How do you know you're live? >> Says right here. On the other side. Hello and welcome to office hours for our energy future week six. And today I have with me Skip Pomeroy. And Skip is a Professor here in the Department of Chemistry and Bio-chemistry and his background is actually in organic chemistry and analytical chemistry. And so if you guys have any questions about especially the chemistry or biochemistry of fuels send those in, otherwise we're just going to chat about different stuff biofuel related. And a few people have sent questions in, so we're going to answer a few of those. And we're going to start with this one right here and it says a problem with palm diesel is the appearance of fungi in the infrastructure which complicates storage and pipeline transport. Does the same problem exist with biodiesel from algae? So I will let Skip answer the first part of it and then I'll answer the second part about algae. >> Yep, the first part here is any biofuel, regardless of whatever the feedstock was, is going to suffer the problem of having microbial attack. And so the first thing you do is want to keep water out of the system because the critters live in the water and then they feed right at the interface and you get a biofilm there. But the way it should fix that is you add an anti microbial or just like we add anti oxidants to the fuel so that we can improve the lifetime of the fuel in storage. That is the one draw down of biodiesel as a fuel source is that its storage is nowhere near like what petroleum diesel is, which sit forever and not take up any water. >> And then, the second part of that, which is does the same problem exist with biodiesel from algae? It absolutely does, if you make biodiesel from algae. The good news is about that is that that means it's biodegradable, that means things are eating it. So if you would happen to have a spill out in the environment, then microbes can come along and eat it and that's actually kind of a good thing. Another way around this is rather than make biodiesel you make renewable diesel and what's the difference between those two? Is the difference between those two is you take the crude oil or any oil from algae or vegetable oil or anything else and then rather than doing a esterification of it. You actually run it through a catalytic cracker in the same way that you do with crude oil because then what you get out of that is identical to fossil fuel. So that is sometimes called renewable diesel instead of biodiesel to separate the two. But then it acts exactly like regular diesel which means it's not biodegradable. So if you have a spill with that stuff, it just either has to chemically break down or just gets absorbed into the environment, okay? Here's a little controversial one and we'll talk about this one, there's a couple of different ways to answer it. But this comes from Walker Sandy says, I question your economic analysis of meat production energy intensity. It is misleading and based on factory farms. So that's true, it's based on factory farm and we'll discuss whether it's misleading or not. What about local grass-fed cows? Energy input calculations from grain production and feeding of cattle shouldn't be included. So let me start with this. All of the life cycle analysis, when you do a life cycle analysis, you have what's called the boundary, and you have to decide what's included in that boundary. So if we look at meat production and the life cycle assessments of that, those are generally lot fed beef. So you're putting them in a feedlot, and you're bringing corn into them and that's the calculations that people have made. Because that is the dominant beef that is sold in the market in the United States and Europe. If you have a different way to grow those cows then you have to have a different life cycle assessment. Well you have a life cycle assessment which has boundaries, you calculate different things into it. So I think the lecture you're talking about is one in which Steve Break said. One of the ways you can dramatically reduce your carbon footprint is to not eat beef and become a vegetarian. Every life cycle assessment that I have seen says that it is a much lower carbon footprint to be a vegetarian rather than a beef eater. That's not the way the world runs, that's not the way I run, that's the way Skip runs. There are vegetarians in the world, and they have a smaller carbon footprint than I do, or Skip does, or you do, Walker. So there's no way around that. Now, are there different forms of raising animals, that would have different carbon footprints? Absolutely and our grass fed cows, the answer to that, well that's a complex equation. And actually I think I'll let Skip tell you something about that. >> Yeah, you have to watch out for the way then the calculation is done. You really want to do it on the amount of energy per kilogram of beef acquired. And so you also want to look at the acreage that was under production. So if you had to think about carbon footprints but you had to clear a large area of the trees. Then you have all that biomass that went to waste and the carbon footprint from that. Plus you got a larger area of land that you're now occupying for the cows, so you have to then change the calculation quite a bit. When I've seen the two calculations, it actually indicates that the farmed cows and the- >> Factories. >> That actually turns out to be the most energy efficient. It's actually more energy efficient than the grass-fed cows. I can get the reference that I read that from but it looked like a really good study that was in environmental science and technology looking at the lifecycle analysis of this thing. But where people wind up disagreeing on these things as Steve said is where you draw the boundaries and how you look at this problem. >> Yeah, so that's called indirect land use and it's one we now use in California when we consider any biofuel, not cows. But when we consider any biofuel. So for example, corn and corn ethanol. The assumption now is that if you grow corn and you sell that corn to make biofuel corn ethanol. Then