Of course, if you are ideologically against taxes and intervention in the “free market”, taking effective action this way requires some mental gymnastics which is well beyond the capabilities of the administrations in Ottawa and Washington.

San Jose Mercury News

Four years ago this piece of nonsense started. Gordo tried to climb on board with his own Olympic Highway to Heaven - or Whistler anyway. And in all that time not one hydrogen fuelling station has opened. Which is just as well as there are not too many hydrogen cars either.

In February, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, a non-partisan agency, recommended the Legislature not fund the program this year because “the administration has little visible progress to show.”

Of course the BC Liberals kept very quiet about that. Or perhaps Arnold forgot to tell them.

There are just 175 vehicles in California running on hydrogen, nearly all of them experimental and in government fleets. Retail sales are about 10 years away by most expectations.

And if you had the misfortune to jump on to any of the earlier alt-transportation-fuel programs, you might have noticed that there are fewer CNG, Propane and Methanol pumps at gas station these days. Indeed, the poor folks in Creston who bought Ford single fuel CNG cars have been without refuelling facilities for some years now. That is because in the tight margin gas station business you really want to be able to sell Mars bars and car washes to make some profits - and there really is no commercial justification for pumps that no-one is going to use very much.

What I find really interesting is the size of the story. It would appear that there are some new sources in North America that do not have to boil things down to a couple of slugs. I wish we had more like that here.

I am going to ask you to sit and watch 20 minutes of video. I have just done that. I am amazed. Electric cars have always been “just around the corner”. But it now appears that things are going to change - because of a man who understands “the social contract” between car drivers and automakers. He has worked out what it would take to wean Israel off oil - and says that he can do the same for the US - for the cost of one year of imported crude.

If you move the slider to 4:25 you can skip the intro

Now what am I, a transit advocate, doing promoting electric cars? I do not believe that it will ever be possible to convert most of the trips in this region to transit trips. I think we can do much better than 11% - which is where we have been stuck for the last ten years - but in order to do that we would need the sort of transformation that Shai Agassi talks about for cars. We do not have anyone trying to do that here. I would love to think that we could have, but I am not going to wait for that moment. IF we can have electric cars and clean power generation, then we will have to deal with the traffic congestion. We cannot wait for the gas prices and taxes to rise enough to do that for us. For as we have seen, it has had very little effect up to now - at least in BC. And as long as transit is in the cold dead hands of the bureaucrats appointed by Victoria, do not expect things to change much.

So I am prepared to see lots of electric cars - and remarkably quickly - because this one man has 1) made it unnecessary to buy the battery and 2) I get a free car if I sign up for a long term contract - just like a cell phone. We will still need a lot more transit. We will still have a congestion problem. But air quality and ghg emissions will have been removed from the equation. That will present the transit system with an even bigger challenge. How can you be better than a zero emission vehicle that is as good as my (EV) car? And I think we can do that. Just the way we could do it now, if we were doing the right things.

(And thank you Erika for sending me this link)

It will at least buy us some time, as adapting the suburbs and the transit system to fit together better will take longer than Mr Agassi says it will take to perform the switch from IC to EV.

I first saw IT on Bowen Island in July of 2002. IT was an electric car - built on Annacis Island. A Low Speed Vehicle with limited range, not suitable for the freeway of course, but it would easily meet the needs of many urban commuters. I did not know the back story - which you can get from the Surrey Leader.

And thanks largely to bureaucratic bumbling it has now been shipped off shore and will be built in Pakistan. At least it has not been killed entirely, but really what is the matter with us? In the US simple ill will from GM will explain most things in the automotive business - and I suppose that could be true here too.

But we have needed electric cars for a while now. And enthusiasts can build them in their driveways. But somehow …

oh I don’t know … I give up

Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service

Transport Canada denies it of course, but Ian Clifford of Zenn Motor Co, is blaming them for the fact that he still cannot sell his electric cars here, even though he has been selling them in the US for quite a while. Something about the definition of low speed vehicles and crash worthiness exemptions or somesuch. Bureaucratic twaddle of course. For most things automotive we just accept the US standards - but add daytime running lights and speedos in km/hr. No doubt the US also had to co-ordinate federal and state requirements, since it is the states that look after the roads - and only the interstates get federal funding. Not that you can take a slow speed vehicle on a freeway of course. So don’t buy a Zenn if your commute takes you across the Port Mann or through the Massey tunnel.

The Avaaz web site has a campaign on at present that I encourage you to at least look at if not sign on to.

Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means “voice” in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

Some biofuels are much better than others. Right now a “market based” approach - which means big subsidies for American farmers - is distorting priorities. The food supply and, contrary to expectations, the environment are carrying the cost. As usual “throwing money” at a problem does not produce an optimum solution.