While waiting for final government approval of its sale of the ailing Hummer brand to China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp., GM is hoping to give it a sales boost with the introduction next month of a flex-fuel engine for the 2010 H3 and H3T models.
Adding E85 (ethanol) capability is part of the GM calls the brand's "evolution to offer responsible ... more efficient" models that don't sacrifice any of the big trucks' all-terrain capabilities.
The 5.3-liter, 300 horsepower flex fuel V8 is a new engine that, GM says, will be a standard offering across the entire 2010 Hummer Alpha series performance lineup.
GM no longer lists Hummer as one of its models - anticipating completion of the brand's sale early next year - but a slightly higher horsepower version of the same engine in the Chevrolet Tahoe is rated at 14 MPG in the city and 19 MPG on the highway - 16 MPG combined - using gasoline. You can figure a 25 percent drop in fuel economy - but lower CO2 emissions - when using E85.
The larger H2 Hummers got their flex-fuel engines with the '09 model launch and fuel economy for the 6.2-liter V8 got a combined city-highway rating of 14 MPG on gasoline, dropping to 10 MPG on E85.
We're not sure the new H3 powerplant will help that much - if Hummer's got a good market anywhere in this country it's Southern California, and there are only 10 ethanol stations in the entire region.
With sales down more than 60 percent this year after falling 50 percent last year and 20 percent the year before that, adding a biofuel-capable, high-performance engine to the Hummer H3 lineup is sort of like trying to patch the Titanic's hull with bandages from the infirmary.
Oh, wait - there also are three new exterior colors for 2010. That ought to help.
Recycling at work: Trash hauler Waste Management Inc. says it will be able to produce up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas daily to fuel 300 of its trash trucks using methane gas from decomposing garbage at one of its large Northern California landfill dumps.
The company, which has been involved in waste-to-energy programs for nearly 40 years, has installed a $15.5 million biogas collection and refining system at its Altamont Landfill near Livermore in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The German-made system removes impurities from the methane and chills it to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit to liquefy it so it can be pumped directly into the trash trucks' tanks.
We can't help but wonder how many gallons a weekly residential curbside garbage can would be good for and whether there's any future in, say, neighborhood waste-to-gas programs? Perhaps a monthly voucher good for your garbage's equivalent of LNG at the local dump pump?
In the biggest federal boost for green car development in decades, the 2010 energy budget bill just signed into law by President Obama includes $814 million in funding for various alternative fuel and vehicle programs.
One provision, $283 million for fuel cells and hydrogen fuel, restored more than $100 million that in funds for automotive-specific programs that Energy Secretary Steven Chu initially proposed cutting from the budget.
Chu said at the time he didn't see fuel-cell electric cars as commercially viable in the next 15-20 years.
Automakers and fuel cell developers quickly rallied to persuade Congress that Chu hadn't see the whole picture and promised to have commercial quality fuel cell cars - which use hydrogen for energy production - in the market by 2015.
Other green aspects of the bill include $311 million to help fund various vehicle electrification and advanced internal combustion engine projects and $220 million for advanced biofuel development.
As expected, the bill was cheered by trade groups representing the fuel cell, biofuels and electric drive industries.
Argonne National Laboratory researcher Thomas Wallner explains the R&D center's omnivore engine project.
The nice thing about flex-fuel engines is that if one type of fuel isn't available, the other probably will be.
The not-so-nice thing that automakers with flex-fuels in their lineups don't like to talk about is that they mostly are turned for gasoline, so performance diminishes when ethanol, natural gas or other fuels are used.
The answer maybe the so-called omnivorous engine, set up to burn all kinds of fuels and overseen by a smart engine control unit that changes valve and injection timing and other variables to minimize emissions and maximize performance, and fuel economy, from whatever is exploding down there in the cylinders.
From Gas to Electric, 3-Wheelers to Exotics, Contestants Vie to Build 100 MPG Vehicles
Students from West Philadelphia High School are youngest competitors, but no slouches when it comes to design or performance, as shown by their Alternative category entry, the biodiesel-electric EVX-GT hybrid sports car. The school also has a diesel-electric hybrid Ford Focus in the Conventional class.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Judges for the Progressive Automotive X Prize contest have winnowed the field in the race for $10 million in prize money for building the best 100 MPG MPH car to the final 43 teams.
The teams will enter a total of 53 vehicles (there are different categories, so multiple entries are possible) in a competition pitting them against one another in a variety of road and safety tests.
All the finalists already have survived two design judging rounds that pared the number of entries from the original 111 teams with 135 vehicles.
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The Progressive Automotive X Prize was launched at last year's New York Auto Show.
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The contest, aimed at inspiring green-car development, was announced more than 18 months ago. It challenges contestants to design, build and operate a commercially viable vehicles that can deliver fuel economy of at least 100 miles per gallon - or the equivalent.
