TechStuff Fuels Up Part 2

that's exactly what we talked about. And now in this episode, we really want to focus on what are the challenges of getting away from a gasoline based fuel and really focusing on one of these alternatives to make the alternative actually the primary as opposed to just an alternative, right, because a lot of these seem like really good ideas in theory kind of sort of you know, it's they they burned cleaner and are it's some of them are renewable,

which is great, right, But there's some challenges, I mean, some major challenges, and such is why they haven't taken every yet. Yeah, that's that's one of the many reasons. And and it's we think it's important to keep in mind what those challenges are, because it gives you a more realistic view of what you need to do in order to to make this happen. It's not that I think that we shouldn't switch from gasoline to something else.

It's just that I think that it's important that we are honest with ourselves so that way we can come to the right decision when it comes to figuring out what the alternative should be for everybody. Now, from an individual basis, this is a much easier decision if you have the means to to buy the sort of vehicle you want to sure as as a single consumer. Um. You know, with with these options available to you can

make you can make any number of decisions. Right. You could get one of those f f vs we talked about and use a higher blend of ethanol. You might be able to get a car that can run bio diesel with a decent be blend. Or you might get an electric vehicle. You know, there are a lot of different options open to you. But if we're talking about rolling this out to a wide yeah, but that countrywider

or globally. Um. You know, the reason that gasoline caught on was that it was the cheapest and most efficient fuel available at the time, and that hasn't changed enough. And it's had more than a century to become a a an institutionalized infrastructure, something that is so established and so central to the way we do everything from transportation to UH to other kinds of commerce, that it's no surprise that it will be very difficult to displace gasoline.

It's just we We've invested countless billions of dollars around the globe, not just here in the United States, in this infrastructure, and it's it's got a lot of momentum behind it. So how do how do we replace it? And why would we even want to? So I think first we should probably look at the WISE and then look at how because and I put the big question

mark because it's it's a it's a tough question. So we kind of divided up the WISE into three major categories, and um, you know, you have to ask yourself this question, why do you want to get off gasoline? Because the answer to that will determine in part which alternative fuels with right right, Because one alternative fuel might be great for one part of this answer, but not so great

for another. So one of the ones I think leaps to mind for a lot of people is the environmental impact of petroleum based products and how using a combustible engine and burning this stuff means we create a lot of emissions that are pollutants that are toxic, that are greenhouse gases that can affect client change. These are all things that a lot of people keep in mind when they're talking about we need an alternative fuel source. Yeah, and a lot of these alternative fuel sources are really

good about that. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we remember we divided these up in the previous episode in large categories. So for example, we had biofuels, and biofuels are things like biodiesel, which is made out of animal fats or vegetable oils or even recycled restaurant grease and then process to become a diesel fuel. Most often it is blended with actual petroleum based diesel uh, and it tends to

emit fewer pollutants. The higher the concentration of biodiesel, the fewer pollutants it tends to emit, And the downside is the less energy dense it tends to be. So, in other words, honestly true, for I think everything that we were talking about in the last episode. Everything everything tends to be if it's if it's something that's mixed with gasoline or diesel, then it tends to be have have higher energy density. The more the petroleum based product is

mixed in, the less of it. That's they're the less uh dense as far as energy is concerned. The fuel is so you don't go as far on a full tank if you're using pure biodiesel as you would if you were used a blend that only had a small amount of biodiesel in it. Same thing is true of ethanol, which is with gasoline. This is ethyl alcohol that you would mix with gasoline. Increases the octane, lowers the energy density. Um. So they both tend to emit fewer pollutants than pure

gasoline or pure diesel. Are a few fewer carbon dioxide, yeah, I fewer carbon dioxide emissions. You do have to keep in mind that some of these could emit completely different chemicals that could be you know, toxic in their own way. But biodiesel, for example, is non toxic. It's biodegradable. Uh. The emissions tend to be much less severe than the petroleum based ones. It still does emit some toxins and some pollutants, just not nearly as much as the petroleum

based kind. Same thing as is more or less true of ethanol. The higher concentration of ethanol you go anyway, lower concentrations means that there's enough gasoline there for uh for you to emit fewer but not zero emissions. And then you've got the fossil fuels. So you've got the biofuels with biodiesel and ethanol. You have the fossil fuels that includes natural gas and propane also known as liquid

