[Terrapreta] Net Present Value vs. Net Future Value of Terra Preta benefits
Sean K. Barry
sean.barry at juno.com
Sun Mar 16 00:49:07 CDT 2008
Hi Robert,
Why would you say this is getting all a bit off topic? Do we not mention in just about every post how using Terra Preta formations can help combat the problems we are discussing? Or did you miss that and I missed the other more "on-topic" stuff?
Regards,
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Klein<mailto:arclein at yahoo.com>
To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Cc: terra preta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 12:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Net Present Value vs. Net Future Value of Terra Preta benefits
Hi all
This is all getting a bit of topic, however I have hit just about every option on my blog. (google arclein)
I suspect that humanity will eventually consume every drop of oil however long it takes, as well as every ton of coal. It is foolish to assume otherwise when it is free money. A little will be left over for museums.
Having said that, transportation fuel can be most easily be provided by mastering algae based oil. See my postings. And the back stop for static energy is solar and geothermal with the reverse rankine cycle engine.
In the meantime let us master the art of using terra preta to produce stable carbon rich soils.
arclein
----- Original Message ----
From: Sean K. Barry <sean.barry at juno.com>
To: Terra Preta <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>; Greg and April <gregandapril at earthlink.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 10:03:49 PM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Net Present Value vs. Net Future Value of Terra Preta benefits
Hi Greg,
I think that you are right to observe that petroleum energy and chemicals play a great big part in our world today. We can survive that mistake and change the perception with education of young children, high taxes on fossil fuels, and a concerted effort to take as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as soon as possible. I know we can use Terra Preta formations to do just that. Our head long use of fossil fuels not only caused the climate problems we see now, but it will be our bane and will continue to exacerbate the problems in our future and that of others after us.
Find another way, I say. Let everyone find heat in geo-thermal and solar-thermal sources, cooling from geo-thermal sinks, and run their cars on electric power from nuclear, wind, and solar electric resources or on non-petroleum fuels from biomass. We'll make do with biochemical replacements for petrochemicals, fuels, and petrochemical based byproducts. Make stronger, lighter weighting, higher fuel economy cars out of light weight carbon fiber instead of running heavy steel cars on fossil carbon fuels. Make clean process charcoal making kilns and retorts out of the steel from car bodies.
I know renewable energy technology uses fossil fuel to make the components now. I know fossil fuels dominate the energy supply sector. I think this needs to change. I think biomass/bio-energy/biochemcial, geothermal sources and sinks, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic resources, and nuclear power should dominate the energy supply sector in all applications, especially domestic heat and electric, as well as industry power and all transportation.
Any supply of energy which releases more fossil carbon emissions from fossil carbon fuels should be outlawed, I think, or at least heavily taxed, and/or including large import/export taxes. We need to find ways to continue to increase agricultural production and do it without the use any longer of manufactured high nitrogen industrial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, that use fossil carbon based chemicals and feed stocks.
That is an interesting fact about the cement enclosure on Biosphere 2 absorbing CO2, so much so that O2 had to be added into the enclosure.
I wonder if we could make more building materials that "absorb" CO2 over their lifetimes? There could be a good carbon sequestration business in that. There was a YouTube video posted here a few weeks back, where an older British woman scientist demonstrated making limestone (CaCO3) and producing some reaction heat, out of ash from municipal waste incinerators combined with CO2 gas in a plastic pop bottle that heated up and then imploded as the reaction occurred inside of it.
The whole idea of embodied energy in manufacturing of products as one of the unrecognized full life cycle costs, has made me think differently.
Not about the unfairness of using fossil carbon fuels to make renewable energy technology and then calling it pure renewable energy (that is a fossil fuel peddlars game). But, rather, about how embodied carbon is carbon sequestration. Couldn't we recognize that, too? Let's make everything out of carbon nano-tubes. Let's make these in Africa and earn "carbon credits" for doing it. We'll make carbon nano-tubes as much and as fast as we can. Lets make them out of carbon that was got, not from fossil carbon sources, but instead from biomass carbon sources.
This human race will struggle mightily to wean ourselves of cheap fossil carbon fuels. It will go much easier to develop sooner rather than later, the cheap biochemical and carbonless energy replacements for all that we get from fossil carbon. Replacing the use of fossil fuels with biomass carbon and other carbonless energy resources will help us survive the next couple of centuries without roasting most of the living species off the planet. Replacing fossil carbon will relieve us of dealing with potentially unfriendly third world nations that have fossil carbon fuel reserves. Replacing the machines that harvest and or use fossil carbon based energy with machines that harvest other renewable energy or do not need fossil fuel energy to run will put our country well ahead of the world market producing usable machines.
Using only renewable energy to manufacture renewable energy technology and then also to make it run, to harvest more renewable energy, can be a the touchstone we aspire to with our work. To work towards seeing and feeling a leveling off and eventually a sustained, controlled, decrease in the atmospheric concentrations of the GHGs: CO2, CH4, and N2O can be an objective for industry and civilian activities to guide themselves by. It can be a guiding policy for all our governments. It can be a guiding policy for the United Nations.
We're not stupid, but we are kind of lazy. Let's get off the fossil carbon and the industrial revolution kick and start the ecological revolution. We need to join in on what the world is providing and doing for living things. We need to cooperate with natural forces and attempt to control our own forces (on nature) better than we do, or become victims of the natural forces we cannot control. The tender atmosphere we have control over now. Let's not bust the thing.
Regards,
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Greg and April<mailto:gregandapril at earthlink.net>
To: Terra Preta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Net Present Value and Net Future Value ofTPBenefits
While very commendable, I highly doubt that ceasing the use of fossil fuels or the use of cement will ever happen.