Part of the competition involves presenting a marketing plan to the judges, who will decide if the vehicle has real-world possibilities.
Among them, the final entrants use 14 different fuels including gasoline and electricity, with battery-electric and hybrid-electric the most popular types of powertrains.
In the hybrid-electric category, teams are entering vehicles whose internal combustion engines run on gasoline, diesel biodiesel, ethanol, butanol and compressed natural gas.
There are even three entries that use plain old gasoline as their sole fuel.
For every energy unit in fossil fuel it takes to produce biodiesel, more than four units are contained in the fuel, the National Biodiesel Board said this week, citing the report.
The board is promoting the biodiesel energy improvements study in hopes of influencing the Environmental Protection Agency as it prepares rules to implement the expanded federal renewable fuels standard.
The carbon impact of each fuel is weighed in setting the mix of fuels to be used in the country and the agency is using a four-year-old study to establish baseline numbers for petroleum and biodiesel and the numbers favor gasoline because biodiesel production was less energy-efficient then, the board says.
Lowe's Fernandez Acura driven by Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz took top green honors in the American Le Mans Series prototype class as winner of the annual Michelin Green X Challenge for finishing highest with the lowest environmental impact.
Gil de Ferran, Simon Pagenaud and their LMP Acura took the checkered flag in the prototype class at this past weekend's American Le Mans Series final at Laguna Seca, but the increasingly important 'green' flag was captured by another team of prototype Acura drivers.
Edmunds.com photo editor Kurt Niebhur was there to take in the race and filed this report for Green Car Advisor on the environmental aspect of the competition. ---------- Race for the Green
Racing and environmentalism might seem to run on different sides of the track, but the Michelin Green X Challenge just might have something to say about that.
Started in 2008, the Michelin Green X Challenge was formed by the tire maker in conjunction with a major racing series, the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Society of Automotive Engineers International.
As a race within a race, the Green X Challenge awards points to cars - and drivers - based on four different criteria; releasing the least amount of CO2, displacing the least amount of petroleum, excelling in energy efficiency during a race weekend, and last, but by no means least, finishing position.
As testament to the fairness of the rules in both the ALMS and the Green X Challenge, the 2009 Season saw nine different cars from eight different teams representing five different manufacturers. All teams involved ran on E10 ethanol blended gasoline, E85R gasoline blended ethanol, GTL biodiesel or E10 with electric hybrid power.
For the 2009 season, the winners of the Michelin Green X Challenge were the #15 Lowe's Fernandez Acura, driven by Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz, in the Prototype category, and the #44 Flying Lizard Porsche, driven by Seth Neiman and Johannes Van Overbeek, in the GT category.
With the success of the Green X Challenge, as well as the focus these days on environmental responsibility, it came as no surprise that Michelin announced it would continue the challenge through the 2010 American Le Mans Series..
Poo power raises its banner again as a Massachusetts biofuels company and an Israeli water recycling firm announce a joint venture to turn biomass into cellulosic ethanol.
Applied CleanTech has developed a process for recycling "wastewater solids," the stuff we inelegantly call poop, into a low-moisture feedstock for ethanol production. Qteros has developed what it believes is a better bug -a proprietary microbe technology for turning biomass into ethanol.
By teaming up, the two figure to be able to market to "every municipality that has a waste water treatment plant," said Jeff Haustor, Qteros' co-founder and manager of the project. the plants can use their accumulated waste to produce fuel that could be used in city-owned vehicles,
"It also helps answer the question of what municipalities can do with their sewage sludge," added Israel Biran, ACT's chief executive (We found one a while ago that was turning it into hydrogen for fuel-cell electic cars!)
The companies say their process improved cellulosic ethanol plant efficiency by up to 20 percent because the reclaimed sludge is easier to convert than other, woody biomass feedstocks.
Bentlley says initial Continental Supersports to hit U.S. shores won't be able to use ethanol.
A quarter-million-dollar, 12-cylinder Bentley with 621 horsepower and top speed of 204 m.p.h. was always bound to be an unlikely champion for environmentally friendly driving. News that Bentley Motors will delay the much-touted flex-fuel compatibility for its new U.S.-bound Continental Supersports isn't likely to help.
The fastest and most powerful Bentley ever, the 2010 Supersports was also due to be the company's first model capable of running on bio-fuels like E85. But a variety of problems means the first Supersports to hit our shores will be limited to a diet of gasoline.
Green Living Advocates Ed Begley Jr., Daryl Hannah Converted Cars for Program
By Danny King, Contributor LOS ANGELES - "It's so easy, even an actor can do it," quipped Daryl Hannah as fellow thespian and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. installed an alcohol-fuel conversion kit in his Toyota Prius.
