"A Truly Odd Couple: American Le Mans Series Dates The Nature Conservancy" Green Car Advisor

A Truly Odd Couple: American Le Mans Series Dates The Nature Conservancy

Nothing says "I really care about the planet" quite like a race car.

By Scott Doggett, Contributor

The American Le Mans Series, contributor of countless tons of greenhouse gases for sport, says it has formed "a relationship" with The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization renowned for its wildlife conservation and environmental regeneration efforts.

"As the Global Leader in Green Racing, the Series believes it is as important to lead with off-track programs as much as it is to lead with on-track innovation that emphasizes energy conservation and sustainability within a highly relevant platform applicable to today's automobile and transportation industries," the race series' organizers said in a press release Thursday.

The relationship has several components: the racing organization, teams and fans can donate money to the conservancy's adopt-an-acre reforestation project in California (which, of course, they could do before the relationship), and they can purchase T-shirts that read "Growing a Greener Tomorrow ... Faster." The shirts will be at American Le Mans Series races and on its Website with a portion of the proceeds going to the conservancy.

As if that weren't innovative enough, the Series says it will soon announce a Green Park program - "a media-driven event" (that usually means that it is being done to attract media coverage) "for each of its race markets."

The program involves planting trees in areas affected by the ALM Series races, specifically a "city park, local children's hospital, track, etc., along with construction of environmentally sustainable playground equipment provided by Lowe's Home Improvement Stores and Michelin."

So in the great American spirit of paying someone else to clean up after you, the race series has taken a page from the playbook of hundreds of other businesses and decided to plant trees in the neighborhoods affected by the emissions it causes.

The series is also promoting use of cleaner fuels and this year is even letting a hybrid race car run.

It's all better than doing nothing.

As for "green racing," it's a little like "an environmentally friendly car." There is really no such thing. However, some cars are less harmful to the environment than others and some racing events are greener than others.

Green Racing

Green racing is a concept that awards a prize to the fastest car that produces the smallest environmental footprint. The hope, its proponents say, is that the effort to build greener race cars will lead to clean fuel and emissions innovations in the cars we use in everyday life, to a cleaner environment and to less dependence on foreign oil.

"Race cars actually move the technology of street cars in several ways," says John C. Glenn, an environmental specialist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"One, the technology of race cars develops at a much faster pace than the technology in street cars," said Glenn, "and two, they form the basis of what kind of cars people want. They see cars racing on the track, and that's the kind of car they want to buy."

Nevermind that very few people actually need vehicles with more than 300 horsepower that, because they typically guzzle fossil fuels, contribute heavily to global warming and America's dependence on foreign oil.

In 2006, the EPA, U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory and SAE International formed the Green Racing Working Group to establish criteria for this new type of racing. Two years later, the American Le Mans Series announced it would be the first racing series to take the environmentally focused competition to the race track.

The first American Le Mans Series race to feature the Green Challenge (essentially a race within a race) was held last October. Michelin is sponsoring the series for 2009.

The prize recognizes speedy cars that are "eco-friendly" based on three factors: energy used, greenhouse gases emitted and the amount of petroleum displaced by alternative fuels. A scoring system developed by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory takes vehicle mass and average speed into account in order to prevent cars from running slow just to get a better score.

"These are still 200-mph cars. We clearly did not want to change racing. We didn't want to make it boring and slow," Glenn said. "We didn't feel as if that would accomplish our goal, which is to get people to use more energy-efficient vehicles and to stimulate the development of more energy-efficient technologies."

Now, let's not all go out and purchase 200-mph cars. That really wouldn't be environmentally friendly.

But if you saw one racing on the track and just had to have one, we hope you saw it at an American Le Mans Series event because it allows all of its cars to race powered by alternative fuels, such as cellulosic E85, E10 and sulfur-free diesel.

Just imagine getting 8 miles per gallon and being able to tell your closest beer-drinking buddies how "green" you are because your ride perhaps isn't as insidious as their Hummers and mud-caked trucks.

How cool would that be.