Policies:
Biofuels Production as Critical Infrastructure
Economists, even those most prejudiced in favouring private endeavour and individualism while being in general hostile toward government, recognise (if grudgingly) that spending on infrastructure is something legitimate for governments to do.
What is infrastructure really?
Transportation comes readily to mind — such things as bridges and tunnels, roads and rails, but also mass transit in cities in whatever form that takes. ..While many people equate infrastructure with built structures, nonetheless mass transit may mean a fleet of buses or of railcars, not merely the road or rails these travel on, whether underground or on it. ..Similarly, the vehicle fleet of the postal service ought to qualify as infrastructure.
Water and sewer also come to mind, usually using pipes, as does provision of natural gas. ..So also is distribution of liquid fuels part of a community’s infrastructure, though not typically thought of in this way — not until some transport interruption results in ‘sold out‘ signs proliferating. ..Or perhaps rationing has been put in place in order to allocate a limited supply (as may happen due to some calamity).
Then there are other useful facilities such as electricity and telecommunications. ..Nothing like the electricity going out, or of a cellular phone signal to disappear, to bring home the critical importance of these services. ..Not to mention the internet, something once quaintly referred to as “the digital highway”, a name redolent of public ownership.
Various of the above may be provided ‘for profit’ or by a public body ‘at cost.’ ..Some things such as highways are considered to be of general benefit to all, directly or indirectly, and thus often free of user charges as such. ..These may be funded by government wholly from general revenues, else with some charges or specific taxes related to the service, such as vehicle registration fees and fuel taxes. ..Street lighting and sidewalks are other examples of things felt to be of general benefit to all.
Climate change
Surely, another thing that affects everyone is the prospect of changing climates, and as such any measures taken in regards to this must be a matter of general concern and application. ..Reducing or eliminating use of fossil fuels warrants a societal response.
Biofuels instead…
Having hybrid vehicles equipped with EC engines (external combustion) would create a situation where biofuel usage would soar. Many such fuels may be burnt in with such engines, exterior to them. ..[The automotive companies really should long since have come up with EC engines: .After all, this technology is well~known and merely needs to be adapted to mass production for road vehicles.]
A good way to get started would be to have all new postal delivery vehicles be hybrids sporting EC engines. ..Since these are used in all urban settings, it would mean the purchasing of biofuels would be similarly widespread, and biofuel production would naturally become so, too. ..Transit buses would be another good target for EC engines.
Critical infrastructure
In order to substantially replace fossil fuels with biofuels would require a huge production of them. ..Here is where their production should be considered critical infrastructure of general concern, and as such eligible for support from governments using their general revenues. ..After all, production of biofuels on a very large scale is also economic development that creates considerable employment and with it considerable tax revenues for governments. ..This wider perspective needs to be kept in mind.
Dedicated crops specifically for biofuel production,irrigated where feasible,might get cut several times during the growing season, hence many tonnes per acre. Such farms are typically smaller in size than average, so one result would be growth in the total number of farms.
More farm families create more business in nearby villages, and together create more business for larger service centres as well…This ‘knock~on effect’ may be significant. ..It is how rural development works for the benefit of a Province overall. ..Grow the base of rural population and villages, then the whole pyramid of larger centres, regional cities and major cities will benefit as well.. ..And who will argue against that?
In some places, Brasil the most prominent, the juice of sugar cane is fermented to produce ethanol, which is used as a fuel in cars there. The ferment itself releases almost as much by weight of CO2 as it does ethanol. Sequestering that CO2 could be done, of course: …sending it underground.
Now, where did the carbon in the sugar come from? From CO2 the plants took from the air — which is where all the carbon in plants comes from. .. So this bio=C in emitted CO2 is simply returning to the air from whence it had come. It is a cycling event, in contrast to any CO2 where the C is of fossil origin and came from underground, which is adding fossil=C that is new to the air.
Notice something very important- only part of the plant is being used in the ferment; ..only part of the C the plants took from the air gets returned there soon after. When biofuels made from annual plant growth will be replacing fossil fuels in a major way, then much less fossil=C will be in emitted CO2, and plants will be removing more CO2 from the air than the biofuels made of them emit. There will still be the same total of CO2 being emitted, but with much more biomass being grown, they will be removing much more C from the air than now.
