Lee Siegel have made an estimate of the amount of buried plant material that is needed to produce one gallon of gasoline. It is about 98 tons. (= A conversion factor of about 6,500 : 1)
From that figure, you can calculate the "fair" price of oil.
- Assume you think a fair price for 1 kWh of plant biomass is 0.5 SEK (=$ 0.065 or € 0.055), if you buy it as wood. (Many people think so.)
- Assume you would think it is fair to pay the same price for the energy embodied in oil.
- 98 tons of plant biomass is about 24,500 kWh (= about 4 kg dry mass per kWh), which is what Siegel estimates is needed to produce a gallon of gasoline.
- The price for this in biomass of today, in the rate we assumed above, is 12,250 SEK (or $ 1,598 or € 1,345). About $ 1,600 a gallon ! Don't nag about gas prices any more!
- In Sweden, and most part of Europe, the cars are filled with litres One gallon is about 3.78 litres. The "fair" gasoline price should ten be SEK 6481 (€ 711) per litre.
People start nagging when it is above 10 SEK, or € 1.1, per litre. (About $ 5 per gallon)