you actually have to count against that, the indirect land use, which is your somebody else in some other part of the world is now going to go. Cut down some grassland and plant corn there to make up for the corn that you took out of the production to put into your field. So, it's a complex equation but one part of the equation, which is really easy to measure and that is the efficiency, if I take a grain and feed it to an animal. What is the efficiency of which that animal turns it into meat? The reason that chicken is so much cheaper than beef is because the efficiency of taking a pound of grain and turning it into a pound of chicken is much much better than beef, right? And so that means you absolutely have a lower carbon footprint if you eat chicken than if you eat beef. Those are not close and pork is not as good a chicken but still better than beef. So beef is just one of the least efficient ways at turning grain calories, or energy from grain into energy and meat. And I'm pretty certain that's what we said in the lecture. So, certainly better ways to farm. A lot more environmentally sustainable ways to farm and we need to think about those and energy is a really important component of that. So I've said this many times in this class before, and I think you guys are going to see this now. Showing up in the next few years. The most important impact of the increasing cost of petroleum is not the increasing cost of gasoline or jet fuel, it's the increasing cost of food, right. That's what impacts humans, especially the bottom 2 billion, they don't really care what the cost of a gallon of gasoline is, because they're not driving a car. But they very much care what a loaf of bread costs, what a bushel of wheat costs, so that's the one that I think is impacting the world dramatically. That's actually the urgency that I think we have in getting renewable fuels to go. And so that actually pops up to our next question right here, which comes from Steven T and he says, with the projections of population growth and the increased demand for energy that the developing world is seeking. Is it really feasible that we can replace fossil fuel with renewal synthetic fuels? So that is a really good question and I do not have a concrete answer for you on that, right. There are 7 billion people on the planet, the top 2 billion of us use the vast majority of the energy on this planet. The next 3 billion, the center 3 billion, India and China, those guys are starting to come up, they're starting to demand more energy. As we demand more energy, fossil fuel is a finite resource. In spite of what you may have read in the papers recently, you know fracking is not going to give us energy independence and give us unlimited fossil fuel. All right, it's going to increase the production and has increased the production a little bit, about 9 to 10% is what the analysis from the Department of Energy says. So what that means is, when you have more people, more demand, and supplies are not going up, what happens? Supply and demand says the price goes up and that's exactly what's happened. Today, I think we're at $103.66 a barrel when I looked this morning, so we've been north of $100 a barrel for about the last year. You only have to go back 10 years and oil was $20 a barrel, all right? So it is the cost of energy has increased dramatically, the cost of food is directly related to the cost of energy. It's almost a one to one correlation, that means when the price of oil goes from $20 a barrel to $100 a barrel, you can pretty much predict that the price of food is going to go up five fold. And it has, that is what is impacting the world. So back to your question, Steven, which is, bigger population, bigger increase, if we don't get renewable fuels to go, I don't know what the answer is. Well, two things have to happen, we have to find a way to get renewable energy. That could be solar, that could be wind, that could be bio fuels, right, that's number one. Number two, we have to be much, much more efficient with the way we consume energy, especially in the United States and equally so in Europe. And even in China now, we're wasting a lot of energy, right. One of the things that $106 a barrel oil does for you, at $4 a gallon people start to conserve it, right. And now most people I know who are looking at cars are very conscious of what the gas mileage is in those cars. At two bucks a gallon, people don't care, it's like two bucks a gallon, so what? 12 miles a gallon sure that'll do, at four bucks a gallon, people care some, and at six bucks a gallon people will care a lot. So better energy efficiency and figure out a way to make renewable energy go, because no matter what, fossil fuels are a limited resource and there's an enormous demand on. And Skip, I'll let you say something because I'm certain you have an opinion. >> Yeah, I think the market will set that. The good news is there's lots of really nice technologies that are coming and things are getting better all the time, your old TV sets were energy hogs compared to what you have now. If you look at the old-fashioned incandescent light bulb, which not only heated the room, but was really inefficient. And now, we went to those compact fluorescents, which helped some but had the problem of the mercury in them, but now these LED light bulbs. I think if you move into an apartment and you put in the LED light bulbs when you move out you're going to take the damn light bulbs with you. Because they're going to last you a lifetime and they use so much less energy. And so, small changes like that, but in a widespread, huge economy like the United States, that has a measurable impact. I think what, gasoline usage dropped by, was it 10 or 15%, the last time it hit $5 a gallon? Because people just decided to conserve, and then they all did switch to Priuses, this isn't a plug for Toyota but you know they all switched to really energy efficient cars. And so I think In the last what five or ten years, the US gasoline consumption is down 5% without really compromising the miles because we're all driving more energy