---------- Ethanol proponent David Blume and actress Daryl Hannah look on as Actor Ed Begley Jr., adds a bi-fuel conversion kit to his 2001 Prius. ----------
The contraption, which costs $367 for a four-cylinder engine and is about the size of a Walkman (remember those?), essentially reprogrammed the computer in Begley's 2001 Prius so that the hybrid car could efficiently use ethanol - a form of alcohol - in addition to unleaded gasoline.
Installation time? Less than 10 minutes - if you don't have on older car, like Hannah's Trans Am, which required a whole new fuel injection system before it could be converted.
Blume, who wrote the first version of his book "Alcohol Can Be a Gas!" in 1983, has for decades been preaching the virtues of alcohol as a cheaper, more widely available, less-polluting alternative fuel to gasoline.
Congress should require U.S. EPA to consider more widely the environmental effects of biofuels production when deciding which fuels are eligible under the federal biofuels use mandate, according to congressional investigators.
The suggestion is one part of a wide-ranging Government Accountability Office report released today on increased biofuels production. A 2007 law requires the amount of biofuels in the nation's transportation fuels mix to reach 36 billion gallons by 2022.
"For the environment, many experts believe that increased biofuels production could impair water quality -- by increasing fertilizer runoff and soil erosion -- and also reduce water availability, degrade air and soil quality, and adversely affect wildlife habitat," the report states.
"However, the extent of these effects is uncertain and could be mitigated by such factors as improved crop yields, feedstock selection, use of conservation techniques, and improvements in biorefinery processing," it adds. Future increases in use of cellulosic feedstocks -- such as grasses and crop wastes -- can reduce harmful effects, GAO notes.
The 2007 law that boosted the renewable fuels standard requires biofuels to have lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, by varying degrees, than fossil fuels.
But GAO says Congress should weigh amending that law by requiring EPA to more widely assess the environmental effects of increased production. And EPA should use this wider review to determine which fuels qualify under the standard.
Land Rover announced today that a production version of its Range Rover LRX Concept SUV (pictured) will be built, with sales to begin in 2011.
Designed and engineered at Land Rover's Gaydon facility, the new Range Rover will be the smallest, lightest and most fuel-efficient vehicle the company has ever produced.
The three-door SUV will be built in Halewood, near Liverpool, England, subject to quality and productivity agreements, and will be sold in more than 100 countries around the world, the company said in a statement.
In an interview with Edmunds.com's Michelle Krebs this morning, Jaguar Land Rover spokesman Stuart Schorr said the LRX will be the first of four new segment offerings from the company, with Jaguar and Land Rover to receive two each.
He stressed the four will be premium brands, meaning they won't come cheap. Schorr also said that Jaguar Land Rover is committed to hybrids and electrics, but he refused to provide further details.
The LRX Concept debuted at the Detroit Auto Show last year and featured a 2.0-liter diesel-hybrid powertrain, which when running on biodiesel achieved a claimed fuel economy of 60 miles per gallon.
Jaguar or Land Rover Plant to Close
In a related development, India's Tata Motors Ltd. said today it will close one of the three Jaguar Land Rover assembly plants in England by 2014 in a bid to move its money-losing British unit into profitability.
In an article published today, Biofuels Digest takes a look at the creative financing sources being used to fund biofuel research and development today.
---------- Right, mining for coal in Wyoming. ----------
It notes, for example, that many strategies have been mooted, but one perennial is still popular: Have the cheapest way to make a load of sugar. Simple sugars are the new gold, Biofuels Digest points out. If you can make it fast enough and cheap enough, "customers and their own financing backers will beat a path to your door."
Sometimes, though, you can just be the biggest, baddest sugar project in a local market, even if your technology is not quite ready for the 22nd century. The article goes on to describe a Philippine project that went down just such a road, obtaining $30 million in equity from the Japanese firm Itochu and others.
But nothing is getting funded in bioenergy this year quite as fast and furiously as algae-related ventures. These young companies, the "baby bloomers" as Biofuels Digest calls them, have been landing scads of venture capital and public funding, leaving their brethren in advanced bioenergy scratching their heads in wonder, disbelief, and occasionally a bit of spite.
The publication describes how a government-funded project in Arizona landed $70.5 million based on stimulating green jobs in a depressed region, and as a carbon strategy. Not to mention the promise of fuel, and biochar that can be converted into energy at a higher clip than simply burning biomass.
And then there's the funding source we all know only too well: public-private partnerships. They have been a hallmark of bioenergy projects for quite a while, but perhaps never more importantly than now, when local authorities despair over rising costs of landfills, and bioenergy developers are hard-pressed to raise the benjamins for their projects.
A Canadian partnership between the city of Edmonton, the province of Alberta (home province of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper) and Enerkem shows how it can get done, Biofuels Digest reports, not only for a waste-to-energy project, but an R&D center to boot.
