Categories
-
Recent Posts
- A Nuclear spent fuel pool fire could force millions to evacuate & cost $2 trillion
- A Mega Storm in California might cost $1 trillion & destroy a third of America’s food
- Sodium Batteries
- Book review: Atomic Days. The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America
- Bill Gates Gen IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) in Wyoming
- Want to survive Peak Everything? Become a Mormon
- Book review of No friends but the Mountains. Dispatches from the worlds violent highlands
- Why tight fracked oil and gas is mostly extracted in the US
- Fusion: Book review of “Sun in a Bottle”
- Book Cobalt: The Making of a Mining Superpower
- EV charging not possible when restricted or grid down
- The Impact of Climate Change on California: 8th Largest Economy, 40% of U.S. Shipping
- Fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Fusion: Tokamak Obstacles
- Opposition to mining will prevent a green transition to renewables
Search Results for: Biomass
Reforestation for the return to biomass after fossil fuels
Preface. Below are excerpts from a New York Times article about forests. My book “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy” explains why the myriad ways we use fossil fuels can’t be electrified (or hydrogenized or anything … Continue reading
Posted in Deforestation
Tagged biomass, Reforest
Comments Off on Reforestation for the return to biomass after fossil fuels
How to make biomass last longer
Preface. Before fossil fuels, societies were able to make their forests last longer than today. Felling tall trees and killing them was rare except for special needs such as making bridges or ships. For firewood and other needs, trees were … Continue reading
Posted in Plant Trees
Tagged coppice, firewood, forest, pollard
Comments Off on How to make biomass last longer
Generating electricity with biomass at utility-scale in California limited to direct combustion in small 50 MW plants
Preface. It’s obviously much easier and more energy efficient to set logs on fire for heat and electricity than to turn them into ethanol. Burning biomass can’t do much to solve our energy crisis. To produce just 10% of … Continue reading
60 minutes promotes biomass scam
Preface. Hey 60 minutes, do some fact checking first. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, … Continue reading
Power density of biomass, wind, & solar take too much land to replace fossil fuels
Volumetric versus specific energy density for selected energy carriers. Source: Palmer, G. 2020. Energy storage & civilization: a systems approach. Springer. Preface. Vaclav Smil writes “The fact that wind, solar, and biomass have incredibly low energy density per square meter … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biomass, Coal, Hydropower, Natural Gas, Oil
Tagged alternative energy, biodiesel, biomass, coal, ethanol, natural gas, oil, renewable energy
1 Comment
How burning biomass made us human
[ This is a book review of Wrangham’s “Catching Fire: How cooking made us human”. Fire enabled us to have larger brains from the increased calories in cooked food, held carnivores at bay, killed bacteria, and gave us many other … Continue reading
Coal or Biomass & Coal to Liquids: CTL, DCL, & CBTL technology
Gray, D., et al. August 1, 2012. Topic Paper #8 Production of Alternative Liquid Hydrocarbon Transportation Fuels from Natural Gas, Coal, and Coal and Biomass (XTL). National Petroleum Council Background With national energy security still being a dominant concern because … Continue reading
Posted in Coal to Liquids (CTL)
Tagged CBTL, CTL, DCL, XTL
Comments Off on Coal or Biomass & Coal to Liquids: CTL, DCL, & CBTL technology
Biomass Electricity More Polluting Than Coal and Waste Incinerators
Trees, Trash, and Toxics: How Biomass Energy Has Become the New Coal Mary S. Booth, PhD Partnership for Policy Integrity April 2 , 2014 Executive Summary Highlights Because of a perfect storm of lax regulation and regulatory rollbacks , biomass … Continue reading
Posted in Air, Biomass, Hazardous Waste
Comments Off on Biomass Electricity More Polluting Than Coal and Waste Incinerators
Why biofuels can not scale up to replace petroleum
Preface. This is my favorite paper on why we can’t replace crude oil with biofuels. Of course, oil is a biofuel. But alas, not renewable, since it took over 100 million years to make them. Every year we burn fossil … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Oil, Peak Biofuels
Tagged peak biofuels, peak oil
Comments Off on Why biofuels can not scale up to replace petroleum
Deforestation in the news
Preface. I wrote in “Life after fossil fuels” that as energy declined, it would be hard to cut down distant forests with limited oil supplies. I thought this because even in Britain, so denuded of trees people turned to filthy … Continue reading
Posted in Deforestation, Wood
Tagged climate change, collapse, deforestion, global warming, wildfire, wood
Comments Off on Deforestation in the news