2008
2008 December 15. Waste
Coffee Grounds Offer New Source Of Biodiesel
Fuel. Science Daily. Excerpt:
Researchers in Nevada are reporting that waste
coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant,
and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel
fuel for powering cars and trucks.
In the new study, Mano Misra, Susanta Mohapatra, and Narasimharao
Kondamudi note that the major barrier to wider use of biodiesel
fuel is lack of a low-cost, high quality source, or feedstock,
for producing that new energy source. Spent coffee grounds contain
between 11 and 20 percent oil by weight. That's about as much
as traditional biodiesel feedstocks such as rapeseed, palm, and
soybean oil.
...The scientists estimated...that spent coffee grounds can potentially
add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply.
To verify it, the scientists collected spent coffee grounds from
a multinational coffeehouse chain and separated the oil. They
then used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of the
oil into biodiesel.
...The scientists estimate that the process could make a profit
of more than $8 million a year in the U.S. alone. They plan to
develop a small pilot plant to produce and test the experimental
fuel within the next six to eight months....
2008 November 3. Neil
Young on gas guzzlers: Long may you run. By
Al Saracevic, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt:
Leave it to Neil Young to make green technology
cool.
The rock legend has created a company called
Linc Volt Technology to promote the conversion
of existing gas-guzzling cars into vehicles
that run on alternative energy.
...Young, who likes his cars old and big,
is launching his effort by converting a 1959
Lincoln Continental to run on electricity
and natural gas.... All 5,000 pounds of it.
..."All we're doing is showing that you
can run a car like this at 100 miles per gallon
or more," said Young, standing next to
the cream-colored beauty at a South San Francisco
auto shop. "Our main focus is on developing
the technology. We can tell people how to
do it. Or, we can do it for you."
...The car's conversion to a green machine
started about a year ago when Young was feeling
guilty about driving his oil-burning behemoth....
He approached a Wichita, Kan., entrepreneur
named Johnathan Goodwin and his company, H-Line
Conversions, to do the job. But once he got
to talking with Goodwin, he became convinced
that there might be an even better solution.
H-Line had pioneered a new type of alternative-energy
engine that makes a car run on a variety of
fuel platforms. Here's how it works in a nutshell:
For short runs, a car can be plugged in, charged
and then run strictly on electricity using
a rotary engine and its batteries. For longer
hauls, there's also a generator in the car
that runs on compressed natural gas. When
electricity runs short, the generator kicks
in and refuels the batteries. To make matters
even more interesting, the car's generator
will actually feed electricity back into your
home when it's parked and plugged in in the
garage.
"It's a power generator," Young said. "This
thing can power up about a third of a city block. It'll make
your meter run backward."...
Fall 2008. Running
Out of Gas. By Jim Kliesch, Catalyst,
Union of Concerned Scientists. Federal
regulators are shortchanging U.S. drivers
by making new fuel economy standards weaker
than the law meant them to be. UCS is working
to reverse this trend and give consumers the
clean car choices they deserve.
2008 October 14. With
Little Fuel, Eco-Racers Arrive in Las Vegas. By
Steve Friess, The New York Times. Excerpt:
Las Vegas — In a city accustomed to
the catering to the strange and offbeat, the
arrival Monday evening of Jack McCornack and
Sharon Westcott in a topless, two-foot-tall
green and yellow roadster at the front door
of the storied Sahara Hotel-Casino still turned
heads.
Gawkers couldn’t have known that Mr.
McCornack and Ms. Westcott had just driven
the vehicle more than 800 miles over three
days from Berkeley, Calif., but many nonetheless
noticed the plastic tank of vegetable oil — a.k.a.
fuel — affixed to the back.
In making it to Las Vegas in a total of 1,418
minutes without burning an ounce of petroleum,
the duo from Cave Junction, Ore., collected
a $5,000 prize in the Escape From Berkeley
race.
...Beyond the requirement to use no petroleum
products for fuel was the added twist that
the participants would have to scavenge along
the way for raw materials....
“I’m actually kind of shocked that anybody made
it at all,” said Jim Mason, the event’s organizer
and founder of a 20,000-square-foot open-air garage in Berkeley
called Shipyard Labs where self-described “geeks and
gearheads” work in shipping containers....
...Mr. McCornack’s sole rival by Monday
was a green Dodge Dakota that runs on oxygen,
hydrogen and methane power converted from
burned wood in a large black contraption.
The vehicle was driven by Wayne Keith, a 59-year-old
cattle rancher from Springville, Ala....
... Among the vehicles that didn’t make
it were a Mercedes-Benz that runs on vegetable
oil, a two-man bicycle augmented by a one-horsepower
electric motor that runs on ethanol, and a
15 m.p.h. steam-powered three-wheeler (two
of which are wooden)....
Summer 2008. The
New Car Conundrum. By Christine Sarkis,
Terrain Magazine - The Ecology Center. Excerpt:
I've never embraced the consume-more-to-consume-less
strategy; avoiding waste of any kind seems
essential to environmental responsibility.
It's one of the reasons I still drive a conventional
gasoline car...
...When it comes to your carbon footprint,
is it better to keep driving the car you already
have or buy a new hybrid?
...How would the Prius, that iconic hybrid,
stack up against my own not-very-new four-door
hatchback?
...Since I am considering replacing my existing
car with one that must be newly produced,
I need to know how long it would take to make
up for the emissions involved in manufacturing
the Prius—the equivalent of about eighteen
tanks of gas. Since I drive 10,000 miles each
year, it would take about eleven months for
the emissions to balance out....And since
I'd be using less gas, I'd be saving over
$900 a year at the pump. The clear message:
When it comes to emissions, mileage matters
more than manufacturing.
How much would driving a Prius reduce my overall
carbon footprint? ...In my case, there would
be a 5,809 pound difference each year, which,
even including the manufacturing emissions,
translates to an impressive 11.8 fewer tons
of carbon dioxide over five years. That's
like erasing my carbon footprint for an entire
year....
...After crunching my way through the whole
equation, it seems that in my case the impulse
to conserve by making the most of what I've
got doesn't take into account vast differences
in fuel efficiency. In California, where people
drive more than 825 million miles each day,
getting the most out of every gallon of gasoline
has a tremendous environmental impact. That's
reason enough for me to take another look
at consuming a little more in order to use
a lot less....
2008 August 29. Surge
in Natural Gas Has Utah Driving Cheaply. By
CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times. Excerpt:
SALT LAKE CITY — The best deal on fuel
in the country right now might be here in
Utah, where people are waiting in lines to
pay the equivalent of 87 cents a gallon. Demand
is so strong at rush hour that fuel runs low,
and some days people can pump only half a
tank.
It is not gasoline they are buying for their
cars, but natural gas.
By an odd confluence of public policy and
private initiative, Utah has become the first
state in the country to experience broad consumer
interest in the idea of running cars on clean
natural gas.
Residents of the state are hunting the Internet
and traveling the country to pick up used
natural gas cars at auctions. They are spending
thousands of dollars to transform their trucks
and sport utility vehicles to run on compressed
gas....
...Natural gas is especially cheap here, so
that people spend about 87 cents for a quantity
of gas sufficient to propel a car approximately
the same distance as a $3.95 gallon of gasoline.
...some unique factors apply in Utah. Natural
gas prices at the pump here are controlled
and are the cheapest in the country, while
the price of conventional gasoline is one
of the highest. Questar Gas, the public utility,
has compressed-gas pumps around the state
open to the public, a fueling infrastructure
that few states can match.
...Natural gas cars produce at least 20 percent
less greenhouse gas per mile than regular
cars, according to a California study....
2008 August 13. Downtowns
Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future. By
BOB DRIEHAUS, The New York Times. Excerpt:
...Cincinnati officials are assembling financing
for a $132 million [streetcar] system that
would connect the city’s riverfront
stadiums, downtown business district and Uptown
neighborhoods, which include six hospitals
and the University of Cincinnati, in a six-
to eight-mile loop. Depending on the final
financing package, fares may be free, 50 cents
or $1.
...At least 40 other cities are exploring
streetcar plans to spur economic development,
ease traffic congestion and draw young professionals
and empty-nest baby boomers back from the
suburbs, according to the Community Streetcar
Coalition, which includes city officials,
transit authorities and engineers who advocate
streetcar construction.
...Modern streetcars, like those Cincinnati
plans to use, cost about $3 million each,
run on an overhead electrical wire and carry
up to 130 passengers per car on rails that
are flush with the pavement. And since streetcars
can pick up passengers on either side, they
can make shorter stops than buses.
Streetcar advocates point to Portland, Ore.,
which built the first major modern streetcar
system in the United States, in 2001, and
has since added new lines interlaced with
a growing light rail system. Since Portland
announced plans for the system, more than
10,000 residential units have been built and
$3.5 billion has been invested in property
within two blocks of the line, according to
Portland Streetcar Inc., which operates the
system....
2008 June 16. Honda
rolls out new zero-emission car. By Tomoko
A. Hosaka, Associated Press. Excerpt:
TAKANEZAWA, Japan (AP) -- Honda's new zero-emission,
hydrogen fuel cell car rolled off a Japanese
production line Monday and is headed to Southern
California, where Hollywood is already abuzz
over the latest splash in green motoring.
The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and
electricity, emits only water and none of
the noxious fumes believed to induce global
warming. It is also two times more energy
efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three
times that of a standard gasoline-powered
car, the company says.
Japan's third biggest automaker expects to
lease out a "few dozen" units this
year and about 200 units within three years.
In California, a three-year lease will run
$600 a month, which includes maintenance and
collision coverage.
The FCX Clarity is an improvement of its previous-generation
fuel cell vehicle, the FCX, introduced in
2005...
A breakthrough in the design of the fuel cell
stack, which is the unit that powers the car's
motor, allowed engineers to lighten the body,
expand the interior and increase efficiency,
Honda said.
The fuel cell draws on energy synthesized
through a chemical reaction between hydrogen
gas and oxygen in the air, and a lithium-ion
battery pack provides supplemental power.
The FCX Clarity has a range of about 270-miles
per tank with hydrogen consumption equivalent
to 74 miles per gallon, according to the carmaker.
The 3,600-pound vehicle can reach speeds up
to 100 miles per hour.
The biggest obstacles standing in the way
of wider adoption of fuel cell vehicles are
cost and the dearth of hydrogen fuel stations...
2008 May 21. New
Trend in Biofuels Has New Risks. By ELISABETH
ROSENTHAL, NY Times. Excerpt:
ROME - In the past year, as the diversion
of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels
has helped to drive up food prices, investors
and politicians have begun promoting newer,
so-called second-generation biofuels as the
next wave of green energy. These, made from
non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses,
would offer fuel without the risk of taking
food off the table, they said.
But now, biologists and botanists are warning
that they, too, may bring serious unintended
consequences. Most of these newer crops are
what scientists label invasive species - that
is, weeds - that have an extraordinarily high
potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun
adjacent farms and natural land, and create
economic and ecological havoc in the process,
they now say....
2008 April 7. Money
Doesn't Grow on Trees, But Gasoline Might. NSF
Press Release 08-056. Excerpt:
Researchers make breakthrough in creating
gasoline from plant matter, with almost no
carbon footprint. Researchers have made a
breakthrough in the development of "green
gasoline," a liquid identical to standard
gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass
sources like switchgrass and poplar trees.
...chemical engineer and National Science
Foundation (NSF) CAREER awardee George Huber
of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst
(UMass) and his graduate students Torren Carlson
and Tushar Vispute announced the first direct
conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline
components.
...While it may be five to 10 years before
green gasoline arrives at the pump or finds
its way into a fighter jet, these breakthroughs
have bypassed significant hurdles to bringing
green gasoline biofuels to market.
"It is likely that the future consumer will not even know
that they are putting biofuels into their car," said Huber. "Biofuels
in the future will most likely be similar in chemical composition
to gasoline and diesel fuel used today. The challenge for chemical
engineers is to efficiently produce liquid fuels from biomass
while fitting into the existing infrastructure today."
..."Green gasoline is an attractive alternative
to bioethanol since it can be used in existing
engines and does not incur the 30 percent
gas mileage penalty of ethanol-based flex
fuel," said John Regalbuto, who directs
the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at
NSF and supported this research.
