Which alternative fuel do you believe will be used by cars in the future?

Question

Which alternative fuel do you believe will be used by cars in the future?

Answer 1

CNG and hydrogen

Answer 2

Fossil fuels is the only way to go.

Answer 3

I believe hydrogen is our best long term bet, but we will need to go through low emission combustable fuels first over the next 5-30 years. Technology will improve over time so we can cut down on the combustables

Answer 4

It will mainly be a combination of plug-in hybrids and electric cars because the infrastructure to refuel them already exists, the technology is available and improving, and they minimize carbon dioxide emissions.

If the technology to obtain hydrogen from aluminum alloys pans out, eventually hydrogen cars might make up part of the transportation sector because aluminum is a common metal and the only byproduct is water vapor.  That technology is still a long way from being developed though.

Answer 5

Probably biodiesel  just because it's easy to make, and runs on basically the same type of engine that we already have in place.

There wouldn't be a need for a major changeover or attempt to sway people to change to electric cars that they may not trust.

Answer 6

Short term (~50 years) I'm guessing Ethanol from switchgrass. But after that I think we'll be using Zero Point energy sources. They already exist in some small, private labs, and now with the Internet, the information can't be supressed anymore, only ridiculed.

Answer 7

I believe , someday, that we will learn somehow, to manipulate the earths natural magnetic field to run our autos.

This natural rescource is unlimited and pruduces no byproducts.

Answer 8

I hope it is not Ethanol ,but it looks as if it will be

Solar or peddel cars would be the best

Global warming is a really destructive situation.

But not half as destructive right now ,as what the USA is planning.

They are insane intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...

Answer 9

I would be more inclined to believe in more mass transportation systems thru the electric grid and storage batteries using geothermal technologies. Supposedly,there are already devices you can purchase to refuel your hydrogen powered vehicles in your own homes at a cost of around $20,000. It would seem we need to socialize our transportation and shipping systems to hold costs down. It's time to end this corporate domination. This has to be more than some political promise from any typical political party.They've been stalling this way too long because of greed and payoffs. These are the biggest criminals. No more excuses and wars over oil. How would you feel if martial law was imposed because of people fed up with oil corporations and a government who constantly gets bought off?

Answer 10

I personally believe hydrogen (produced with solar, wind and ocean current energy) will ultimately win out. Other technologies will help get us there meanwhile...

Answer 11

I think Butanol will be the next widely used fuel as their is already an infrastructure to distribute it and is an easy direct replacement for gasoline.

Unfortunately the US will never produce enough to replace more than half of the fuel usage of the US. Eventually gas engine will have to be replaced. Hydrogen perhaps? A small set of massive nuclear power plants could produce all of the fuel the US needs for a hydrogen ran vehicle. Remember that hydrogen is merely a good way to store the energy. It has to be made from another fuel source.

Answer 12

In a very short future ?

Still biodiesel because like diesel, the motor has a 20% higher efficiency and the structure of the molecule is very similar to regular diesel.

Bioethanol is explosive like regular gas which  limits the possible compression rate in the motor... this means that the US  might not leave soon the underperforming technological path it is on.