I think most hybrids have that technology. Lots of cars here in Europe have now the technology that when they stop moving, engine stops automatically. Needs smooth fast egnition but I guess they work ok, never tried one. There's lots of good small steps from the industry and of course the CO2 based car tax helps. Then there are the horrible steps what this thread is about. The more expensive Brazilian ethanol gets tax relief and 10% biofuel content gasoline is cheaper than the 5% one. If these % amounts are raised like they plan and if other countries and continents follow we are heading into a massive tropical forest clearing era.

15% ethanol has recently been approved here in the states.

I recommend you pick up a copy of the Transition Handbook and read it. All of you. It discusses several of the things mentioned here, including that in addition to finding different, renewable fuel and energy sources we also need to power down and reduce our consumption. It also has a GREAT graph that shows the efficiency of different sources of energy (how much return is gained for energy invested during production). I found that chart alone to be an incredible eye opener.

OMHO we don't yet have a good solution for alternative liquid fuel. Electric cars may be the answer for a lot of populations, but liquid fuel may still be needed elsewhere (areas other than transportation), and as the technology currently stands, electric cars don't suffice for folks who need to drive long distances, in extreme cold conditions, or in areas without much infrastructure. I am a HUGE supporter of electric vehicles, but they've only yet met a part of the challenge. In addition, depending on the source of electricity, electric vehicles may still be HUGE contributers of environmental pollutants and CO2 emissions. Most people and businesses still aren't using green energy to power their homes.

while regenerative braking dose charge the bateries, it takes more energy to get the car moving again than the charge put back into the bateries. while a moving care dose have energy it is quickly eaten up by friction and moving air out of the cars way.

Oil is biological fuel in principle, it's from ancient trees and plants. I don't think mankind will ever be able to produce more cost-effective and nature friendly biological liquid fuel. No animal needs the trees that died millions of years ago. If we move this operation to current time ecosystems and onto the shoulders of living ecosystems, it means destroying them. We don't need to replace oil. There will be plenty of oil left if most vehicles move soon to using electricity instead of liquid fuels. Electric cars can have solar, wind, nuclear etc. sources, even traditional oil, all these are much better than effectively burning living nature as fuel. And if one does not like using oil, why not happy it's getting more expensive and possibly running out in the future? Sometimes when listening to Finnish green party politicians I feel oil is almost extinct species and human endangered and we should take the necessary steps in the plentiful nature to combat this. It's insane.

Bio(agro)fuels are mixed in current fossil fuels. They are perfect marketing tool to keep on using fossil fuels carefree and actually promote it. 90% fossil fuel + 10% rainforest destruction fuel = more ecological green fuel for the environmentally enlightened. In reality it's keeping things as they are with the twist that we destroy some extra as well. This also slows down moving to other sources, not so much need moving to electric cars and so on.
Perfect, perfect marketing!
IMHO all friends of earth and nature should fight for banning all international trade of biofuels.

I would be able to do the majority of my driving with an electric car, it's too bad it's so slow coming. Even if the range wasn't that great , I'm sure it would suffice for most situations.

upnorthfar,

The problem with oil is that for a long time it was too inexpensive and efficient to ignore. It is still one of the most efficient fuel sources we know of. However, today's oil is much harder and more costly to extract and refine than oil of years ago. Our addiction to oil has the cost of environmental destruction, war, political controversy, destruction of unique habitats and ecosystems, and toxic pollutants from transportation and refining processes.

I like your point about international trade of biofuels. Using fuel to transport fuel that can be created at home is counterproductive. However, when we use biodiesel to fuel a farm tractor and the biodiesel contains agrowaste from harvests on that farm, I think that's pretty friggen cool.

I haven't complained about rising gas prices in nearly a year, when I became more enlightened about our environmental economy. When fuel prices go up, people drive less and that's a good thing. I pay more just like anyone else, but I understand that a drastic shift in the economic viability of gas guzzling automobiles is probably what is needed to change people's habits and ideas. If $8/gallon is what is needed to have half of SUV owners switch to Prius's, well than I'm all for it.

I think gas should cost $100 a litre. Then we'd see a switch to green energy pretty quick. The cost of things in our current economy does not factor in their environmental and other negative effects. If we used true cost accounting in which the costs to the environment of, say, trashing the boreal forest to get oil from the Alberta tar sands and the cancers and other human health risks this poses, were reflected in the actual cost we paid at the pump, then we would be paying far more than we already do. Paul Hawken (founder of Smith and Hawken) talked about this sort of accounting and the positive effects it would have decades ago in his book The Ecology of Commerce.

