Renewable fuels

At the moment I'm drooling to get a Kia Optima PHEV to replace our aging Skoda Octavia TDI.  I'm looking at that model because that is just about the only similar car that has tow mount and relatively large cargo space. We've got two large dogs, after all. The car ain't cheap (and our government's lack of tax breaks worth a crap for hybrids certainly isn't helping), and if I were to do the strict cost/benefit math alone, I'd never, ever choose this car. But this isn't that simple.

But for a moment here, let's go back to current car, Skoda Octavia TDI 1.6, model year 2011. This is one of the "emission cheat" vehicles, and since it was pretty much necessary, I had it emission-fixed. In this case, this meant software update, along with installing of some kind of intake air flow filter that smoothes air flow or something.

The usual expectations were that there would be major loss of power of efficiency. As far as I can tell, neither happened. On the contrary, I haven't noticed any loss of power, and my recent road trip (work-related) actually had my best consumption ever; 3,3l/100km, or about 71-ish US-MPG on return half of the journey. Not too bad. Then again, whenever it's mostly short trips, like typical city driving, mileage seems lower than before; hovering around 6l/100km, so that might have been affected.

But back to the actual topic here;

These days there are news about renewable energy just about everywhere. Biofuel was used to fuel a car, or a plane, or whatever. And it always, with absolutely no exceptions, end up with someone commenting how much land area was used or energy was spent to refine that fuel. Obviously the idea is to compare this about oil-based fuels, where far less energy and/or land area is used.

This comparation is of course completely false. Oil-based fuels have had the energy spent already, millions of years ago. The energy that was spent back then is not renewable, nor is it re-usable, and it will also release lots of carbon now (in a very short period, as opposed to millions of years it took to "refine" it) causing serious damage here and now. Yet, somehow, this apparently doesn't count when comparing against biofuels. Curious, that.

Yes, biofuels do (at this moment) use lots of energy, and take lots of land to produce. But here is the thing; we are even now - when renewable energy is just starting to, well, get started - producing massive amounts of excessive energy with other them - namely solar and wind power. For running the electric grid alone, as it is now, these two types of power are ridiculously bad. They provide the most power then it is needed the least, or essentially at random times, thus needing huge backup supplies - which, at the moment, are mostly coal or LNG, with some hydro thrown in. Aside hydro (which is pretty much at its maximum at the moment anyway), these will just make our situation worse in the long run. So not good.

However, this excess power could be used directly for other purposes - like battery storage (which is seriously expensive), pumped hydro (likewise expensive up front and seriously limited by geography), or -- and I seriously like this idea - refining biomass for fuels whenever there is excess power.

Yes, it will still use a lots of land, but the thing is, there is lots of land that can't produce food suitable for human consumption, for whatever reason, but can still produce biomass. In the past these areas have been used for cattle or grazing, but now we could have a better use for that; biomass for fuels.
That, in my vision, is the future.

It doesn't mean that we get to live like this - wasting energy everywhere like there's no tomorrow  - but at least we get to keep on living, with fairly comfortable lives.

Our western way is using way too much energy, in many forms. Each and every joule we can transfer from harmful fossils to renewables will be net win, in the long run. And that is the reason I want that plug-in hybrid. That'll allow me to reduce my fossil fuel usage (for moving around) by half or so, just by using electricity for those short 10km trips. And if I could get a personal biofuel refinery to go along with my array of solar panels -- well, even better!