efficient cars. >> That's right. >> So I think all together, to some degree, the market world will start to tailor what happens at the top end, it's really the people at the bottom end that you have to figure out. What's going to happen with them and are we going to leave them in that kind of poverty all the time? And then the wild card is what's going to happen with that 3 million in the middle because they want to live westernized lifestyles we already occupy, and there's no reason for us to say they can't do that. But I think the new technologies are going to help us in a lot of those ways. >> Yeah, I think what Skip said, is exactly right. Unfortunately what he said is also right about what do you do with the bottom 2 billion. Right, they do not have access to energy right now because they simply can't afford it. We're actually recording another lecture tomorrow, which we will play at the end of this MOOC on energy in Nepal. Right, to find out what it really is, what the bottom two billion people use. It's amazing, five watts a day, we use 10,000 watts a day is what we consume in the United States. Five is what they use, not 5,000, five watts,half of what your iPhone is. This is really an open question and new technology is going to come up and probably make our life better, and then what we really need to do is to decide how we're going to distribute that down the line. Okay, at any rate, more to come on that, watch the news, it will be on there every day. Okay, here is a question from Bindra, it says, who or what is the overarching body for biomass and bio-gas matters? For example, there is an AWEA, which is the American Wind Energy Association for wind energy. There's a bunch of different ones for biomass, there's one for bio-diesel called the Bio-Diesel Alliance, there's the Algal Biomass Organization. There's a lot of things, these are not federal agencies, these are what are known as trade groups. So this is everybody in the industry sort of gets together and they all chip in a little bit. And in general what those groups do, the American Wind Energy is, Wind Energy Association, is an example of this, they actually lobby, that's actually the primary function of those guys, education and lobbying. By education, you're going to set up a web page, you're going to tell people how great your technology is, you're going to try to get them to use it. And then lobbying, you actually go to Congress and talk to those guys, and tell them how wonderful, in the case of wind energy, how wonderful wind energy is. How Congress should support it with taxes, etc. So, those are different than regulatory agencies, okay? Those are essentially industrial trade groups. And then the second part of the question says, it seems more complex as biogas can replace natural gas, but natural gas networks are already established. So that is absolutely true, but you can fit biogas into the established network. There's no problem with that at all. Biogas tends to have hydrogen sulfide in it, you gotta get that outta there so it's not corrosive, it doesn't do damage once it gets into the system. But once you do that, there is no difference between biogas and natural gas. They are the same thing. They are methane and that's called a fungible fuel. That means it can go right into the existing infrastructure. Now, there are groups here in the United States and Europe that regulate natural gas. How it can be transported, how it has to be stored, etc. But that's separate from a trade organization that lobbies for the benefit of that. And so the regulatory environment, which are government agencies, are very different than the supported agencies that show up. Skip, anything from? >> Yeah, no. I think that's about all there is to say about that. The only other thing that exists out there is the Department of Transportation actually regulates the fuel and the quality and so on and so forth. Groups that you're talking about are really just trade organizations and people that get together of like mind to try to pitch their ideas. >> Yeah and by the way, those groups are super valuable on all sides. Lobbying sort of has a bad name. People are like, you're a lobbyist. That's the worst thing ever. Lobbyists actually do a really important thing, right, especially when you have a new industry is they get out and they educate people about what it is. So if you're a senator or you're a congressman and you're expected to vote on legislation, you're expected to put up laws that will help the United States and the rest of the world get energy independence and make energy available. You should know, you should have all the facts and all the scientific knowledge about all of these different technologies, all right? And lobbing groups do that. They educate, they come and they tell you about the benefits. Now they might put a positive spin on it and not tell you some of the bad things about it, but I guarantee you, their competitors will get up and tell you the bad things. Okay, here's a very specific question, but it has a good underlying sort of general theme to it. So this comes from, I don't know how you say that name, Mansi, and she says, I am considering joining the UCSB extension for biofuels process. It says, what is your opinion? So, that's a general idea. Okay, that's extension here at UC San Diego, we have an extension class in biofuels processing and Skip actually teaches a really important part of that, which is the chemistry and biochemistry of fuels. In fact, they make biodiesel. I think someplace I have a little jar that they made for me a couple years ago and they do the complete analysis of it. So a very nice class and it has some very good professors teaching it, but here's the more important part of the question. What is you opinion for the jobs markets on biofuels here in California and in the world? So, that's a very interesting one and this has been hotly debated actually the last couple months. And in fact, two weeks ago, KPBS, which is our local Public Broadcasting Network, came and did a story on biofuels, specifically in California. Now, jobs