petroleum gas. Both of these are well natural gas we find when we're also mining for crude oil, and propane is something we get through the whole processing of natural gas and crude oil, the refining of crude oil. So both of these are in a way kind of like byproducts of going after oil. And although you couldn't have a mind that's just for natural gas as well, you can. Yeah,

so these could still produce pollutants. They do tend to produce fewer pollutants than gasoline or d easel, but they still do produce pollutants, and sometimes again the shift is on different pollutants than it would be with a gasoline based engine or a diesel based engine. So environmentally, uh, it goes uh, it's it's still I think favorable, but

it's not a great solution. In other words, you're slowing down the amount of emissions you are putting out into the environment, but you're not eliminating and so you're still right, um and and also you know, the the other trade off is that you're getting less energy out of it. Again again the same sort of thing where you you cannot go as far, so you have to use more fuel to go the same distance as you would with a gasoline or diesel powered vehicle. Then you have hydrogen.

If you're using it in an internal combustion engine, you are emitting nitrous or nitrogen oxide I should say not nitrous oxide a little bit different, but nitrogen oxide. And it's a uh that you know, that's a pollutant. So that's a problem. But if you are using it as a fuel cell, the only real emissions you have are heat and water. Yeah, so water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it can be incorporated into the water cycle a little more readily than say anything else. So anyway, carbon monoxide,

carbon monoxide not not, so it's much better than carbon monoxide. Um, so you've got uh that as a benefit. But then the downside that we've mentioned before is that in order to get hydrogen, you have to pour energy into stuff to break molecular bonds to free up the hydrogen in the first place, because it doesn't really appear unbonded to stuff in any great amount on Earth right right once you once you're burning it, it's fairly efficient. But but to get it to the state where you can, yeah,

you have to use a lot of energy. So if that energy is coming from fossil fuels, this is true by the way of all of the different ones we're talking about biofuels, uh, the natural gas or propane, we have to use energy to get at this fuel and process this fuel before we can use it in any sort of vehicle. Right. That The thing is with with gasoline is that all of that work was done by the Earth of the course of billions and billions of years.

Although we do have to process oil to make it, guess, but a lot less than we do for for for bio fuels or ethanol. So it's it's one of those things where uh, if that energy to do the processing is also coming from fossil fuels, then you have to worry about the environmental environmental impact of the processing part of this as opposed to the fuel part, which is the direct effect of electricity. Because electric electrically run vehicles. Um, you know you're plugging them into a wall. Where is

the electricity coming to you from that wall? Right? Um, if it's a coal processing plant, then you're not really doing anything. Yeah, you're just uh, the pollution has just been shift. But if it's if it's one of those things, like you know, you're getting it from solar power or wind power or whatever, then the electric car is a great choice because you are not really putting out any

appreciable amount of pollutants or emissions from that vehicle. So uh, if the if the energy source that's creating the electricity is renewable and clean, then that's the best option for

an individual I think personally. Um. That being said, if you can't guarantee that if you are getting your electricity from a coal powered plant or something else that is producing a lot of pollutants, then it could just be that again, the problem has shifted to a different part of the equation, Right, and and some of this is a little bit arguable. Um. For example, with ethanol, there's

been a bunch of conflicting studies. The two major ones that I've seen were one from a Cornell University that was saying that that considering all of the energy cost it takes to grow corn and convert it to ethanol, it's a lot more energy production than you actually get out at the end. Right. Um, Well, we'll really look into energy return on investment towards the end of this podcast.

