We are currently shifting production to tar sand & shale. We are indeed running out of oil that you can just pump out of the ground (~2 years left). Tar sand and shale will last 130 years, but by the time we exploit all of it we will have dug up and resurfaced all of north america between the 49th parallel and the arctic circle. It is really destructive.
The alternative is to build 1/2-terawatt of renewable energy infrastructure specifically to supply methanol for automotive applications. Methanol is just as good as gasoline when used in internal combustion engines, but it is better than either gasoline or hydrogen when used in fuel cells. Reasons are that methanol is liquid just like gasoline, but hydrogen can be extracted from it at much lower temperature, ~250 deg.C as opposed to 850 deg.C for gasoline, and it can be done more efficiently.
The cost of converting 10% of Canada's gas pumps to methanol would be a trivial $85 million. This is much easier to do than a liquid hydrogen infrastructure. Besides synthetic solar methanol, there are other more conventional feedstocks too. Natural gas could supply a very large fraction of what is needed for a 100% renewable transportation industry.
If we went with an all-solar approach we'd need at least 1356 square miles of solar concentrators, an area equivalent to 1/3rd the size of the city of Toronto. If you look at a strip-mine operation undertaken to extract oil from tar-sand or shale you will have no doubt that we could go with the renewable approach instead.
Space/Science » in reply to Re: Canada's impending energy crisis
Re: Canada's impending energy crisis
The whole thread (26 posts)
- Canada's impending energy crisis
- Re: Canada's impending energy crisis
- Ralph sez...
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- Might want to try capitalism...
- Re: Ralph left out a small piece of information
- I bow before superior research :-) (n/t)
- Re: Ralph left out a small piece of information
- Re: Canada's impending energy crisis
