Toto Wolf - Formula 1 should be leading the pack in sustainable fuels and biofuels instead of electric

[RedNEO]

I did read it. Did you read mine? Perhaps you wouldn’t have corrected me if you did because I said net zero is when more carbon will be being extracted than put back in. Anyway I’ve already pointed why biofuels are better at doing what batteries were trying to do but now it’s become about ‘whataboutisms’. It’s not about not liking batteries it’s just I share the opinion of Toto that biofuels solve a problem better than they could. If you think they are not as efficient thats fine, but they have far more benefits than losses and remember it’s only the second generation of biofuels and they have already achieved carbon neutrality.

Yes, I noticed you had conflicting statements on carbon neutrality in that post. I can't smell which one to take seriously and which one to discard, so I picked the first statement - which you seem to use in later posts, too, anyway.

You haven't actually addressed why biofuels are batteries in the long run, or in the consumer car market at which engine development would be targeted. You simply waived any comments on that, or provided a strawman response. The comments you received were not 'whataboutisms', but addressed valid aspects that deserve further discussion in deciding whether ICEs, biofuels and synfuels are a viable, long term option for consumer cars (and hence whether further development of them is warranted).

Your argument so far seems to be hinging on 2 points.
1: Toto says X, so that is the truth and I agree with it (which is an argument from authority)
2: Battery production comes with huge emissions, while biofuels are carbon neutral (which is a fallacy too).

How exactly do you think that biofuels are produced carbon neutral (it's not important which generation they are in this question, per se)? The equipment to harvest biomass runs on gasoline or diesel. Most processing steps are heated with gas, and carbon isn't captured and stored. Some may be electric, but with grid energy - which is a mixture of sources, including fuel. The practical way to claim carbon neutrality in that case is to use (1) green energy certificates to claim the grid energy you use is green, and (2) offsetting the carbon emissions from the other processing steps. The thing is, of course, the exact same thing applies to batteries. You can buy green energy certificates for the grid energy used to produce batteries (and the electricity for car usage), and you can offset the other emissions of battery production. If biofuel producers can claim their biofuels are net zero emission if they offset production emissions, then battery producers can claim net zero emission if they offset production emissions. Otherwise, if you want to keep complaining that battery production is causing substantial gross emissions, then you need to accept that biofuel production is causing substantial gross emissions, too. You cannot complain about the one and waive the other, which has been pointed out numerous times, yet you keep committing exactly this fallacy.

And, net zero CO2 emissions does not remove the other secondary emissions of both options. For batteries, the social and environmental impact of lithium, cobalt and graphite mining for example. For biofuels, the land use, nutrient runoff, impact on land and water quality, pesticide use, etcetera. If you want to have a fair assessment of which tech has the biggest impact, you need to assess those aspects. It's quite hard for 2nd generation biofuels because they are a co-product of food production, but because it's hard in practice does not mean it can be ignored.

Also, I did not claim batteries are better at this stage than biofuels. I don't know if they are, I have not had the time to delve deep into LCAs and such. I stated they have more potential, for a number of reasons that were listed several times. First and foremost, because the available biomass is hardly sufficient to cover aviation fuel demands, and because aviation has the biggest need for liquid fuels. So you need alternatives for consumer cars if you want to step away from fossil, and there battery tech has simply has the best papers. Despite it being mentioned several times, you didn't address this.

The second argument is that there is much more development potential in battery tech. The processing steps for 2nd generation bio can be somewhat more efficient, but it won't be a huge deal more. For battery tech, prices keep dropping substantially, energy costs per kWh storage capacity, too, and the environmental footprint via efficiency gains as well (which seems to be your biggest concern). Of course, a more-and-more green energy grid also has an impact (if we consider gross emissions), but that applies equally to battery tech and biofuels.

I just can’t follow this line of thought. You are in denial at this point. Batteries and Biofuels don’t produce the same emissions. Batteries are dirty to produce and biofuels are not. That’s just a fact! I don’t see why you keep saying batteries can be produced in the same way, they cannot. They are not recyclable and don’t come from a renewable source like biofuels. There is no debate, biofuels are just better at making sustainable carbon neutral fuels than battery production is at making batteries that add to the carbon footprint. Batteries are only good for adding to the carbon footprint and waste footprint. Biofuels are not a co-product of food production either, I don’t know where you got that from but these second generation bio-fuels don’t even use anything consumed by humans or animals.