The New England biofuels startup Mascoma Corp. said today that it has entered a feedstock deal with Chevron Corp.'s alternative technology arm.
Under terms of the agreement, Houston-based Chevron Technology Ventures will supply Mascoma with lignocellulosic feedstock, including wood chips, switchgrass and agricultural waste. Mascoma plans to use genetically modified bacteria to break down and ferment the hearty biomass into cellulosic ethanol at a demonstration plant in Rome, N.Y.
Chevron -- which already has a research and development alliance with the algal biodiesel maker Solazyme Inc. -- plans to use a thermal process to convert Mascoma's leftover lignin into a liquid petroleum replacement, such as biodiesel or jet fuel, explained Kate Casolaro, a Mascoma spokeswoman.
"People have asked, 'Aren't you using up all of the good stuff?'" Casolaro said. "Actually, lignin is still very energy-rich."
The companies declined to disclose financial details of the feedstock supply deal, which will span two years.
In the meantime, Mascoma plans to hire a new chief executive to begin work on a commercial-scale ethanol refinery in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Last month, former CEO Bruce Jamerson switched to the role of chairman of Lebanon, N.H.-based Mascoma and its Michigan subsidiary, Frontier Renewable Resources LLC. Jim Flatt, Mascoma's former executive vice president of research, development and operations, will serve as the company's acting president until a CEO is hired.
Montana-based Sustainable Oils reports that it has been awarded a defense contract for 40,000 gallons of camelina-based jet fuel for testing by the U.S. Navy.
Sustainable Oils said camelina was selected because it does not compete with food crops, has been proven to reduce carbon emissions by more than 80 percent compared to petroleum jet fuel, and has already been successfully demonstrated in a commercial airline test flight.
In addition, camelina has naturally high oil content, is drought tolerant and requires less fertilizer and herbicides than other biofuels. Studies have shown camelina is an excellent rotation crop with wheat, and it can also grow on marginal land.
Sustainable Oils says it has the largest camelina research program in the nation. It reportedly began in 2005 and has steadily expanded to include more than 140 trials across North America.
In January, Sustainable Oils sourced the camelina for Japan Airlines' historic biojet demonstration flight. That flight's biofuel blend was comprised primarily of camelina.
The upcoming Navy tests are part of a larger effort to test and certify promising biofuels in support of the Navy and Defense Department's strategy to enhance energy security and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Perhaps one day soon biofuels such as these attracting the military's attention will replace petroleum-based car and truck fuels. One can only hope.
Solazyme Inc., a California company specializing in renewable oil production company, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense to research and develop commercial scale production of algae-derived biofuel for the Navy, the company reported today.
---------- A worker pours biofuel at Solazyme. ----------
The contract also calls for delivery of more than 20,000 gallons of Soladiesel F-76 Renewable Naval Distillate fuel to the Navy for compatibility testing over the next year.
F-76 Naval Distillate is similar to diesel fuel and is the primary shipboard fuel used by the Navy.
The contract is significant to green-car proponents in that it gives the alternative-fuel industry more reason to invest algae-derived fuels, which may one day account for much of the fuel powering cars and trucks.
Solazyme CEO Jonathan Wolfson said in a statement that the fuels made with his company's algal technology reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 85 percent versus standard petroleum based fuels.
The company, which is headquartered in South San Francisco, said its Soladiesel F-76 fuel meets the Navy's F-76 specification.
"This program will lead to the eventual certification of Soladiesel F-76 Naval distillate for commercial sale to the U.S. Military," the company said.
Calls placed to Solazyme seeking the dollar amount of the contract and other details were not immediately returned.
The federal-private Clean Cities progam is responsible for promoting a lot of alternatively fueled vehicles over the years and this month added to the tally by handing out $300 million in federal grants that will help various government agencies and commercial fleet operators deploy and fuel 9,000 more - mainly commercial trucks and taxis using compressed andliquid natural gas, propane and E85.
The list is long -agencies in 22 states and muillti-state regions received funding, and a little disheartening - it provides for 542 new alt-fuel stations, but that includes only 1 hydrogen fueling station and 210 electric vehicle chargers -most of them in three locales, Chicago and North and South Carolina.
Only about100 of the 9,000-plus alt-fuel vehicles to be subsidized with the grants will be all-elelctric, including at east 56 neighborhood electrics, or NEVs. But more than 1,000 will be trucks and buses (and a few cars) using propane.
Gas-electric hybrids will account for at leat 738 of the vehicles (the totals aren't exact because the grant descriptions don't always specify how many of which type of vehicle will be purchased with the funds.
Still, the main purpose of the program is to clear up the diesel emissions and other exhaust fumes choking many cities, and that's a goal we applaud, long and loudly.