But that does mean that you're talking about land used to and land use could mean that instead of using that land to grow things that could be big carbon sinks or grow food for people, uh, you are growing stuff that's going to be used in fuel. And that also means that you have to use things like fertilizer requires a lot of nitrogen. Uh, And that could mean that you are using a lot of energy in order

to create the fertilizer. And if the energy you're using to grow the crops that are eventually going to be turned to fuel, if all the energy is more than what you are getting out of the whole fuel equation, then you're not only causing environmental damage, it may just not make sense from a big picture perspective, keeping in mind that it all kind of depends on what crop

you're growing in the first place. In the United States, it's it's chiefly corn that we use to create for ethanol, and chiefly soybeans, I believe, for biodiesel, and then if you are in Brazil, then sugarcane for ethanol. But you know, we've also talked about the possibility of using switch grass and other types of cellulose based stuff to create ethanol, which would require a much lower investment and therefore, at least ideal ideally, would mean a smaller environmental impact on

land use and other issues. You know, you can get into lots of complicated things with land use, you know, even things like erosion and flooding problems. And you know, if you've altered the landscape to an appreciable amounts that you can grow the stuff that's going to fuel the

nation's vehicles, that can have unintended consequences. And that's why this, yeah, I mean, you know, in an ideal world, you would be um, you know, share sharing crop land to rotate crops out and and plant something that's really going to help the environment around it, use that for biofuels, and then let it get switched out with something else, right, Yeah, yeah, crop rotation is one of those basic farming techniques that can really save the soil a lot of wear and

tear and make it easier to grow healthy crops for longer um. But unfortunately, yeah, there's there's not and and farming. Farming is is a technology that actually I think would be really interesting to do a whole episode on because we've got a lot of really interesting new research coming out. Sure. Yeah, so not only is it the just the technology behind farming, but just the techniques that are being used, some of

which are centuries old. So anyway, that's kind of the overview of the environmental concern is the idea that this is a very complex issue. If you're talking about the biological stuff, you have to say, all right, well, what's the environmental impact of growing the stuff that's going to

make this fuel. Then once the environmental impact of actually burning that fuel with the fossil fuels, it's it's sort of saying, well, this is assuming that we're going to continue producing petroleum based fuels in the first place, Because both of these are kind of byproducts of that. Um So, really it's just saying, how do we offset our gasoline consumption so that we're using something that's less harmful to

the environment. And then with hydrogen, you're talking about how do you get the hydrogen in a way that doesn't involve pouring a lot of more energy than it takes to yeah, and burning fossil fuels just so that you can get at some hydrogen. And then of course electricity is how do you get the electricity buddy? And uh So, like I said, it's very complex. This is one of those conversations that the more the longer you have the conversation, the more you realize this is not a simple solution.

There's no easy switch we can flip. Now, let's talk about the second of the three things we identified as reasons you might want to switch to gasoline, and that is economic reasons. So let's talk about economic from the point of view of the average consumer's wallet. So, in that sense, some of these fuels at right now are

less expensive than an equivalent amount of gasoline. And when I say equivalent amount, I really mean equivalent and distance, because because you can't really compare, it's like comparing apples to hydrogen gas. It's um hard to do because gasoline comes in liquid forms. Some of these fuels come in gas forms. Some of them are in liquid forms, some of them are in fuel cells, which make it, you know, complex,

some of them you plug into a wall. It's really hard to to easily compare them, right, But in general, things like electric vehicles are still still more expensive, at least in the Nine States, still more expensive than UH

than gas powered cars. Like I think it kind of goes like gas powered hybrid and an electric UM and UH and and supposedly at this point, the the amount from even a hybrid car, the amount of money that you'll save by using electricity versus gasoline in the end will pay off over the lifetime of vehicle, assuming that you're keeping that vehicle for a good amount of time. It's it. I've seen different studies on this where there's been some debate about how long you would have to

maintain and keep that vehicle. And of course maintenance costs fold into that too, And the maintenance cost for a hybrid vehicle or an electric vehicle maybe higher than it would be for a traditional gasoline or diesel powered vehicle. So then you know, you have to take just like with the environmental issue, it gets more complex than just saying how expensive is this for me on a day

to day basis. You have to look at the lifetime of the vehicle, and especially since um, since things like hybrid vehicles are a little bit more costly to maintain, just because you can't take it in to any old shop anywhere, as a lot of the parts are specialist parts that take a little bit more time and money to get ahold of right, and and also the idea that these are kind of still seen as specialty cars. They're they're becoming more popular. I mean it's especially in

