Breaking through the non-cooperative game

Can Cooperation Survive Within a Non-cooperative Economic System?

by Bill Brandon, special to The Digest

I say yes it can, but we should not assume it is only a voluntary cooperation. Forty-five years ago we made a major transition in our fuel composition. Under the Clean Air Act and the clean fuel program, we stopped using lead as an octane enhancer. There is one small difference between then and now, smog could be seen, smelled and tasted. Today ultra fine particles and CO2 are relatively invisible though real none-the-less. There was push back then and the transition required new pumps and tanks at fueling stations, yet it was accomplished. The government seems not so inclined to make such a transition today however. My thoughts on how such a transition might be accomplished can be seen here.

A look at history can tell us how we might confront a non-cooperative economic environment. We have just celebrated our Independence Day, but that independence grew over many years. The unequal economic relation between England and the colonies brought about ‘cottage’ industries to supply daily needs originally supplied by the colonial masters in England. This spirit followed the pioneer western expansion where isolated settlements were required to be highly self-sufficient.

Some communities like the Oneida Communities in New York or the Amana Community in Iowa, adopted co-operative arrangements we might find unacceptable today but that co-operative spirit still remains strong in some areas of the US. It needs to be reinforced against the corporate power of the ‘me’ mentality that infects our economy today.

According to the USDA figures published in 2010, average diesel inputs for growing corn is 5539 BTU per bushel or about .04 gallon of diesel per bushel of corn. Mean ethanol plant capacity is about 100 MGY requiring about 36 million bushels of corn, which used about 1.4 million gallons of diesel to produce and deliver. Why do we buy that from the non-cooperative competition? Are we captive; is there no alternative? Just as in colonial times, we should not allow ourselves to become captive to colonial incumbent economic interests.

Rather than accept the inferior, dirty product offered by the incumbent, we should implement ‘cottage’ industries to replace those legacy energy products with a modern fuel. That fuel is DME (dimethyl ether), which handles just like propane and delivers all the power of diesel in a compression ignition engine with none of the ultra fine particles and little of the CO2 emitted by diesel. Best of all, it is a logical co-location technology for corn ethanol refineries using corn stover as feedstock and also replacing a portion of the refinery’s natural gas use through use of waste process heat.

Assume all farm diesel used to produce the corn for an ethanol refinery were replaced with DME, and 80% of the waste heat from producing DME went to the ethanol refinery. This would reduce the cooperative reliance on fossil fuel for ethanol production by 9.5% and keep that money from exiting the cooperative community of farmers and ethanol refiners. This technology also has spin off potential. The intermediate product of methanol has its own market and is used in making biodiesel fuel. DME can also be a direct replacement for a portion or all LP or propane gas use.

DME can produce advanced D4 or D3 RINs and introduction as a better fuel does not need government action. What it really needs is a spirit of community cooperation to counter the power of the incumbent corporate ‘me’ economy for its legacy fuels. It does not need significant new technologies but it does need a resurgence of the community cooperative spirit that has been historically strong in our country.