A rundown of grants, provided by the federal Energy Department, shows that more than 1,400 diesel trucks and buses and several hundred gasoline-burning taxis will be replaced by alt-fuel vehicles. Almost half - 651 - will be LNG trucks replacing diesel trucks in several Southern California locations.
Most will use natural gas, but150 gas and diesel trucks in Maryland and 190 diesel school buses in Kentucky will be replaced with hybrid-electric models.
Teh feds say the programs will help displace 38 million gallons of petrolleum annually.
The entire list of grants, and their descriptions,is available here.
The state of Massachusetts announced today that it intends to ban all biofuels not made using waste feedstocks from qualifying under the state's Clean Energy Biofuels Act of 2008.
The state said that the biofuels mandate will begin July 1 of next year and that mandated volumes would be waived in the first year but that "early action credits" will be provided for all gallons of qualified advanced biofuels, which will be applied to second-year mandate obligations.
And, the state said that its Department of Energy Resources, or DOER, will announce by the end of next year whether the second-year biofuels mandate will be set at the 2 percent or 3 percent level.
But in a surprise move, DOER said that it "will only accept applications for biofuels derived from waste feedstocks," and only then if they yield a 50 percent greenhouse-gas reduction threshold.
Under the proposed regulation, Massachusetts will ban the use of all non-waste feedstocks, which include algae, cyanobacteria, jatropha, miscanthus and switchgrass, or oils produced on a harvestable basis by microorganisms, such as employed by Joule Biotechnologies.
Curt Felix, chief executive of Wellfleet, Massachusetts-based biofuels company Plankton Power, said the DOER ruling guts the state's biofuels act and directly opposes the intention of the state's legislature and its governor.
"DOER has made impermissible all but waste restaurant oil as a biofuel feedstock in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for compliance with the law," he said. "The ruling means that algae fuels and other 'non-waste' feedstocks that clearly meet the legal requirements of the biofuels law will not be allowed to be sold as qualifying product."
That's the way we see it, too.
Moreover, DOER's ruling that the emissions from renewable fuels have to be 50 percent cleaner than petroleum's creates an enormously high threshold that would likely disqualify many good biofuels.
And the 50-percent ruling is completely unrealistic. As Felix put it, "Why not require that next year petroleum has to lower its carbon emissions by 50 percent?"
As the summer of algae continues, start-up Aquentium has announced a 475-acre project in New Mexico, Waxman-Markey climate bill co-sponsor Edward Markey has declared the legislation will generate $1 trillion in private-sector investment, and British Petroleum has plunked down $10 million in green-diesel R&D.
In New Mexico, Aquentium announced today that it has secured 475 acres in New Mexico for the development of an algae bio-fuel production facility. The company is developing green crude, and noted the potential of brackish or salt-water to host algae without disclosing the strains that it will focus on.
In Alameda, California, while touring the Aurora Biofuels laboratory, House Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Ed Markey described Aurora's technology as "very exciting," adding that "with a little bit of luck, we'll pass this legislation later this year and create a marketplace for technologies like this."
Unsatisfied with that remark, Markey also predicted: "Our legislation will unleash more than a trillion dollars' worth of private-sector investment." It's wishful thinking, to be sure, but wouldn't it be nice.
And in the United Kingdom, British Petroleum and Martek have agreed to use Martek's core algae technologies as a platform for the production of diesel from microbes.
According to reliable sources, BP will invest $10 million in the research and development of Martek's technologies and will own all intellectual property that results from the R&D. BP's interest in the research being strictly "green" diesel.
For its part, Martek will have an exclusive license to apply the technology in the fields of nutrition, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
Recent technological advances might put fuel from forest waste, cornstalks, algae and other biomass into commercial production within just a few years, a National Science Foundation program director said in a paper published today.
John Regalbuto, a chemical engineer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and director of the NSF catalysis and biocatalysis program, wrote in Science (subscription required) that biomass-derived fuels are not far from being part of the energy mix as a replacement for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
"If recent technological innovations result in competitive production costs, hydrocarbons rather than ethanol will likely be the dominant biofuel," Regalbuto wrote.
Hydrocarbon fuels can be directly produced from the sugars of woody biomass - forest waste, cornstalks or switchgrass - through microbial fermentation or liquid-phase catalysis, he wrote. They can be produced by pyrolysis or gasification directly from the woody biomass. And they can be produced by converting the lipids of nonfood crops and algae.
"The resulting hydrocarbon biofuels will be drop-in replacements for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel; will give much higher gas mileage than ethanol and will work in existing engines and distribution networks," Regalbuto wrote.
Ethanol, which is produced by breaking biomass into fermentable sugars, is used in the U.S. as an additive to improve combustion, but it does not provide as much energy as traditional gasoline.