growth has been okay. Since 2009 to today, we have about 500 jobs here in San Diego that are directly related to sort of algae biotechnology and algae biofuels. You throw in this cellulosic ethanol and the the rest of the guys down here in California and you're well over 1,000 direct jobs, probably 2,000 indirect jobs. But it hasn't exploded the way I think it's going to have to if we're really going to get biofuels to go. And part of that debate with KPBS was the KPBS reporter actually said in his report that fracking has increased our production so high and reduced the cost of petroleum so much that this is taking the urgency off of biofuels. And when I challenged him on that statement, I said, wait a minute. When fracking started, which it did in earnest in about 2008, that's where we really got going on it. Oil was $40 a barrel and oil is a 106 bucks a barrel two weeks ago. I said, what part of $40 to a $106 is a reduction in the price of oil? I don't get it, that's 2.5 times what it cost. So clearly fracking has not reduced the price of a barrel of oil one lip and his response was well, it hasn't yet, but it's going to, all right? The second part of the question, I said, okay, we hit our low point about 40 years ago. We were producing about 5.5 million barrels of oil per day. And now by fracking, we have increased that output to 7.5 million barrels of oil a day. We burn 19.5 million barrels of oil per day. So I said, again, what part of we produce 8.5 million barrels and we burn 19.5 million barrels is energy independent? Energy independence means we're no longer importing oil. We import a huge amount of oil into this country and his response to that was but the trend lines are clear. Since we've increased our production, 3 million over the last 5 years, another 15 years of that and we'll be energy independent. So look, this is a crazy idea, all right, but this is something that, and it's not so much the oil majors. Exxon and Chevron, and Shell, and BP have been very specific to say over the last years that fracking is not economically viable for them. And in fact, the CEO of Chevron, John Watson, came out and said earlier this year that Chevron can't make money at $100 a barrel with fracking and doing it responsibly. And by that, what he was suggesting was that the people who are making money at a 100 bucks a barrel is because they're not quite paying the full freight. So some of the things that I know that they don't do, they don't pay health insurance. And clearly, they're not that worried about some of the environmental concerns. Chevron and Exxon sold all of their fracking properties and the reason they did that and their stated reason for doing that was when the bill comes due on this, which means in another five or six years. When people start looking around and asking, hey, what are the environmental consequences and who's going to clean up this mess? They're not going to be the ones to pay that bill, okay? So, back to your specific question. So, what's the job opportunities? Right now, I think many people's attitudes are that fracking is going to continue to expand in this country and abroad and that is going to increase fossil fuel and the price of it may go down. And because of that attitude, it's not the reality, but because that attitude, investors are very leery to put big dough into renewable fuel right now, into biofuels right now. I think that is going to change in two years, that's my guess. Everybody sort of gets their five years to shine. Fracking's sort of in its third year. I think two more years of that. It's already leveled off, by the way. Fracking production has not increased in the first six months of 2014. It sort of stayed level. And that was predicted, by the way. The Department of Energy said, it's going to go up for four or five years then it's going to hold study for a couple of years and it's going to start the decrease. In about 2018. And I think once it starts to go down and people know that it's going down, then I think there's going to be, then the urgency for renewable energy will come back. So there are jobs in biofuels right now in California, about 200 million bucks a year in economic activity. That number's gotta go up a lot. Is it going to go up in two years, or four years, or ten years? I don't know, but it had better go up. And the reason it had better go up is because we'd better start producing renewable fuels, all right? There's just no way around that one. Skip. >> Yeah, and so there's two parts to that question. And so the one part is, so the class that I teach is the analytical chemistry of biofuels, and so we make biodiesel and then we analyze it. And the students actually get good lab skills out of that. And so while the projection and the reason why we put the biofuels technician certificate together was the idea that there was going to be this booming need for all these biofuel jobs. And that hasn't been quite been seen. This particular certificate actually thought provides you with the particular job skills that you go out and work in the other jobs around this area anyway. Everybody I know has been through there has been gone out and got a job. The other part about this that always sort of cracks me up. Is even if you were to find, if you're running a deficit at your household income, but you find $80 on the couch cushions, that doesn't mean that you've got your fiscal house in order, so to speak. So the idea that we found a new source of fuel, or what if off the coast of Brazil they find this big reserve of oil and they find a way to realistically tap it? We're still drawing the fuel out of the ground faster than it could be produced, in terms of the geologic time. So whether we solve this problem now or later it seems to me we have to solve the problem period. And I think what you're going to see is the death throws of the petroleum industry from time to time. As you saw in 2000, was it, I think it was 2007, when it got to $5 a gallon. Then all of a sudden, people were investing in biodiesel refineries and buying soybeans and putting all that stuff up. And then