[Terrapreta] Net Present Value vs. Net Future Value of Terra Preta benefits

[Greg and April]

Interspaced between the ************ .

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: Terra Preta ; Greg and April 
  Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 23:03
  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.


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  Fuel taxes are a poor way of funding a project.    First off, it been repeatedly documented that it's going to affect the poor at a higher rate than higher income folks.

  Personally if you really want to fund something like Terra Preta, make 2 types of carbon credits.

  The first would be very much like what we have now, but, like owning shares in a company.    You can buy so much, but each year they expire, and are tied directly to the second type of carbon credit - so many of the first type for each of the second type and they should be bought and sold on the open market - so anyone can buy them, without having to form a special company ( like what Al Gore did ).

  The second should be issued to people that actually sequester carbon in a long term way ( such as TP ), to renewable energy companies, recycling companies ( to encourage the reuse of resources that we have already 'mined' ) and others along the same lines.    These credits ( Mega Carbon Credits or MCC if you want ) have ' x ' number of standard carbon credits, and the number of standard carbon credits that is tied to them, is in direct proportion to the amount of CO2 saved or sequestered the previous year ( down to the 1/2 ton ).   

  What this does is provide a yearly income to the MCC holder that can be used, to expand operations.    Make this income tax free, and even large mega companies will want to get into the act.

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  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.  

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  That takes money, and allot of it.    When up front costs are $20-$30 K for a complete solar set up, then $200-$300 month utility bills look much more favorable, to someone that lives pay check to pay check or close to it.    

  Let's not forget that many neighborhoods also have restrictions of one type or another.

  Then there are other considerations, I wanted to go totally off grid, by using a veggie oil powered generator, and a neighbor told me that he would take me to court if I tried.


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  We'll make do with biochemical replacements for petrochemicals, fuels, and petrochemical based byproducts.  

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  A big problem here is energy density - and that also indirectly translates to how much of product we can make from a given amount of resource.    Most ( if not all ) biological sources are anything but energy dense.    Don't forget that  in the 18th century Britain virtually eliminated all it's forests before switching to coal.

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  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.

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  Carbon fiber has it's uses, but vehicles is not one of them.    While comparable to steel when under tension, it's shear strength is worse than glass, and once in a resin it shatters rather than bending ( a problem with most FRP's ).    There is currently only one source for carbon fiber ( by either of the two manufacturing processes ), and that is a resin derived from petroleum. 

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  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.

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  Again you start running into energy density issues.    Few biological sources can even come close to petroleum based products.    Of all the alcohols, Butanol comes the closest to gasoline, and biodiesel still doesn't have the energy density of dinodiesel ( not to mention really poor cold weather performance ).    Only after these problems are solved will biological / renewable energy be truly viable for everyday use by everyone.

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  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.

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  Again taxes are not the solution.    OTOH, the reverse is more likely to produce results.    Major tax breaks for renewable research and energy efficient products will make people more willing to switch from fossil fuel to renewable energy and using more efficient products.   

   As it is, with the current US tax code, if someone spends money to increase the efficiency of their home, only a tiny portion of the money spent is allowed as a deduction, and that person can not take another tax break if the move and make the next house more efficient.    They effectively get only One small deduction for making One house more efficient and that is it.


  OTOH, you are correct that agriculture needs to find more efficient ways, and ways that use more biological methods rather than petrochemical feedstock's.

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  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.

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  Cement is the only thing ( that I can think of ) that eventually evolves into a more natural product that still does it's job correctly, in fact, as is absorbs CO2 ( which can go on for a hundred years or so - although most of it is has occurred within the first 20 yrs ) it continues to get stronger, as it coverts from calcium oxide to a mix of calcium silicates and calcium carbonates.

  The one negative is that cement alone has poor shear strength, so steel is needed to compensate for it's drawback.    Pre-stressed concrete is one of the strongest materials available today and allot of things require it and there are no biological replacements available.

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  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).  

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  I don't buy the theory that it's a fossil fuel peddlers gimmick.    I don't promote fossil fuel but I do understand that there are still plenty of things that have no biological analogs - least wise any that are as cost effective as petroleum currently is - in some cases there is no analog at all for a product that is made with or from a fossil carbon product.    Even the steel in which to make our TP kilns came from the use of fossil fuel.    As I mentioned above, before Britain started using coal, they had virtually stripped all the forests of trees, in an effort to fuel their industrial revolution.

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  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.

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  Until nano-tubes even get out of the lab, something that they can not even achieve when using relatively cheep fossil carbon, then that's not going to come close happening.

  Nano-tubes is a ultra high tech product, and not something that is ever going to happen ( even in a lab ) in Africa.

  Don't forget, that much of Africa today is a desert, because back in the times the Roman Empire, they mastered the art of clear cutting, long before the term clear cutting was ever used.

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  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.  

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  Not really, all it will do it just postpone any confrontation.    Say that for some reason that tomorrow we had everything in place to replace all fossil carbon use with biological sources - and did so.    

  All that means is that the price of fossil carbon will drop world wide, thus other countries can ( and will ) increase it's use.    

  Let's take a little side step for a moment and look at what will happen just with a fall in the cost of oil, if all industrial nations stopped using fossil carbon.    Many Third World countries rely on the income of oil to sustain them selves.    If the price of oil drops, then they have little in the way of income.    They also have little else to export.    When the governments can't keep the citizens happy then nasty little wars tend to happen - either internal civil wars or they start fighting their neighbors.

  Ok, let's go back to the original thought.

  Cost of fossil carbon drops.    Other nations decide that we are real idiots and increase their use ( drops in cost of oil are always followed by an increase in use ).    

  Sidestep:    Since it takes more land area to compensate the lack of energy density ( or if you will carbon density ) you now need to spread out more - you now need more streets and the things that go with them - but wait you can't use fossil carbon to make the asphalt to pave the streets with - ok just increase cement production - but now you can't use fossil carbon to make cement - just how many trees are you going to have to burn in order to make the necessary materials?    Remember Britain?

  Big cities are only made possible because of the energy density of fossil carbon.    A drop in the amount of energy always makes cities a dangerous place to live as more and more people try and survive at all costs.    Like it or not, the current population on the earth, is only made possible through the use of fossil carbon and when the carbon runs out, some people are going to die, because biological carbon can not fill the gap fast enough.

  Back to thought:    Ok fossil carbon use goes up in other nations because the cost has gone down .    That also means that they can make products ( made from fossil carbon ) more cheaply - Do we now ban imports of fossil carbon based products because they are made cheaper?

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  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.

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  Sounds nice, but not really practical.    Who wants to buy a machine that doesn't use a fossil carbon fuel source, when the cost of the fossil fuel just went down?

  When you really get down to it, there is only one type of ' machine ', that will do what your talking about - work animals.    Anything else is a pie in the sky dream, due to the carbon density / energy density issues already known. 

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  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.

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  It's a grand plan, but highly unlikely.    There may be a United Nations in name, but until they are actually unified, nothing is ever going to happen - that's why the Kyoto Protocols has for the most part fallen flat on it collective face.    

  All nations, industrialized or not has to do it at the same time, not this bunch of nations now, and this bunch of nations at a later unspecified time.    

  All nations at the same time or it will never work, and as long as one nation hold out - it will cause problems and eventually kill the effort.

  What many people do not realize and give the US credit for, is that the US is already home to the largest solar facilities in the world, a series of 9 plants with a combined output of about 400 MW ( peak capacity ), covering 1000 acres and using some 400,000 mirrors: http://www.fplenergy.com/portfolio/contents/segs_viii.shtml 

  Greg H.
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