"In theory it requires much less energy to make than ethanol,
giving it a smaller carbon footprint and making it cheaper
to produce," Regalbuto said. "Making it from cellulose
sources such as switchgrass or poplar trees grown as energy
crops, or forest or agricultural residues such as wood chips
or corn stover, solves the lifecycle greenhouse gas problem
that has recently surfaced with corn ethanol and soy biodiesel."....
2008 Mar 18. Hydrogen
Fuel Station Opens in White Plains. By
DIANA MARSZALEK, NY Times. WHITE PLAINS. Excerpt:
WITH a history of using alternative-fuel vehicles
long before it became chic, White Plains now
is the Northeast hub - and one of three cities
nationwide - for a model program designed
to put hydrogen-powered cars in consumers'
hands.
In partnership with General Motors and a division
of Shell Oil, the city has opened on its property
the only hydrogen refueling station in the
metropolitan area equipped for public use,
G.M. and city officials said.
Proponents laud hydrogen-powered, or fuel-cell,
vehicles for producing virtually no emissions
and reducing the need for traditional fossil
fuel. The vehicles are still in development
- and out of most consumers' reach with price
tags for some ringing in at nearly $90,000
- but they are already refueling at the station
on the Public Works Department's refueling
site.
..."The big benefit of using hydrogen
as a fuel is that there is practically zero
pollution," said Mr. Nicoletti, who oversees
the city's approximately 400 vehicles, about
20 percent of which run on alternative energies
including electricity, ethanol and compressed
natural gas. "Water vapor is what comes
out of the exhaust pipe." Maria Recchia-O'Neill
of Rye Brook, who is one of the first two
local residents to get one of the Equinoxes
on a three-month loan, said driving the car
had created even more interest in alternative
fuels than she had expected. She is the science
curriculum coordinator for the Port Chester
Public Schools....
2008 Mar 18. They
May Not Use Gasoline, but They Sure Burn Through
Water. By HENRY FOUNTAIN, NY Times. Excerpt:
One way to reduce the world's dependence on
oil is to produce more cars that get their
power from the electrical grid rather than
the gas pump. In the United States, replacing
a large percentage of the roughly 235 million
cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles
with all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids
(which have a supplemental gasoline engine)
would make a big dent in gasoline consumption,
currently about 380 million gallons a day.
But such a shift would have an impact on another
of the world's precious liquids - water. It
takes a lot of water to produce electricity,
both to mine and to process coal and other
fuels and to cool power plants. ...in an analysis
in the journal Environmental Science and Technology,
Carey W. King and Michael E. Webber of the
University of Texas found ...For every mile
driven by a gas-powered vehicle that is displaced
by one driven by an electric vehicle, ...
about three times as much water is consumed
(that is, lost to evaporation) and about 17
times as much is withdrawn (used and returned
to its source).
The researchers say the impact on water use
does not mean a shift to electric vehicles
is a bad idea. But ...particularly in areas
like the Southwest, that it should be considered
in policy discussions about widespread use
of electric vehicles.
2008 Mar 11. Pollution
Is Called a Byproduct of a ‘Clean’ Fuel. By
Brenda Goodman, NY Times. Excerpt:
Alabama’s first biodiesel plant, a refinery
that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly
fuel, has been polluting the local river… The
spills, at the Alabama Biodiesel Corporation
plant outside this city about 17 miles from
Tuscaloosa, are similar to others that have
come from biofuel plants in the Midwest. The
discharges, which can be hazardous to birds
and fish, have many people scratching their
heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution
from an industry that sells products with
the promise of blue skies and clear streams… According
to the National Biodiesel Board, a trade group,
biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable
for sensitive environments, but scientists
say that position understates its potential
environmental impact… In
January, a grand jury indicted a Missouri
businessman in the discharge, which killed
at least 25,000 fish and wiped out the population
of fat pocketbook mussels, an endangered species. Back
in Alabama, Nelson Brooke of Black Warrior
Riverkeeper,
a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting
and restoring the Black Warrior River and
its tributaries, received a report in September
2006 of a fish kill that stretched 20 miles
downstream from Moundville... The agency
did not charge Alabama Biodiesel. In
August, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, in a complaint
filed in Federal District Court, documented
at least 24 occasions when oil was spotted
in the water near the plant… In
October 2005, the Alabama Department of Environmental
Management informed Alabama Biodiesel that
it would need an individual pollution discharge
permit to operate, but the company never applied
for one. The company operated for more than
a year without a permit and without facing
any penalties from state regulators, though
inspectors documented unpermitted discharges
on two occasions. For some, the troubles
of the industry seem to outweigh its benefits.
15 January 2008. Virgin
Atlantic Plans a Biofuel Flight. By NICOLA
CLARK PARIS - Virgin
Atlantic said Monday that it would conduct
a demonstration flight next month of one of
its Boeing 747 jets using biofuel - the first
airborne test of a renewable fuel by a commercial
jet. The airline, founded by the British billionaire
Richard Branson, said a 747-400 plane would
make the one hour and 20 minute journey from
London Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam in late
February using 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent
conventional jet fuel. The test, without passengers,
is part of a joint research project announced
by Virgin, Boeing and the aircraft engine
maker GE Aviation.
15 January 2008. Europe
May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops.
By JAMES KANTER. If
approved, the law would prohibit the importation
of fuels derived from crops grown on certain
kinds of land--including forests, wetlands
or grasslands.
2007
2 December 2007. San
Francisco Fleet Is All Biodiesel. By CAROLYN
MARSHALL. NY Times. Excerpt:
Claiming it now has the largest green fleet
in the nation, the city of San Francisco this
week completed a yearlong project to convert
its entire array of diesel vehicles - from
ambulances to street sweepers - to biodiesel,
a clean-burning and renewable fuel that holds
promise for helping to reduce greenhouse gases.
Using virgin soy oil bought from producers
in the Midwest, officials said that as of
Friday, all of the city's 1,500 diesel vehicles
were powered with the environmentally friendlier
fuel, intended to sharply reduce toxic diesel
exhaust linked to a higher risk of asthma
and premature death.
"Just like secondhand smoke, diesel is one of the worst
things we can breathe," said the city's clean vehicle
manager, Vandana Bali of the Department of the Environment.
...Ms. Bali said the city's diesel vehicles
now all used a fuel known as B20, a mix of
20 percent soy-based biofuel and 80 percent
petroleum diesel fuel, which reduces toxic
emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons
and other pollutants that lead to global warming.
...In November, Mr. Newsom announced a new
project called SFGreasecycle, a program to
collect fats and cooking oils from restaurants,
at no charge.
"We are collecting grease," Mr. Ballard said. "Waste
fats and oils are a major source of backup in our sewage system.
But we're taking the grease that would have gone down the drain
and turning it into biodiesel."
November 2007. Biofuels:
An Important Part of a Low-Carbon Diet.
Union of Concerned Scientists. If
developed in a sustainable way, bioenergy
does have the potential to produce both electricity
and fuel with fewer risks than those associated
with oil, coal, and nuclear technologies.
But a rapid global expansion of bioenergy
development could have profound negative environmental
and economic consequences. If bioenergy is
to become a part of our low-carbon future,
farmers, producers, policy makers, and consumers
will all have to be smart from the start.
...To reduce transportation-related emissions-responsible
for nearly 40 percent of the United States'
total global warming pollution-we need more
efficient vehicles, fewer
miles driven, and lower-carbon fuels (i.e.,
fuels that generate
significantly less heat-trapping gases per
unit of energy delivered
than today's petroleum-based gasoline and
diesel). Hydrogen, electricity, and biofuels
(fuels produced from plants) all have the
potential-if produced in a sustainable manner-to
not only reduce
transportation-related emissions but also
promote economic and energy
security by curbing our country's growing
oil dependence. Biofuels
can quickly become a staple of a low-carbon
fuel diet because they
integrate well with our existing fuel distribution
infrastructure and
offer potentially abundant domestic supplies
with significant
opportunities for growth....
2007 November 5. In
Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels.
By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times. Excerpt:
PORTLAND, Ore. - ...Cyclists have long revered
Portland for its bicycle-friendly culture
and infrastructure, including the network
of bike lanes that the city began planning
in the early 1970s. Now, riders are helping
the city build a cycling economy.
...what is most distinctive about the emerging
cycling industry here is the growing number
of smaller businesses, whether bike frame
builders or clothing makers, that often extol
recycling as much as cycling, sustainability
as much as success.
...Mia Birk, a former city employee who helped
lead Portland's efforts to expand cycling
in the 1990s, said the original goals were
rooted in environmental and public health,
not the economy.
"That wasn't our driving force," Ms. Birk said. "But
it has been a result, and we're comfortable saying it is a
positive result."
Ms. Birk now helps run a consulting firm,
Alta Planning and Design, which advises other
cities on how to become more bicycle-friendly.
In a report for the City of Portland last
year, the firm estimated that 600 to 800 people
worked in the cycling industry in some form.
A decade earlier, Ms. Birk said in an interview,
the number would have been more like 200 and
made up almost entirely of employees at retail
bike stores.
...the city is nurturing the cycling industry,
and there are about 125 bike-related businesses
in Portland, ....
...Sam Adams, a city commissioner in charge
of transportation, joined development officials
to help lure the show to Portland. It seemed
a natural fit. The city regularly ranks at
the top of Bicycling Magazine's list of the
best cycling cities and has the nation's highest
percentage of workers who commute by bike,
about 3.5 percent.... Drivers here are largely
respectful of riders, and some businesses
give up parking spaces to make way for bike
racks.
"Our intentions are to be as sustainable a city as possible," Mr.
Adams said. "That means socially, that means environmentally
and that means economically. The bike is great on all three
of those factors. You just can't get a better transportation
return on your investment than you get with promoting bicycling."....
28 October 2007. Reimagining
the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity.
By JOHN MARKOFF, The New York Times. Excerpt:
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28 - Shai Agassi, a Silicon
Valley technologist who was in competition
to become chief executive of SAP, one of the
world's largest software companies, has re-emerged
with a grand plan to reinvent the world's
automobile industry around battery-powered
all-electric cars.
Others are developing green cars, like the
Tesla and Chevrolet Volt. However, Mr. Agassi
is not planning to make cars, but instead
wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging
stations in the United States, Europe and
the developing world.
The new system will sell electric fuel on
a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle
costs through leases and credits.
"We're basically saying this is just like the cellular
phone model," he said. "If you think of Tesla as
the iPhone, we're AT&T."
...General Motors has said it hopes to have
advanced lithium-ion battery technology in
place to commercialize its planned Chevrolet
Volt, but those batteries are still being
developed.
There are also issues of safety with existing
lithium-ion batteries that have become unstable
under extreme temperatures.
"If you listen to the car companies, they suggest there
is a fix, but it's not there yet," said Stephen J. Girsky,
a partner at the investment firm Centerbridge Partners who
formerly served as an adviser to General Motors.
However, the new venture, which Mr. Agassi
has named, for now, Better Place, would be
viable even with existing lithium-ion battery
technology, he said....
30 September 2007. Ethanol's
Boom Stalling as Glut Depresses Price.
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS. Excerpt:
NEVADA, Iowa, Sept. 24 - The ethanol boom
of recent years - which spurred a frenzy of
distillery construction, record corn prices,
rising food prices and hopes of a new future
for rural America - may be fading.Only last
year, farmers here spoke of a biofuel gold
rush, and they rejoiced as prices for ethanol
and the corn used to produce it set records.…The
average national ethanol price on the spot
market has plunged 30 percent since May, with
the decline escalating sharply in the last
few weeks…..
..While generous government support is expected
to keep the output of ethanol fuel growing,
the poorly planned overexpansion of the industry
raises questions about its ability to fulfill
the hopes of President Bush and other policy
makers to serve as a serious antidote to the
nation's heavy reliance on foreign oil……Many
industry experts say the worst problems are
temporary and have been intensified by transportation
bottlenecks in getting ethanol from the heartland
to the coasts, where it is needed most....The
falling price of ethanol comes in sharp contrast
to the rise in crude oil prices. Lower ethanol
prices help reduce gasoline prices at the
pump, where ethanol is available, but because
it constitutes 10 percent or less in most
blends, the impact for the consumer is marginal.