As mentioned above, major use of biofuels has policy implications. Railways which aren’t electrified could run on biofuels instead of fossil diesel fuel; ..remote communities who now rely on electricity from generators powered by diesel engines, could instead use quieter turbine generators run on biofuels — even pellets of wood or crop straws.
Plants take CO2 out of the air, then create various polymers — starches, xylans, lignins are a few examples. A certain amount of such polymer carbon does not end up back in the air as CO2. ..It becomes soil organic matter; peat in bogs; shells of crustaceans, and so forth. _It is misleading to presume it all will return to the air.
In order to increase the amount of plant growth planet-wide, irrigation of semi-arid and sandy desert areas is indicated, growing “energy crops” to be made into biofuels. A collateral benefit will be increased food production there as well. ..All this growth will increase the amount of aerial CO2 being withdrawn annually.
Hybrid Vehicles Policy
What Governments Should Do
Hybrid road vehicles use less fuel per trip than other cars or delivery vans (or buses for that matter). So in order to reduce fossil fuel use, an obvious choice is to have many more hybrid vehicles and fewer non~hybrids on the roads. Policies to that end are easy to make. But there is more to this ….
Nobody likes air pollution. The images of Beijing wreathed in smoke will someday be an artifact of the past, just as images of major English cities wreathed in smoke are today. They’ve been cleaned up, and so too will all major Chinese cities. And none too soon for those who dwell therein. [Cities in India are similarly afflicted, but are less likely to be cleaned up anytime soon.]
Much of the problem stems from burning coal without good control of emissions. But no small contribution comes from the great many internal combustion (IC) engines in vehicles.
Hybrid vehicles use less fuel per kilometre travelled, largely because the combustion engine is not running continuously. ..For part of each journey (even for much of it) a hybrid vehicle runs on stored energy. Then when the engine is running, its output is split between the immediate needs of the vehicle and replenishing the energy store.
External Combustion Engines
EC engines are well suited to be in hybrid vehicles, where the engine is either running at full power or not at all. ..That EC engine will likely be a turbine, and turbines with condensers are fuel efficient at full load though do drop sharply in efficiency at partial loading.
The engine would be a closed cycle sort whose working fluid is condensed and returned to the boiler. ..A few decades back DuPont engineers invented an interesting engine that featured a rotating boiler. It with a short condenser section could be cooled by the usual separate coolant circuit with a radiator. Several US Patents in the 1970s assigned to DuPont contain detailed descriptions. [see US Pat 3.613.368 especially] No doubt others have suitable engines as well.
EC engines cost less to make and the emissions are far better. External combustion is more complete, comparable to a fuel oil furnace. Most cities have poor air quality even where it might not seem so. ..But look at particulates, especially the very small ones that people breath in — these may be largely avoided by use of EC engines. And where gov’t provides much of the health care, this is an additional reason to strongly favour EC engines in vehicles.
It is also good news for monuments and historical buildings that suffer damage from corrosive emissions of today’s vehicles, places like Athens in Greece and the tourists who flock there.
EC engines also have another advantage very attractive to many national governments: they are fuel flexible and so can use .locally made. fuels, which would often mean lessening dependence on imported fuels or imported crude petroleum.
A ‘green fuels’ industry would thrive, mostly produced by ferments of biomass. ..Such an industry creates a good many jobs, and job creation boosts an economy, something politicians like to boast about, whether or not they had much to do with it.
Government Action
Hybrid electric vehicles don’t require so extensive a network of electrical charging stations, which is critical infrastructure for an all~electric vehicles future. ..Nor would it be wise to depend overly on all~electric vehicles, for whenever the electrical grid goes down over an extensive area, the all~electrics are going to run out of charge. Hybrids won’t.
Recall that in mid 2022 much of the Atlantic Canada region was without electricity for more than a week due to a severe tropical storm downing many power lines.
Governments can take action to promote or foster hybrids having EC engines. The point is to distinguish them from hybrids with IC engines, rather than hybrids in general relative to non~hybrids. ..One way would be through vehicle registration, which is typically an annual thing. ..The fee for registering a hybrid with an IC engine could be made substantially higher than for one with an EC engine.
Or, more drastically, ones with IC engines built after a certain date, like after the end of next year could not be registered at all! ..Thereafter, except for older ones, a hybrid would have to have an EC engine.
For the reasons given above, it is justifiable to do this, to force adoption of EC engines in these vehicles. ..And the more jurisdictions that do this, the more focussed automotive companies will be to comply — else lose market share.