[Just_a_fan]

The reason it results in less carbon in the atmosphere is because it simply outputs less carbon than it extracts from the atmosphere.

How does burning a fuel produce less carbon dioxide than went in to making that fuel? "Petrol" is C(n)H(2n+2) - that's going to be the same with these "biofuels" because they're just making "petrol" from the air. You burn it in ideal conditions and you get CO2 and H2O. But you don't get ideal conditions in any engine so you get CO2, CO, H2O, NOx, particulates (these are soot which is, you guessed it, carbon) etc. The amount of C out is the same as the amount of C in. It doesn't matter who funded the research and who backs it, the chemistry is set by the Universe and it doesn't care.

In principle one could make the biofuel so pure that it contained no other atoms other than C and H and that would help with other pollutants such as sulphur, but as most petrol these days is extremely low in sulphur anyway, that's a minor gain.

And in order to make all of this biofuel, you need energy. Now that can be from the Sun via photosynthesis (growing the fuel) or via PV, or via wind turbines, or hydro, but it all needs energy. And you get out less than you put in - again the Universe requires this and we don't get to change the rules on that.

Perhaps this link will explain it better than I ever could..
https://energypost.eu/extract-co2-from- ... tic-fuels/

This image shows the process.


See the bit where it shows energy being added to the system? That's either electricity at 1.5GWh/t CO2 or 0.5t of natural gas being burnt (and releasing CO2...). That's just to produce the CO2.

Then you've got to produce the hydrogen. This is usually done by breaking up natural gas by steam reforming. This also produces a lot of CO2 (actually CO but that is then converted to CO2 as CO is nasty stuff).

You can make hydrogen by splitting water but not much is done that way because, well, it's energy intensive.

So, if you're going to make fuel from the air, you're going to need a lot of energy. That energy could also be used directly for heating/lighting buildings etc. Which means you either build more energy sources (presumably renewables) or you need to find another energy source for those buildings etc. You see? You can't just wave your arms and say "it's 100% renewable" and "carbon neutral" unless you spend a lot of resources making it so. Currently, we can either make "fuel from the air" or we can light / heat buildings. Not both at the same time.

And that's before you get to the ability to make enough of the fuel to be anything more than a tiny percentage of the world's oil usage. The world uses about 100,000,000 barrels / day of oil. That's 15,900,000,000 litres. Petrol produces 2.3kg of CO2 for each litre burnt. So you'll need to capture 3,657,000,000 kg/day of CO2 to replace all of that oil with "fuel from the air". How much energy is that going to require? Hint: an awful lot. And that's before you've sorted out all of the hydrogen supply you'll need.

[Just_a_fan]

That’s just a fact! I don’t see why you keep saying batteries can be produced in the same way, they cannot. They are not recyclable

Batteries aren't recyclable? Really? If you think that then it's no wonder you've been saying some of the other stuff.

[RedNEO]

If you want to argue with a fuel that’s been developed and given to all four manufacturers to make there own versions and will start being incorporated from 2021 than be my guest. But it’s like being angry at a cloud for being a cloud at this point. The fuel is there, it’s carbon neutral and it’s ahead of battery tech in carbon emissions, renewability, recyclability, energy density and widespread infrastructure incorporation. What else is left to discuss at this point?

[RedNEO]

That’s just a fact! I don’t see why you keep saying batteries can be produced in the same way, they cannot. They are not recyclable

Batteries aren't recyclable? Really? If you think that then it's no wonder you've been saying some of the other stuff.

You cannot fully recycle a battery, you can only re-use parts of it but only for a secondary less intensive battery use so it’s just going to add to waste pollution. So yes it’s not recyclable.

[RedNEO]

How does burning a fuel produce less carbon dioxide than went in to making that fuel? "Petrol" is C(n)H(2n+2) - that's going to be the same with these "biofuels" because they're just making "petrol" from the air. You burn it in ideal conditions and you get CO2 and H2O. But you don't get ideal conditions in any engine so you get CO2, CO, H2O, NOx, particulates (these are soot which is, you guessed it, carbon) etc. The amount of C out is the same as the amount of C in. It doesn't matter who funded the research and who backs it, the chemistry is set by the Universe and it doesn't care.