the price of fuel dropped below $3 a gallon, or even below 2 here, I think at one point. And then all of a sudden, that puts all those peoples and all their investments out of business because it can't work at that. You can't make biodiesel at that price. But I imagine you're going to watch these prices come up and then accordion down and back and forth a couple more times. But we all know which direction it's always going. Because we're never running out of, the fuel's going to run out. And we've already taken the easy fruit. And so all that's left is the stuff at the top of the tree to pick. And then the demand worldwide is going up. So if the supply is going down with demand is going up and it's getting harder to get to that prices are only going up. >> Yep. >> And at some point, they're going to be solidly over some number where I think the economics of biofuels or wind energy. Or solar or whatever it is you're talking about as an alternative fuel, alternative energy, there'll be economic incentive. Right now, every time you turn around, there's some sort of answer in carbon that alleviates everybody's wallet. It's like finding the $80 in the couch cushions, but it doesn't fix your economic outlook forever. >> Yeah, there was a really interesting article in, I think it was Forbes, on Friday. I'll try to find it and post it for you guys. Just a brief little economic analysis. So, believe it or not worldwide this year we are going to spend $1.2 trillion that is $1,200 billion in oil exploration. Fracking in the United States, we spent $175 billion last year, but worldwide, $1.2 trillion. And all that allowed us to do was keep our reserve stable. So we didn't increase them one bit. By 2020, so six years from now, that number's going to have to be $1.8 trillion per year. Okay, now if you guys remember the lectures from earlier, the entire energy industry is about $5.8 trillion. That means they're spending 25% of their income, 25% of the total sales to try to find new oil, that number is staggering. And I think the saddest thing about it when I look at that, is I think, on this planet, we're going to spend $1.2 trillion to go find more fossil fuel in ever harder to get places. And yet, we're not even willing to spend one thousandth of that on getting renewable energy to go, it's really kind of sad. But that's the way it goes, existing industries always protect themselves, that's the nature of the beast. That's one of the downsides of capitalism, is that if I have an existing industry and people have jobs in it. They always want to keep those jobs because change is scary and that's just the way it's going to be. So that's where you hope for leadership. You hope that governments step forward and say well we can afford to spend 1.2 trillion on fossil fuel discovery, maybe we can spend a billion, 100 billion on renewable energy. Okay, at any rate enough of that. Let's answer a few more questions here. Okay, here's an interesting one because it's back on the science side of things rather than the political side of things. So I like this one. And it says Adikia, I think is how you say that name, but I'm trashing it. It is not that the biological organisms are mainly comprised of aromatics in their chemical composition? That is true statement. If so, how does the aromatic composition of a biodiesel with low amount of aromatics? So I think the question is how do we get aromatics in there, is there a process for that? So aromatics do come from biological molecules, absolutely. So there's a couple of different ways that we get fuel one is fatty acids, and the others are isoprenoids. And isoprenoids are really good. Those are five carbons all linked together, so you get C10, C15, C20, etc. . And from those things you have wonderful aromatics in there. In fact, the C10, the monoterpenes, all those are aromatics, that's why they smell so good. That's what comes out of lemon peel, and lime peel, and pine, and eucalyptus. Almost every plant makes these things. So there are aromatics, but they're not the most abundant component. By far the most abundant component are the fatty acids. But when we get those things out, we can also run these things through a catalytic cracker. And you can take a long chain hydrocarbons and you can rearrange those things to make branches and to make aromatics. And branches and aromatics are really important because those give fuels a lot of their chemical properties that we like. So one is that it keeps them from what's called having a high cloud point or from turning solid. And I'll let, Skip's a chemist, I should let him answer this anyway. >> If you're getting them from triglycerides then they're basically going to be free of, when you say aromatics, you're talking about the ring, the structures? >> The ring structures, yeah. >> Okay, so stuff derived from the lipids is going to be relatively free of all the ring structures. But if you do this by hydrothermal treatment and those sorts of >> Processes. You're going to extract those things, but the petroleum industry already knows out to deal with all of those issues. >> Yeah. >> Because if you were to take the just the raw petroleum out of the ground, it's full of aromatics and other things. And what they're good at, at the refinery is taking the petroleum base and working it back into whatever product they want in particular. So if they want them to be branched or they want them to be straight-chained or they want them of a certain molecular weight, I mean, they create the catalysts to do all this stuff. So that part of it is on the chemical engineering side on the back side of this thing that doesn't really matter and I think in the grand scheme of things, because they can be refined to have whatever you want to have in them. >> That's right and that's why we call that renewable gasoline or renewable diesel and that means that the oil you extract out of an algae, or you extract out of jatropha. Once you put it through one of those refining and chemical cracking facilities, it's indistinguishable from fossil fuel. And therefore, it has the aromatics. It has