"The drawback to using ethanol as a complete replacement for gasoline ... is not only the high cost of its production from cellulose but also its lower energy density," Regalbuto wrote. "Ethanol has two-thirds the energy density of gasoline, and cars running on E85 (85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) get about 30 percent lower gas mileage."
But the ethanol industry is given heavy government incentives, including a renewable fuels mandate that calls for the use of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol a year by 2022 and 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels.
But the 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels mandated by the 2007 energy law is not limited to cellulosic ethanol. It "can be met with green gasoline, diesel and jet fuel as well," he wrote.
Every spring, fertilizer runoff from the U.S. Mississippi River floods into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a massive algae bloom that leads to a giant oxygen-deprived "dead zone" (pictured) where fish cannot survive covering some 6,000-7,000 square miles.
Now, Silicon Valley startup LiveFuels Inc. wants to scoop up the algae - simple sea organisms that thrive on the farmland runoff - and use it to feed fish that could be processed for oil, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The process is already used to produce fish-oil dietary supplements.
The article was published just a month after Exxon Mobil Corp. announced it would partner with Synthetic Genomics Inc. to spend up to $600 million working on developing algae to use in biofuels, while start-ups Sapphire Energy and Solazyme Inc. have raised more than $75 million for their own algae-conversion effort.
But unlike those efforts, LiveFuels doesn't envision harvesting the algae directly. Rather, it wants to go a step up the food chain, using algae to feed fish that could be processed for oil.
"It is too expensive for humans to grow algae, harvest it and get the water out and then convert it into a petroleum-like substitute," LiveFuels Chief Executive Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones told the Journal. It is easier and cheaper to harvest algae's oil the way Mother Nature does it - "which is to use fish," she said.
The fish would gobble up the algae and then be harvested, cooked and pressed to extract fish oil - a method already used to produce omega-3 fatty acid dietary supplements.
LiveFuels, of San Carlos, California, is testing out carp, tilapia and members of the sardine family at a fish farm in Rio Hondo, Texas, near the Mexican border. "We want the couch potato of fish, the kind that just eat and eat," Morgenthaler-Jones said.
Once it figures out a good fish mix, LiveFuels wants to release them in Louisiana bays - more than 11,340 kilograms of fish per acre - to feast on the algae blooms.
"This is the sea equivalent of traveling goats: you have algae, we'll bring the fish," she said, referring to companies that rent out goats to eat up grasses on California hillsides to reduce the danger from wildfires.
The company envisions building caged fish farms in parts of the algae blooms in Louisiana bayous and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The algae would provide a free source of food to raise the fish, and natural tidal flows would churn the algae to keep fresh nutrient-rich water flowing through.
A Southern California algae research startup claims to have made a breakthrough in the effort to find an economical way to produce biofuels from the aquatic organisms.
Sustainable Green Technologies says its researchers have discovered a way to increase oil output in a same-sized area of algae to 50 percent from 15 percent without sacrificing plant growth in the process.
Previous attempts to boost oil content have slowed algae's rapid growth, a trade-off that negates the increase in the content of oil that can be processed into biodiesel and other fuels.
The ability to more than triple the oil output of an acre of algae without increasing the demand for land or nutrients would help bring down the cost of production.
J.B. Hunt Transport Services, the second-largest trucking company, in the country, has signed an agreement that could make it a substantial purchaser of biodiesel from SunEco Energy
, which specializes in making fuel from algae oil.
---------- A SunEco test truck using a 50 percent algae-oil blend. ----------
The companies executed the preliminary purchase pact after results of tests that mixed the algae oil with petroleum diesel. Trucks driven on mixtures of 20 percent and 50 percent algae oil were found to have reduced emissions by 82%, said closely held SunEco
, which is based in Chino, Calif.
J.B. Hunt has almost 3,200 big-rig tractors in use across the country, and weaning them from even 20 percent of their petro-diesel consumption would be a boon to air pollution cleanup efforts.
For Hunt it could also mean lower fuel bills.
SunEco, which entered the biofuels industry a few years, is one of a number of firms developing methods of extracting fuel-grade oil from algae - a rapidly growing acquatic plant material that is relatively rich in oil, doesn't take land away from food crops and isn't particularly water intensive as about 90 percent of the water used to grow the algae is recycled.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu (pictured) announced today that more than $327 million in new funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will go toward scientific research, including more than $41 million to biofuel, fusion and smart-grid research and development.
The biofuels research could directly influence America's dependence on oil by shifting motorists' need for a petroleum-based fuel to a fuel that doesn't produce greenhouse gases and contribute to climate change.
The smart-grid and fusion research could indirect benefit "green" cars by providing a clean source of electricity for electric and hybrid-electric vehicles (most electricity produced in America today is generated by burning coal).