In principle one could make the biofuel so pure that it contained no other atoms other than C and H and that would help with other pollutants such as sulphur, but as most petrol these days is extremely low in sulphur anyway, that's a minor gain.

And in order to make all of this biofuel, you need energy. Now that can be from the Sun via photosynthesis (growing the fuel) or via PV, or via wind turbines, or hydro, but it all needs energy. And you get out less than you put in - again the Universe requires this and we don't get to change the rules on that.

Perhaps this link will explain it better than I ever could..
https://energypost.eu/extract-co2-from- ... tic-fuels/

This image shows the process.
https://energypost.eu/wp-content/upload ... age-26.png

See the bit where it shows energy being added to the system? That's either electricity at 1.5GWh/t CO2 or 0.5t of natural gas being burnt (and releasing CO2...). That's just to produce the CO2.

Then you've got to produce the hydrogen. This is usually done by breaking up natural gas by steam reforming. This also produces a lot of CO2 (actually CO but that is then converted to CO2 as CO is nasty stuff).

You can make hydrogen by splitting water but not much is done that way because, well, it's energy intensive.

So, if you're going to make fuel from the air, you're going to need a lot of energy. That energy could also be used directly for heating/lighting buildings etc. Which means you either build more energy sources (presumably renewables) or you need to find another energy source for those buildings etc. You see? You can't just wave your arms and say "it's 100% renewable" and "carbon neutral" unless you spend a lot of resources making it so. Currently, we can either make "fuel from the air" or we can light / heat buildings. Not both at the same time.

And that's before you get to the ability to make enough of the fuel to be anything more than a tiny percentage of the world's oil usage. The world uses about 100,000,000 barrels / day of oil. That's 15,900,000,000 litres. Petrol produces 2.3kg of CO2 for each litre burnt. So you'll need to capture 3,657,000,000 kg/day of CO2 to replace all of that oil with "fuel from the air". How much energy is that going to require? Hint: an awful lot. And that's before you've sorted out all of the hydrogen supply you'll need.

This was for the purpose of showing you one example how net zero emissions is achieved. The means to do it is currently still being developed by FIA further and they are confident they will achieve it to a satisfactory level by 2030 so don’t take this one example by a small company that doesn’t have the funding and backing of the F1 industry.

[Ferry]

You cannot fully recycle a battery, you can only re-use parts of it but only for a secondary less intensive battery use so it’s just going to add to waste pollution. So yes it’s not recyclable.

We had that discussion a couple of days ago. Have a look at what the company Fortum is doing in Finland. They claim 80% recyclability: https://www.fortum.com/products-and-ser ... g-solution
Batteries are 80% recyclable. It's not black or white.

[Just_a_fan]

If you want to argue with a fuel that’s been developed and given to all four manufacturers to make there own versions and will start being incorporated from 2021 than be my guest. But it’s like being angry at a cloud for being a cloud at this point. The fuel is there, it’s carbon neutral and it’s ahead of battery tech in carbon emissions, renewability, recyclability, energy density and widespread infrastructure incorporation. What else is left to discuss at this point?

If it's just going to be a specialist product used by F1 then it's pointless and will do nothing useful other than a bit PR flag waving.

If the intention is to promote its use instead of fossil-fuel petrol and thus allow ICE to continue to be used instead of EVs on the world's roads, then my early points about scalability are exactly what needs to be discussed.

[Just_a_fan]

Perhaps this link will explain it better than I ever could..
https://energypost.eu/extract-co2-from- ... tic-fuels/

This image shows the process.
https://energypost.eu/wp-content/upload ... age-26.png

See the bit where it shows energy being added to the system? That's either electricity at 1.5GWh/t CO2 or 0.5t of natural gas being burnt (and releasing CO2...). That's just to produce the CO2.

Then you've got to produce the hydrogen. This is usually done by breaking up natural gas by steam reforming. This also produces a lot of CO2 (actually CO but that is then converted to CO2 as CO is nasty stuff).

You can make hydrogen by splitting water but not much is done that way because, well, it's energy intensive.