Congress essentially legislated the industry's
expansion by requiring steadily higher quantities
of ethanol as a gasoline blend, a kick-start
that was further spurred by the proliferation
of bans on a competing fuel additive used
to help curb air pollution.
But the ethanol industry, which is also heavily
subsidized by federal tax incentives, got
far ahead of the requirements of the law,
rapidly building scores of plants and snapping
up a rising share of the corn harvest....Already,
ethanol producers are poised to outpace that
mandate, with capacity expected to reach 7.8
billion gallons by the end of 2007 and 11.5
billion gallons by 2009, although some in
the industry are now predicting that the expansion
could slow….
…"As ethanol supply increases over the next 12
months, the challenge will be to find a home for it," said
Mark Flannery, head of energy equity research at Credit Suisse. "The
ethanol surplus is here already."
September 2007. StartUp
U. California Alumni feature. Excerpt:
With global warming breathing down our necks,
energy is hot. And at Berkeley, green ideals
are teaming up with that other green-money.
...Having just announced a $500 million ten-year
deal with oil giant BP to found a new Energy
Biosciences Institute on campus, Steven Chu,
the Nobel Prize winner and head of Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), made
a pitch for more: "We are seeking industry
partnerships É We seek solutions. We
don't seek, dare I say, science papers anymore."
Across campus, green ideals are teaming up
with the other green-money. Typical of the
new "double-greens" is the group
that organized the March symposium, a multidisciplinary
club of grad students called the Berkeley
Energy and Resources Collaborative, or BERC....
Unlike previous generations of environmentalists,
who saw capitalism as "part of the problem," the
new greens see it as part of the solution,
if not the solution.
...BERC co-chair Merrian Fuller, a first-year
MBA candidate at Haas ..."We have to
experiment much more and be willing to fail," she
said. "We have to realize some policies
and initiatives might not work out."
...Convinced that early regulation could avoid
environmental disaster and benefit the state's
economy, the governor and the California Legislature
passed AB 32, the greenhouse gas legislation....
These regulations, which could eventually
allow expensive new technologies to compete
with cheap, entrenched fuels such as oil,
natural gas, and coal, made the very idea
of a green tech "moon shot" feasible.
LBNL director Steven Chu ... searched for
technologies that were in their infancy, where
improvements might make a big difference.
...By process of elimination, Chu arrived
at two promising avenues for research: energy
efficiency-a field pioneered by Berkeley physicist
Art Rosenfeld-and harnessing the power of
the sun. Sunlight can be captured by both
technology and plants, which led him to identify
the fields of photovoltaics, nanotechnology,
electrochemistry, artificial photosynthesis,
catalysis (producing hydrogen from water using
sunlight), batteries (to hold energy produced
by solar cells), and biofuels. Chu imagined
a spectrum of biofuels, ranging from ethanol-which
requires modest leaps in innovation-to more
technically challenging fuels, such as butane
and octane, that could be used by both airplane
and conventional auto engines. Chu dubbed
these sun-related projects Helios.
Summer 2007. Fueling
Our Future. Coop America. Interactive analysis
of alternative fuels. Excerpt:
There's a lot of talk about "alternative
fuels" to gasoline and diesel these days,
especially as national security concerns make
reducing our dependence on foreign oil a priority.
As the world wakes up to the climate crisis,
it's become apparent that we need to do something
drastic about our transportation -- which
produces 28 percent of our emissions in the
US -- to stem the greenhouse gas tide.
The truth is, not all of the "new" fuels
are created equal. In fact, some are nearly
as bad as gasoline in their environmental
impacts, and others can't be scaled up in
a meaningful way without creating other problems....
10 August 2007 (SF Chronicle). New
scooter zips along nicely for pennies per
mile Michael Taylor, Chronicle Auto Editor. Excerpt:
Bay Area zero-emission advocates got their
first test ride Thursday on a zippy new all-electric
motor scooter ... that will cost them just
pennies in electrical power. The plug-in hybrid
automobile crowd ...gathered at San Francisco's
Presidio to see the latest wrinkle in emission-free
transportation - an electric motor scooter
called the Vectrix that can whiz along at
60 miles an hour. At $11,000, the Vectrix
may be a bit pricey, ...Marc Geller, a San
Francisco photographer who owns a rare all-electric
Toyota RAV4... said of the Vectrix: "I've
ridden it and it's fantastic. It's all about
the (electric) plug and environmental concerns,
petroleum concerns. I think it's totally cool,
compared to that noisy piece of [#$%&*]." He
was referring to a loud gas-powered vehicle
that sped past as a few Vectrixes quietly
tooled around the Presidio's main parade ground
...The 462-pound Vectrix scooter takes two
hours to recharge its batteries on 220-volt
house current and three hours on a 110-volt
current. Its makers say it has a top speed
of 62 mph and, when traveling at a constant
speed of 40 to 45 mph, has a range of about
60 miles on a charge. It is freeway legal
and is sold in San Francisco by British Motor
Cars. ...But it's the price that gets people. "Eleven
thousand dollars? It's bloody insane," said
Morris Friedlander, a veteran scooter and
motorcycle dealer. ...He said a typical scooter
buyer might spend $3,000 or more - sometimes
up to $8,000 - for a new gasoline-powered
scooter that will run circles around the Vectrix
and still get 50 to 80 mpg. After riding the
Vectrix, Friedlander said, "the speed
is acceptable and the weight is well balanced
and the brakes worked well....
8 August 2007. Ethanol
Is Feeding Hot Market for Farmland. By
MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times. Excerpt:
DEKALB, Ill. - While much of the nation worries
about a slumping real estate market, people
in Midwestern farm country are experiencing
exactly the opposite. Take, for instance,
the farm here - nearly 80 acres of corn and
soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of
corn and soybeans - that sold for $10,000
an acre at auction this spring, a price that
astonished even the auctioneer.... Skyrocketing
farmland prices, particularly in states like
Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the
promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring
new optimism among established farmers. ...Unknown
is what will come of land prices if corn loses
its place in the ethanol world and is surpassed
by another source like cellulosic ethanol
from switchgrass.
"Right now, a lot are still betting that corn-based ethanol
will be around a while," said Mr. Duffy, who is also the
director of the Beginning Farmer Center, which assists farmers
who are starting out. He noted two other farming booms, in
the 1910s and the 1970s, which were each later followed by
periods of depression.
"In five years, corn-based ethanol will be around," Mr.
Duffy said. "Fifteen years? I'm not as convinced."
8 August 2007. Cooking
Up More Uses for the Leftovers of Biofuel
Production. By HILLARY ROSNER, NY Times. Excerpt:
The baking tins and muffin cups lining the
countertops in a corner of Ronald Holser's
cluttered laboratory were filled with curious
substances resembling angel food cakes and
loaves of bread. ...The concoctions were prototypes
for biodegradable weed barriers and sticky
films intended to hold grass seeds on the
ground long enough to germinate.
If Mr. Holser, a research chemist, and his
colleague Steven F. Vaughn, a plant physiologist,
are successful, they will have found more
than ecologically friendly ways to fight weeds
and grow grass.
They will have found innovative uses for a
byproduct of the production of biodiesel fuel,
glycerol. This, in turn, could help transform
the biodiesel industry into something that
more closely resembles the petroleum industry,
where fuel is just one of many profitable
products.
"Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product
that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will
have to be true for biofuels," said Kenneth F. Reardon,
a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado
State University in Fort Collins. "Biorefining is what
the vision has to look like in the end."
Glycerol is used in a variety of products,
including foods, soap and dynamite. But as
biodiesel fuel production in the United States
has risen, the market for glycerol has become
saturated.
If scientists like Mr. Holser, ...can expand
the number of valuable uses for the syrupy
liquid, biodiesel makers could sell their
glycerol instead of paying someone to haul
it away.
"Every week I get at least one or two calls from biodiesel
producers who have all this glycerol and don't know what to
do with it," Mr. Holser said....
6 August 2007. The
BATT FabLab: Road to a Better Battery. Science@Berkeley.
Contact: Allan Chen, The
better transportation battery - a battery
for hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles
- needs to be lighter than today's battery,
store more charge, and last through more charge-discharge
cycles. Also, it needs to be safe, affordable,
and compact enough to fit under the hood.
That's a tall order. Developing a better battery
for vehicles requires a multipronged approach
to research and development, that of the Department
of Energy's BATT program: Batteries for Advanced
Transportation Technologies.
...BATT research includes using nanoprobe
diagnostics to study advanced battery materials
and computer modeling to improve lithium-ion
(Li-ion) battery chemistry. Li-ion batteries
are of considerable interest because they
are lightweight and store more charge per
unit weight than those currently used in hybrid
electric vehicles.
..."All battery assembly work now takes
place inside of glove boxes to keep out water,
which is a real killer in lithium-ion batteries," says
Battaglia. Water is limited to less than one
part per million in the boxes' inert atmosphere;
by contrast, the dry rooms in many battery
manufacturing facilities limit water in air
to 50 parts per million.
...Before lithium-ion batteries can be manufactured
economically and meet performance requirements
for hybrid vehicles, battery engineers have
to learn to control the performance of the
electrodes in Li-ion ...battery's lifetime,
the number of charge-discharge cycles it can
run through before degrading too much to operate,
the total amount of charge it can store -
which translates directly into vehicle range
- and how much charge it can discharge per
second - which translates into vehicle acceleration.
...Keeping water out of the battery system
is a significant problem for battery engineers.
...Water in a lithium-ion battery reacts with
a lithium salt to form an acid, which is thought
to attack the cathode, causing its dissolution.
"We need to know how much water can get into the system
before the performance begins to degrade," says Battaglia.
In the lab's glove boxes, Battaglia's research
team manufactures test cells in an extremely
low-humidity environment, then introduces
water in higher and higher amounts. The researchers
measure decrease in battery performance for
different kinds of cells. Battery manufacturers,
who need cost-effective ways to make batteries
without letting in water, are extremely interested
in this work....
6 August 2007. Plug-in
Prius Turns Heads - Ferrari of Hybrids.
By Michael Taylor, Chronicle Auto Editor (San
Francisco Chronicle). Excerpt:
It looks pretty much like any other Toyota
Prius, sitting in its Redwood City garage,
but there is that telltale yellow industrial-strength
power cord coming out of its tail and snaking
around to a 120-volt electrical outlet.
...The Natural Resources Defense Council and
the Electric Power Research Institute, an
electrical power industry group, said widespread
use of plug-in hybrids, which use little gasoline,
would help the environment and reduce oil
consumption.
...Toyota said it would provide two factory-made
Prius plug-in hybrids to the University of
California - at campuses in Berkeley and Irvine
- for a two-year test on U.S. roads. The Chronicle's
own test drive the other day showed that the
plug-in Prius is much like the regular plugless
one sold in Toyota showrooms, but with a few
tantalizing exceptions. By far, the most arresting
(or non-arresting) detail is when you start
out driving the plug-in. The car is absolutely
silent - that's the electric motor - but when
you move down the street, it continues its
silence (the regular Prius turns on its engine
soon after takeoff). By now, however, you're
not caring about electric-this, gasoline-that.
You are mesmerized by a dashboard-mounted
instrument whose digital readout shows your
gas mileage leaping from 54 mpg to 145 mpg
to 421 mpg to 999 mpg, depending on how much
of a lead foot you are.
...In the Prius, the nation's most popular
hybrid, the electric motor is powered by nickel
metal hydride batteries. ...In the plug-in
hybrid owned by Felix Kramer, here in Redwood
City, those original batteries have been replaced
by some 4,000 lithium-ion batteries, which
are twice as powerful as the old batteries.
Kramer's car is the showpiece of his homegrown
plug-in hybrid organization, the California
Cars Initiative, a 5-year-old nonprofit that
extols the virtues of plug-ins - the car is
emblazoned with decals touting its 100-mpg-plus
capabilities. The car, a 2004 model, was converted
by Energy CS, in Monrovia (Los Angeles County)
at a cost of about $15,000. Energy CS is one
of a handful of firms in the United States
and Canada converting Priuses in to plug-in
hybrids.... Kramer's Web site (www.calcars.org
)....
