Wouldn't coal make airplanes really heavy*?

David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, seems to think that coal is the answer for high fuel prices in the airline industry. 

Instead of scaling back on costs, Neeleman said he is investing in methanol research. Methanol is fuel made from coal and while it has less energy per gallon than both ethanol – the corn-based fuel touted by President George Bush in his State of the Union address – it is also significantly less expensive.

“We should be able to make fuel out of coal,” said Neeleman, who blames high oil prices, the Florida hurricanes and Hurricane Katrina for the airline’s financial woes. “People are figuring out a way to do it right now.”

*The title is a joke.  I read the story and I'm picturing this...on an airplane.

Comments

[odograph]

did you see the similar bit from the air force?

"According to Dr. Sega, the Air Force is also looking at alternative sources of energy, from potential conversion of natural gas or coal to jet fuel, to increased use of renewable energy sources."

There are still laggards out there discussing if "peak oil" is real ... but discussion of coal-powered airplanes seems to cinch it.

[Tim Haab]

Odo,

I don't know about peak oil, but I know that higher prices make people look elsewhere. To me, peak oil is only an issue if the economic model fails--alright the ball is sitting on the tee, swing away.

Higher oil prices are a good thing...creating the proper incentives for investment in alternative technologies and creating the incentive for conservation. Peak oil becomes a problem if policies are put in place to prevent price adjustments.

[odograph]

I suppose I have to back up because "peak oil" has a few geological and engineering definitions, and then is attached to a few more predicted scenarios (possible futures) based to various degrees on that geology and engineering.

My view is that this is like any other field of prediction (remember the threads on GDP?) and suffers when people offer a false sense of precision or accuracy.

My take, after two years surfing this news, pretty much matches the one presented by Peter Tertzakian in his book "A Thousand Barrels a Second." Anyone who as read that will have a better sense of my (provisional) worldview than any blog comment can convey.

For me, peak oil is a fuzzy concept, and true in the fuzzy sense that business as usual (an oil based transportation economy) is unlikely to prevail for another 10 or 20 years.

Airlines looking at coal, and GM running ethanol TV campaigns, seem to cinch that for me.

I think we are in the initial stages of a transition ... while some laggards say "huh, what transition?"

Now, how "bad" will this transition get? That's the worst kind of prediction to make. It's one of those places where a "best" prediction from available evidence must still be given a low judgement of confidence.

So, like the GDP predictions, the easiest thing is predict more of the same ... more companies (and countries) casting about for alternative fuels, and more companies (and countries) suffering (like GM?) when they don't plan it just right.

[odograph]

BTW, Pete and I don't believe in silver bullets, so the superficial optimism that higher prices will yield them ... flys for me about as well as an airplane with a coal hopper ;-)

[Dano]

Not that I disagree with your assertions, odo, but:

Airlines looking at coal, and GM running ethanol TV campaigns, seem to cinch that for me.

Another possibility is big ag trying to create a more profitable market.

Best,

D

[Duncan Brown]

The ideology of "peak oil" (a nightmare vision of demand-supply "imbalances," in which neither the quanty demanded nor the quantity supplied changes signficantly as the price doubles--or more!) has been seen before. I remember the 1970s, when all of the smart money believed that oil prices were heading for $100! And that energy was somehow different from other commodities.

In the 80s we explored lots of alternative energy sources (including methanol from coal gasification). We also started driving all those cute little Japanese cars. And we imposed markets in previously price controlled natural gas and oil.

The current price is propped up by all of the hurricane damage in the Gulf (which is still being repaired), and the lost production in Iraq (and by a risk premium in oil futures markets due to the Iraq adventure and other destabilizing events).

We have short memories in America.

[odograph]

I was thinking the other day about a break-table conversation from 20 years ago. A guy was describing what his brother did for a living (actually, to make a very nice living). At the time, he was getting out of the environmental cleanup business, and getting into the savings and loan cleanup business. This would have been in the mid-80's.

The guy (the brother) was obviously an operator, had federal contacts, and knew that whatever "problem" the government perceived, they would be spending money to solve it.

So of course, now, operators will be heading into alternative energy. That doesn't prove or disprove the problem ... but unfortunately it does create confusion.

[odograph]

Duncan, I think your disproof is itself a proof.

For peak oil to be a concern, all it would have to be is a repeat of the same sort of difficulties we faced in the past, in the 70's and 80's.

We have short memories in America.

[Duncan Brown]

I think a lot of snake oil solutions (e.g., ethanol fuel) get sold politically because they can be touted as "renewable," even though their net economic benefits are negative. The US Congress likes to spend money and loves subsidies to business in their territories.

My favorite example of this is the Farm Lobby, which has turned the Depression-era sustem of temporary price supports into a permanent program of subsidies (which never can be abandoned because Congressmen think , correctly, that they'll be thrown out).

These groups push continually for higher support prices, and subsidies to more and more crops. The programs become sacred and inviolate.

The emerging energy crisis is largely such a beast. In the Carter Administration already we poured billions of dollars into losing technology bets (like oil shale) and established a whole new cabinet deparment (the DOE) with a multibillion dollar budget. But that didn't lick the problem, did it?

So, when I hear a member of Congress talk about the latest "crisis" I hold on to my wallet.

