Thread: Cheap diesel for my Disco, but the Gov't won't invest.

Originally Posted by Laurie

With the Gov't just giving $35M to Toyota, even though they didn't ask for it. They were so quick to look "green" they wasted our money, when an investment in this process would help the transport, maritime industries to compete with cheap imports and protect jobs.
This extract is from The Daily Telegraph.\
"Dr Jensen, originally from South Africa, didn’t dwell on negatives, he leapfrogged Labor’s nihilistic debate and asked why Australia is not investing in the Sasol oil-from-coal process which his native country was forced to rely on when South Africa was subjected to trade sanctions which cut its energy supplies.

According to Dr Jensen, the process, which uses the Fischer-Tropsch process, developed prior to World War II, was used by Germany to produce synthetic fuel during the war.

Largely ignored by the rest of the world during the era of cheap fuel, it produces an extremely clean fuel and in the current climate is extremely cheap - producing oil for between $27 and $55 a barrel.

Might be a good thing for OZ, Wonthaggi might open up the mines again

This might answer your question
John
For Earth, a carbon price is priceless
Date: June 16 2008

Ben McNeil
There has been a frenzy of populist political arguments over petrol and whether a carbon price should be imposed on the hurting Australian motorist.

Some politicians seem to think the high global oil price is already doing the job on greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging more efficient use of fuel.

Oil prices have indeed doubled in a year, and unleaded fuel in Sydney has jumped 31 cents - so why impose an extra carbon price? Although you might think high petrol prices would automatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, it may do the opposite.
The point of introducing a carbon price across all sectors of the economy is not only to increase energy efficiency but also to drive investment and production of low-carbon alternative fuels. Cars, trucks and aircraft can only get so much efficiency gain over a certain time. A lot of oil will still be needed in the coming decade as we move to a low-carbon economy. So where will the oil come from? With oil at $US135 a barrel, new investments in unconventional sources of oil become attractive. But without a carbon price on fuel there is no incentive for directing these new investments toward fuels that emit less carbon. So high oil prices without a separate carbon price on fuel could result in oil production moving to worse alternatives.
Before World War II Adolf Hitler knew he was short on supplies of the most important commodity for any army: oil. Without domestic oil production, how was Hitler going to fuel his trucks, aircraft, submarines and tanks? However, Germany did have tremendous amounts of coal reserves - so the Nazis hastened the unconventional technology of making oil from coal. The technology was perfected, and virtually all of the aviation fuel used by German aircraft and half its total oil use during the war came from coal-to-oil technology. Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel, and Australia has one of the largest reserves. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says coal-to-oil production is seven to eight times the carbon emissions of conventional oil - and that is before you burn it in your car. The World Coal Institute estimates this sort of unconventional oil production is economic at $US25 to $US45 a barrel - well below the global oil price. Higher oil prices will result in more investment into coal-to-oil production.
We are already seeing investment into this area in Australia. Monash Energy plans to build a $5 billion plant converting brown coal into diesel in Victoria. Without a carbon price on fuel there would be no economic reason for a company like Monash Energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its coal-to-diesel plant.
Canada is experiencing the dilemma Australia will face if a carbon price is not included on fuel. Oil sands are a mixture of sand, water and sticky oil that need enormous amounts of heat to extract usable quantities of conventional oil.
Reserves of oil sands in Canada are equivalent to 174 billion barrels of oil, making it the second largest reserve after that of Saudi Arabia. Canadian oil sand production becomes economically viable once oil reaches $US30 a barrel. Considering the price of oil, there has been huge investment in oil-sand production over the past decade. Production is more than 1 million barrels a day, with some forecasting fourfold expansion by 2030. Oil sands in Canada are three to four times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional oil, and that is why Canada's greenhouse emissions have surged over the past decade. Canada is yet to impose a carbon price within its economy - and without including it in transport it can expect emissions to grow more rapidly in the future.
High oil prices in the absence of imposing a carbon price on fuel will drive Australian coal-to-oil production, like oil sands in Canada, so as to fill the void of dwindling conventional oil supplies. A carbon price in transport is critical to avoid this and to create new investment in Australia's low carbon economic future - whether it is next-generation cellulosic biofuels, battery technology, fuel cells or plug-in electric cars.
If you think that the global oil market and the high petrol price has solved greenhouse emissions in transport, think again. It could result in a far worse greenhouse gas nightmare in Australia.
Dr Ben McNeil is a senior fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre, University of NSW.

This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
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So why not use the real green technology - nuclear energy - which is completely carbon free, clean, and in almost limitless supply. And Australia has 40% of the world's known reserves.