the United States. Hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles are both becoming more popular. You're in Atlanta there kind of everywhere. Yeah, I see smart cars everywhere, but uh I see you know, like the Prius is just about everywhere too. So it's you know, the popularity is rising. But the as as popularity rises, the nice thing about that is demand goes up. Companies find more efficient means of manufacturing these vehicles, which

then allows the cost to come down. But it's a process that takes time, so it's not like, you know, year one vehicles are going to be sixty dollars and you're too, they're going to be fifteen thousand, and your three they're gonna be twelve thousand. That's not the way

it works, all right. And also, as as this cost is dry ropping, part of that is because the infrastructure that allows them to be popular is developing, and so you're really um, you're you know, for the consumer, it might become less expensive, but the cost of building up that infrastructure is enormous, right, And and that's a huge issue with hydrogen based UH cars, whether it's fuel cells or hydrogen used as a fuel and an internal combustion engine.

There's no real existing infrastructure to get that hydrogen everywhere, So it would mean building that out and creating hydrogen fuel stations. And there are a few, I know, there are some. California's got a few, but they are few and far between, and if you were to drive anywhere outside of that region, you would quickly realize that you

were stranded and you had to call mom. So the assuming mom has giant tanks of hydrogen line around, and Mom always has a giant mom Mom's purse holds a myriad of amazing things in it Mary Poppins bags essentially a bag of holding. It's from a D and D buddies out there rill a D twenty to save against being nerdy. You lost. Um. So, yeah, infrastructure is really expensive. It can be, which then can mean that it would

be more expensive to the end consumer. Right that cost has to be for taxpayers or Yeah, because some of these are programs that the governments is encouraging through tax incentives. But again that tends to mean that those incentives are are are paid off from the by the tax payer. So uh, and in different countries do this in different ways.

You know, there's some that just they that's they allocate a certain percentage of the tax income towards things like, uh, encouraging these sort of industries so that they grow faster or that they take hold. But that's a big issue. Economic is complicated, just like environmental. Now that brings us to the third of our reasons why we might want to switch from guest Lean, and that is national security.

Now Here in the United States, and we said this in the last podcast, in the United States, we import a lot of our oil from other nations, and some of those nations are nations that it would mean that the money we are spending to get to that oil maybe going to fuel instability and regions of the world.

It could mean that we are inadvertently giving more power to parties that are going to cause lots of trouble in different parts of the world, either directly to the United States or to our allies, or just create instability in general, which is not good for anybody really and uh, and so there really is it really isn't the interests of the United States and really any country to find a way of being as self sufficient as possible so that you can create as much of your energy domestically.

And when I say create energy, obviously I don't think you can create or destroy fuel. Yeah, yeah, domestically as opposed to to internation. Really, so here here in the here, in the United States, Um, we do produce each of the six each each of the six fuels that we're talking about here. Um, but we also produce gasoline. So yeah, so if you look at the fuels that we produce, the alternatives we mentioned, most of them, we produce the vast majority of what we use here domestically in the

United States. Uh. Even so we do import some stuff, Uh, specifically within natural gas and propane. We import a little bit of that, although we produce quite a bit, we also export some. So it's kind of interesting that we export some and then import others. Um uh. And that's you know, a lot of that has to do with infrastructure and uh and transportation as well as just logistics and you know, when where we can get the most money out of the resources that we have available. So uh.

One of the things that a lot of people have pointed at is alternative fuels would allow us to remove our dependency on four in oil. That's usually how it's worded, and it's really it's really decreased, I think, because we are so far off from But yeah, that's that that we're going to cover in our next section because because that's the that's that's where we're gonna really look at some of the huge challenges besides the ones we've already mentioned.