I say this as even the renewable energy industry requires the large use of fossil fuel to make those wonderful products that make renewable energy industry even possible. Where does the raw materials come from the make a wind generator or a solar cell - do you see what I'm trying to say?
This is why I have traditionally asked what the carbon footprint of a MW wind generator or a field of solar cells is - and no one that has advocated such forms of energy over fossil fuels has ever been able to reply with any thing more than " I don't know but it's smaller than traditional energy sources ". Then when I ask " How do you know? " all I get is silence.
The point I'm trying to make, is that it takes allot of fossil fuel to make solar cells or a wind generator, so you can't just do without it when making such products - just not possible.
Cement is a fact of life, and in many ways can not be done without, indeed even the renewable energy industry needs it almost as much as fossil fuel. I also do not see the issue with CO2 release with cement making as it is temporary, since while CO2 is driven off to make the lime for the cement, the cement absorbs CO2 as it cures. Granted it does take more time to absorb it than it did to drive it off, but it does happen - recall the problems with Biosphere 2 and how they had to import O2 during the great experiment - that was because the cement that was used for the construction of the facility, was absorbing it from the air, and they failed to take that into account and make sure that there was enough CO2 available for the plants to use and the cement to absorb.
Greg H.
----- Original Message -----
From: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 13:49
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Net Present Value and Net Future Value of TPBenefits
SNIP
Terra Preta formation can address the multiple purposes; climate mitigation, food production, and a viable energy resource. I think this model works for how to behave in the future with respect to energy and the environment. The immediate problem of high GHG concentrations in the atmosphere can be dealt with by sequestering charcoal-in-soil and ceasing the production and use of industrial fertilizers, burning of fossil fuels, and maybe of limestone cement. Charcoal-in-soil can lead to long term agricultural benefits, lasting thousands of years (similar to the Amazonian TP formations, which are found circa 4500 after formation began on them). The process of making charcoal from biomass can be a co-product with harvesting usable heat and chemical energy in gaseous fuels from biomass. The gaseous and liquid chemicals extracted from pyrolysis of biomass can also or otherwise be refined and used to produce even, again, industrial fertilizers and other chemical products like those from petro-chemicals.
Regards,
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Haard<mailto:richrd at nas.com>
To: Kevin Chisholm<mailto:kchisholm at ca.inter.net>
Cc: Peter Read<mailto:peter at read.org.nz> ; Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> ; Miles Tom<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> ; Toch Susan<mailto:anaturalresource at gmail.com> ; Michael Pilarski<mailto:friendsofthetrees at yahoo.com> ; Baur Hans<mailto:hans at riseup.net> ; Todd Jones<mailto:tjones at nas.com> ; Terrapreta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 11:12 AM
Subject: Re:-----and Net Present Value of TP Benefits
On Mar 14, 2008, at 8:47 PM, Kevin Chisholm wrote:
> Peter Read wrote:
Hello Kevin - drifting a bit from the thread but an interesting topic
to me.
by NPV you mean direct value to farmer such as added CEC or OM
equivalent? The real value to farmer - not discounted carbon credit is
what will make this all happen as general practice in agriculture.
What is the real economic benefit to the farmer per ton applied to
land will depend on soil type, climate and needs for fertilizer
supplements to maintain fertility levels and as yet unquantified
benefits of charcoal additive in soil. This figure of NPV $50 could
be quite higher.
Most important in soils where organic matter needs to be monitored
carefully to maintain productive capacity (not all do), what needs to
be calculated is the cost of raising soil organic matter an equivalent
amount permanently. Ie the cost in lost production of fallow periods
and the cost of reestablishing farming if the land has gone back to
forest during fallow.
I am hoping the block research currently underway at our farm
comparing compost to charcoal to fertilizer and permutations will
answer this question for us at 4CN.
In our farming we are holding organic matter at 4 % minimum with
biannual applications of 1 cubic yard of compost made from sewage
solids and sawmill wood waste per 1000 sq. feet. In addition, we are
adding summer and winter cover cropping when a particular section is
fallow. So far as a OM supplement sawdust alone will do the job when
balanced with garden fertilizer to compensate for binding of N and P
by the decomposing wood. But this OM benefit in tilled soil is gone in
a few years whereas the charcoal lasts as I am trying to quantify at
our soil.
Buying charcoal at $ 200/ton will not happen for us in the short term
anyway because of these economic factors. I do not know what a cubic
yard of dry sawdust weighs but cost is most likely 5 % or less and we
use about 250 yards or more annually. What might happen though in the
near term is our on farm waste wood summer dried and converted to
charcoal by some sort of smothered combustion. In our climate dry
weather July through September will allow us to do this by windrowing
with farm machinery.
We will have significant quantities available, probably each year 300
cubic yards of loose twigs, roots and reject plant trimmings. Right
now we either burn this stuff or use the soil/weed and reject plants
as fill. Labor and use of equipment on farm does not equate to
purchases outside of normal operations hence costs we incur on such a
project are more easily absorbed as I suppose they are elsewhere. I am
thinking some sort of buried pyrolysis with movable scrap sheet metal
and wet spoiled hay in a top lit bottom draft system similar to our
project 2 years ago.
If the value of farm waste worked into soil, say corn or wheat is
higher when converted to charcoal then the most efficient method for
doing this onsite will rule in the end.
On Mar 14, 2008, at 8:47 PM, Kevin Chisholm wrote:
> If we assume that Charcoal in TP gives a return with aNet Present
> Value equivalent to $50 per tonne of Charcoal applied,
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