I'm still here!

I bet you think that I've quit because I've run out of things to write about - but that is a lie! I have had a great time with this little piece of work so far and I will be back. It's just that life has not allowed me much time for this lately. And I have to say that it's not looking good for the next few weeks, either. I'm leaving for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Northern Minnesota for 4 days and then will be in San Diego for a work conference for 4 more days. So I will try to get some typing in while in San Diego, but I can't promise that I'd rather be indoors than out while I'm there. I know, it's not the best start for this newbie, but I do promise to be back, so keep checking in (please?).

Peace

Yum...diesel!

In 2005, transportation accounted for 28 percent of energy consumption in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). It came in just behind industry, at 32 percent, and ahead of residential and commercial (22 and 18 percent respectively). We expend about 28 QUADRILLION British thermal units of energy per year on transportation. Wow! That is something I feel completely unable to connect to any sort of reference point. It is astonishing that those quadrillions are only a fraction of U.S. energy consumption. But they are an important fraction and a place where there is space for some innovative reduction.

There is something sort of exciting going on in the transportation market right now in the U.S. I'm not talking about the introduction of the Hummer H7 Hybrid. I am talking about the utlra-low-sulfer diesel fuel requirement that will take effect on October 15 of this year. What does this mean?

1). The main benefit of the low-sulfer fuel is that it allows diesels to be outfitted with pollution-reducing technologies like particulate matter filters and oxidation catalysts. Basically, less soot and garbage spewing from the tailpipe. Fewer obnoxious fumes. Good times.

2). The diesel car market in the U.S. can grow significantly. They are already using "clean" diesel in Europe, where diesel car sales are expected to surpass gasoline this year. Making this kind of diesel available at U.S. pumps means that the Euros will need to make very few modifications to sell them over here. Check out some of the new models here and here.

3). You won't be able to buy a new diesel Volkswagen in the 2006 or 2007 model years and some other manufacturers are likely to take the year off as well. Most are taking these two years to refine their designs for the 2008 model year.

4). My fondest dream - the introduction of the diesel hybrid - may finally become a reality.

Right now, driving a diesel can be somewhat of a moral trade-off situation. Do I care more about air pollution or global warming? When I bought my Beetle TDI, I chose global warming. Diesel fuel just has a lot more concentrated energy in it than gasoline, resulting in amazing mileage - anywhere from 40 to 50 miles per gallon. Right now I'm avoiding the moral dilemma during the summer by using 99% biodiesel and getting significant reductions in pollution along with decent milage. Mileage is reduced a little with biodiesel, closer to 35 or 40 mpg. Still pretty fabulous compared to the majority of U.S. cars. But nobody's figured out the magic ingredient that will allow one to use it over the course of a Midwestern winter without it turning to butter. Diesels are talked about quite a lot as an alternative to a hybrid. But what about combining these technologies for a super-mileage vehicle?

Way back in 2005 General Motors worked with DaimlerChrysler on a diesel hybrid concept car called the Opel Astra - a sedan that got about 59 mpg. Volkswagon's diesel-electric prototype, engineered around that same time period, achieved 118 miles per gallon. Mercedes, Ford, Nissan and PSA Peugeot Citroen have also struggled to design a doable diesel-hybrid concept car. I'm sure that list isn't exhaustive, but the interest of major auto makers indicates that it's an idea with market merit.

Unfortunately, current costs for these cars are keeping them stuck in the concept stage. Some estimates put them at $8,000 to $10,000 above a conventional diesel. Conventional diesel cars already cost about 10% more than gasoline cars, so herein lies the problem. If you're dealing with a high-cost item, like a transit bus, then it's a smaller increase as a percentage of the price. Hence, the technology has already hit the road, so to speak, in that market. But adding $8,000 to a $30,000 vehicle, just for example, is a 27% price increase. That hurts. It's almost un-American, if you ask me.

But just to be reasonable about this, let's do some calculations. My VW New Beetle TDI gets 45 mpg (my estimate) with conventional diesel. If mileage for a diesel hybrid was in the middle of the two examples above, I could expect 90 mpg. That's doubling my efficiency. Diesel is at a nationwide average of $3.03 per gallon this week. Assuming 30,000 miles driven in one year, you'd save about $1,000 in fuel costs per year. If the hybrid costs $8,000 more upfront, that's 8 long years to make up your initial investment, compared to a conventional diesel.