If you think it's been challenging already, we have not even scratched the surface. Uh. So Yeah, it's it's this idea that we can perhaps make the United States a safer place and hopefully the entire world a safer place by producing more of that energy or producing more that fuel rather domestically, and the same is true, like I said, for nations all around the world. Since Lauren and I are both from the United States, we work in the United States, we live in the United States. That's what

our perspective is based on. Uh, we are aware that there are people all over the world who's who thought, So that that kind of covers the y and uh, well we'll tackle the how, but before we can, let's take a quick break. So, yeah, we've we covered the why we might want to. So, Jonathan, I was wondering

how much gasoline exactly do we use? Well here in the United States, Lauren, according to the the US government, specifically, according to the U S Energy Information Administration, in two thousand twelve, which if my calendar serves me correctly, is just last year, on an average day, the US went through three hundred and forty seven million gallons of gasoline per day per day. Yeah, if you want to talk about the whole year, that's about a hundred and twenty

six billion with a B gallons. Uh, you know, that's just that's just me rounding it off to Now I should say that this isn't all bad news because Originally, Uh, people were projecting us to be up to about a hundred and fifty billion gallons of gas per year. We were, we were therepenty Yeah, we we cut out nearly twenty five billion gallons of gas. Um. It turns out that our our gas consumption maybe slightly decreasing due to people

just being a little more conservative with their driving habits. Right. Yeah, the the economy in general, and I mean it's it's easy to say the economy in general about anything, but um, but yeah, people aren't are cutting back on the amount of gas that they're using, right, so h so, you know, it's not all because people are concerned about saving the earth. Some of them are concerned about saving their their cash. Yeah. Uh not that that's not that I'm trying to cast dispersions.

That's important to it's important to but yeah. So, so around a hundred twenty six billion gallons of gas in the United States every year. So in order to get off gasoline, so let's say that our goal is to eliminate using gasoline as our primary source for fuel, to make gasoline the alternative as opposed to one of these others. Uh, then what kind of numbers are we looking at and I've got a few, but um, it's it's not looking

great right right. But you know, and keep keep in mind that a lot of this is because, as we have said earlier, um, most of these other most of these alternatives won't get you as far as gasoline will, right. So in other words, even the fuel economy is lesser, you would have to use more of the fuel to get the same amount of distance as you would with if you had the same kind of vehicle, but it

was a gasolene powered vehicle. So, um, hundred and twenty six billion gallons of gas every year in the United States. Let's look at ethanol. So in two thousand eleven, the United States produced about thirteen point nine billion gallons of ethanol, so we'd need a hundred and ten extra billion well, and and also keep in mind that ethanol right now is being used as a blend, right, So it's stretching our gasoline a little, because we are blending ethanol with

gasoline to increase octane. But fair, But from US vehicles, the highest that you go generally is e eighty five, which is only ethanol. Ethanol good, but gasoline, Yeah, if you want to go with pure ethanol. You would have to have a seriously retooled engine that could withstand that solvent kind of action. We could, Yeah, I guess we could.

You know, ethanol was in fact one of the fuels that Henry Ford was looking at back when he was first designing the automobile, was expecting all vehicles, all of his vehicles to be using core and ethanol. Yeah. Yeah, so you know this was This is not like it's a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. But the point is is that we had to produce a lot more of it if we really wanted ethanol to be a replacement for gasoline. And let's I just want

to be fair. I'm not suggesting that any of these industries are saying that they are positioning themselves to replace gasoline entirely. That's not the message there they are trying to make. I'm just pointing out that if we did want to have everyone take this and not just be you know, an individual choice thing, but that we're trying to guide people into these kind of vehicles in the future,

that we face some pretty serious production problems. Now. One of the nice things about ethanol is that the ethanol we're producing we're producing for fuel, and we're producing it for fuel four vehicles for the most part, So that means that it's not like we'd have to repurpose or redirect the stuff we are producing for one thing into something else, which is not the case when we get to the fossil fuels. But but for ethanol, again, big

deficit there. And then with biodiesel, biodiesel tends to be measured in tons as opposed to gallons. So and I'm going to stick with gasoline. I know, technically I should compare biodiesel against diesel, but we're you know, my my, my hypothesis was how could we get off of you know what? So biodiesel production inn was about six million tons, and if you compare that to tons of gasoline, and this is not a direct comparison, but answer around four

fifty million tons. So they're not not even not even getting into the billions. Yes, that's a lot of McDonald's that you'd be reading to get to get the grease that you would need to keep your your cars running. This this is not to say that the raw materials aren't there. They may very well be, but we're only processing about six million tons per year, and uh, and and again this is this is a bio diesel is