26 July 2007. CALIFORNIA/UC
to street-test 2 plug-in hybrid Toyota Priuses Michael
Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer. Excerpt:
Toyota took a big step Wednesday toward marketing
plug-in hybrid cars -- vehicles that run mostly
on rechargeable batteries and can go 100 miles
on a gallon of gas -- when it announced it
would provide two specially made Priuses to
the University of California for testing on
U.S. roads. The Japanese company will be the
first major carmaker to put the experimental
electric-gas hybrid cars on American streets
for daily driving when the Priuses take to
the road in Berkeley and Irvine this fall.
...The cars look like normal Priuses, but
unlike the showroom model, the experimental
version runs mostly on its electric motor
and plugs into a 110-volt house current for
overnight charging.
...A big problem with developing plug-in hybrid
cars historically has been in their batteries.
A few small firms that have converted showroom
Priuses to plug-ins have done so by removing
the car's nickel metal battery and replacing
it with a lithium ion battery, twice as powerful
as the original. But some lithium ion batteries,
particularly those used in laptop computers,
have overheated and caught fire. Toyota's
experimental hybrids will simply add a second
nickel metal battery....
25 July 2007. Transportation
researchers to test Toyota plug-in hybrid
vehicles. UC BERKELEY Press Release. Excerpt:
The University of California, Berkeley, has
been awarded $750,000 to conduct, along with
project partner groups, the first real-world
tests of and research with an automaker-produced,
plug-in hybrid electric passenger vehicle
(PHEV), the campus's Institute of Transportation
Studies announced today (Wednesday, July 25).
UC Berkeley transportation researchers will
work on the project with the California Air
Resources Board, California Energy Commission,
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., UC Irvine
and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
...Under the agreement, Toyota is providing
vehicle technology and support engineering
services to allow the PHEV and fuel cell vehicles
to be tested and analyzed under various conditions.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District
will support air pollutant emission and air
quality modeling efforts led by UC Irvine
in collaboration with the South Coast Air
Quality Management District. UC Irvine will
also receive a PHEV to test and analyze, and
will work with UC Berkeley on behavioral response
assessments for Southern California settings.
...According to a statement by Toyota, "the
big advantage is that the PHEV's prototype
battery pack is capable of storing significantly
higher levels of electricity supplied by 'plugging
into the grid' for periodic recharging sessions.
"With significantly more electric power in reserve, the
vehicle will be capable of operating in pure-electric mode
for longer periods of time and at much higher speeds than the
current Prius. This will result in substantial gains in fuel
economy ... over current conventional hybrid systems."
20 July 2007 CLEANER
FUTURE? PLUG IN/Electric hybrid cars hold
promise of slashing greenhouse gases.
(San Francisco Chronicle) Zachary Coile, Chronicle
Washington Bureau. Excerpt:
Washington -- ...plug-in hybrid electric cars...
with fuel economy that can exceed 100 miles
per gallon -- could play a crucial role in
fighting global warming and America's addiction
to foreign oil. A study released Thursday
by the Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research
Institute and the Natural Resources Defense
Council confirmed...: Hybrid electric cars,
if widely adopted in the United States, would
yield huge reductions in greenhouse gases
over today's fleet of gas-fueled cars and
hybrid vehicles. ...If most Americans switched
to electric hybrids by 2050, greenhouse gases
would be slashed by 450 million metric tons
annually -- the equivalent of taking 82.5
million cars, about one-third of the U.S.
fleet, off the road.... GM is already hyping
its concept car, the Chevrolet Volt ...The
new vehicles are powered by batteries that
can be charged at home but also carry a backup
gas tank for longer trips beyond the range
of most electric cars. ...The study found
that if 60 percent of Americans shifted to
plug-in hybrids by 2050, it would lead to
an increase in electricity usage of 7 to 8
percent -- a relatively small increase, indicating
that hybrids would not necessarily require
a surge of new power plant construction. Plug-in
hybrids are charged mostly at night, when
demand for electricity is low. At the same
time, the report estimates that electric hybrids
would displace the need for 3 ... to 4 million
barrels of oil per day by 2050, more than
twice what the United States imports each
day from Saudi Arabia. ...no matter what energy
source was used to produce the electricity,
whether coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind
or solar... Electric hybrids generated 40
to 65 percent less greenhouse gas than gas-fueled
vehicles and 7 to 46 percent less than conventional
hybrids. ...UC Davis Professor Andrew Frank,
whose vehicle design center has produced nine
different plug-in concept vehicles, is seen
as one of the founders of the movement. ...Comparing
the Hybrids
CHEVROLET VOLT Range: 640 miles with batteries
and on-board generator; 40 miles on batteries
only; Weight: 3,200 pounds; Recharge time:
6.5 hours
TOYOTA PRIUS Mileage: 55 combined; 60 city
/ 51 highway; Weight: 2,932 pounds; Recharge
time: None
15 July 2007. A
New French Revolution's Creed: Let Them Ride
Bikes. By KATRIN BENNHOLD, NY Times. Excerpt:
PARIS,France- About a dozen sweaty people
pedaled bicycles up the Champs-Élysées
on Sunday toward the Arc de Triomphe, as onlookers
cheered.
These were not the leading riders of the Tour
de France racing toward the finish line, but
American tourists testing this city's new
communal bike program. "I'm never taking
the subway again," said a beaming Justin
Hill, 47, a real estate broker from Santa
Barbara, Calif.
More than 10,600 of the hefty gray bicycles
became available for modest rental prices
on Sunday at 750 self-service docking stations
that provide access in eight languages. The
number is to grow to 20,600 by the end of
the year.
The program Vélib (for "vélo," bicycle,
and "liberté," freedom),
is the latest in a string of European efforts
to reduce the number of cars in city centers
and give people incentives to choose more
eco-friendly modes of transport.
"This is about revolutionizing urban culture," said
Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of Paris's trendy third district, which
opened 15 docking stations on Sunday. "For a long time
cars were associated with freedom of movement and flexibility.
What we want to show people is that in many ways bicycles fulfill
this role much more today."
Users can rent a bike online or at any of
the stations, using a credit or debit card
and leave them at any other station.
A one-day pass costs 1 euro ($1.38), a weekly
pass 5 euros ($6.90) and a yearly subscription
29 euros ($40), with no additional charges
as long as each bike ride does not exceed
30 minutes....
2007 MAY/JUNE The
Case for Electric Bicycles. -Joelle Novey,
RealMoney: Coop America. Save
on the expense of a second car and curb your
emissions with the latest generation of "human-electric
hybrid" bikes.
SUMMER 2007. Felix
Kramer and the First Plug-In Hybrids.
Coop America. By Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist. Excerpt:
In 2004, Felix Kramer gathered with a group
of engineers and car junkies in a friend's
garage. Their goal: to make a hybrid car that
would plug into the wall, giving it a greater
ability to run on electricity.
The concept had been pioneered by University
of California Davis professor Andrew Frank
years before, and with the help of student
teams, Frank had built several plug-in electric
hybrid prototypes that were generating excitement
among environmentalists, engineers, and car
lovers. ...Electric vehicle enthusiasts were
thrilled by the 2004 Toyota Prius, which was
equipped to run solely on battery-stored electricity
in Japan, but not in the US. Prius owners
across the country started adding extra batteries
to the car to increase its electric range,
and Kramer gathered together a group of experts
to find a way to plug the Prius in. The result
was the PRIUS+, a plug-in hybrid electric
vehicle that gets over 100 miles to the gallon,
puts out half the greenhouse gas emissions
of a conventional vehicle, and costs almost
half as much per mile to drive.
...Kramer loves educating people about the
vehicle, and has seen people responses to
a plug-in car evolve from "What is this?" to "Why
are carmakers holding back?" Kramer's
answer to that last question is that "carmakers
are slow to change, and make bad decisions
all the time." He hopes that demonstration
cars like the PRIUS+, and other plug-in conversions
underway by Hymotion and others will prove
the viability of plug-in technology, motivating
carmakers to stop dragging their feet....
27 May 2007. Solar
Sailors--Harbor ferry line goes high tech By
Ginger Adams Otis, New York Post. The
transportation wave of the future will include
solar-powered ferries with special sunshine-grabbing
sails. The first of these "green ferries" in
America could be launched in New York Harbor
by Circle Line, which has partnered with an
Australian shipbuilder to build a $8 million
vessel for its Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island
route. ...It was while watching a sailboat
race along Australia's Gold Coast that the
idea for a massive "solar wing" -
the vessel's key element - came to Solar Sailor
co-founder Robert Dane. The wing can be manipulated
into different positions - including folding
flat in high winds.... Covered with ray-absorbing,
reflective-glass panels, the wing measures
50 by 23 feet. Like a large sail, is rotated
into position to capture maximum sun- and
wind-generated energy....
Even on a cloudy day, enough energy is generated
to charge the vessel's main batteries and
keep the boat running - including its plasma
TVs. While the vessel will cost about $2 million
more than traditional ferries, Meyer said,
it burns one-third less fuel, saving hundreds
of thousands annually.... [Hybrid marine power
combines electric drives with the power and
range of hydrocarbon/alternative fuels. Like
the hybrid car; the system is controlled and
optimised by a computer. In the case of a
hybrid marine power system, renewable energy
available on the water such as solar power
can also charge batteries and the vessel can
sail.]
See also http://www.bluewaternetwork.org/news_stories/ss/solar_sailor_0606.pdf
6 May 2007. A
Two-Wheeled Option (With a Battery) for Commuters.
By BARRY REHFELD, New York Times. Excerpt:
JEFF BAUM ... travels 10 miles each way from
his home in Frisco, Colo., to his office in
Breckenridge - ... 9,800 feet in the Rockies
- to his job as the executive director of
the Breckenridge Music Festival. For most
of his 10 years with the festival, he had
driven a standard gasoline-powered sport utility
vehicle. Last September, though, he started
leaving it at home for something cheaper,
quieter and cleaner: an electric bicycle.
It takes him a little longer to get to work,
but the bike is more dependable, more nimble,
more invigorating and just more fun than the
S.U.V., he said. "I personally feel very
good about it," said Mr. Baum, 53, who
spent $7,000 for an Optibike. "[http://www.optibike.com/ ]
I get the fresh air and, in fact, by switching
to the bike, here is one of the few ways in
which I as an individual can have a good impact
on our environment." Electric bikes ...typically
used at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour
without pedaling. They can generally cover
20 to 50 miles on a battery charge, well within
the distance of many daily commutes. ...amid
higher fuel prices and deepening worries about
the environment, they are emerging as a viable
option for commuting, shopping and other local
trips. Prices of electric bikes can run from
a few hundred dollars for cheap models to
$2,000 or more. ...Electric bikes, popular
in Asia and Europe, have yet to gain much
of a following in the United States. The number
sold here is in the tens of thousands a year,
compared with 10 million in a recent year
in China....The Quando, made by eZee, has
a lithium-ion battery, which is lighter, more
powerful (and more expensive) than the lead
acid battery...
...bike from Veloteq, a company based in Houston,
for $1,450....resembles a scooter and has
a padded seat big enough for two people, backup
pedals at the side of the footrests and a
security system....
29 April 2007. On
the Road, Hope for a Zero-Pollution Car.
By DON SHERMAN, The New York Times. Excerpt:
LAKEHURST, N.J. ...In dozens of laboratories
and research centers, scientists and engineers
are busy searching for ways to reduce the
cost and improve the practicality of hydrogen-powered
vehicles. Development has progressed to the
point that some of these prototype vehicles
are in daily service, commuting around Detroit,
delivering packages in Washington, serving
urban bus routes....FORD E-450 SHUTTLE ...In
the conversion to hydrogen, some of the passenger
area was walled off to house six pressure
tanks wrapped in carbon fiber, each rated
for storage at 5,000 pounds per square inch.
...this vehicle drives like a bus. The husky
V-10 provides ample urge to get the rig rolling
briskly. The supercharger sounds like a distant
police siren....GENERAL MOTORS HYDROGEN3 ...