[Duncan Brown]

To clarify, Odo--That is not to say that the federal government shouldn't do basic research to make new energy technoologies available. Just not subsidize the production of ethanol or wind or nukkes or any other form or energy.

[Tim Haab]

Odo,

I'm not sure I follow. Since when is skepticism proof of the opposite? If I read your comment correctly, you offer Duncan's disbelief of peak oil as evidence that peak oil is a concern. Am I misinterpreting?

[odograph]

I try to take an averaged view of this, sampling across the information sources, and trying to weigh each one by its merits. That's a messy process because this is a messy population response.

I think maybe the lesson from Tertzakian is not to sweat the details, but to look at the big numbers: 220 million cars on the road, average fuel economy 20-something mpg, 400 million gallons of gasoline consumed each day.

That is a huge system, and given that we didn't change it post-Carter, there isn't a heck of a lot we (whether you judge "we" as consumers or as government) can do about it.

The big secret no one wants to tell you is that a price crunch will probably come before anyone's programs change those big numbers, and therefore we will have a market adjustment. We will have (some degree of) creative destruction.

I'm not ready to make government a bogyman on this because, without a time machine, they have as few options as anyone else.

IMO they can't even say what they think about oil supplies, without their comments killing of GM for sure, and maybe Ford.

[odograph]

BTW, on what they say ... a recent Corps. of Engineers paper said:

"The oil market will remain fairly stable in the very near term, but with steadily increasing prices as world production approaches its peak. The doubling of oil prices from 2003-2005 is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Oil production is approaching its peak; low growth in availability can be expected for the next 5 to 10 years."

- more here

There is some discussion amongst the (more moderate) peak oil folks, about whether this report was released, or if it escaped ;-)

[odograph]

Tim, I'm out of sequence here.

I was just picking up on one thread of Duncan's conversation. That was (to be a little rough) "history disproves that we can have oil shocks to our economy .. just look at the last oil shocks for proof."

[odograph]

Quad post:

Am I right in thinking that biologists can be trusted to count fish, but that geologists cannot be trusted to count oil?

;-)

[Duncan Brown]

Odo, What I really said was this:

"The ideology of "peak oil" (a nightmare vision of demand-supply "imbalances," in which neither the quanty demanded nor the quantity supplied changes signficantly as the price doubles--or more!) has been seen before. I remember the 1970s, when all of the smart money believed that oil prices were heading for $100! And that energy was somehow different from other commodities."

In my second comment (above), in response to your first one or two, I voiced the worrry that the energy crisis will lead to solutions that become political sacred cows Like the farm subsidies, which are hideously expsnsive and environmentally damaging and olictically inviolate.

"So, [I said] when I hear a member of Congress talk about the latest "crisis" I hold on to my wallet."

hard to

[odograph]

I am a moderate on this, and I think I reacted to your painting "peak oil" at one extreme (as "a nightmare vision") by painting it the other way (as another category of "oil shock").

There is a continuum here, ranging from happy (a return to 39 cent gas?), through moderate positions (perhaps just a continuation of status qua, or a gradual tightening). All that before we get to the most extreme, the nightmare vision.

Call it a scale of 0..100, and put the nightmare out there at 100.

That doesn't disprove that we'll hit 5 ... 10 ... or 20.

And of course grabbing your wallet might be a good instinctive move ;-), but it doesn't really tell you whether the Army Corps of Engineers has it right or not, about this bit:

"The doubling of oil prices from 2003-2005 is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future."

[Robert Schwartz]

"suffers when people offer a false sense of precision or accuracy."

you mean like the princeton professor who announced that it had occured on December 16?

[odograph]

December 16?

If he is serious, certainly. If he is using the date as an instructional aid ... I guess we'll see how well that works out.

FWIW, I think people now wish they could localize "peak oil" to a month or year ... but that people looking back will call it as a decade or two, like we do the 70's and 80's oil shocks.

[Duncan Brown]

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." Those words should ring hollow to intelligent people everywhere. Why does Odo believe that the Corps of Engineers has some special claim on infallibility (in the Core report he has found forecasting the futute of oil prices? It's not their mission anyway. Their mission is to plow up wetlands and build dams. (Which, BTW they're not that good at--Look what they did to New Orleans!)

[odograph]

PS. there are some interesting mathematics behind that date. Hubbert's equations (as used by Deffeyes and others) arguably do provide the best reduction of the production data now available.

It's just that the production data now available isn't perfect, and it isn't the only wild card in play.

[odograph]

Did I really say the Corps has a special claim on infallibility?

Why on earth would you put some silly claim like that into my mouth?

[Duncan Brown]

Odo, I didn't put them in your mouth. You did. Your earlier comment said exactly this:

"BTW, on what they say ... a recent Corps. of Engineers paper said:"

"The oil market will remain fairly stable in the very near term, but with steadily increasing prices as world production approaches its peak. The doubling of oil prices from 2003-2005 is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Oil production is approaching its peak; low growth in availability can be expected for the next 5 to 10 years."

[odograph]

I've been off on a nice outing ... and I expected something better than this when I got back. Quoting one source, after saying:

"I try to take an averaged view of this, sampling across the information sources, and trying to weigh each one by its merits. That's a messy process because this is a messy population response."

... is obviously not "say[ing] the Corps has a special claim on infallibility."

[Duncan Brown]

Sorry if I overinterpreted you, Odo. I don't want to poison the debate with anger like that. My apologies.