something that very early on UM. In fact, Rudolph Diesel, who diesel is named for, UM, was in testing peanut oil driven engines. Interesting, now I want peanuts, boiled peanuts. Oh wow, you are Southern. I told you born and bread down here. So thank you? So so yeah. Biodiesel. Again, another problem is that we'd have to produce a lot more of it for it to actually replace gasoline. Not that the bio diesel industry is saying that that's what they're trying to do, but if we wanted to that,

it would require a lot more work, lot a lot. Now, propane in nineteen nine, which was the year where I could find some some reliable, reliable statistics. There are lots of statistics that are out there, but when I start tracing back the main source, it eventually gets so cloudy that I'm thinking this might be an extrapolation. So I try to find the most reliable source I can. Uh. In this case, the source said nineteen point six billion

gallons were produced in nine. Again, it's more than ethanol, and it's more than biodesel. Actually, view it's more than those combined, almost almost running combined. But it's right around the same amount as those combined. But you know, it's propane again, not as energy efficient as gasoline, so and a lot of it is still being used for other purposes such as home heating. Right, So if we wanted to make propane an alternative fuel that was much more

widely adopted, we'd have to produce a lot more propane. Yeah, we we would either have to m to find a another fuel source for those other things that it's used for, or yea or like a bunch more than that, more than quadruple down. I mean, you're talking about producing an enormous amount of propane natural gas. This is where we kind of everything sort of breaks down because we're talk

about natural gas. You're talking about volume, right, You're not talking about a liquid measurement like a gallon or a leak in liquid natural gas. But yeah, it's under pressure. We usually talk about in cubic feet. Yeah, so if you're talking about twenty five million cubic feet, it's kind of hard to compare that against gasoline. But again, natural gas, we're using a lot of that already for other purposes. So if we were to use natural gas as a

primary fuel source for our vehicles. Propane. Yeah, we would have to keep that into keep that in mind, the fact that we already need some natural gas for we're already using it. Yea, yeah, if we if we ended up repurposing it, then we'd have to find some other means of heat our homes or providing a natural gas for cooking, or all those other applications we talked about in the previous episode. Hydrogen. There's been no appreciable amount of hydrogen that we've produced other than you know, we

we've used it in again oil refining. It's funny how all these alternative fuels, many of them are used or are by products of the oil refinery process. Uh. So, uh, it's hydrogen. We would just have to create a whole new industry that would be all about breaking down molecular bonds so we could get at hydrogen to use it as a fuel source. Um. It's just uh, it would

be almost like starting from scratch. And I think that once we figured that out, um, it would change the face of energy as we know it, because then we would be using fusion reactors for our our general power.

And I think that a lot of bigger things would happen before commercial hydrogen vehicle if we if we got to the point where we could use fusion reactors, then this is a moots Just go with the sixth one, which is electricity, because we'd be generating so much electricity with our fusion generators that that would solve that issue. We would just you know, and and fusion generators create clean energy, especially or at least cleaner than than almost

any other method that doesn't involve wind or solar. In fact, you could argued, based upon the rare earth materials that are needed for these that that could be cleaner. But uh, we haven't made a fusion reactor that puts out more energy than it requires to start, So until that happens, it's kind of a moot point. But anyway, electricities are

sixth one. Uh An, Electricity is is a different type of thing, right, It's not like we can't produce more electricity, although depending upon where you are, like in the United States, the power grid might not be robust to handle the extra energy output. The load on the power grid might

be so much as to overwhelm it. So there are a lot of countries out there that are investing heavily and creating things like smart grids which are much more adept at uh at moving dynamically so that balancing balancing different areas of usage exactly so that way not no one region gets overloaded and you don't have to worry about like rolling blackouts or something which lots of different parts of the world have experienced in cleaning the United States.