Under acceleration, the HydroGen3 sounds like
an angry golf cart. With only 100 horsepower
on tap, it requires more than 15 seconds to
reach 60 m.p.h. ....TOYOTA PRIUS ... configured
to run on hydrogen by ECD Ovonics. The 1.5-liter
4-cylinder engine was fitted with a turbocharger
and intercooler and produces roughly the same
power and torque as a gasoline-hybrid version;
... ECD Ovonics, ...focused its expertise
on carrying hydrogen in solid form in tanks
filled with powdered metal. Two tanks fitted
under the Prius's floor are filled with hydrogen
by connecting a 1,500 p.s.i. hose to a standard
fitting. The tank capacity is 7.9 pounds,
enough for nearly 200 miles....BMW HYDROGEN
7 ...a modified 6-liter V-12 and a superinsulated
storage tank to provide dual-fuel mobility.
The liquid hydrogen offers a 125-mile driving
range; when that is consumed, a button on
the steering wheel switches the engine over
to run on gasoline for 310 more miles from
the standard 19.6-gallon gas tank. The engine
is tuned to deliver nearly the same power
on either fuel. The detuned engine and 500
pounds added to carry hydrogen safely impair
performance slightly, but the Hydrogen 7's
143-m.p.h. top speed and 400-mile range easily
surpass existing fuel-cell vehicles. While
running on hydrogen, the only traces of carbon
compounds in the exhaust come from engine
oil consumed during combustion....MERCEDES-BENZ
F-CELL ...In the tall four-seat A-class, passengers
sit above the drivetrain, ... This arrangement
is also a handy way to package the bulky storage
tanks and electronics necessary to for the
fuel cell. The 20-second start-up ritual is
accompanied by a chorus of clicks, whirs and
buzzes. ...With only 87 horsepower to move
3,380 pounds, acceleration is sluggish. ...the
run to 60 m.p.h. takes 15 seconds and a governor
limits top speed to 87 m.p.h. ....HONDA FCX
... A 127-horsepower A.C. electric motor is
fed by a fuel cell twice the size of a home
computer that produces 100 kilowatts of power.
Driving the FCX demonstrated impressive performance:
acceleration from zero to 60 m.p.h. takes
less than 10 seconds and top speed is more
than 90 m.p.h. ...Next year, Honda will begin
building the FCX in small numbers for demonstration
fleets.
17 April 2007. Renewed
Push for Ethanol, Without the Corn. By
MATTHEW L. WALD and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO. NY
Times. Excerpt:
JENNINGS, La. ... in October 1998, ... ethanol
from crop wastes seemed to be just around
the corner. It still is. ...the Energy Department
was predicting that ethanol produced from
cellulosic waste would be in the market by
about 2009 in the same volume as ethanol from
the conventional source, corn. But no company
has yet been able to produce ethanol from
cellulose in mass quantities that are priced
competitively with corn-based ethanol. And
without the cellulosic ethanol, the national
goal for ethanol production will be impossible
to reach. "Producing cellulosic ethanol
is clearly more difficult than we thought
in the 1990s," said Dan W. Reicher, who
was assistant secretary of energy efficiency
and renewable energy at the time of the first
ceremony and who spoke here then. ...If making
the technology work to produce ethanol from
cellulose was important in the 1990s, it is
even more critical now. Because of growing
concerns about oil imports and climate change,
Mr. Reicher said, "it is essential that
we figure this out, and fast."...So why
has no one figured out a way to make ethanol
from materials like the sugar cane wastes
engineers are working with here? In fact,
engineers at several companies have done that
- but only at the lab level. One company,
Iogen, has a pilot plant running in Ottawa
and hopes to build a larger operation soon.
Abengoa, a Spanish company, says it plans
to open a plant in northern Spain late this
year, and wants to build a factory in Kansas.
Broin Companies, of Sioux Falls, S.D., is
planning to expand a corn ethanol plant in
Emmetsburg, Iowa, to use cellulose as well.
But everyone is still struggling to develop
a method that is cost competitive with corn
ethanol - not to mention competing with gasoline
and other fuels from oil without subsidies.
...The broad concept is the same everywhere.
Yeast is used to turn sugar into alcohol,
a process learned thousands of years ago.
The easiest way to get sugar is from sugar
cane. Corn provides carbohydrates, long chains
of starch that are easily broken into sugars.
Mr. Heissner is hopeful that stems, stalks,
wood chips and other materials will replace
the corn....
16 April 2007. Tyson
Foods and ConocoPhillips to Produce Diesel
Fuel From Animal Fat. NY Times. Excerpt:
HOUSTON, April 16 - Tyson Foods and ConocoPhillips
have cooked up a new recipe for your pickup
truck. The two companies announced Monday
that they were forming an alliance to produce
and market diesel fuel made from pork, poultry
and beef fat. It was another sign that farmers
and agribusinesses, which are now producing
corn for ethanol, will be playing an increasingly
large part in the country's energy future.
The new brew should be available at the neighborhood
filling station by the end of the year. The
companies said that the diesel, which will
be shipped and distributed through existing
pipelines from ConocoPhillips refineries,
would burn cleaner than conventional diesel.
Much of the feedstock for the fuel will come
from several Tyson rendering plants. "This
strategic alliance is a big win for the entire
agricultural sector because it paves the way
for great participation of fats and oils in
renewable fuels," said Richard L. Bond,
Tyson's president and chief executive....
27 March 2007. If
we want to save the planet, we need a five-year
freeze on biofuels. George Monbiot, The
Guardian. Excerpt:
Oil produced from plants sets up competition
for food between cars and people. People -
and the environment - will lose....The governments
using biofuel to tackle global warming know
that it causes more harm than good. But they
plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made
from plants can reduce the amount of carbon
dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants
absorb carbon as they grow - it is released
again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging
oil companies to switch from fossil plants
to living ones, governments on both sides
of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our
transport networks. ...So what's wrong with
these programmes? ...Already we know that
biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum.
The UN has just published a report suggesting
that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia
will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five
years ago, the same agencies predicted that
this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they
reckoned without the planting of palm oil
to turn into biodiesel for the European market.
This is now the main cause of deforestation
there and it is likely soon to become responsible
for the extinction of the orangutan in the
wild....
23 March 2007. Valley,
environmental groups charged up about plug-in
hybrids. By Matt Nauman, Mercury News. Excerpt:
From Silicon Valley to China, the groundwork
is being laid for plug-in hybrid vehicles
that get more of their power from electricity
and less from gasoline. In Palo Alto on Thursday,
Plug-in Bay Area, a coalition that includes
the Rainforest Action Network, Bluewater Network,
CalCars, Pacific Gas & Electric and others,
and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, led
by Carl Guardino, announced a partnership
to support plug-ins hybrids. Nothing specific
was unveiled at the event, but those present,
including Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto,
pledged to work to encourage local companies
and governments to show their support of plug-ins
by placing "soft orders" for them.
Soft orders are public statements of support
for the concept; no company is mass-producing
plug-in hybrids yet. About two dozen plug-in
hybrids exist in the United States. Like a
traditional hybrid, plug-ins have both electric
motors and batteries as well as a gasoline
engine. The difference, advocates say, is
that plug-ins have more robust batteries,
which allow them to achieve the equivalent
of 100 mpg. And they can be charged using
a home's electricity. Also Thursday, automotive
entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin revealed in
a phone interview more about his plans to
build plug-ins in China and sell them in the
United States. He intends to build four-door
models costing about $35,000 that can go 40
to 50 miles on electricity and then use a
small gasoline motor to extend the driving
range another 300 miles. They might go on
sale in 2009. See
also http://www.pluginpartners.org/
21 March 2007. MASSIVE
DIVERSION OF U.S. GRAIN TO FUEL CARS IS RAISING
WORLD FOOD PRICES. By Lester R. Brown.
Earth Policy Institute. Eco-Economy Update
2007-3. Excerpt:
If you think you are spending more each week
at the supermarket, you may be right. The
escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest
going to ethanol distilleries is driving up
food prices worldwide. Corn prices have doubled
over the last year, wheat futures are trading
at their highest level in 10 years, ...Some
16 percent of the 2006 U.S. grain harvest
was used to produce ethanol. With 80 or so
ethanol distilleries now under construction,
enough to more than double existing ethanol
production capacity, nearly a third of the
2008 grain harvest will be going to ethanol.
...There are alternatives to this grim scenario.
A rise in auto fuel efficiency standards of
20 percent, phased in over the next decade
would save as much oil as converting the entire
U.S. grain harvest into ethanol. One option
that is gaining momentum is a shift to plug-in
hybrids. Adding a second storage battery to
a gas-electric hybrid car along with a plug-in
capacity so that the batteries can be recharged
at night allows most short-distance driving--daily
commuting and grocery shopping, for example--to
be done with electricity. ...cars could run
largely on electricity for the equivalent
cost of $1 per gallon gasoline....
March 2007. Leading
the Way in Clean Vehicle Design. Catalyst
magazine, Union of Concerned Scientists. By
Erin Rogers and Spencer Quong. Excerpt:
UCS vehicle engineers have designed a minivan
called the Vanguard that uses existing technology
to offer drivers an unbeatable combination
of performance, safety, affordability, and
lower global warming emissions. ...Improved
engine ...Greener fuels. ...Advanced transmissions
...Load reduction
...The Vanguard would emit 43 percent less
heat-trapping pollution than the average vehicle
on the road today-using technology that is
already available. What's more, the Vanguard
technology and fuel package could be applied
to every class of vehicles to achieve similar
savings on both global warming emissions and
fuel costs. ....
January 2007. Idling
Gets You Nowhere. Would you drive a car
that gets zero miles to the gallon? Of course
not. Yet that is your mileage whenever your
engine idles. Idling wastes money and fuel,
contributes to air pollution, and generates
carbon dioxide emissions that cause global
warming. ...Unfortunately, many people believe
that idling is necessary or even beneficial-a
false perception that has carried over from
the 1970s and 1980s, when engines needed time
to warm up (especially in colder temperatures).
Fuel-injection vehicles, which have been the
norm since the mid-1980s, can be restarted
frequently without engine damage and need
no more than 30 seconds to warm up even on
winter days. ...idling longer than that could
actually damage your engine in the long term...
leaving residues in the engine that can contaminate
engine oil and make spark plugs dirty. ....No
matter what time of year, minimize your idling
with the following tips: When first starting
your car, idle for no more than 30 seconds.
Except when sitting in traffic, turn your
engine off if you must wait in your car for
more than 30 seconds. You can still operate
the radio and windows without the engine running.
2006
December 2006. Notice from GSS teacher, Debbie
Avalon-King: The future is Now!
Click on this site <http://www.youtube.com/v/ry6w3mRm-FM> http://www.youtube.com/v/ry6w3mRm-FM and
press play. ...not the Mazda Rx8, wait until
the new GM [Hy-Wire fuel cell] car comes
up. This is the car of the future. Note
from Alan Gould: The clip is good for discussion
purposes. It has a serious flaw at the end
where the gentleman implies that it runs
on seawater and has water as it's only exhaust.
The latter is essentially true, but the
former is false. It's conceivable to develop
a system where seawater could be electrolyzed
to produce H2 but the only systems I know
of currently use fresh water. In any case
it requires an electrical energy source.
Ideally that would be renewable energy source
from wind, solar, tidal, and so forth, but
many people are saying that we'll continue
to burn fossil fuel for electricity. There
is also a way to extract H2 from fossil
fuel, a process called "reforming".
At the GM website, http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/400_fcv/index.html
they say, "...four important challenges
must be addressed before practical fuel cell
use can become a reality. They are hydrocarbon
fuel reforming, storage, cost and infrastructure
development." No mention of using renewable
energy systems to generate H2.
15 November 2006. Honda's
vision of the future -- a car powered by
hydrogen. Michael Taylor, Chronicle
Staff Writer (SF Chronicle) Excerpt:
Monterey -- The future of driving, if Honda
has anything to say about it, came to a
Monterey County race track Tuesday in the
form of a dark red sedan that is slated
to be the first fuel cell car on the planet
to come off a production line. The Honda
FCX looks like a slightly futuristic version
of a blend of cars, especially those made
by Honda Motor Co. ... Honda says that within
two years it plans to produce and lease
to the public an untold number of cars based
on the concept car the company put on display
Tuesday. Tentative plans call for leasing
the car for perhaps $600 or $700 a month.