the branch components in it. And therefore, behaves exactly the way regular diesel or regular gas. Or importantly, regular jet fuel does. Jet fuel is especially important to have some aromatics in it, because it gets really cold when you get up there at 35,000 feet and you can't have your jet fuel turn solid on you. Here's a good interesting question that ask about biogas and fracking and this comes from Brian and he says, there are some issues pertaining to methane leaking with hydraulic fracturing. Yes, that's absolutely true. A bigger issue right now and I think we brought this up in one of our lectures is that when you're doing hydraulic fracking to get oil out and oil is your primary targeted hydrocarbon that you're going after then, you end up with a fair amount of natural gas. All the oil wells always have some natural gas in them, because fracking has gone on so fast in North Dakota and Texas over the last three or four years. They haven't built the infrastructure to capture the natural gas that comes out of that. So, methane is much worst green house gas than carbon dioxide. 30 to 50 tons far depends who asking how measure, so its better rather than let the methane weaken to the atmosphere to actually flare it. So that's what they do and I showed this picture in my lecture, but it's an easy one to find if you guys want to look at it. Just Google view of North America at night, North Dakota and you will see that the six of brightest spot in North America is actually the light that's in the Northwest corner of North Dakota and that comes about from the flaring of the natural gas. So it's absolutely an issue with fracking and we just waste all that energy by burning that natural gas, but it's actually better to do that then to let it escape into the environment. But the second part of the question says, are there similar problems to bio gas? And if so, to what extent? Absolutely, there are enormous problems with biogas. Not the biogas the way we make it in an anaerobic digestion, because that is set up to trap it. But in biology, you make a huge amount of biogas. That is otherwise, known as quartz. So cows and any organism that has, they're called ruminants, they have an anaerobic digester as their stomach. So the reason cows can eat grass and get nutrition from it is not because they themselves are fantastic about breaking down cellulose, it's they have an enormous stomach, which is an anaerobic digester and the bacteria in that stomach breaks down the cellulose in the grass and the cows can, therefore, absorb the nutrients out of it. But when they're doing it, that's an anaerobic digestorate. They make methane. And so, cows belch and fart out methane all the time. Sheep do the same thing. And so many people have calculated that with the number of sheep and the number of cows on the planet, a significant component of greenhouse gas. It's not as high as the CO2 from burning fossil fuel, but a significant component of greenhouse gap is the methane coming out of those animals, because we have so many of them. So from the biological side, from that biogas, it's an important problem and it's not one that there's an easy answer to. One of my favorite pictures and I think I used it in one of the lectures is a cow with an enormous plastic bag on its back, because they're capturing the biogas that's coming out of that cow. That's not a practical solution, obviously, we can't do that. It just gets invented to the air. So, that is something that you know that we have to think about. It's something that there's clearly no easy solution to it and people, believe it or not work on it. I read a paper the other day about a group that has worked on different bacteria that you can inoculate into the cows or into the sheep, so that they will produce less methane gas. So you still can get anaerobic digestion of the grass that the cows gets still benefit from it, but does not put on this much methane. And apparently, it works. Apparently, depended upon on bugs inside your gut that makes lot of it. Here's a very simple question. Skip, did you want to say anything about that? >> Well, there's two things that I would add, I guess is that coal mining, actually. There's a lot of methane gas that is just is emitted constantly from coal mining. So on the petroleum side, but what we're also studying here at the university is when there's an algal bloom in the ocean and then the bacteria sort of chew them up and you get the lipid, which get carried to the surface, then they're in the sea surface microlayer and they get concentrated right at this very oily, slick, very small, thin band at the surface of the ocean, but then that's all oxygenated. And so when there are double bonds in those fatty acid chains, you get reaction with triple oxygen that starts splitting off pentane, methane, all sorts. I mean, so they're natural sources of this. The good news is that there is a molecule call hydroxyl radical, it's in the atmosphere that constantly breaks methane gas. So methane is a lot like brown carbon problem and that is, is that it is an issue. But if we stopped it today in three to four weeks, there'd be no problem. >> Yeah. >> So it's not the carbon problem, because that stuff will last decades. I think the half life in the atmosphere for a carbon dioxide molecule is somewhere in the order of two or three decades before it gets cycled around someplace. So, that's really where the action's at this. >> So, here's a very simple question. But actually not a simple answer, I would say. This comes from Mike Leap and he says, would a carbon tax on energy help or hurt biofuels? So as I said, it's a simple question or not. So a carbon tax is essential, if we are going to pay for the damage that carbon does to the environment. So, the way we do it everywhere in the world right now is we just release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Every single government and every single company out there has done some calculation on what is the damage, what is the cost of releasing that. And surprisingly enough, many of the companies and many of the