Roberta Olenick
Vancouver, BC
www.neverspook.com

Excellent point Roberta. For those interested, The Story of Stuff Project (http://www.storyofstuff.com/) talks a lot about the "true" cost of our cheap stuff.

There are plenty of valid arguments against the oil sands (not "tar sands"--the word "tar" refers to something completely different, although it is often misused; "bitumen" is actually the correct word), but the boreal forest argument is one of the weakest, and is often vastly overstated by environmentalists. (I've heard people talk about an area the size of the UK being affected--which is something like a third of the province of Alberta, and is wildly inaccurate.)

Currently, approximately 600 km² of land have been disturbed by oil sands mining. (For comparison, New York City is over 1200 km²; Greater Vancouver is 2700 km². The province of BC cuts something like 180 km² of forest each year.) The boreal forest in Canada takes up something like 3,100,000 km², so 0.0194% of Canada's boreal forest has been affected by the oil sands. Furthermore, mined areas are very effectively reclaimed. Just like much of the pit mining of coal that is done elsewhere in Alberta and around the world. And far, far better than the mountain top removal mining that is done in places like Appalachia.

If you want to trash the oil sands, talk about the tailings ponds, which are much more of a problem (IMO) than the effect on the forest. You won't get an argument from me on that one! (I won't debate about the cancer claims, as both sides have studies which contradict each other, and neither side's "experts" are reliably unbiased.)

Of course, something like 80% of the oil sands resource is not available for mining. The oil in those areas must be extracted with in situ processes. These require more energy input than mining, but much less water (on a net basis, as most of the water is recycled), and there are no tailings ponds.

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Aside from that... I agree completely that energy should be priced much higher. That is the *only* thing (IMO) that will drive down consumption. If you can find a graph of energy consumption in the US over time (Google it--there's one at Wikipedia), there's something very interesting. Consumption peaked around 1979-1980, with the big oil crisis at the time. Prices peaked at the same time, of course. (Accounting for inflation, we didn't get back to the same price until the peak in 2008, and we're back down below it now.) But with the high prices, consumption dropped substantially. And more importantly, it didn't get back up to the same level until after 2000. The short term of high prices around 1980 was enough to cause a shift in behaviour in the US. People bought more efficient cars, did a better job insulating their houses, etc., etc. Despite a growing population and economy, it took two decades to get back to the same consumption that there was before the spike. The high prices in 2008 didn't last long enough to have the same effect (unfortunately, I think), but prices remain high enough to stimulate interest (i.e., investment in research) in greener technologies. They may not be economic yet (i.e., in the absence of subsidies, they're not cheaper than hydrocarbons), but given another spike in oil prices (or, unlikely in the US or Canada, a significant hike in fuel taxes), they are well positioned to become economic--and maybe we can get another two decade depression in consumption...

-Paul

When I used to flyfish every weekend a few years ago, a buddy and myself were concerned about the amount of gasoline we were using to support our habit. This was before buzz words like carbon footprint were even invented, but we were trying to go "green". We caught fewer and smaller fish around our local lakes but we still caught fish. I wonder how many globe trotting photographers would consider doing such a thing. Do you really need to take a yearly trip to the Falklands, Galapogos or other far flung places. Just playing devils advocate here.

If that comes about who gets that money? The oil companies already make obscene profits, the current crisis in the US (and the world) shows the government can only mismanage the taxpayers money. If put into a fund to support causes to fight cancer, habitat destruction etc. who manages (and gets rich off of)this money. The government can't do it, the money will get sent to pet projects as they did with Social Security. So in all honesty what happens to the money so it goes to the right place?
As far as the argument that higher prices will make people conserve, I don't think so. The state of Florida not too long ago passed a cigarette tax using the same argument. A pack of cigarettes jumped several dollars to over $6.00. The money is supposed to go to pay for health related costs of smoking (fat chance) and make people quit. Not a single person that I know quit smoking, not one! No one even slowed down they just bought the cheaper "no name" brands for awhile, BTW I don't smoke.
The other major problem is, the whole world is in an economic crisis. Just imagine the riots and economic devastation raising prices like that would do to the world, I think it would cause complete and utter chaos and anarchy.

Excellent point well made.

I agree with you, Paul, that there are many reasons to oppose the tar/oil sands including but not restricted to impacts on the boreal forests. Tailing ponds as you mentioned are another. And probably top among the countless reasons is that it takes so much energy to extract the oil from the sands that tar sands oil contributes far more carbon to global warming that oil extracted using more tradtional methods. (But of course, we are running out of that sort of oil and so are resorting to the harder to extract, dirtier sources.) The tar sands are a main, perhaps THE main contributor to Canada's carbon footprint. On top of that, there is the Enbridge proposal to pipe tar sands oil to Kitimat and then tanker it down the fragile Inside Passage, an accident waiting to happen. That would devastate our coast, the salmon fisheries and shellfish fisheries, all the wildlife and all the communities in the vicinity of such a spill. I sure don't want a Gulf of Mexico type disaster where I live!