Automakers typically lease experimental
cars to the public rather than sell them
outright as a way of retaining control of
them. ... Honda knows it faces enormous
barriers as it tries to introduce a completely
new way to propel a car. The biggest problem
is where to fuel it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
long-touted "hydrogen highway" is
behind schedule, said Honda's FCX product
planner, Christine Ra. Still, a few stations
accommodate fuel cell cars, and more are
planned, said Catherine Dun- woody, executive
director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership,
... "There are 23 in California, mostly
in Southern California," Dunwoody said
Tuesday, "and 14 more are on the way.
8 November 2006. Archer
Daniels to Look Beyond Corn for Fuel Sources.
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO, NY Times. Excerpt:
CHICAGO, Nov. 8 - Archer Daniels Midland's
new chief executive outlined a broad strategy
Wednesday for the company to dominate the
growing bioenergy industry, but offered
few specifics on how it would carry out
that vision. Patricia A. Woertz, who took
over in May, said A.D.M., the grain-processing
giant, would seek to maintain its leadership
in biofuels, like ethanol, by diversifying
its production sources beyond corn. The
plan includes possible investments in Brazil
to make sugar for ethanol and in Indonesia
to make palm oil for biodiesel, as well
as export opportunities for biofuels in
India and elsewhere. ...The company plans
to expand its ethanol capacity in the United
States to 1.6 billion gallons a year by
the end of 2008, from 1.1 billion gallons
a year now. Ms. Woertz also said A.D.M.
would look to invest in so-called cellulosic
ethanol made from agricultural waste and
nonfood crops. But she and other company
officials declined to say which kind of
crop A.D.M. favored for such production.
...A.D.M., which processes corn, soybeans
and other crops into vegetable oils and
products like high-fructose corn syrup,
ethanol and biodiesel, has had record sales
and profits the last two years. That growth
has been driven largely by high ethanol
prices, which topped $4.20 a gallon this
summer. Global demand for food will more
than double by 2050, and by then traditional
energy supplies will be inadequate to meet
demand, Ms. Woertz said. Demand for ethanol
and biodiesel is growing more quickly than
production capacity in both the United States
and Europe, she said. Only 47 percent of
gasoline today is blended with ethanol,
Edward Harjehausen, a senior vice president
at A.D.M., said Wednesday....
2 November 2006. As
Investors Covet Ethanol, Farmers Resist The
New York Times. By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO. Excerpt:
MALTA BEND, Mo. - Farmers do not see fast
money very often. But with big profits gushing
forth from ethanol plants, dozens of Wall
Street bankers, in loafers and suits, have
been descending on the cornfields of the
Midwest promising to make thousands of farmers
rich overnight.
Most of them, though, are proving surprisingly
reluctant to cash in.
In this sleepy town of 250, for example,
people have lived on the edge of despair
for decades, dreaming of a way to make their
corn worth more than $2 a bushel. Seeking
a way out, a group of farmers from here
and surrounding communities scoured the
state three years ago to raise the money
for a $60 million plant that would turn
some of their corn into ethanol for cars
and lift their incomes.
When ethanol prices soared to more than
$4 a gallon this summer, the plant became
a roaring success.
And that is when the big money types came
knocking. New offers - some as high as $275
million - have rolled in just about every
week from an investment bank or hedge fund
seeking to buy the plant. For the farmers,
particularly those who borrowed part of
their investment, a sale could have meant
a profit of as much as 10 times what they
put in.
So far, however, the plant owners have said
no. To them - and to many other farmers
who have invested in ethanol around the
country - the ethanol plants represent more
than a winning lottery ticket. Instead,
they signify an emotional investment in
the future of their farms and communities,
a chance for greater independence and a
sense of pride that they are helping make
America less dependent on foreign oil....
..."I have been farming for 50 years
and this is something we have been waiting
for all our lives: a way to increase the
value of our agricultural commodities," said
Marvin Oerke, 66, another board member. "I
would hate to turn loose this opportunity
to leave something for the kids and grandkids."....
September 2006. Ethanol.
Catalyst Magazine, Union of Concerned Scientists.
Don MacKenzie - an engineer in the Clean Vehicles
Program. Excerpt:
...Ethanol offers many of the same benefits
as gasoline and diesel, including ease of
handling and storage, but it is typically
blended with gasoline because ethanol does
not evaporate well at cold temperatures-making
it hard to start a car running on pure ethanol
in cold weather. All of today's gasoline-burning
cars and trucks can use a blend of 10 percent
ethanol (known as E10) or less without any
engine modifications; E10 accounts for more
than 99 percent of all fuel ethanol consumed
in the United States.
...Almost 20 years ago, in an effort to stimulate alternative-fuel
use and reduce oil dependence, Congress created an incentive
program that gives manufacturers of flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs)
credit for higher fuel economy, under the assumption that vehicles
running on ethanol blends reduce total gasoline consumption.
The incentive assumes FFVs use E85 half the time; however, today's
FFVs use E85 only about one percent of the time. As a result,
automakers are getting much more credit than they deserve.
...Blends of 85 percent ethanol, known as E85, can be used in "flex-fuel" vehicles
(FFVs) designed to run on gasoline or any current ethanol blend....
From an air quality perspective, E85 is preferable to E10. E85
produces higher emissions of toxic formaldehyde and acetaldehyde
but lower overall emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs,
a key precursor to smog) than either E10 or pure gasoline. E10
actually produces higher VOC emissions than pure gasoline.
...While ethanol will not decrease the number of visits to the
fuel pump, there is no question that it has a positive role to
play in helping to reduce our petroleum dependence and the risks
of dangerous global warming. But in the near term, we can achieve
the greatest oil and consumer savings by improving the fuel economy
of new vehicles. These efficiency gains will help lower the costs
of an ethanol future.
9 August 2006. Hot
sports car with no gas tank. San Francisco
Chronicle. Excerpt:
...This could be the future of electric
cars. The ... Tesla Roadster ... will do
zero to 60 mph in four seconds and will
top out at 130 mph. ... 40 well-heeled customers
have paid $100,000 each for a car, even
though they won't get their new toys for
at least a year. ...Tesla was the brainchild
of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Eberhard
and Marc Tarpenning, who co-founded the
Rocket e-book firm. "When you make
a handheld electronic device," Eberhard
said, "you're obsessed with the energy
density of your batteries. I was also looking
for my next car." Eventually, he got
in touch with Tom Gage, president of AC
Propulsion, a San Dimas (Los Angeles County)
firm that had already made the TZero, a
brutally fast electric-powered sports car.
AC had made only a few cars, and Eberhard
says he invested in the company and drove
its lithium ion-battery-powered car for
about three months "as a daily driver." ...Down
the road, Tesla plans a four-door electric-powered
sedan that would sell for somewhere between
$50,000 and $65,000. ...The king of the
heap, pricewise, is the Venturi Fetish,
a speedy little electric sports car handmade
in Monaco and selling for more than $600,000.
...Commuter Cars of Spokane, Wash., makes
the Tango, something that looks like a four-wheeled
motorcycle and was different enough to attract
actor George Clooney as its first (and,
so far, only) buyer. Commuter Cars Vice
President Bryan Woodbury says the car will
do zero to 60 in four seconds (like the
Tesla) and, in the spirit of these exclusive
wheels, costs about $108,000. ...Universal
Electric Vehicles of Thousands Oaks (Ventura
County) makes a convertible sports car (the
Spyder) that it says will, like the others,
be doing that zero to 60 dance in around
four seconds, according to Vice President
Gregory Lane and will be relatively cheap
-- under $70,000. ...Phoenix Motorcars in
Ojai figures its niche is SUVs and SUTs
(sport utility truck), using bodies made
in South Korea and electric motors built
in Torrance. The vehicles will sell for
about $45,000 each.....
25 June 2006. THE
ENERGY CHALLENGE - For Good or Ill, Boom
in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland. By
ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO. Excerpt
(NY Times): Dozens of factories that turn
corn into the gasoline substitute ethanol
are sprouting up across the nation, from
Tennessee to Kansas, and California, often
in places hundreds of miles away from where
corn is grown. ...The modern-day gold rush
is driven by a number of factors: generous
government subsidies, surging demand for
ethanol as a gasoline supplement, a potent
blend of farm-state politics and the prospect
of generating more than a 100 percent profit
in less than two years. The rush is taking
place despite concerns that large-scale
diversion of agricultural resources to fuel
could result in price increases for food
for people and livestock, as well as the
transformation of vast preserved areas into
farmland. ...Despite continuing doubts about
whether the fuel provides a genuine energy
saving, at least 39 new ethanol plants are
expected to be completed over the next 9
to 12 months, projects that will push the
United States past Brazil as the world's
largest ethanol producer. The new plants
will add 1.4 billion gallons a year, a 30
percent increase over current production
of 4.6 billion gallons, according to Dan
Basse, president of AgResources, an economic
forecasting firm in Chicago. By 2008, analysts
predict, ethanol output could reach 8 billion
gallons a year. ...But many energy experts
are also questioning the benefits of ethanol
to the nation's fuel supply. While it is
a renewable, domestically produced fuel
that reduces gasoline pollution, large amounts
of oil or natural gas go into making ethanol
from corn, leaving its net contribution
to reducing the use of fossil fuels much
in doubt. ..."The cost of the alternative
- of staying addicted to oil and filling
our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and
keeping other countries beholden to high
gasoline prices - is unacceptable," said
Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst
at the Natural Resources Defense Council
in New York. "We have to struggle through
the challenges of growing and producing
biofuels in the right way."....
2 June 2006. Bio-Town. Slide
show and audio narration by Monica Davies
for NY Times. Pig manure, cow manure to
be used to make ethanol to replace gasoline
fuel and natural gas. The town has hundreds
of "flex-fuel cars that are ready to
use either gasoline or E-85 (ethanol). There
is article
on Bio-Town also.
2 June 2006. Asian
Cars Won 40% of Market Last Month By
MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY. NY Times. Excerpt:
DETROIT, June 1 - Three decades ago, with
fuel supplies running short . and long gas
lines around the corner, Asian cars won
their first converts in the American market.
...Now that average gas prices are flirting
with $3 a gallon, consumers are rushing
to them again. Sales figures reported Thursday
showed that Toyota, Honda and other Asian
manufacturers claimed a record 40 percent
of the American market in May, when sales
of fuel-efficient vehicles like the Toyota
Corolla, Honda Civic and Hyundai Sonata
all rose 20 percent or more compared with
May 2005. For Detroit companies, which have
continued to aggressively market their costly
new sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks
despite the high gas prices, market share
last month dropped to 52.9 percent - their
second-lowest in history. ...In all, industry
sales for May dropped 4.6 percent compared
with 2005, ...Car sales rose nearly 2 percent,
but sales of S.U.V.'s, pickups and minivans
fell 10.2 percent. Toyota, the company causing
the most trouble for Detroit, took a record
15.9 percent of the American market in May,
when its sales rose 12.3 percent from 2005.
... said Laura Ries, president of Ries &
Ries, an Atlanta marketing firm..."Hey,
they had plenty of time to see this coming.
Cheap fuel wasn't going to last forever,
because nothing lasts forever."...
May 13, 2006. Full
Tanks Put Squeeze on Working Class. By
ROBIN POGREBIN. NY Times. Excerpt:
MIAMI BEACH, May 12 - Giving up the occasional
rib-eye steak hasn't been the hardest part
for Ana Lopez, although her husband is a
red-meat man. Ana Lopez, housekeeping manager
at the Bentley Hotel, worries about paying
$60 a week to fill the tank for her 60-mile
round trip to work. More difficult are having
to tell her 11-year-old son that he cannot
go to the movies, and swearing off Sunday
visits to her sister in Pembroke Pines or
to her brother in Miami Lakes. These are
the sacrifices required now that it costs
$60 to fill her aging Toyota 4Runner. ...As
many drivers struggle to cope with soaring
fuel prices, working-class people like Ms.
Lopez who commute long distances to their
jobs are suffering the most. In many cases,
they had moved far away from major metropolitan
areas to be able to afford decent houses.
