Within the EU 27, I would argue that availability of land is a problem. Official fallow land stood at 10.8 Mha in 2006 (Eurostat). The EU put it back into use (if farmers wish) for this year, because of wheat shortages in particular.
Could there be "vast tracts" available in Central European countries, that are not classified as fallow? Possibly, but let's look at the largest of these countries from the agricultural point of view, Poland.
Poland has a total area of 31 million hectares. More than 9 million are forest. The Usable Agricultural Area (UAA) stands at 16 Mha. Within that, arable land is at 12 Mha. Official fallow was at about 1 million hectares but dropped last year to 440,000 ha. (So here's some land coming back into use).
There are about 5 million hectares unaccounted for there, but from that have to be taken unusable lands (wetlands, uplands, barrens, shores) and all the built land of cities, towns, villages, roads, etc. I don't have numbers for those, but I can't imagine there are all that many hectares free.
And don't let's forget that, when making the choice to abandon farming because it doesn't pay, it's the least good land that is dropped first. What is now under culture is the best.
So: is there all that much land available, and how good is it? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
There are also newer crops being developed which can produce more oil equivalent per acre and with less input and conversion costs. There will also be strategic benefits from the point of view of sustainability, employment creation, import substitution and lesser dependence on oil from unreliable trading partners.
However all of this is tinkering at the edges because bio-fuel will never be able to replace oil at current usage levels and so will probably be used more in Jet fuel and high end applications where battery/fuel cell power/weight ratios and storage requirements make other non-oil solutions unviable.
The biggest strategic waste of oil is probably now in home heating where better insulation/zero carbon frontprint housing/workplaces should have been made mandatory for all old/new houses a long time ago. That in itself would probably save more oil than bio-fuels ever will. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
Synthetic fuels, just like hydrogen fuel cells, are not an energy source but an energy storage and transportation medium.
Liquid fuels are very useful because of their energy density (per volume or per weight), their stability, and their portability. I don't think they're going away. But they may become expensive and suitable only for niche uses such as off-road vehicles or where autonomy is paramount over fuel efficiency. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
Wikipedia: Dimethyl ether
Conventional DME production uses the methanol dehydration method.[1] For mass production of DME as a fuel other methods are being considered, the main one being DME synthesis from hydrogen and CO gas, also known as syngas.[2] DME can be produced from methanol by combining two methanol molecules to produce a DME molecule and a water molecule.[3] This is a reversible reaction.[3] This can be shown in the following equation: methanol → dimethyl ether + water 2CH3OH → CH3OCH3 + H2O There are various companies developing this method of DME production, the most active one being JFE Holding in Japan.[citation needed] The DME-synthesis method has a better overall efficiency because with methanol dehydration,[citation needed] the methanol is firstly produced from a base source such as LPG, NG or coal via synthesis and then this is converted into DME.[citation needed] This method attempts to cut out the intermediate methanol production and produce DME from LPG, NG, coal or even biomass in one process.[citation needed]
DME can be produced from methanol by combining two methanol molecules to produce a DME molecule and a water molecule.[3] This is a reversible reaction.[3] This can be shown in the following equation:
There are various companies developing this method of DME production, the most active one being JFE Holding in Japan.[citation needed] The DME-synthesis method has a better overall efficiency because with methanol dehydration,[citation needed] the methanol is firstly produced from a base source such as LPG, NG or coal via synthesis and then this is converted into DME.[citation needed] This method attempts to cut out the intermediate methanol production and produce DME from LPG, NG, coal or even biomass in one process.[citation needed]
On a HHV basis per kg carbon:
DME is indeed a decent contender as an energy carrier, not as good as methane but on par with LPG. The real upsides are:
Auto-format doesn't like my tables. Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
The increasing cost of both aviation gasoline and jet fuel will be a worry for the Eastern Caribbean states ... I was always intrigued by the possibilities for Ground Effect aircraft to provide more fuel efficient inter-island connections. But in any event, that is a transport task where autonomy is fairly crucial. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
CO2 is an end-product of combustion while coal is not, so it obviously takes more energy to make fuel from CO2 than from coal.
That Ground Effect aircrat is just cool. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
And there is also the question of what is the most effective co-generation with the exhaust gas, after catalytic conversion of pollutants. If that is a useful input into a synthetic hydrocarbon process, that might be very appealing, since the bio-coal itself is such an appealing complement to sustainable "use them or lose them" renewable sources of electricity. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
And that was just from pictures and articles in the press. When I went looking for an article on the concept and stumbled on that PR clip, I knew I had my link.
Of course, in terms of the Midnight Thought on the Arc of the Sun (8 April 08), the main relevance in Africa is for express transport along major rivers and lakes, focusing the express travel on the same route that the much slower barges take and actually connecting the cities and central river ports of the countryside together, rather than having the cities connected by airports and the countryside simply as fly-over country. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
we are as yet far from "peak land" use as far as agriculture is concerned
In the EU 27, I don't think you've made a case for this. We don't have that much spare land.
20-25 million hectares (DoDo) of Russian land of unspecified quality may provide some biofuels. But you can't just count it all in immediately as half the EU's 10% needs -- as I said above, for biofuel production it needs to be prime arable with the right climate (plus irrigation for maize), to be easily mechanisable (ie flat) and with easy transport infrastructure, and land possessing these qualities needs to be grouped together in the same region to justify industrial investment and to facilitate export of the finished product. There are constraints here that mean it will provide far from 5% of the EU's current consumption, without adding Russia's own consumption in there (since we're envisaging an end-game scenario with little or no liquid fossile fuels). When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
But the real question is, since when did humans have a fundamental right to jump in a car and drive for hundreds of miles? The whole "personal transportation" concept is really a post-war idea, and not necessary. How far from home did your great-grandfather roam?
Of Ukraine's total land area of 60 million hectares, roughly 42 million is classified as agricultural land... Between 1991 and 2000, sown area dropped by about 5 percent, from 32.0 million hectares to 30.4 million
All in all, CIS doesn't seem to be able to offer surplus production for much more than 5% of European consumption, even in the best-case scenario... *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Plus, why should Russia provide the EU's biofuels? Who is the EU to decide what Russia should do with its fallow land? Why should Russia consume its topsoil to then burn the product? When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
... a wait a minute, there might be a different set of motivations for net producers and net consumers. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
As AMcF has noted - and increase in bio-fuels has resulted in increased prices for foodstuffs which has made farming in Sub S.saharan Africa more economic and resulted in growing output. Agriculture has long been the neglected legacy industry of post-industrial and even third world economies and now it is becoming centre stage again. The problem is when this impacts on wild-life habitats and Rainforests etc. - but presumably this doesn't apply to the same extent in the east European steppes. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
I thought the extension of the steppe / prairie / pampas / plains into the Ukraine was what that short lass that won Eurovision a couple years back was stomping around about. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
The markets that small scale farmers in Africa need are not the fictitious markets in fictitious commodities, but real, actual, markets, with regulated weights and measures and protection of contracts, and secure access to a transport route to ship out a crop surplus to customers outside the local district. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
A sad commentary on the joys of human "rationality" and our religious devotion to magical market thinking without somehow managed to factor out the ecological impact of our depredations. Ancient civilisations made a God out of nature and we decry their barbarity, but have we been that much wiser when we ourselves became the masters of nature and proclaimed our subjugation of those Gods? "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
That is, if they needed US help it may have been they had a bad year, not that there was a lot of land laying fallow. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