Randy, I don't buy your argument. People addicted to tobacco don't have many alternatives to feed that addition. But if $100/l created incentive to develop alternatives to fossil fuels (and made those alternatives more economical relative to fossil fuels), then people addicted to fossil fuels would have decent alternatives and would use them. Polls already show that a lot of people would happily use green energy alternatives now if they were readily available and even if they had to pay a bit more. Plus paying $6 for a pack of smokes is a lot less money that paying $100/l. At 50 l for my gas tank, I would be paying $5000 to fill up and that would sure make me think twice or two hundred times before I drove anywhere. But $6, even if if that is a big increase, is not even on the same order of magnitude. I don't smoke but my vice is chocolate and I would pay $6 for a Mars bar if I had to, but I sure would be looking to public transit pretty quick at $100/l for gas. The idea is that if gas prices reflected the true cost of fossil fuels to society, then gas would become so expensive that demand would plummet so your concern about the obscene profts the oil industry makes would become a non-issue. And energy sources that do not have such negative impacts would become relatively more afforable under true cost accounting so demand for these would go up. Hawken's whole premise is you tax what you want less of (polluting fuels) and don't tax what you want more of. But we have it all backwards, at least in Canada, where the government gives huge subsidies to the oil industy and very little in the way of support or tax incentives for clean energy.

Roberta Olenick
Vancouver, BC

Fuel prices are determined to maximize profit, not to stop people's driving. It's a balance.

Not to make excuses for the oil compaines but sadly a larger hunk of every dollar I spend on gas goes to the government in taxes than goes to the oil companies. At least the oil companies did something for their smaller share. I suppose it's all how one wants to define the term "obscene."

Bob, that statement about the government making more money off gas than the oil companies is no where near correct. The federal gas tax is 18 cents PER GALLON and the state tax varies from 8 to 32 cents again PER GALLON. So with gas now being $3.75 per gallon the government gets about 50 cents depending on where you live while the oil companies get the remaining $3.25.
If your talking about the profits that the local gas station makes then you are right.

Roberta, while I totally agree something needs to be done and done soon, I don't agree with your methods. You are talking about insane increases to promote alternative sources of energy, fine. Those won't happen overnight, what happens in the mean time to everyone who can not afford your high priced fuel. Which brings up the chaos and anarchy your prices would throw the entire world into. You didn't address that earlier, how are you going to avoid and solve that?

Randy, I'm talking profit not gross. The best as I can determine from doing a bit of internet research is that the typical oil company, such as Exxon or BP, makes 6 to 8 cents profit per gallon. The rest of the money are costs such as distribution, purchasing crude, advertising, refining, etc. As such I'll stand by my statement that the government is making more off a gallon of gas than the oil company.

Bob, that's probably true on the sales side of the equation. But look at your list of costs--it includes "purchasing crude". Who do the big guys buy it from? Themselves! The refining subsidiaries buy it from the E&P subsidiaries. At the current oil prices, the cost of production is much less per barrel than the price of oil. OTOH, the "E" (exploration) side of E&P is horribly expensive, and that cost needs to be amortized from the production revenues...

Looking at the numbers for ExxonMobil on their Wikipedia page: It says they produce 3.9 million barrels per day, and have a "net income" (which I presume is equivalent to profit) of $30.4 billion in 2010. Doing the math $30.4 billion divided by (3.9 million barrels per day x 365 days/year) = $21.4 dollars per barrel of "net income" (profit). There are 42 gallons in a barrel, so that is just under $0.51 per gallon (of crude) in profit. Of course one gallon of crude doesn't make a gallon of gasoline, so it's hard to compare directly with prices at the pump, but their profit looks to be on the same order of magnitude as the taxes... Not much more or much less.

-Paul

I have worked for the oil industry for 30+ years, don't believe what they say about their profit margin. Exxon recently paid their outgoing CEO Lee Raymond a $400 million dollar Golden Parachute package. He was the leader for 12 years, that amount comes to $91 thousand dollars a day (7 days a week) BONUS for every day he was there for 12 years (in addition to his regular salary). They don't pay out that kind of money on "6 to 8 cents profit per gallon"! (Unless you interpret profit as after all expenses including pay, bonuses, Board of Directors, shareholders etc.)
Anyways this is getting off track from the original comments about feasibility of Bio-fuels.