Harder-to-Reach Oil Means More CO2
Posted: December 7, 2007
As the Energy Bill beat goes on in the Senate, here’s some food for thought on the necessity of corn ethanol and biofuels.
The Fueling Station reports that Scott Nauman, corporate planning manager for ExxonMobil, speaking at an Energy Business Forum in Florida, estimates global demand for energy is expected to be one-third higher by 2030 than it is today.
Nauman said Exxon estimates annual energy demand growth is expected to average 1.3 percent per year from 2008 to 2030. Fossil fuels will continue to account for about eighty percent of energy demand through 2030, with oil and gas accounting for approximately sixty percent.
If Exxon is correct in this analysis, world governments will have serious difficulty meeting their CO2 emissions reduction targets, reports Fueling Station. But will th is play in California, targeted as an early adopter of low-carbon emissions. The California Low Carbon Fuels Standard requires a reduction of carbon emissions of at least 10 percent by 2020.
Yet the harder to reach oil that companies are extracting and refining–the tar sands or coals to liquid–contain higher levels of greenhouse gases. In exploring California’s Low Carbon Diet, Cleantech Blog notes:
“All unconventional forms of oil are worse for greenhouse-gas emissions than petroleum,” said Alex Farrell, of the University of California at Berkeley. Farrell and Adam Brandt found that the shift to unconventional oil could add between fifty and four hundred gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere by 2100.
So, how can California reduce the carbon emission from fuel use? As a major agricultural state, E10 ethanol will be part of the solution. E10 can be used in all gasoline vehicles including 40 mile per gallon hybrids and in the new 100 mile per gallon plug-in hybrids being driven by early adaptors.
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