What about compared to a gasoline vehicle? Gas is at $2.97 this week. A New Beetle with a gasoline engine gets an average of 26.5 mpg according to the VW website. Assuming also 30,000 miles on this car, a diesel hybrid would save you $2,350 per year in fuel costs. It pays off in a much shorter 3.4 years. But is it worth it? I'm curious. This calls for one final comparison:

A brand new VW New Beetle with a gas engine is listed at $17,180. A new VW New Beetle TDI is $18,900. The website specs say the TDI gets an average of 40.5 mpg, which seems low, but we'll go with it. All other assumptions as above, you save $1,100 per year and recoup your extra cost in 1.6 years and don't have to worry about ever replacing an expensive battery pack. From a consumer's standpoint, this is by far a better deal with a benefit that keeps on giving. If you drive your car for 10 years, you've saved $11,000 in fuel. And that's assuming prices remain around $3.00 per gallon, which seems highly unlikely. At $4.00 per gallon, your 10-year savings would be closer to $16,000.

However, this whole question is about a whole lot more than you and me and our Gucci knock-off purses/wallets. There are those bigger moral questions I mentioned above - what about global warming? And what about air pollution? And, you know, what about when all the oil is almost gone? I'm personally really disinterested in World War III (the Oil War) if one can believe we haven't yet gone there.

A 2003 MIT study found that investing with a vengeance in diesel hybrid technology could result, by 2020, in a class of cars twice as efficient and half as polluting as today's gasoline hybrids. The same study found that hydrogen - emphasized by the current administration as the answer - could not achieve these same results over this time period.

I am not complaining without a resolution. Here is one last, I promise the last, calculation. At $4.00 per gallon, a diesel hybrid would save $3,200 per year in fuel costs over a conventional gasoline engine- erasing the $10,000 premium ($2,000 extra for diesel and $8,000 for the hybrid) in a little over 3 years of driving. Increasing the gas tax could get us there. A subsidy similar to what we've seen for gasoline hybrids wouldn't hurt either. Or, for a more labor-intensive approach, we could take an in-depth look at the ways current U.S. government policies distort the oil market through tax breaks and subsidies and make changes where necessary.

Demand drives the market and manufacturers will bring these cars online if there is enough interest. That intesest won't arise until fuel prices reach a certain level. It seems to me to be a moral imperative to allow the market to move, or to drive it if necessary, in the direction of sustainability. MIT tells us that diesel hybrids are the fastest way there.

I'm sure the opinion above would not get me invited to a White House dinner. There are macroeconomic arguments to be made in the short run. But weigh these against the possibility of losing polar bears and coral reefs in our generation, against the toll of war, and against doing nothing. How does that make the world look, 50 years from now? How does it look if you choose the change? A temporary increase in energy prices does not the downfall of a society make. And 50 years from now, I believe our grandchildren would certainly be thanking us for the sacrifice we made, for them.

The Siksika Project

An hour east of the Canadian city of Calgary is the Siksika Nation - a First Nations people numbering about 6,000. One tribe in the larger Blackfoot Confederacy, the Siksika ceded their land to Queen Victoria of Britain in Treaty Number 7 on the 22nd of September, 1877.

The treaty reads like an awful, legalese-laden eulogy:

And whereas the said Commissioners have proceeded to negotiate a Treaty with the said Indians; and the same has been finally agreed upon and concluded as follows, that is to say : the Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan, Sarcee, Stony and other Indians inhabiting the district hereinafter more fully described and defined, do hereby cede, release, surrender, and yield up to the Government of Canada for Her Majesty the Queen and her successors for ever, all their rights, titles, and privileges whatsoever to the lands included.

The Siksika Nation did lose the right to its way of life that day. But it was just the signature on an already-issued death certificate. The buffalo economy - the foundation of the Nation's livelihood - was on the verge of collapse, and did soon after the signing. The newly poor Nation turned to farming the reservation allotted in the treaty. It is, tragically, not an atypical history for a Native American people, but let's jump the timeline 130 years ahead.

In 1994, the Canadian Parliament authorized the First Nation Oil and Gas Management initiative (FNOGM); all oil and gas resources on the lands of three First Nation communities, including the Siksika Nation, were to be under Tribal control and management by 2005. In that year, Parliament secured the transfer of control through additional national legislation. An estimate from 2001 put the fair market value of the resources controlled by the Siksika Nation at $25.0 million. Control of these resources and revenues over the past eleven years, and unmatched creativity, has driven the Siksika Nation to invest in ways that have made it a model for communities worldwide.