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in Berkeley, California: $11 million for fusion energy research; $4 million for new instrumentation at the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute; and $875,000 for mathematical analysis related to the development of smart-grid technology.
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, in Princeton, New Jersey: $8.8 million for a variety of initiatives in fusion energy research and $5 million for infrastructure improvements at the laboratory.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee: $5.4 million for equipment at the DOE BioEnergy Science Center; and, $180,000 for fusion energy research.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, Washington: $867,000 for mathematical analysis related to the development of a smart grid.
Argonne National Laboratory, in Argonne, Illinois: $5.6 million for improvements at the Advanced Photon Source.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, California: $810,000 for fusion energy research.
Sandia National Laboratories, in Sandia, New Mexico, and Sandia, California: $688,000 for mathematical analysis related to the development of a smart grid; and $75,000 for fusion energy research.
In March, Chu announced $1.2 billion in DOE Office of Science Recovery Act projects. In July, he announced a new Office of Science Early Career Research Program to be funded with $85 million in Recovery Act funds.
With this third and final round of projects, the Obama administration has now approved projects covering the full $1.6 billion that the DOE Office of Science received from Congress under the Recovery Act.
Hard on the heels of a research project at the University of Delaware looking into carbonized chicken feathers as a hydrogen storage medium for fuel cells comes word of a new transportation-related use for chicken feathers.
Researchers at the University of Nevada say they've found that commercial "feather meal" made from ground-up chicken feathers (and sometimes blood and guts) can be an important feedstock for making biodiesel.
The stuff is used now for animal feed and for fertilizer, and is still good for that after the biodiesel's been wrung from it, the researchers said.
The amount of chicken consumed in the U.S. yields enough meal to produce 153 million gallons of biodiesel a year, the researchers say; extended globally, the potential is for close to 600 million gallons a year.
You can read the entire article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry if a deep dive into the chemistry of it all interests you.
The short form is that chicken feathers contain fat, and fat can be rendered out and turned into biodiesel.
The process should wind up costing abut $1 per gallon of biodiesel, the researchers estimated.
Engineers have developed a method for creating high-performance membranes from crystal sieves that could increase the energy efficiency of chemical separations up to 50 times over conventional methods and enable higher production rates.
So say a team of researchers led by chemical engineer Michael Tsapatsis of the University of Minnesota, in an article that appeared in today's issue of Science.
The ability to separate and purify specific molecules in a chemical mixture is essential to chemical manufacturing. Many industrial separations rely on distillation, a process that is easy to design and implement but consumes a lot of energy.
Tsapatsis's team developed a rapid heating treatment to remove structural defects in zeolite membranes that limit their performance, a problem that has plagued the technology for decades.
Rosemarie Wesson of the National Science Foundation said that using membranes rather than energy-intensive processes could increase the energy efficiency of producing renewable biofuels such as ethanol and butanol.
Is Now the Time for A Gas Tax to Help Americans Revolt Against King Petroleum?
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Gasoline burners still rule, but interest in hybrids and diesels is climbing along with summer fuel prices, and an impressive number of shoppers are looking at flex-fuel trucks.
Those are the chief findings of just-completed research into the kinds of vehicles Edmunds.com users are researching these days, and it underscores the close tie between gasoline prices and the "green-ness" of the auto market.
As long as the prices of diesel and hybrid cars and trucks remain significantly higher than those of their conventional gasoline counterparts, the level of interest in the alternative models is likely to stay well below interest in gasoline vehicles.
Tipping Point
But as gas prices rise, the payback for hybrids and diesels drops and interest levels creep back up the charts.
Anything to take away some of that pain at the pump seems to be the mantra of many car shoppers..
That's what David Tompkins. Edmunds' executive director of business solutions, found when he and his team looked at the percentage of Edmunds.com users researching the various type of vehicles over the past 18 months.
Tompkins specified "researching" rather than "browsing" because people researching a vehicle are more likely to be buyers than the people who, in the real estate market, would be called "lookie-loos." It's a key difference that some analysts haven't caught onto yet.
Comparing levels of interest shown by shoppers in June of '09, Tompkins found more than twice as much research into hybrid models than into diesels, 9 percent versus 4 percent.
Electric cars and natural gas vehicles didn't register at all, given that the number for sale in the U.S. is so small, but the data suggests that if there were a number of vehicles available - cars and trucks that didn't need gasoline at all - interest in them would soar with fuel prices.
After all, when gas prices were above $4 a gallon last summer, interest in gas vehicles dropped to 84 percent while 26 percent of shoppers researched hybrids, the only significant alternative in the market at the time.
Hybrids began dropping out the picture as gasoline prices fell and by December accounted for only 4 percent of shopper research on Edmunds.com, while gas-burners were back up to 96 percent.
