Greener Gas and Cars

From the Spring & Summer 2007, Green Living, pages 45-48, an article on greener gas and cars, here is an excerpt about fuel choices:

FUEL FOR THOUGHT

A Guide to Greener Gas and Greener Cars

By Stuart Foxman

"The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit...weeds...almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter than can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for 100 years."

The speaker? Not an environmental advocate but Henry Ford in 1925, assessing the potential of cellulose and crop-based ethyl alcohol fuel. However, as you stand at the pump, watching the gas prices roll by faster than the reels on a slot machine, it's easy to wonder if drivers will ever see the "fuel of the future." But a convergence of forces - rising cruide-oil costs, the call for energy security and concern over climate change - may be bringing that day closer."

"Our urgent national and international imperatives will require a shift in fuel choices," says Kory Teneycke, executive director of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (DRFA), "Ethanol and biodiesel are at the point where you can make the case for commercialization and make them parts of our energy mix."

However, Jose Etcheverry, research and policy analyst, Climate Change Program at the David Suzuki Foundation, cautions that we shouldn't get seduced by the word "'alternative'. Among alternative fuels, there are better and worse options," he says. "If it takes more energy to produce the fuel than the energy you get out of it, it's not a logical idea."

That kind of criticism is often levelled at Alberta's oil sands, where the process of separating bitumen from the sands and turning it into fuel uses considerably more energy than conventional oil production. Similarly, says Etcheverry, with ethanol and biodiesel (see sidebars) you have to consider how energy-intensive the entire process is. If your main raw material is corn, for example, when you factor in the energy expended to grow and refine it, Etcheverry says the "return on your energy investment can be quite negative." he believes that ethanol made form cellulose (e.g. forest residue, straw) is far better, from an environmental standpoint, than ethanol made from corn. As for biodiesel, will supplies come from plant oil? Canola? How will crops be grown?

While biodiesel and ethanol are promising alternative fuels, there are more choices. An unusual possibility - and a particularly clean one, says Etcheverry - is "brown energy," That's where animal manure is turned into usuable biomethane through an anaerobic digester, with the gas then used as a transportation fuel or for electricity and residential heating. One Wisconsin dairy farm with a digester is powering 600 homes with 900 cows. In Sweden, meanwhile, over 8,000 vehicles are powered by a combination of natural gas and biomethane.

While Etcheverry calls the interest in alternative fuels "a step in the right direction," he says we should be asking other fundamental questions, such as how we can approach urban and suburban design to be less car-dependent. And how we can encourage wider use of public transit and other modes of transportation. "Even if you could run cars on water, you 'd still need highways and parking lots, and it takes a lot of resouces to make a car," says Etcheverry. "Are you going to live closer to where you work and play? Will you ride a bike? Take the train? That's what's truly revolutionary."