Now, paradoxically, the cost of gas is making
the distance prohibitively expensive. ...Aline
Lacombe, who travels from Palm Beach County
to her job as a legal assistant at the Justice
Department in downtown Miami, has stopped
driving altogether. As a result, her commute
now includes two train rides and a shuttle,
and takes close to two hours each way, at
least twice what it used to. "It's
a nightmare," said Ms. Lacombe, a 39-year-old
mother of three children under 10. She is
also losing sleep because of the longer
commute: wake-up time is 5:20 a.m. now;
it used to be 7. For Ms. Lacombe, gasoline
costs used to be about $100 a week, about
11 percent of her $45,000 annual salary;
that figure is closer to $200 a week now.
For Ms. Lopez, driving to and from work
used to cost $30 a week; now it costs $80.
With an annual income of $32,000, that means
nearly 13 percent of her income goes for
gas, instead of about 5 percent, as in the
past. ...Ms. Lopez could try to car-pool.
But she values her autonomy. "I don't
want to depend on nobody," she said. "I'm
not that kind of person." ...
13 May 2006. Gas
Prices and Rate Worries Rattle Consumer
Confidence. By VIKAS BAJAJ and JEREMY
W. PETERS. NY Times. Excerpt:
Several months of rising gasoline prices
appear to be deflating some of the enthusiasm
American consumers exhibited at the start
of the year. ..."It's pretty clear
that people have been really rattled by" high
gasoline prices, said Ian Shepherdson, chief
United States economist at High Frequency
Economics.
"The big question is, How much of an
impact has it had on spending?" The
answer to that question is not obvious.
Nor is it clear that the economy will suffer
from a slowdown in spending, as long as
it remains relatively modest. Indeed, it
could be a benefit. That is because the
Federal Reserve is counting on the recent
economic boom to cool off enough that it
can take a breather in its two-year campaign
of raising interest rates to keep inflation
in check. For now, the signals are mixed.
...Consumers are finding creative ways to
cope with higher gasoline costs. Ross Edwards,
a corporate project manager from Pittsburgh,
said his family's gasoline cost has doubled
in the last year, prompting his wife, Toni,
and him to take a chartered company bus
to New York this weekend, instead of driving.
..."We're not eating at the expensive
restaurants anymore," he said. "It's
more Red Lobsters, Friday's and Olive Gardens.
We're staying away from the restaurants
with white tablecloths."
...
19 May 2006. Largest
Hummer to Go the Way of the Dodo. By
MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY. NY Times. Excerpt:
DETROIT, - General Motors is preparing to
give a final salute to the hulking Hummer
H1, the ultimate in sport utility might
and, to its many critics, the ultimate in
environmental incorrectness. About 12,000
H1's have been sold to the public, and the
current price is around $140,000. G.M. said
Friday that it expected to stop building
the H1, flagship of its Hummer line, next
month. The move comes 14 years after it
first went on sale to the public. The H1,
originally called simply the Hummer, and
lately known as the H1 Alpha, is derived
from the military vehicle called the Humvee.
... G.M. has added two slightly smaller
Hummers, the stately H2, introduced in 2002
and the relatively petite H3, which went
on sale last year. Perhaps because there
are more choices of Hummers, or because
H1's moment of military chic simply has
passed because of the conflict overseas,
sales of the H1 have plummeted. ...With
diesel fuel prices around $3 a gallon, it
costs more than $150 to fill up the H1's
two gas tanks, which together hold 51.5
gallons. And with G.M. on a push to recast
its image as a green company, "it's
time for it to go away," Mr. Pinelli
said of the biggest Hummer. Environmentalists,
who have used the H1 as an automotive punching
bag since it first heaved onto American
streets, could hardly contain themselves. "It's
one thing if it's carrying soldiers to and
from a fight," said Daniel Becker of
the Sierra Club, which maintains an anti-Hummer
Web page called "Hummerdinger.org." "It's
another if it's hauling lattes home from
Starbucks."
For its part, G.M. said high fuel prices
were not the reason it pulled the plug on
the H1. ...
7 February 2006. Corn
Power Put to the Test. By MATTHEW L.
WALD, NY Times. Excerpt:
AMES, Iowa - The endless fields of corn
in the Midwest can be distilled into endless
gallons of ethanol, a clean-burning, high-octane
fuel that could end any worldwide oil shortage,
reduce emissions that cause global warming,
and free the United States from dependence
on foreign energy. ...There is only one
catch: Turning corn into ethanol takes energy.
For every gallon that an ethanol manufacturing
plant produces, it uses the equivalent of
almost two-fifths of a gallon of fuel (usually
natural gas), and that does not count the
fuel needed to make fertilizer for the corn,
run the farm machinery or truck the ethanol
to market. The use of all that fossil fuel
to make ethanol substantially reduces its
value as an alternative source of energy.
Not that ethanol is useless.
2005
30 December 2005. His
Car Smelling Like French Fries, Willie Nelson
Sells Biodiesel. By DANNY HAKIM. NY Times. Excerpt:
The diesel fuel BioWillie [wnbiodiesel.com]is
sold in four states....Willie Nelson has birthed
his own brand of alternative fuel. It is called,
fittingly enough, BioWillie. And in BioWillie,
Mr. Nelson, 72, has blended two of his biggest
concerns: his love of family farmers and disdain
for the Iraq war. ..."I knew we needed
to have something that would keep us from
being so dependent on foreign oil, and when
I heard about biodiesel, a light come on,
and I said, 'Hey, here's the future for the
farmers, the future for the environment, the
future for the truckers,"
Mr. Nelson said in an interview this
month. ...In some ways, it is a return
to the origins of the diesel engine;
some of Rudolf Diesel's first engines
ran on peanut oil more than a century
ago. ...Mr. Nelson's BioWillie is
aimed mostly at truckers and is usually
sold as B20 [20% biodiesel, 80% regular
diesel] ...Daniel Becker, the Sierra
Club's top global warming expert,
said ..."In order to grow soybeans,
you need multiple passes over the
field with diesel tractors, you need
a lot of fertilizer that's energy
intensive to produce and, at the
end of the day, you have a product
that is no boon for the environment."
...
26 November 2005. Battle
Lines Set as New York Acts to Cut Emissions.
By DANNY HAKIM, NY Times. Excerpt:
ALBANY, Nov. 23 - New York is adopting California's
ambitious new regulations aimed at cutting
automotive emissions of global warming gases,
touching off a battle over rules that would
sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions while
forcing the auto industry to make vehicles
more energy efficient over the next decade.
Stricter automotive rules are intended to
curb greenhouse gas emissions from traffic-choked
places like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
... But the auto industry has already moved
to block the rules in New York State, and
plans to battle them in every other state
that follows suit. Environmentalists say the
regulations will not lead to the extinction
of any class of vehicle, but simply pressure
the industry to sell more of the fuel-saving
technologies they have already developed,
including hybrid systems that use a combination
of electricity and gasoline. And that, they
say, will curtail one of the main contributors
to global warming. "The two biggest contributors
to global warming are power plants and motor
vehicles,"
said David Doniger, a senior lawyer for the
Natural Resources Defense Council. "If
you deal with them, you deal with more than
two-thirds of the problem."
But automakers contend that the regulations
will limit the availability of many sport
utility vehicles, pickup trucks, vans and
larger sedans, since they will effectively
require huge leaps in gas mileage to rein
in emissions. The industry also says the rules
will force them to curb sales of more-powerful
engines in the state, and ultimately harm
consumers by increasing the cost of vehicles.
The standards ...will be phased in starting
with 2009 models and require a roughly 30
percent reduction in automotive emissions
of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
by the 2016 models. The new rules will also
effectively require an improvement in fuel
economy on the order of 40 percent for vehicles
sold in the state. Ten states follow or plan
to follow California's air quality rules,...If
all 10 states and California succeed in enacting
the rules, they will form a powerful alternative
regulatory bloc accounting for about a third
of the nation's auto sales. "That is
so much of the market it should reach a tipping
point," Mr. Doniger said. "It won't
make sense for the automakers to build two
fleets, one clean and one dirty."
November 2005. Driving
Hydrogen Car Research. by David Pescovitz. While
eco-friendly hybrid automobiles gain popularity,
researchers are already developing cars with
no emissions at all. Powered by hydrogen fuel
cells, future automobiles may travel long
distances with only water dribbling out of
the exhaust pipe. The path to the hydrogen
economy isn't smoothly paved though. One big
question is whether a safe and practical hydrogen
storage system can be built to store enough
fuel for long journeys. To that end, UC Berkeley
chemist Jeff Long is developing novel nanomaterials
for tomorrow's hydrogen fuel tanks.
Fall 2005. ECD-Ovonics
Tests Solid Storage in Prius Hybrid
by Dean Stanley. Rochester Hills, MICH. -- Driving
the ECD-Ovonics' hydrogen-fueled Toyota Prius
hybrid, one thing becomes quite obvious: there
is virtually no performance difference from
the gasoline version, and that's exactly what
ECD-Ovonics is shooting for. Less obvious
is the company's solid hydrogen storage system,
which currently yields a nearly 200-mile driving
range while taking up no more space than the
original Prius gasoline tank. Of course, 200
miles is a far cry from the Prius' 600-plus
range, but it's a start. ... a solid hydrogen
storage system, retrofitted turbocharger,
gaseous fuel delivery system, plus modified
ignition and fuel metering software. ...Emissions
is also an area where the hydrogen ICE improves
on the already ultra clean gasoline hybrid.
By employing hydrogen as a fuel, the ECD-Ovonics
Prius produces less hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide
and carbon dioxide emissions than its gasoline
counterpart. In fact, carbon dioxide output
- due entirely to the burning of trace amounts
of engine lubricants - is reduced to less
than 1.5 percent of that produced by the gasoline
version. Of course, the ECD-Ovonic Prius is
really a test bed for the company's solid
hydrogen storage system, which uses a proprietary
mix of powdered metals - nearly a dozen different
materials - an internal heat exchanger, a
small electric heater (for cold starts), plus
an arrangement of internal baffles to keep the
metal powder distributed and to avoid any caking
within the tank. ... the eight-minute filling
time is still lengthy. Dynetek produces the tanks for ECD-Ovonics,
using one of their carbon-fiber-wound, aluminum-lined
CNG tanks as a starting point. ...cycle life
of the solid storage system is not a concern,
according to Schmidt. "We've cycled canisters
over 500 cycles and have no degradation of the
powder, or very minimal at most, so the capacity
of the tank would not be changed," he
states.
Fall 2005. British
Fuel Cell Innovator Moves to California. by
Michael Coates. Intelligent
Energy's newly-introduced ENV motorbike is
powered by a one-kilowatt fuel cell that gives
it a top speed of 50 mph and a range of at
least 100 miles. ...a new approach to fuel
cell technology, creating a compact Proton
Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell that didn't
require a cooling plate and used stainless
steel in place of some more exotic metals.
Other technologies that later became a part
of IE included to an innovative steam methane
reforming technology that promises to profitably
produce hydrogen from sources such as biomass
or hydrocarbon fuels. The private company,
Intelligent Energy, was formed in 2001, immediately
acquiring the R&D company that had prototyped
the fuel cell products.... For its first commercial
fuel cell product, IE has chosen is the ENV,
a subtle integration of transportation fuel
cell and remote power generation capabilities.
The 50-mph motorbike runs on IE's one-kilowatt
PEM fuel cell "Core," which can
be removed from the bike and used to power
remote electrical devices. Onboard hydrogen
storage is in a two-liter, 3000-psi cylinder.
A short ride on the sleek-looking bike (penned
by Seymourpowell product design) revealed
the classic quick acceleration of an electric
bike coupled with more of a motorcycle feel
because of the added weight of four 12-volt
lead acid storage batteries. Total weight
of the bike is 176 pounds. The 6:1 direct
belt drive delivers the 6 kW 48V brush motor's
energy to the rear wheel. For fuel, IE expects
that the bike's carbon composite cylinders
will be able to be refilled at any of California's
100 Hydrogen Highway stations planned to be
built during the next five years. ... It hopes
to launch the bike at a retail price of $6,000
in limited volumes next year [2006].
4 October 2005. Big
S.U.V.'s Lag in Sales, Hindered by Gas Cost.
By DANNY HAKIM. Sales
of sport utility vehicles fell 43 percent
last month as consumers reacted to surging
gasoline prices and auto companies ended discount
offers.
