Combustion is the breaking of carbon bonds to bond with oxygen, producing carbon dioxide and monoxide. There is no carbon based fuel that isnt 1:1 for energy released vs GHG emitted. Making fuels from plant mass doesnt change that.
The advantage of making fuels from plants isn’t in them burning cleaner, it’s in the fact that growing the plants takes carbon out of the atmosphere. That means that the carbon released upon burning them was carbon that was already recently in the atmosphere, as opposed to being deep underground like it was with fossil fuels
That doesn’t negate the issues of land use changes and similar, but in terms of plain old net carbon emissions they absolutely are better
The caveat of finding “better” methods is that it excuses continuing or expanding the things we do that are the core problems of rapid growth, consumption, and a throwaway society. And like you said, they have their own issues that might become problematic with growth in that process. Not to say that we shouldn’t try to improve what we can, just a point that being better than the worst way to do things isn’t all that great either.
The word “sustainable” in the title is one of those greenwashing terms to sell a product and keep the status quo of business as usual. As the report shows.
For sure, I’m not disagreeing with the article. The problems raised by this report are not what the comment I was replying to raised, and I think that we should criticise these things for their actual problems.
No, under normal circumstances, the part of the plant that isn’t burned eventually also decomposes and the carbon continues in the cycle. You’d have to explicitly do something to prevent it (e.g. sink it in a bog) to make it net negative.
Technically combustion is the breaking of chemical bonds to instead bond with oxygen; carbon need not be involved. (Actually, technically oxygen need not be involved either, but we have an oxygen atmosphere not a chlorine one, so it’s gonna be oxygen.)
Good luck finding a non-carbon-based fuel suitable for commercial air travel though, hydrogen tanks are too heavy, while hydrazine and ammonia are out for obvious reasons
but we have an oxygen atmosphere not a chlorine one, so it’s gonna be oxygen.
Could also be fluorine but there are other good reasons not to use anything involving that as a fuel
“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
― John Drury Clark, Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants
I think that bit was about Chlorine Trifluoride but I might be misremembering.
I’m in favor of using carbon-free energy sources to power plants that do carbon capture and manufacturer fuel from the captured carbon. This on top of using carbon-free energy sources for our other energy needs would lead to carbon in the atmosphere being reduced, at least temporarily.
That being said, I suspect those have even worse scalability.
Combustion is the breaking of carbon bonds to bond with oxygen, producing carbon dioxide and monoxide. There is no carbon based fuel that isnt 1:1 for energy released vs GHG emitted. Making fuels from plant mass doesnt change that.
The advantage of making fuels from plants isn’t in them burning cleaner, it’s in the fact that growing the plants takes carbon out of the atmosphere. That means that the carbon released upon burning them was carbon that was already recently in the atmosphere, as opposed to being deep underground like it was with fossil fuels
That doesn’t negate the issues of land use changes and similar, but in terms of plain old net carbon emissions they absolutely are better
The caveat of finding “better” methods is that it excuses continuing or expanding the things we do that are the core problems of rapid growth, consumption, and a throwaway society. And like you said, they have their own issues that might become problematic with growth in that process. Not to say that we shouldn’t try to improve what we can, just a point that being better than the worst way to do things isn’t all that great either.
The word “sustainable” in the title is one of those greenwashing terms to sell a product and keep the status quo of business as usual. As the report shows.
For sure, I’m not disagreeing with the article. The problems raised by this report are not what the comment I was replying to raised, and I think that we should criticise these things for their actual problems.
And I guess not all of the plant is something that can be burned as fuel so done right it should be a net negative
No, under normal circumstances, the part of the plant that isn’t burned eventually also decomposes and the carbon continues in the cycle. You’d have to explicitly do something to prevent it (e.g. sink it in a bog) to make it net negative.
Technically combustion is the breaking of chemical bonds to instead bond with oxygen; carbon need not be involved. (Actually, technically oxygen need not be involved either, but we have an oxygen atmosphere not a chlorine one, so it’s gonna be oxygen.)
Good luck finding a non-carbon-based fuel suitable for commercial air travel though, hydrogen tanks are too heavy, while hydrazine and ammonia are out for obvious reasons
Could also be fluorine but there are other good reasons not to use anything involving that as a fuel
I think that bit was about Chlorine Trifluoride but I might be misremembering.
That is indeed the chlorine trifluoride quote
I’m in favor of using carbon-free energy sources to power plants that do carbon capture and manufacturer fuel from the captured carbon. This on top of using carbon-free energy sources for our other energy needs would lead to carbon in the atmosphere being reduced, at least temporarily.
That being said, I suspect those have even worse scalability.
One greenhouse gas per energy?