by dissident » Tue 06 Mar 2012, 21:32:57
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 't')here's that old EROEI buggaboo again. if it cost more energy to compress the energy than there is no energy left over for mom and the kids and the dog. and the mall.
but then we don't know because, no one has felt the need to engage in a robust, boundry-controlled recursive, life-cycle study of the NG tranport-fuel energy account. Until then, history tells us that natural gas will always be more expensive than liquid petroleum as the primary transport fuel. Why? Because the necessary infrastructure ([pipelines especially) were never built when the petroleum was cheap. Now if we had NG backhoes, excavators, tractors, bulldozers things might be different.
Burning natural gas in internal combustion engines is the definition of idiocy. To extract more energy out of it, which is what we want to be doing on the downslope of Hubbert's curve, it makes sense to burn it in combined cycle power plants (56% efficiency) and use the resulting electricity for electric drive vehicles. One could argue that gasoline is wasted in IC engines too, but I have not heard of any combined cycle oil power plants. We see how the discussion always revolves around BAU. The notion of retiring the inefficient IC engine is just too radical. Reality will teach us real good, and soon.