Then we can concentrate on making cars that use energy that can be generated by electricity eg, electric cars, hydrogen powered cars, or the idea that some researchers at Deakin University in Geelong came up with, cars powered by compressed air. (Actually, I think this is a pretty neat idea, running a car on compressed air. I wonder where it goes, and how it develops.)

Then we could also develop nuclear technology and sell it to the world, and help the world out of its growing enrgy crisis - and all without a significant carbon footprint!

Willem

I agree with Willem, nuclear is the way to go.
Also for future economic space flight. Most of the activity going on in the
universe is either gravity or nuclear related ?
Can be dangerous if not handled or controlled carefully, but its not a
problem to do that correctly. The japs live side by side with it quite
happily and they know a bit about it.
I wouldn't give a hoot if they built one next to me, in fact, I would like
to have some property to rent them, that they could build one on !!!
The fear mostly stems from the cold war era and all the hype that we
endured back then.
There have been a few nasty accidents all of which could have been
avoided.
Personally I think I would have more to fear if union carbide wanted to
build a chemical plant in my area.
Cheers.

PS: That little Jittny that the Jetsons had was nuclear powered, wasn't
it ?

If people love nuclear so much they should go and move into one of the vacant housing estates at Chernobyl. Chernobyl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Why don't they just fire up the coal to oil plant that ran in Morwell in the '80s?

It's not so much loving nuclear, that would be silly.
Its a matter of looking at the issues in a rational manner.
This is near impossible these days because it's a frightening and emotional
issue. Have a look around the world and see where nuclear is being used,
so far in a safe and responsible manner. It's used in large quantities.
I for one am pleased that there is a nuclear medicine industry.
Who complains about that ?
The Lucas Heights reactor has reached it's use by date and has to be decommisioned. It will be a great shame if it's not replaced somewhere else.
Now we must ask ourself what our emmision rates would be here, if we
didn't have coal fired power plants. They are the greatest contributer
to green house gas emmissions. Sure they have grandiose plans and
hype that they will pipe it underground, but where and when and what
will we have to suffer in the meantime ?
If we replaced them over time with new modern reactors, what would our
carbon trading scheme look like and would we need to have as many
as have now.

A recession wont effect me much but this carbon trading scheme frightens
the life out of me. The cost of fuel and everything else is going to blow out. I think our lifestyle as we know it is going to take a severe battering.

Whenever nuclear is mentioned, people scream Chenobyl Chenobyl.
Well that was a disaster that should not have happened, no doubt about it, but what were the facts. Human error and an outdated, old and poor design. There was a movie with Jane Fonda and the Douglas boy showing
a near disaster brought about by coporate greed, this has to be guarded against and not just in the nuclear industry as its happening all the time.
Following Chenobyl and One Mile Island etc. have lessons been learnt ?
Of course they have, the designs of reactors and recognition of their useby dates have changed the whole industry.

Howard said lets go nuclear, so he was asked where will we put it, he said, where they are most needed. Sounded reasonable and worth looking
into but the next day the Doomsayers were screaming, he's gunna put
a reactor NEXT TO YOU, do you want that, think of your kids and so on.
Well can somebody tell me where NEXT TO YOU is ? They didn't say,
but of course we understood that it meant Sylvania, Chatswood and Fitzroy, eh.

Then there is somethig else to be investigated.
What about converting coal to liquid fuel to replace some fossil fuel.
That would be great eh, but is it a dirty business emmision wise, to
convert it. Imagine the benifit to us all if we did it on a large scale !! Recharging batteries in hybrid cars is not clean as it uses
coal fired energy to do it, yuk. Desalination plants the same but we need them so we will pay the price and suffer the consequences.
Now could this be achieved cleanly using a nuclear reactor and remember
clean and green is the ultimate the future is going to demand.
Next question, does a reactor need to be placed on a desalination site,
or can Ergon run a cable to it like they have done to my house ?
We know without being told tho that it would put NEXT TO YOU in
Yenora and Collingwood and the gold coast eh.
Gawd help us, we wont investigate it in our lifetime so we will just have to
suffer a melt down of a different sort. Do I care tho, not a bit, as I dont
have much faith in human nature on the whole.
Cheers, I think.

PS: My lettuce and Tomato patch in my backyard, is suffering from acid
rain and coal dust pollution settling on it. Wish I could do something
about it. Guess I'll just have to save up and buy frozen vegies imported
from China, full of clean chemicals eh.

Gee's Robert,, I dunno wether to laugh or cry---

all I know is, nuclear will last forever,
there are already hundreds of them in use,
it IS totally green,

I spuiked natural gas as a car propellant,,
but the naysayers reckon we dont have the infrastucture,,

we have enough gas to run all our vehicles forever,,

why do we rely on oil?