21 July 2005. California
Hydrogen Highway legislation On
July 21, 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
signed Senate Bill 76 (SB 76) that provided
the necessary funding and legislative guidelines
to implement recommendations of the CA H2
Net Blueprint Plan. SB 76 is a budget trailer
bill that provides $6.5 million in funding
for state-sponsored hydrogen demonstration
projects until January 1, 2007. The funds
may be used for co-funding the establishment
of up to three hydrogen fueling station demonstration
projects and the State lease and purchase
of a variety of hydrogen fueled vehicles.
16 July 2005. Hybrid
Cars Burning Gas in the Drive for Power.
By Matthew L. Wald. Surprisingly,
hybrid technology is being used to satisfy
the American appetite for acceleration and
bulk. Many people concerned with oil consumption
... are pointing to hybrids - vehicles with
electric motors as well as internal combustion
engines - as a way to reduce fuel use and
dependence on imported oil. The first ones
to reach the market did that; the two-seat
Honda Insight, introduced in December 1999,
was rated at 70 miles per gallon, and it was
followed by the five-seat Toyota Prius, also
built for reduced fuel consumption. ...But
the pendulum has swung. The 2005 Honda Accord
hybrid gets about the same miles per gallon
as the basic four-cylinder model, according
to a review by Consumer Reports, a car-buyer's
guide, and it saves only about two miles a
gallon compared with the V-6 model on which
it is based. Thanks to the hybrid technology,
though, it accelerates better. Hybrid technology,
it seems, is being used in much the same way
as earlier under-the-hood innovations that
increased gasoline efficiency: to satisfy
the American appetite for acceleration and
bulk....Consumer Reports, in an article published
in May, found that in actual on-the-road conditions
the Accord hybrid averaged 25 m.p.g., versus
24 m.p.g. for the 4-cylinder model and 23
m.p.g. for the nonhybrid V-6.
June 2005. The Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) won
a race for the most fuel efficient car. During
the Eco-marathon the
car went 20 km using only 3 grams of hydrogen—equivalent
to some 15,000 miles per gallon of hydrogen.
See: http://www.paccar.ethz.ch/ for
background info.
5 June 2005. Honda
FCX: What a Gas! A Week in Suburbia With a
Hydrogen Honda. By Jim Motavalli.
For
a decade or longer, the fuel-cell
car has resembled the mirage
that recedes as you draw closer
to it. Hydrogen-powered vehicles
always seemed at least 20 years
away, the subject of news conferences
in Washington and static displays
at auto shows. Even when test-drive
opportunities came up, they were
strictly controlled rides around
a track, with nervous company
representatives making excuses
from the passenger seat. All
that changed last month when
Honda handed me the keys to a
2005 edition of its FCX (for
Fuel Cell Experimental), the
first zero-emission, hydrogen-driven
vehicle to be certified by both
the Environmental Protection
Agency and the State of California
for everyday commercial use.
This is a street-ready hydrogen
car with license plates and no
rough edges, a test bed for green
technology worth well over $1
million... The main hydrogen
components are hidden: an 86-kilowatt
fuel cell under the front passenger
area, two tanks (holding a total
of 8.3 pounds, pressurized to
5,000 pounds per square inch)
under the rear seat and the ultracapacitor
(which stores electricity and
takes the place of a battery
pack) behind a cover in the cargo
area. Although top speed is only
93 miles an hour, the low-end
torque of the 80-kilowatt electric
motor is substantial, booting
the little car off the line with
alacrity. The 107 horsepower
has to move a relatively weighty
3,700 pounds, so it takes about
11 seconds to accelerate to 60
miles an hour, but there is no
noticeable lag or flat spots
in the power delivery... Getting
under way in the FCX is a little
different. You turn the key and
a "system check" message
appears on a dashboard display,
followed (in five to eight seconds)
by a "ready to drive" message.
You just drop the normal-looking
shifter into drive - the car
has a single-speed transmission
- and take off...
March 2005. It's
interesting to compare relative fuel performances
of cars. Here are some automobiles that the
Automobile Alliance claims are "ultra
clean" cars:
GM
HyWire
BMW
745h
Jeep
Liberty Diesel
VW
Golf tdi
Toyota
Prius and Ford Escape
March 2005. Self Serve. An
article from March issue of The
Monthly, by Lauri Puchall, photos
by David Wilson. Today's pioneering drivers
enjoy oil dependency with a clean conscience.
They're making their own auto fuel out of
cooking grease. A small but mighty group of
concerned motorists has curtailed (even eliminated)
its fossil fuel usage by switching to biofuels.
This counterculture movement runs vehicles
on biodiesel as an act of protest against
the war in the Middle East and a strategy
to help stem global warming. But locating
both a source of biofuel and a diesel vehicle
takes some sleuthing. How do these dedicated
biofuel users make the transition? Get Full
article as PDF (2MB).
9 January 2005. George
Jetson, Meet the Sequel. By DANNY HAKIM. The
Sequel, a G.M. car that runs on a hydrogen
fuel cell, will be unveiled today in Detroit.
General Motors' latest hydrogen car prototype,
called the Sequel, will be unveiled today
at a press preview of the North American International
Auto Show here. It is a car unlike any other
and a glimpse of a possible, very different,
automotive future. Most important, it runs
on a hydrogen fuel cell, so its only tailpipe
emission is water vapor, not the smog-forming
pollutants and greenhouse gases that come
out of gasoline-powered cars.
January 2005. Hybrids
Under the Hood. Union
of Concerned Scientists learn about the way
hybrid cars combine the use of gasoline and
electric power for greater efficiency on the
road.
2004
15 September 2004. By GreenBiz.com. UPS
and DaimlerChrysler Launch First Medium-Duty
Fuel Cell Delivery Vehicles in the United
States. SANTA
MONICA, California - Buoyed by initial road-test
results and significant technological advancements,
UPS has announced the U.S. deployment of its
first three large package delivery vehicles
utilizing hydrogen fuel cells for power.
October 2004. Save
at the Pump-and Help the Planet With
the cost of gasoline hovering near all-time
highs, many consumers are becoming more conscious
of their vehicle's fuel economy. Fuel-efficient
vehicles save money, lower heat-trapping and
smog-forming emissions, and reduce our dependence
on oil imports. This article online has some
ways to help your car go farther on a gallon
of gas.
August 2004 Clean
Vehicles Update (from Union of Concerned Scientists). There
seems to be no summer slowdown for major clean
vehicles issues. Funding for a clean school
bus grant program got a slight increase from
the House, but not nearly the amount requested
by the administration. The EPA also began
a process to consider revising its outmoded
testing procedures that overestimate real
world fuel economy. Finally, California is
poised to embark on a historic first for U.S.
pollution control with new regulations to
limit greenhouse gas emissions from motor
vehicles. Contents: 1. School Bus 2. EPA Fuel
Economy Testing 3. California Climate Change
June 2004. Alcohol fuel -- http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com
April 2004. Brew
of champions, by Mary Vance, Terrain magazine--Ecology
Center, Berkeley, CA. Stepping into the
city of Berkeley's recycling yard, I am greeted
by the sweet scent of fresh brewing biodiesel-and
by two enthusiastic scientists and a respirator-clad
Dave Williamson, head of curbside recycling
for the Ecology Center. Russ Teall, CEO of
Biodiesel Industries, a Santa Barbara-based
corporation that designs, builds, and runs
biodiesel plants, and technical biodiesel
consultant Randall von Wedel warn me not to
inhale as I peer into a huge vat of what will
soon be 100 percent biodiesel. When the process
is complete, the aroma of the golden fuel
is not unlike that of french fries. ... The
city of Berkeley recently celebrated its first
anniversary of running an entire public works
fleet-180 trucks and school buses-on biodiesel.
Berkeley is the first city in the United States,
and probably the world, to convert its fleet
to 100 percent biodiesel. The Ecology Center
has been running its recycling fleet on biodiesel
since March 2001.
20 April 2004. Governor
Schwarzenegger Announces the California Hydrogen
Highways Network. Governor
Schwarzenegger today announced the California
Hydrogen Highways Network through the signing
of an Executive order creating a public and
private partnership to build a Hydrogen Highway
in California by 2010. At a ceremony at UC
Davis, he christened Station #1 on California
Hydrogen Highway by fueling a hydrogen fuel
cell vehicle at the pump.
March 2004. Low-Impact
Travel Tips . Union of Concerned Scientists. Millions
of people take to the road and the air each
day, for business or leisure travel. This
globetrotting has a significant impact on
the environment, damaging natural resources,
creating air and water pollution, and increasing
the risk of global warming.
January 2004. Need
a New Car? Make Sure It's Got These Features. Union
of Concerned Scientists. ...
your choice of car or light truck is the
single most important decision you can make
as an environmentally conscious consumer.
Cars and trucks create air and water pollution
and release heat-trapping gases into the
atmosphere (which contribute to global warming).
There are two major factors to consider
when car shopping: Gas mileage. ... [and]
Emissions.
Investigation: Compute
vehicle lifetime cost of fuel efficient car
(45 mpg) as compared with fuel inefficient car
(18 mpg). What kinds of things could the fuel
efficient vehicle purchaser buy with the savings?
What is the fuel efficiency of your (parents')
car(s)? What are the most fuel efficient cars
made commercially? What are the least fuel efficient
cars made commercially? [research on Internet
and/or local auto dealers]
Winter, 2004. China
Power. By Jane Braxton Little, for On
Earth (NRDC). Excerpt:
...By 2030, China could overtake the United
States as the world's leading greenhouse gas
emitter. This is a fate that Finamore wants
to help China avoid.
"We can't deny the Chinese people their
desire to live more comfortably," she
says. "We just hope to find ways to do
that without the environmental impacts." ...Finamore,
who has lived on and off in China for more
than a decade, is optimistic. "China
wants cleaner energy," she says. ...in
Jiangsu,... Finamore was among those who helped
the local government design a fund-the first
of its kind in China-that pays factories to
buy energy-efficient equipment. This, in turn,
reduces electricity consumption at peak times. "The
very notion that you can legislate clean energy
is new in China," she says. ...In Beijing,
an eight-story office building that captures
rainwater for irrigation and solar heats water
will soon open; it is China's first building
certified to meet international green-construction
standards. Shanghai manufacturers and a Canadian
company, brought together by Finamore, hope
to begin production of fuel-cell scooters,
which could cut down on urban pollution. And
China is investing research money in coal-gasification,
which would produce electricity, hydrogen,
and liquid fuels with near-zero emissions...
2003
17
November 2003. GUANGZHOU, China. NY Times: China
Set to Act on Fuel Economy. By KEITH BRADSHER,
Associated Press -- With
car ownership in Chinese cities growing, traffic
clogged a Beijing perimeter road last month.
The Chinese government is preparing to impose
minimum fuel economy standards on new cars
for the first time, and the rules will be
significantly more stringent than those in
the United States, according to Chinese experts
involved in drafting them. The new standards
are intended both to save energy and to force
automakers to introduce the latest hybrid
engines and other technology in China, in
hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising
dependence on oil imports from volatile countries
in the Middle East.... Some popular vehicles
now built in China by Western automakers,
including the Chevrolet Blazer, do not measure
up to the standards the government has drafted,
and may have to be modified to get better
gas mileage before the first phase of the
new rules becomes effective in July 2005.
The Chinese initiative comes at a time when
Congress is close to completing work on a
major energy bill that would make no significant
changes in America's fuel economy rules for
vehicles. The Chinese standards, in general,
call for new cars, vans and sport utility
vehicles to get as much as two miles a gallon
of fuel more in 2005 than the average required
in the United States, and about five miles
more in 2008.
9
October 2003. Clean
vehicles, clean energy, and clean air steps
in California. The
Union of Concerned Scientists has recently
won a number of important victories in California,
which will promote clean vehicles, clean energy,
clean air, and provide practical solutions
to global warming.
27
June 2003. Berkeley Daily Planet. Most
city vehicles convert to 100 percent Biodiesel
fuel.
2001
4
April 2001. Mini-engine -- UC
Berkeley researchers create world's smallest
rotary internal combustion engine.
2
April 2001. UC Berkeley researchers create world's
smallest rotary internal combustion engine
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