Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] gas prices

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] gas prices
  • Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 12:51:09 EDT

The biodiesel, methane, natural gas perspective of motor fuel leaves out one
important factor. I suppose if a homesteader devoted a few acres to
dedicated
oil production with rapeseed or sunflowers, processed the oil himself, and
used it for his own motorfuel, my comment would be moot. Maybe, anyway.

But any alternative fuel that begins to get wider acceptance changes the
dynamics like a giant Rubic's Cube and the very thing that made if feasible
often
is moved out of the picture forever.

A very small percent of our motorfuel comes from ethanol at present. I can't
find the current figures so I will use old ones for way of illustration and
stand corrected if someone has more accurate ones. Something on the order
of
3% of the motor fuel in the US was ethanol, most often blended in gasoline.
A
push has been underway for the past few years to increase that percentage and
what with corn, biomass, and ethanol fuel being subsidized and popularized,
we bid fair to make that rate 5% of all our motor fuel.

And increasing the fuel supply by only 2%, what has been the effect? Two
years ago feed corn here abouts was $2.85 per 50#. Now it's $6.15. The
price
of corn has caused economic hardships in Mexico where it is the most
important
staple. Wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice are increasing in price as acreage
is being taken out of production to grow corn. All that by just shooting
for an 2% increase in the share of ethanol in our motor fuel.

How many times have you heard that the solution for transportation fuel is to
just stop by the fast food restaurants and get their used fryer oil. Sure,
people have cut their diesel fuel bill to almost nothing doing that. The
first
person in an area to do it, that is. And maybe the first half dozen or score
of people depending on how populous the area. But what if 5% of the people
wanted to power their vehicles on used fryer oil? All available oil would be
gone in the first five minutes and the price would be higher than gasoline.

Likewise with (purchased) methane, propane, and natural gas. As long as it
is the occasional oddball running his car on natural gas, there is some
savings
to be realized. But what if half, or only10% of the people switched to
natrual gas vehicles? The price would suddenly exceed gasoline and the price
of
cooking, heating, industrial gas would shoot up just as the price of corn
has.
Also, since natural gas is used to make nitrogen fertilizer, the price of
fertilizer would go up, the cost of raising corn would go up, the price of
ethanol
would go up, and where has it all gotten you?

Then there's this: Do the math honestly. Let's take the figure from the
list that you could get 100 gallons of oil from an acre of soybeans. Let's
suppose you manage to get 20 miles per gallon and town is 20 miles away. So,
says
you, I could grow an acre of soybeans, limit my travels to one trip to town a
week, and not worry about the price of gasoline! Right. But if you limited
yourself to one tip to town a week, why would you worry about the price of
gasoline anyway? If gas goes from its present $3 a gallon to a likely $5 a
gallon, that's four more bucks for a trip to town. $200 a year. Is that
going to
be a deal breaker? So the trick is to limit the driving rather than obtain
an alternate fuel. Anyone can do that already.

Fuel and its price is dynamic. It's not possible to identify an alternate
fuel at its present cost and imagine that if everyone used it, the price
would
stay the same. </HTML>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page