So, if you're going to make fuel from the air, you're going to need a lot of energy. That energy could also be used directly for heating/lighting buildings etc. Which means you either build more energy sources (presumably renewables) or you need to find another energy source for those buildings etc. You see? You can't just wave your arms and say "it's 100% renewable" and "carbon neutral" unless you spend a lot of resources making it so. Currently, we can either make "fuel from the air" or we can light / heat buildings. Not both at the same time.

And that's before you get to the ability to make enough of the fuel to be anything more than a tiny percentage of the world's oil usage. The world uses about 100,000,000 barrels / day of oil. That's 15,900,000,000 litres. Petrol produces 2.3kg of CO2 for each litre burnt. So you'll need to capture 3,657,000,000 kg/day of CO2 to replace all of that oil with "fuel from the air". How much energy is that going to require? Hint: an awful lot. And that's before you've sorted out all of the hydrogen supply you'll need.

This was for the purpose of showing you one example how net zero emissions is achieved. The means to do it is currently still being developed by FIA further and they are confident they will achieve it to a satisfactory level by 2030 so don’t take this one example by a small company that doesn’t have the funding and backing of the F1 industry.

But it isn't net zero emissions unless the energy source is also net zero emissions i.e. renewables or nuclear. You keep avoiding the energy input required to make this stuff.

The FIA might be confident they can make a suitable net zero-carbon fuel for racing by 2030. They certainly won't be replacing fossil-fuel petrol on the roads by then in any meaningful way, that's for sure.

[RedNEO]

If you want to argue with a fuel that’s been developed and given to all four manufacturers to make there own versions and will start being incorporated from 2021 than be my guest. But it’s like being angry at a cloud for being a cloud at this point. The fuel is there, it’s carbon neutral and it’s ahead of battery tech in carbon emissions, renewability, recyclability, energy density and widespread infrastructure incorporation. What else is left to discuss at this point?

If it's just going to be a specialist product used by F1 then it's pointless and will do nothing useful other than a bit PR flag waving.

If the intention is to promote its use instead of fossil-fuel petrol and thus allow ICE to continue to be used instead of EVs on the world's roads, then my early points about scalability are exactly what needs to be discussed.

I’m amazed you think this is a PR move or a specialist product. Sorry to burst your battery bubble but we have multiple manufacturers and F1/FIA all endorsing this and investing in ICE combined with sustainable biofuels for both racing and technology transfer to road cars. Take a look at FE, if battery tech was the future VW wouldn’t be removing Porsche, Audi and BMW wouldn’t be following with Toto and Mercedes touting biofuels as the direction they are heading. The writing is on the wall, the days of batteries as a replacement for petrol/diesel are over.

[Just_a_fan]

If you want to argue with a fuel that’s been developed and given to all four manufacturers to make there own versions and will start being incorporated from 2021 than be my guest. But it’s like being angry at a cloud for being a cloud at this point. The fuel is there, it’s carbon neutral and it’s ahead of battery tech in carbon emissions, renewability, recyclability, energy density and widespread infrastructure incorporation. What else is left to discuss at this point?

If it's just going to be a specialist product used by F1 then it's pointless and will do nothing useful other than a bit PR flag waving.

If the intention is to promote its use instead of fossil-fuel petrol and thus allow ICE to continue to be used instead of EVs on the world's roads, then my early points about scalability are exactly what needs to be discussed.

I’m amazed you think this is a PR move or a specialist product. Sorry to burst your battery bubble but we have multiple manufacturers and F1/FIA all endorsing this and investing in ICE combined with sustainable biofuels for both racing and technology transfer to road cars. Take a look at FE, if battery tech was the future VW wouldn’t be removing Porsche, Audi and BMW wouldn’t be following with Toto and Mercedes touting biofuels as the direction they are heading. The writing is on the wall, the days of batteries as a replacement for petrol/diesel are over.

And where is all of the biofuel coming from? We still need to replace billions of litres of fossil-fuel petrol/diesel with bio-alternatives. That's not going to happen in a short period of time.

You seem to think that a few people make an announcement and suddenly the world has changed and everything is ok.

It's worth looking at the energy companies - they're investing in a wide range of futures - EVs, hydrogen and biofuels. The reality is that some mix of these is the real future, not just one relying on biofuels (or solely on EVs or solely on hydrogen).