Immediately upon its entry into the FNOGM, the Siksika Nation formed a private oil and gas company, Siksika Energy Resources Corporation, to generate revenue from the processing of its own natural resources. The Nation also founded a private economic development corporation to oversee business investments, ensuring that decisions were both economically sound and made in the best interest of the Nation's people. The corporation wisely re-invests profits with an eye toward capital to replace the depletion of energy resources over time. A spin-off company from the energy takeover, Siksika Environmental Limited, provides field and consulting services to the community, industry and government, and recently formed a partnership with indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon to assist them in dealing with the repercussions of petroleum development. In 2000, the Nation installed fiber optic cable to supply high-speed internet to the entire community with the goal of generating opportunities for high-tech jobs.

Just this month, the Siksika Nation announced another innovative project: a partnership between the A4 Bar Cattle Company, a limited liability corporation chaired by Alan J. Wolfleg of the Siksika Nation, and Hybrid Fuels (Canada) Inc. Energy of a different sort - the renewable variety - is one goal of this venture. This cutting-edge idea seems to fit flawlessly into the Nation's goals, values and areas of expertise.

Hybrid Fuels' website summarizes the Siksika A4 Bar Farm Operations Project as an attempt to "integrate cattle feeding-to-finish with the production of wet ethanol" (ethanol in liquid form). A shareholder group is financing the facility construction, Hybrid Fuels is supplying the technical expertise and A4 Bar Cattle Company, the livestock.

The facility will have four major parts: a cattle barn, an ethanol plant, a gasifier/burner and a hydroponic barley grass-growing system. The grass growing system is estimated to be the equivalent of 1,600 acres of grasslands. It will be contained in the same unit as the barn, which will be designed to hold 200 livestock at a time and finish the cattle in a 100 to 120-day feeding cycle. The livestock will not be given hormones or antibiotics and, when finished, will be sold at auction.

The cattle will not be made to survive on grass alone. The ethanol production process generates a couple of byproducts, known commonly as distiller's mash and stillage water. The mash has a high protein concentration and will be combined with the stillage water and grass to concoct a delicious bovine casserole. It's an often-cited issue in ethanol production that the energy used to ship the byproducts to where they can be consumed is a wasteful part of the process. When cows and ethanol plants are neighbors, as in this case, this issue disappears.

Another way this operation beats traditional ethanol facilities' efficiency is energy production. Used bedding and manure from the cattle pens will be burned in the gasifier/burner to create the energy necessary to operate both the ethanol plant and the hydroponic grass system reducing fossil fuel usage. The two big inputs into the system are barley - the ethanol feedstock - and cattle. The estimated outputs include: 3,000 liters (about 792 gallons) of ethanol per day, 2,400 finished cattle in a year, and a megawatt of electricity.

As a whole, both the processes and products of this operation appear to be superior to conventional practice. The final fate of the ethanol is as an additive to conventional diesel fuel. Studies show that a mixture with 10% ethanol can reduce diesel emissions of asthma-exacerbating particulate matter by 65%, smog-causing Nitrous Oxide by 22% and poisonous Carbon Monoxide by 20%. By lowering fossil-energy inputs, the operation also allows the ethanol produced to be closer to carbon-neutral and may assist a bit in curbing global warming.

In 1877, the world of the Siksika Nation was inescapably altered by a wave of European settlement they could not control. Soon, the forces of energy scarcity and global warming will put much of the world in a similarly out-of-control situation. This one operation will not, on its own, alter energy and food production markets. But this experiment may show us what's ahead, or what ought to be.

Having lost everything once, the choices of the Siksika Nation seem to have been made with a strong and knowing eye on the distant future. This First Nation's innovations in government, business and environmental management should not be its only contributions. The world would do well to take a look at all that could be gained through adoption of the Nation's self-imposed responsibility as caretaker of the land and of the future.

Entrance to the Field (bad pun intended!)

It's time to get disciplined about information and its dissemination.

I'm thinking about a change of course. I've always loved to write. I'm a research nerd. I love policy, politics, analysis, dissection. And I'm thinking about trying my hand at some freelance journalism. I thought I needed a place to work on ideas and pieces where I can publish myself without fear of an editor's rejection letter. So here it is.

Urban Farm Girl is where I'm at right now - my heart is with rural America. My passions revolve around the environment, energy and how ag plays into all of this. Where is rural America today - where has it gone since I was a child? And what will become of it? My body is in the city, where I plan to stay. And the two work together inside my heart and brain in a way that makes them intertwine in my intellect as well. That's as good an explanation as I can give.