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7 January 2008—At first blush, you might lump claims about a machine that supposedly turns sunshine, air, and water into fuel in the same category as e-mails insisting that someone in Nigeria will pay you handsomely to help free up a large sum of money. But researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, say they have created a device that can break water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight, or in a another reaction convert carbon dioxide, to carbon monoxide that combines with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons such as methanol, ethanol, and even gasoline or diesel fuel. The technology holds the promise of using the same resources as biomass-to-fuel schemes but with potentially greater efficiency, according to the researchers.

The chart above shows domestic fuel prices for Great Britain from 1914 to 2007. The data up to 1985 was compiled by Horace Herring and Rodney Evans using this source and been updated with more recent figures from UK government statistics. It is expressed in UK pounds for the year 2000, adjusted by the retail price index (i.e the price of energy related to other 'real' goods such as food).

The three primary, longer-term objectives for the nation's energy policy should be: reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level consistent with a world-wide goal of global climate stabilization (assumes curbing U.S. CO2 emissions by 60-80% from current levels by mid-century); eliminate U.S. energy imports (i.e., oil and natural gas - now 58% and 15% respectively), while reducing overall use of oil and natural gas; phase out the current generation of nuclear power while substantially curbing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, by increasing the use of energy efficiency and making a transition to sustainable, environmentally safer renewable energy sources.

Consider the table below, comparing several different vehicle and fuel options. The prices shown are for the week of 7/23/07, to align with a comparable E-85 price. The electricity price is the most recent national average consumer price from the DOE's Electric Power Monthly.

One thing that probably goes without saying. Most pretenders don't believe they are pretenders. They are often completely sincere people who believe they have cracked the code, and thus they take exception to my characterization. The cellulosic guys, the algae guys, and even the hydrogen guys will insist that I have it all wrong. In fact, following the posting of this essay on my blog, I heard from all of them. I got numerous e-mails assuring me that they really had come up with the solution. What I have discovered in many of these cases is that people often believe this because they have no experience at scaling up technologies. They might have something that works in the lab, but this can instill a false sense of confidence in those who have never scaled a process up.

According to the NREL report referenced above, converting biomass into cellulosic ethanol can be done at about a 45% efficiency (i.e. 45% of the energy of the biomass makes it into the fuel.) In contrast, biomass can be converted at 33-37% efficiency [pdf] when cofired. Combining this with the 5x improvement of drivetrain efficiency that comes with electric propulsion, and the same amount of biomass converted to what I'll call "cellulosic electricity" will take a vehicle 3.8x as far as it would in the form of cellulosic ethanol.