Why the pessimsm?

Well, I'm convinced: Whatever other problems we have with oil production peaking in the near future, we will be able to keep our cars running, albeit perhaps expensively. I was just poking around the IAGS website, one of the members of the Set America Free Coalition (one of the earliest, loudest voices in favour of plug-in hybrids.) A tidbit from their page, "sources of methanol."

Biomass can be converted to syn-gas by a process called partial oxidation, and later converted to methanol. Biomass is organic material, such as urban wood wastes, primary mill residues, forest residues, agricultural residues, and dedicated energy crops (e.g. sugar cane and sugar beets,) that can be made into fuel. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates 2.45 billion metric tons a year of biomass are available for U.S. fuel production. One ton can be converted to 186 gallons (721 liters) of methanol.

That math works out to a potential of 455 billion gallons of methanol from biomass alone. Methanol can also be made from other sources, such as natural gas and coal. But we want to concentrate on renewable energy first and foremost, obviously.

Is this enough methanol? Let's see. In 2004, the US consumed almost 9 million barrels of motor gasoline a day (PDF). A barrel is 42 gallons, meaning that the US consumed about 140 billion gallons of gasoline in 2004. Methanol isn't as efficient a fuel as gasoline, getting roughly half the mileage. That means we need 280 billion gallons of methanol, assuming all we do is convert existing cars to methanol-powered cars. (This is eminently doable, at reasonable cost.) This is only 60% of the potential - which gives us lots of room. The surplus methanol can be used to make dimethyl ether, a diesel replacement.

Note the milage thing - one gallon of methanol will only get you half the distance of a gallon of gasoline. So obviously the desire is to keep the price of methanol to 1/2 the price of gasoline if we don't want to hurt consumers anymore than they're already hurting. Given that gasoline in the US is averaging $2.35-$2.40 a gallon, while methanol is averaging $0.90 a gallon, this seems a reasonable assumption. Again, the one caveat is that the price of methanol will go up if we make it exclusively of biomass, not coal.

And, if we ever get working fuel cell cars, methanol is a good hydrogen carrier - methanol fuel cells are already on their way for personal electronics. And all of the above totally ignores the potential to replace liquid fuels with electricity - either partially or completely. My guess is that we'll see a move towards gasoline-free and gasoline-optional cars that will reduce methanol demand to well below the 280 billion barrels that I've noted here. This could free up diesel production to drive long-haul trucking, maritime shipping, and trains.

Once again - the problem with fueling the future is not going to be a lack of options. Building the infrastructure will be expensive in many cases, but economics and politics all eventually have to bend to reality. Of course, "eventually" can seem like a long time, especially under the Bush administration.