We've seen rolling blackouts in the US before too, so um uh it would mean that we would have to have a pretty significant investment in that infrastructure, something that a lot of people argue we need anyway, whether we're using electric vehicles or not, we do need to uh invest in that infrastructure. I I agree with that. I

think that that's important. And uh I know that there are people who work in power grid companies who probably lead very stressful lives because the company is always working at close to full capacity and if anything pops up, they have to be very, very deft in order to handle it. I can't imagine that life personally. I'm much happier being a podcaster. Yeah, it's it's tough enough when I get an email saying, hey, can you pick up lunch today? And I have my own little meltdown that's

tiny in comparison. I realize this very very few emergencies, and it turns out, um so, yeah, these are this

is all coming under the umbrella of scalability. Scaling one of these things to a point where you can you can effectively use it, yeah, across a country or across the world, and you know, and that's that's why a lot of these technologies are being used by governments or for for industry, yeah, or in you know, a municipality like a like a city government, not necessarily a nation's government.

But we've talked about how there are a lot of cities out there, Atlanta as one of them that has a fleet of buses that use natural gases it's primary fuel source. So there are plenty of examples. There are a lot of there's a lot of farm equipment out there that runs on either propane or natural gas. Uh So there's a lot of stuff out there that can use this and take advantage of it. But when you're talking about consumer vehicles, it's a huge challenge to roll

any of these out on any large, large scale. Um So, I'm not surprised that we're seeing people adopt this in individual cases. I mean that's as they can is as you can afford to, right as they can afford to, and as their region allows them to. Because right here in Georgia, it would be very difficult to get along on an electric car if you wanted to take it outside of you know, your your immediate neighborhood or your immediate city. M But in California it's a little bit

more possible. Same thing with hydrogen vehicles. There are hydrogen refueling stations in certain parts of the United States, but not so many in Georgia, so you would not be able to go very far for very long with a hydrogen based vehicle here and uh and and part of the reason why we are not rolling into all of these alternatives is that is that we're really not getting the kind of energy return on investment that we're king for.

Right So this is the idea, and we've kind of touched on it already, so we won't spend too much time. But this is the idea of the energy you're getting out in the form of fuel, the potential energy that that fuel can give you, if that's less than what you're pouring into create the energy or the fuel in the first place, then you really have an energy sink.

You're losing energy overall in the deal. So a lot of these fuel sources require some processing, and a lot of that processing comes from energy that we ultimately are getting by burning fossil fuels right right, a lot of ethanol refineries right now are trying to cut costs by using coal as their energy source. So there we have it, right, You're just you've just shifted the fossil fuel from the fuel itself into the processing of that fuel. So if

that's the case, then you could still be polluting. You're still showing a dependence upon fossil fuels. A lot of the problems that we talked about about why you would want to switch off a gasoline are still there. They're just there in a different part of the process us.

And uh, if if it turns out that you could have, like if you're using fossil fuels to process a fuel a different type of fuel, an alternative fuel, and that alternative fuel does not have enough energy into in potential energy in that fuel form to measure out the amount that you poured into it, you might as well have just used the fossil fuel in the first place. Yeah, why why even bother creating an alternative fuel if you

still have to burn using that much fossil fuel. Yeah, exactly, so you're not gaining anything, right, Ideally, you want your return to be greater, so that and you wanted to be a lot greater, Like if it can be a hundred times greater than the amount of energy it takes to make that fuel, Uh, to have that potential energy within that fuel, then that's a great deal. That's what you want. A lot of the alternative fuels, it's more

like two to three times, which is not great. And uh, it's still better than a deficit, but it's it's it's not so great. And all of that ties back into some of the other yes that we were talking about earlier, like financial purposes. You know, it's going to cost more to create this than than sticking with gasoline, and it's it's a hard sell, you know. It's you know, not that we want to be so cynical as to say money makes the world go around. Some of you might say,

kind of death, Well, it certainly it certainly matters. Right. If it weren't for the fact that it matters, then maybe we could just very altruistically say oh, well, you know this is so, but the problem is that you're talking about paying a lot more. Again, You've you know, got gasoline that's had a century to establish itself, so to switch out to something else is going to require

an enormous investment. Yeah, and and and even you know, we keep talking about how complicated these matters are, and they are so complicated that a lot of the research being done as contradictory, right, right, And again part of that also goes back to checking to see who it was that funded the research. Absolutely, because there's so many lobby systems which also relates to money in that are

