Sadly, the Hirsch report is entirely bogus. So I guess any "update" based on it will be so as well. link
I just had a look at the often quoted "Hirsch" report. I find it surprising that the President of the United States points to biofuels as the future for the United States, while this Hirsch report mentions it only in one very short paragraph. Very strange.
How can there be such a discrepancy? I assume that the President has had discussions with countless advisors that went beyond one pityful paragraph. Else he wouldn't stake America's future on biofuels, would he?
So let's have a look at why the Hirsch report is totally bogus on biofuels.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote: VI. MITIGATION OPTIONS AND ISSUES E. Liquid FueIs from U.S. Domestic Resources
PeakOil is You
The Robert L Hirsch Thread (merged)
Re: Scary update from Hirsch
by lorenzo » Wed 03 May 2006, 16:56:16
>already in the title, there's a wrong assumption: biomass does not have to come from U.S. domestic sources; biomass will be traded internationally as it is already being done as we speak.
>see the IEA's Bioenergy Task Force 40, Fair Biotrade, which is entirely devoted to this subject. See the http://www.biomassexchange.com and http://www.bioxchange.com websites for market places that are being created.
>not a single word in the entire Hirsch report refers to international biomass trade. So the entire report loses its credibility, as both the EU, the IEA and bioenergy producing countries recognise that biomass trade will become like the petroleum trade.
>to illustrate this: Brazil is already building a dedicated ethanol pipeline and ocean terminal, for international exports; it has signed deals with Japan and China to export ethanol. / Rotterdam and Ghent are turning their ports into Bioenergy Terminals / Malaysia is building palm oil pipelines.
But let's look at the mistakes the Hirsch report further contains, under this already false assumption.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote:Biomass can be grown, collected and converted to substitute liquid fuels by a number of processes. Currently, biomass-to-ethanol is produced on a large scale to provide a gasoline additive. The market for ethanol derived from biomass is influenced by federal requirements and facilitated by generous federal and state tax subsidies.
>That's true for the U.S. but not for Brazil or Nigeria or Thailand or Malaysia or Congo or Papua New Guinea or Mozambique who will become liquid biofuels exporters. Even the EU has de-subsidized sugar production and has already removed all trade barriers to all the ACP-countries: link
>Since the biofuels market will be like the international petroleum market, with producers exporting and consumers importing, people are looking beyond domestic resources and to international trade. Hirsch doesn't, which disqualifies his report.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote:Research holds promise of more economical ethanol production from cellulosic (“woody”) biomass, but related processes are far from economic.
>False, at US$75 per barrel, cellulosic ethanol is already competitive.
>Brazilian ethanol costs US$ 35 per barrel of oil equivalent
>Unsubsidised Palm biodiesel costs US$ 50/55 per barrel of oil equivalent
>Ordinary and *unsubsidised* Euro-biodiesel based on rapeseed costs US$ 60-65 per barrel of oil equivalent
>Biomass-to-gas is now consistently 20 to 30% cheaper than natural gas
In short, all existing liquid and gaseus biofuels are already cheaper to produce than petroleum at US$ 75 and than natural gas at US$13/14 per MMBTU.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote:Reducing the cost of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass crops will be necessary. In other parts of the world, biomass-to-liquid fuels might be more attractive, depending on a myriad of factors, including local labor costs.
>Remember the row over Cargill's imports of Brazilian ethanol into the U.S.? This says it all: to both Peak Oil fanatics and Hirsch, ethanol is not ethanol when it's not derived from American corn or when it's imported. To them, imported biofuels cannot exist - because it totally undermines their entire hypothesis: link
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote: Related projections for large-scale production would be strictly speculative.
>On the contrary! Of all liquid fuel production projects, bioenergy projects and their potential are the simplest to project precisely because they are based on simple parametres such as land availability, crop yields and fairly straightforward processing and production.
>That is why the EU and the IEA Bioenergy have been projecting global biomass potentials, and that's why they are so optimistic about them.
>I've never seen a single U.S. study about global bioenergy potential and trade. We all know that this is due to the powerful American corn and soy lobbies who want to protect their assets.
>The American taxpayer is being fooled by those lobbies and by some Peak Oil fanatics. There is an alternative, but they are not supposed to know.
>For IEA Bioenergy studies about global biomass potential, please see the website: http://www.ieabioenergy.com/ And the separate task forces there (especially: Task 40: link).
>For the EU's strategy of working together on biofuels with developing countries in the tropics, see: link
[and the links there]
and: http://www.caricom.org/jsp/regional_news/biofuel_eu.jsp
>The EU's Biomass Action Plan even explictly projects a future of international bioenergy trade, whereby the EU imports biofuels from developing countries: link and link
>Finally, both the World Bank and the IMF understand that the future of liquid fuels is in developing countries with huge untapped potential becoming producers and exporters: link
Quick note: when it comes to the EU, we're dealing with a Belgian and his vision. I'm Belgian too; maybe it's because we're such a tiny irrelevant little country that we have a much more objective view on reality:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote: Development Commissioner Louis Michel highlighted the potential opportunities that biofuels production present for developing countries, notably those affected by the sugar reform. “Many developing countries are naturally well placed for the production of biofuel feedstocks, particularly those traditionally strong in sugar production. The expanding EU market for biofuels will provide them with new export possibilities. The EU will help them maximise this opportunity with support for knowledge transfer and development of their market potential.” link
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Q')uote:In summary, there are no developed biomass-to-fuels technologies that are now near cost competitive.
>I assume that this grave mistake is due to the fact that the Hirsch report was written in the 1990s when oil was cheap and plenty; if not, we can only conclude that the writers do not know what they're talking about.
>In today's situation, with oil at US$ 75 per barrel, it would be outright *stupid* not to invest in biofuels, which can be produced at US$35-55 per barrel. Since some people are not stupid, that's exactly what they're doing: investing massively and rapidly in biofuels.
In short, when it comes "mitigation", the Hirsch report is totally useless because it has no grasp of what's going on out there. This might be due to several factors: the fact that it was written a long time ago (1990s?, please do not say 2005, because then we can only conclude that Hirsch is an idiot) incompetence of the authors, censorship, influence of lobbies, who knows.
One thing is certain: the report does not mention either the US President's policy intention of making America's future a bioenergy future, nor of the EU's intentions and those of the developing world.
