False green 'silver bullets' just postpone hard energy-use realities

My Sept. 1 column about the TV ads touting cars fuelled by biofuel, batteries and hydrogen, run by General Motors during the Olympics, drew an incredible letter to the editor from GM's communications director Stew Low that was published on Sept. 6.

In his letter, Mr. Low states: "We can now make biofuels from garbage and old tires."

Well, who knew?!

I'll bet my readers are under the impression that fuel ethanol is made from corn and grain grown on land diverted from food crops. It's great that some garbage dumps are generating electricity by burning methane created by the same bacterial breakdown of organic matter process that created our natural gas fields millions of years ago. But that's not biofuel.

And biofuel from old tires? Sounds great: Just toss your old tires in the recycling pile, happy in the knowledge that they will return as eco-friendly fuel. Sorry, but tires are made out of petroleum-based synthetic rubber and, wait for this, carbon - hardly the raw material for a biofuel.

Mr. Low also says, "Cars that run on ... advanced cellulosic biofuels are here."

The statement is true in a technical sense but, to put it charitably, it may lead the reader to the wrong conclusion. The biofuel he's talking about is fuel ethanol and GM certainly does make cars that run on it.

However, virtually all fuel ethanol burned in GM's North American cars is made from the fermentation and distillation of corn and grain. Cellulosic research is aimed at producing ethanol from non-food crop organic material including switchgrass and wood waste. This is highly important work because it has the potential to eliminate the environmental and human nutrition negatives so clearly associated with food crop-based ethanol. We should all wish it great success, but it's not "here," and no one knows when it will be.

Next, Mr. Low states: "Hydrogen is, in fact, the most abundant fuel source on the planet and one in as plentiful use in industry as gasoline is for cars."

Wow. This will come as a startling revelation that somehow escaped the grasp of the thousands of engineers who, like me, spent their careers in the energy business. Water (H{-2}O) is enormously abundant but, as I pointed out in my column, separating hydrogen from oxygen requires huge amounts of electrical energy. More energy, in fact, than the amount generated when hydrogen is burned to create water again.

The other place where the hydrogen molecule occurs in large quantities is, you guessed it, oil and gas. Diesel fuel and gasoline consist of hydrogen and carbon in complex chain molecular form. As the carbon to hydrogen ratio decreases, hydrocarbons move from liquids to gases at room temperature. Of the petroleum gases, butane (C{-4}H{-1}{-0}) has the most carbon, then comes propane (C{-3}H{-8}), ethane (C{-2}H{-6}), and methane (CH{-4}).

The fact that methane has the most hydrogen per carbon molecules makes it the favoured source for manufacturing the elemental hydrogen needed as a process component in oil refineries and petrochemical plants. Methane arrives at these plants in the form of natural gas, which is dominantly methane. The tiny amount of road fuel that hydrogen currently produces is also manufactured from natural gas.

The hydrogen molecule is indeed "abundant," but it doesn't exist naturally as a "fuel source," and the energy required to manufacture it is a lot more than the energy it produces. It is in "plentiful use in industry," but as a manufactured process molecular element rather than as a fuel.

In fact, hydrogen is no more a primary fuel source than electricity, both of which must be generated from sources such as hydrocarbons, nuclear and hydro. And those, by the way, are the same primary energy sources needed to generate the electricity for the supposedly eco-friendly Volt electric car on GM's drawing board.

Finally, Mr. Low resorts to an all-too-common tactic used by people whose positions are challenged by the facts - attack the source. His statement, "while it may be threatening to some interests" is, no doubt, a reference to my status as a retired energy industry executive.

Readers of this column will know that I have consistently stated that we must find ways of using less energy, particularly oil, because of increasingly tight supply and because that supply is predominantly in volatile, unfriendly or geopolitically ambitious countries.

But I have also said that false green 'silver bullets' just postpone the hard energy-use realities we need to face. North American auto manufacturers haven't exactly distinguished themselves in that regard as they have continued to count on SUV and pickup truck sales even as fuel prices skyrocketed.

I sincerely hope that General Motors will find ways to regain its long-standing position as the No. 1 producer of products more people want to own. It may surprise some readers that I am in favour of the support recently offered to GM by the federal government. Why? Because that support is directed at development of the next generation of fuel-efficient autos for manufacture here in Canada.

My advice to GM? In developing your next generation of automobiles, it's way past time to work closely with technical experts employed by the companies which you expect to produce the fuel for your new cars and trucks, rather than considering them to be "some interests."