active players in various national governments. That. Yeah, while I would not go so far as to say there's a conspiracy out there that is is designed to to suppress innovation, if we're going to say that, we should really bring Ben and Matton here, right, but I will go so far as to say that if if there is an industry that has certain interests and they want to protect it, that could include everything from funding research that gives them a positive light. So that definitely does happen. I'm not

a conspiracy theorist, but I do know, Yeah, yeah. And here here in the States, there's also a lot of big agriculture issues where you know, people people will talk about how how perhaps you know, corn and soybean production are being funded at the expense of other things, and that this is part of what's driving biodiesel or ethanol, or that small farmers are suffering because more and more land and and and resources are going towards producing fuel

than it would be for food. And there are a lot of political issues here and social issues beyond just the fuel problem, which again makes us more complex. Um, yeah, I mean this is kind of uh, you know, the big story here is that when you start opening up this can of worms, you realize there's more worms than dirt here that you have to really take into account.

And but this does not mean that one we should give up the quest to try and find better fuels that are less environmentally harmful, or that are less expensive, or that that give us a boost in national security. We absolutely should continue to do those things. We should not expect some sort of miracle fuel right around the corner, because that's probably not gonna happen. But the more we can wean ourselves off of gasoline and I don't think we're going to get to a point where we completely

eliminate that need any time in the near future. The better. But we can also do things ourselves, right that that helped this out and some of it. If we start implementing these behaviors now, it will make the transition easier when it does happen. Oh right, yeah, of course. I mean with with any of these environmental issues that you're looking at, UM, the way that you behave on a on a personal level and on a community level is

really important. And part of that is, um you know, taking the bus or taking the train if you can, and uh or or or just just driving less or driving more responsibly, you know, not hitting the gas to run around someone who's going four miles an hour slower than than you really want them to write and car pooling, all these ideas of conserving fuel. That's a good habit to get into, because, like we've said multiple times, these alternative fuels, most of them don't have the same sort

of energy density that gas lane does. So if we do get to a point, or if you choose to drive a vehicle that uses one of these other alternative fuels, you'll have to make sure that you're driving habits reflect that, because otherwise you're gonna be stopping for fuel way more frequently because paying way more for it. Yeah, because you're not you're not driving as efficiently as as you could.

So a lot of this can you know, this transition can be made more um gentle on us the consumer if we start to adopt some of these behaviors and plus will just be environmentally and also the maintenance of your vehicle. I mean, there are a lot of reasons to do it, economic and environmental, a lot of good reasons to just be a responsible driver in in that respect. Not to mention the fact that just be a responsible driver people. If you're listening to this podcast where you're driving,

that's fine. If you're reading the transcript while you're driving, please don't do that. That's that's not good. Unless you have one of those fancy, fancy automatic automobiles. Oh yeah, if you if you're in one of those Google driverless car things, then first of all us, yes, swing by, I want to ride, um, but you know that that I think that's just the Google people right now. So

uh hi. Anyway, So that's the that's kind of the wrap up on alternative fuels, and why it's so complex, and that it's not just so some easy solution of saying, hey, let's just switch this gas pump from gas to hydrogen and everything's cool. Yeah, it's unfortunately far more complicated than that. And it's not to say that these challenges are insurmountable. I don't believe that, because human beings are phenomenal when

it comes to finding solutions to difficult problems. But it is important that we we acknowledge that it is a difficult problem and then we take it from there. I have complete faith that the human race is going to come up with some pretty awesome stuff in the next you know, twenty years, even to completely revolutionized. Definitely. Oh yes, when all the future comes isn't twenty or forty years.

So I just gotta live to see it. So in the meantime, while I'm waiting, if you guys would like to send in suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, we would love that. We love reading your email, we love getting the tweets and the Facebook my to just please keep them coming. Let's know what you're interested in, what what what you think would be an exciting podcast and someday, someday we'll bring back that that alarm Clackson and do some reader mail. Yeah yeah, who knows, Yeah

that might that might happen. I Lauren, Lauren has not lived through the hate mail that I got back when I used to do the listener mail segment, but think it could be quiet Clackson. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what a Clackson is. Alright, So guys, let us know. You can say as an email, are just as tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on

Facebook or Twitter, or handle it both those locations. Is tech stuff each s W and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics because it has to works dot Com