TITLE: Synthetic Liquid Fuels Development: Assessment of Critical Factors.  Volume IV. Energy/Economic Comparison of Coal-Based Automotive Energy Supply Systems.

AUTHOR: R. V. Steele;   K. J. Sharma;   E. M. Dickson.

INST.  AUTHOR: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  Feb 77,  123p.

ABSTRACT:

Considerable debate has occurred in recent years about the relative merits of energy analysis versus traditional economic analysis. Some economists assert that energy analysis adds no new information to that in economic analysis; energy analysts claim that the explicit consideration of energy flows is necessary for a complete understanding of the implications of energy supply and use. In comparing the cost and energy consumption figures for the various automotive energy options, certain parallels are evident. Those system components that have the highest costs also require high levels of energy consumption. This is generally due to the severity of the processing conditions required to convert one energy form (e.g., coal) to another (e.g., methanol). These conditions require the use of capital-intensive equipment as well as the consumption of large amounts of energy. For some components that have relatively high costs but low energy requirements (e.g., fuel distribution), the costs are due to the many handling and transfer requirements. Overall, the capital- and energy-intensive energy conversion processes dominate the systems we have examined. Therefore, a comparison of cost with energy consumption for all the fuels considered shows a definite trend - increasing costs imply increasing energy consumption. Thus, decision makers concerned with promoting energy conservative supply options need not worry that their choices will be unduly costly. Rather, they will tend to be the least costly for the types of systems considered here. We caution against extrapolating these results to other systems, however, because systems that do not have the same kinds of capital- and energy-intensive components as those considered here may exhibit different trends. (ERA citation 06:000167)

CONTRACT  NUMBER: AT03-76CS50115