New Study Finds Renewable Fuels Are Dirtier Than Fossil Fuels!

Today we look at two new papers that reveal renewable energies don’t deliver what their proponents like to have us believe they do, i.e. clean, affordable and reliable energy, and another telling us that the Paris Agreement is a joke.

Biofuel blends are more polluting

The first paper by Emery et al., 2017, looks at biofuel and found:

Life-cycle non-GHG air pollutant emissions, particularly NOX [nitrous oxides] and PM [particulates], are higher for corn ethanol and other biofuel blends than conventional petroleum fuels.”

Other findings include 1) emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxide (CO) increase by 9–50% per 100 km traveled for high-ethanol blends from corn grain and combined grain and stover feedstocks; 2) NOX, PM [particulates], and SOX [sulfur dioxides] increase by 71–124% from corn grain and 56–110% from combined grain and stover, relative to conventional gasoline; and 3) The total social costs of ethanol blends are higher than that of gasoline, due in part to higher life-cycle emissions of non-GHG pollutants and higher health and mortality costs per unit.

In Germany many people are apprehensive about putting fuels blended with ethanol or biodiesel into their tanks because it is long known that these fuels are more aggressive with the vehicles’ fuel burning systems. I never put the stuff in my car.

Renewables cannot compete

Another paper shows that renewable energies are non-competitive on yet another front. Vass, 2017 here concludes that they “cannot compete with forest carbon sequestration to cost-efficiently meet the EU carbon target for 2050″.

The paper writes:

[T]he average cost per unit emissions reduction is more than twice as high for renewables as for forest carbon sequestration. Hence, the results indicate that renewables are unable to compete with forest carbon sequestration unless they receive continued government support.”

Paris Agreement is a “toothless deal”

And finally another study by Mahapatra and Ratha, 2017 finds that the Paris Agreement “is a relatively toothless one, which does not bind countries to actual emission limits, and has no mechanisms to impose actions. No sanctions will fall on any country that fails to come up to these intentions.”

The paper goes on to quote Professor James Hansen, the so-called father of climate change awareness:

the deal is worthless words’ (Wente, 2015).  The final text contains only bland platitudes. There is no necessary connection between the legally binding nature of an international agreement and its effectiveness in producing outcomes (Lake, 2015). The agreement delineates an aim for reducing temperatures to a 2°C above pre-industrial levels, but does not commit.

Yes, this is what all the climate activists and politicians were celebrating in December, 2015, in trying to have us believe they had accomplished something really big and unprecedented.

And there have been rumors that Ivanka Trump is pushing for the deal’s ratification by the US. Don’t be surprised should President Trump sign it. But it won’t matter, because the treaty is toothless and only a show. On the other hand, the President should keep his campaign promise and not sign the farce treaty.

 

11 responses to “New Study Finds Renewable Fuels Are Dirtier Than Fossil Fuels!”

  1. Ron Clutz

    The IEA declared 2017 to be the tipping point for climate action. From the World Energy Outlook:

    “If internationally co-ordinated action is not implemented by 2017, we project that all permissible CO2 emissions in the 450 Scenario will come from the infrastructure then existing, so that all new infrastructure from then until 2035 would need to be zero-carbon. This would theoretically be possible at very high cost, but probably not practicable in political terms.”

    “If we do not change course, by 2015 over 90% of the permissible energy sector emissions to 2035 will already be locked in. By 2017, 100%.”

    “We can still act in time to preserve a plausible path to a sustainable energy future; but each year the necessary measures get progressively tougher and viciously more expensive. So, let’s not wait any longer!”

    Maria van der Hoeven
    Executive Director
    International Energy Agency.
    World Energy Outlook 2011
    https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/WEO2011_WEB.pdf

    According to this, starting next year there is nothing we can do except adapt to weather as it happens.

    1. tom0mason

      Thank Ron,

      Looks like the alarmist are still stuck on the same verse they ever were proclaiming everything will get worse and trying mightily to make it so.

      Still with all this global warming Europe’s ever earlier warm spring and snowless winters, there less need for large amounts of domestic power. /sarcoff.

      1. Mindert Eiting

        Tomorrow is Climate Fools Day. Let’s wish beautiful weather to the scientists marching on the streets. That’s the best for flawless photographs to be shown at an exhibition, when humanity has come to its senses.

    2. dennisambler

      I think every year is a tipping point and always has been!

      Here is an appropriate quote:

      Sustainable Development: Promoting Progress or Perpetuating Poverty?
      edited by Julian Morris, published by Profile Books, London, August 2002

      In 200 AD Tertullian said,“ … we men have actually become a burden to the earth, the fruits of nature hardly suffice to sustain us. There is a general pressure of scarcity giving rise to complaints, since the earth can no longer support us.

      Need we be astonished that plague and famine, warfare and earthquake come to be regarded as remedies, serving, as it were, to trim and prune the superfluity of population.”

  2. Newminster

    “According to this, starting next year there is nothing we can do except adapt to weather as it happens.”

    Which is what we have been doing for several thousand generations and will probably manage to do for several thousand more — barring asteroid strike, nuclear war, or idiots whose knowledge of climate, weather, and the behaviour of atmospheric trace gases could be written on a postage stamp.

    1. Graeme No.3

      with a Texta Colour.

  3. John F. Hultquist

    I’ll be happy to explain to Ivanka why, in general, CAGW is not a problem, and why, specifically, the Paris non-treaty is all about payments from western countries to developing countries (+China).
    She needs to know that none of this “climate” stuff is about climate.

    Her considerable talents can be put to much better use promoting clean water and nutrition, among others.

  4. CO2isLife
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    […] To make matters worse, green fuels aren’t even green, and in some cases “dirtier than fossil fuels.” […]

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    […] at Climate Central, they interviewed the lead author. Ouch! Like this: New Study Finds Renewable Fuels Are Dirtier Than Fossil Fuels! Today we look at two new papers that reveal renewable energies don’t deliver what their […]

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