Hybrid systems that regenerate braking energy are an excellent system and likely to carry on no matter what energy source is used to drive the vehicle. And hybrids require batteries to hold that regen energy.

[Scorpaguy]

FYI...Porsche has reaffirmed their commitment to Formula E for the next 3 years. They did not announce their departure as did Audi/BMW.

[Ferry]

I watched this on the news today:
https://www.morrowbatteries.com/post/mo ... -in-norway
"The giga battery cell factory will be located in the Agder region in the south of Norway which has a significant surplus of competitively priced renewable energy. It is also very close to a number of suppliers of critical raw materials and key European markets.

This will enable the factory to become both highly cost competitive and one of the greenest battery factories in the world. Significant amount of upstream processes such as precursor preparation and active material synthesis, to the actual cell manufacturing and close loop recycling, will be 100% powered by renewable energy."

[gruntguru]

re "batteries vs biofuels". WTF! They can not be compared in CO2 emission terms.
- Biofuels are a form of energy.
- A battery is a reservoir of energy. It stays in the car and gets filled and emptied thousands of times before it is replaced and recylcled. If you want to focus on the embedded CO2 in a part of the car, you need to do a LCA on the whole car and compare that with the competing technology.

It is also disingenous to claim that technology A uses "green" energy in its manufacture and technology B is manufactured using coal fired electricity. Energy is energy. If a large amount of green energy is used in the manufacture of biofuel, that green energy is not available for say - household electricity and therefore more coal must be burned to make up the shortfall.

One study shows that the CO2 break-even mileage for a BEV varies from 17,000 km to 310,000 km depending on the source of energy. https://www.electrive.com/2020/04/07/li ... n-engines/ The world is heading towards 100% zero carbon electricity production and the BEV is one of the alternatives for transferring that to the transportation sector.

As pointed out by DChemTech, Biofuels cannot be scaled to meet 100% of transportation energy requirements - at best they might be sufficient to support the aviation industry where no other solution (electric or hydrogen) is likely to be available in the near future. Like Solar and wind, biofuels run into a land-use problem and atmospheric carbon capture is a long way off - and may be needed to REDUCE atmospheric CO2 levels.

A comment on atmospheric carbon capture. This is not a technology that will ever be implemented on a large scale, while power stations are pumping megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. It is much easier and cheaper to capture this carbon.

[RedNEO]

re "batteries vs biofuels". WTF! They can not be compared in CO2 emission terms.
- Biofuels are a form of energy.
- A battery is a reservoir of energy. It stays in the car and gets filled and emptied thousands of times before it is replaced and recylcled. If you want to focus on the embedded CO2 in a part of the car, you need to do a LCA on the whole car and compare that with the competing technology.

It is also disingenous to claim that technology A uses "green" energy in its manufacture and technology B is manufactured using coal fired electricity. Energy is energy. If a large amount of green energy is used in the manufacture of biofuel, that green energy is not available for say - household electricity and therefore more coal must be burned to make up the shortfall.

One study shows that the CO2 break-even mileage for a BEV varies from 17,000 km to 310,000 km depending on the source of energy. https://www.electrive.com/2020/04/07/li ... n-engines/ The world is heading towards 100% zero carbon electricity production and the BEV is one of the alternatives for transferring that to the transportation sector.

As pointed out by DChemTech, Biofuels cannot be scaled to meet 100% of transportation energy requirements - at best they might be sufficient to support the aviation industry where no other solution (electric or hydrogen) is likely to be available in the near future. Like Solar and wind, biofuels run into a land-use problem and atmospheric carbon capture is a long way off - and may be needed to REDUCE atmospheric CO2 levels.

A comment on atmospheric carbon capture. This is not a technology that will ever be implemented on a large scale, while power stations are pumping megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. It is much easier and cheaper to capture this carbon.

It’s like speaking to a brick wall. You battery enthusiasts need to realise batteries are beaten and let it go. You make biofuels and synthetic without adding more co2 to the atmosphere unlike the dirty battery production and you don’t need to change the infrastructure to distribute it. It’s not that hard to grasp that you simply will not make battery production meet the emission requirements in the timescale that is needed. You can’t even produce them from renewable sources let alone making them carbon neutral. It’s a completely redundant argument at this point.