governments come up a similar number. So Exxon, British Petroleum Coca Cola, they all have a number that's between 30 and $60 a ton for carbon released into the atmosphere, so what does that mean? If I release a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere because of climate change, because the rest of stuff that's going to happen because of climate change, right? I can kind of make a calculation that says for every ton I put in, I'm going to do 30 or 40 or 50 bucks worth of damage. And like I say, there's variation around that, but surprisingly for me, surprisingly consistent between 30 and 60 bucks a ton., so that's real damage and somebody's got to pay that. So who pays it? Well, it's not directly paid, I mean, all of us do, but that means it's not directly paid by the person who's putting it out there. If you want to make good decisions about carbon, then you should pay what the damage really is, right? I'm always amazed when I hear people say, but why should I pay? I mean economically, I can't afford to pay for the tons of CO2 that I release into the atmosphere. Well if you can't afford to pay for it, then you shouldn't be releasing any, you shouldn't be doing that. it reminds me a bit about somebody driving their car and smashing another car and destroying it. And saying well, yeah, of course, I destroyed that guys car when I ran into it but I can 't afford to pay for it. Well, then you shouldn't be driving a car. If you can't afford to pay the damages your doing, you should be doing okay? So would a carbon tax help? It would enormously help and it would enormously help on two fronts, all right? Number one, that means biofuels, so number one you would be paying the real cost of fossil fuel. We don't pay a fraction of the real cost of fossil fuel right now, right? We don't pay for the environmental damage that comes from it. We don't pay for our enormous defense budget in this country, 33%, one-third of our defense budget goes to keeping the supply lines open for fuel. We don't pay that in the cost of gasoline. If we did, the cost of gasoline in this country wouldn't be four bucks a gallon, it'd be six or seven bucks a gallon. And at six or seven bucks a gallon, we would suddenly become much more efficient at using gas. So that's the first thing a carbon tax does, it raises the price and makes you much more efficient at your utilization. The second thing is, since you're making a biofuel, you're CO2 that you put out from that is less. And that means that you're doing less damage with that to the environment and that means the tax is going to be much less on a biofuel. The tax is not going to be zero, okay? Because when you make a biofuel, you're still putting some CO2 out into the atmosphere. Granted, you're capturing that CO2 by photosynthesis the day before or the day after, but you don't get 100% with that, okay? You might, if you're lucky, get 60% or 70% of it back, so there's still going to be some tax on biofuels. And you want those because you want people to be very conservative with how they use biofuels, so a carbon tax would absolutely help biofuels. But more important than that, it is absolutely essential If we are going to treat energy the way that it should be treated. Meaning that we pay what it really cost for the production and utilization of the stuff. Skip? >> Yeah, I sort to find that the argument interesting in the following sense, there's always people who would attack somebody with a SUV. I was like well, okay, I understand they're less fuel efficient. But if I had an SUV that got 12 miles to the gallon, but I only lived 2 miles from work and so my daily commute is less than one gallon of gas. And the people I'm talking about are using more than a gallon of gas but they're in a 40-mile-a-gallon Prius that somehow there's this idea that we shouldn't tax Prius because they're fuel efficient. But we should tax my SUV? I would argue the money has to go towards where the consumption and the tax should be on the carbon. Not on the industry that you don't like, not on the car you don't like, not on whatever you don't like about whether it's a farming practice, or Nike shoes, [LAUGH] or whatever the deal is, right? That's how politics I think gets into this stuff, because then people are making value adjustment. You should really just tax the fuel and you should be taxed on your carbon consumption. >> That's right, that is exactly right, right? And if we did do that, all right? Then people would make the correct decision, which is, if we put a tax on that actually makes people pay the price for the damage they're doing, right? Then you would use less of it, right? That's a good tax, it's called a tax that's what the economists tell me, all right? But in this country right now, no way are we a putting a tax on. In fact, in California we now have what's called cap and trade. And what cap and trade does is rather than put a tax on it, what you do is you say you are capped at some level of carbon output. Usually it's a date, so you are capped at the level of carbon output that you do in 2010. And then if you want to exceed that, if your company grows or you want to get a bigger car, you want to drive more, whatever, then you have to trade with somebody else who is using less carbon. In the end, it kind of works out the same as a tax, because if you want to increase your carbon output, you have to pay something to buy that credit or to buy that permit to put out more of it. But it's indirect and people don't make the correct economic decisions because of it, okay? Let's see, here's another comment and this one says. When I listen to all energy talks and sustainability, especially in the U.S., very little is talked about efficiency, and just the pain fact or becoming aware and just use less, okay? There is so much that can be done in this area, little attention is paid to it. So, that's kind of true and kind of not. If you actually listen to people who really know about energy, they will tell you that the most important thing we can do is become more efficient at how we use energy, right? It's a much better economic return If we are more efficient with the energy we consume now rather than go out and try to figure out how to make sustainable energy, right? We have to have both of those, but the economics work out better for you if you go insulate your house, right? So that you're not spending as much money to cool it or heat it and you go get LED light bulbs instead of incandescent light bulbs. If you do those things, the economics of that works out way better than if you go out and try to figure out how to make renewable solar or renewable wind energy and keep it going. So people who really know will tell you energy efficiency is the best bang for our buck and that we have to do that, but it only gets you part of the way there, right? It makes you more efficient, we can probably in the United States, the estimates are that we could cut our energy use in half just by efficiency improvements, but half isn't zero. It takes us down from 19.5 million barrels a day to 10 million barrels a day, an enormous improvement, but it doesn't get us down to zero. Get us down to zero, add renewable energy on top of that. Skip? >> Yeah, I think I mentioned that earlier with the idea of the LED lights and it's about being more efficient. And so if you can do that, that's a much better way to solve this problem, overall, although, it's not the solution in the end, so I think that this is where technology comes in. So that you see your five star appliances, your refrigerators, now work a whole lot more efficiently than they ever did, and so as you move over to those things, but that costs money But it doesn't address in my mind what happens to those bottom two. >> Yeah. >> Or the middle three. Like I said, I think in this country through either the economic pressure, or by technology, we will find a way to maintain our lifestyles as close to what they are now with those sorts of changes. I wonder how the rest of the planet does this. >> Yep, that's a good point. Okay, we've got time for at least one more question, so we're going to take this one, might end it right there. And it said, would diesel powered trains, fueled by biofuels created from algae feedstocks, grown in salt water on non-arable land, be the best of all possible worlds? Absolutely, it would be. Right, as an algae guy, that would be, no, look, then the second half of that question, or it says, or that's growing appropriate yield with regional resources provide greater environmental returns. So, one of the expressions that I've heard many times, and I think actually there is some truth to this one in renewable energy, it's unlikely that there will be a silver bullet. But, if we're lucky, then there may be silver buckshot, and what that means is that there's never going to be a single solution to a big problem, all right? But many, many different solutions added on top of each other might give us a chance for the future. So, would growing algae in saltwater on non-arable land be a good idea? That's a great idea, and if we can do that and get 10 or 15% of the energy from that, then that would just be a wonderful thing and would really help the world a lot. If we then add on top of that another 15% from wind power, another 15% from photovoltaic, geothermal add another 5% on top of that, cellulosic ethanol another 10% on top of that, and then couple that with a 40 or 50% reduction in our consumption by energy efficiency. A quick calculation says, if we did all those things together, we'd be there, or be pretty close to it, so some bean stalks are better than others. That's just the nature of biology And we should take advantage of those when we can. But, it's probably going to be many, many things piled on top of each other that are going to give us the best chance to have an energy future in which all seven billion people on the planet can participate. Skip, I'll give you the last word. >> Yeah, i think that's, we oftentimes have heard of class as the all of the above approach. There was something that came up earlier about the Association For Winged Engineers, or whatever it was, and that is one thing that does create a problem in the country. So, lobbyists do a good job of educating people, but they oftentimes do walk in the door to their local congressmen and senators and say, the money needs to be set aside for us, we're the future of, we're the solution, right? And so, the problem is because they're pitching their own ideas, they're really not pitching the all of the above solution. And then, the politics, I think get in the way of that from time to time, where if this is originally for biofuels, and everybody's going to want to pitch for biofuels in California. If you will replace for these Corn Ethanol, and you're going to make that pitch there if it's a place where wind happens. And then sometimes I think we don't have a very, Bob, do we even have an energy policy in the United States per say? >> [LAUGH] Yeah, Kenya, yeah. >> And so that I think is where the real problem is. >> Kind of obvious. >> When there's no real >> Thought process and the energy policy. That's where I think the idea of a lobbyist then comes and mucks up the water a little bit. Because everybody's pitching for their thing and the limited resources from federal tax dollars to develop it. Yeah in best of all worlds I think you do it all of the above. And then like I said earlier wide spread practice over an enormous economy has an Has an enormous impact. >> Okay, we're going to leave it there this week, thanks all of your for participating, thanks for sending your question in, you know keep going on the class, in the next couple weeks, I think we have some interesting lectures coming up we're going to leave on the economics and there have been a couple questions on that >> And a little bit on climate change as well. These are really important considerations that we haven't got into yet. And those of you who have been posting comments and questions, I really applaud you. Thank you for sticking with us. Okay, that's it for this week. And thanks to my guest Skip Pomeroy. And I will see you all next week.