Now, as gas starts what most analysts believe will be a steady upward climb, research into hybrids is rising, hitting up to 9 percent in June.
Gasoline vehicles fell slightly to 93 percent last month, while 4 percent of research in June was directed at diesel vehicles. (The numbers exceed 100 percent because of overlapping research by shoppers who research more than one type of vehicle when trying to select a fuel or powertrain type).
Here's one for the "every cloud..." file, or perhaps the "caveat emptor
" file. Take your pick.
When the EPA recently issued a report anticipating 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol production in the U.S. by 2010, it was including 70 million gallons from an Alabama company called Cello Energy.
That's 70 percent of the total U.S. production from one relatively small company, per the EPA.
Bad Move
The government didn't factor in ethanol fraud.
Turns out the Cello was just found guilty in a federal court in Alabama of civil fraud for lying to a major investor about the state of its ability to make ethanol from grass and other woody, non-food materials.
The jury ordered Cello principals to pay $10.4 million in damages after witnesses testified that the "cellulosic" fuel the company was showing to investors was actually fuel derived entirely from petroleum.
From the files of inhabit.com
, the Website that claims "design will save the world," comes this little nugget:
The rice-farming community of Tabontabon, Philippines, has got two taxis consisting mostly of bamboo and run entirely on coconut biodiesel.
According to the community's mayor, who also happens to be the vehicles' owner, the taxis offer residents and visitors alike an alternative to the dangerous, people-piled-on motorcycles that dominate Philippine roads.
The larger of the two taxis seats 20 humans and can run on a gallon of biodiesel for eight hours.
The smaller taxi seats eight passengers, gets about the same fuel economy and has a stereo sound system (that's a big deal in Tabontabon, which has a population of just under 9,000 residents).
A third bamboo taxi is planned, but we cannot promise you that we'll stay on top of this story.
In case you were wondering, this is the same Tabontabon that was controlled by Japanese troops during WWII. A heroic account of U.S. forces taking the town in the face of heavy machine-gun fire makes for compelling bedtime reading.
There wasn't a lot of detail in General Motors Corp. CEO Fritz Henderson's press conference this morning, but he did vow that fuel economy and energy independence will be among the automaker's prime goals as it emerges from bankruptcy.
The company will make advanced battery technology - for hybrids and all-electric vehicles - a core competency, with several announcements about its battery work expected for later this summer, GM said in a statement issued after the press conference.
In his opening remarks in a conference devoted largely to structural changes, Henderson (right) reiterated the the Chevrolet Volt is still on schedule to launch late next year - it will be the first mass-produced "extended range electric vehicle," capable of up to 40 miles of all electric travel. A small gas engine will generate power for the electric drive system once the batteries, charged from the commercial power grid, are depleted.
GM also has promised to build a new small car in the U.S. - we're still speculating in the absence of an announcement by the company - that it will be based on the Spark subcompact initially designed for Latin America and Europe.
Henderson said green initiatives already underway, including the company's work on hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, biofuels and cleaner and more effcient internal combustion engines, will continue.
And he put to rest,fr now a least, speculation tat the General, hankering for a new image, was planning to change the background color of ts corporate logo from blue to green.
The logo he said, "is not on my desk to change, and I don't have any plans to change it."
We hope though that the company, with the same old logo and much of the same management (although many managemet change annnouncemenmnts are exected in coming week), still will be a "new" GM with a new emphasis on greening its cars and trucks.
For more news and opinion about GM's management and product outlook, check the continuing coverage at our sister blogs, Auto Observer, Inslde Line news and Straightline.
Bill Was Passed by House, but Senate Okay Isn't Certain; Reid Sets December Deadline
We're still trying to get a solid understanding of how the proposed climate and energy bill will affect the cars we drive - now and in the future.
So we offer up a quiet "thank you" to Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee and just said she'll hold off hearings until after the August recess.
That gives us a little more time to digest the bill (and opponents and proponents more time to argue about it).
To Obama By December
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said today that he wants to place the measure on President Obama's desk before the big U.N. climate talks set for Copenhagen in December - a location sure to give the climate warming non-believers lots to shout about as they stand in the center of Denmark's capital city and throw snowballs).
There's some doubt as to whether the Senate can muster the 60 votes needed to pass the bill - Republicans are pretty much united in their opposition and more than a few Democrats in the Democrat-controlled upper chamber are iffy.
Most Congress watchers figure that if a bill does come out of the Senate, it will be considerably watered down from the House version, necessitating a potentially heated joint committee session to iron out differences and make compromises.
What We Know
Incentives
Right now, the House version has lots of goodies for green car boosters, including a doubling of the federal loan program to help car makers revamp old factories to build a new generation of advanced technology vehicles (plug-in hybrids, battery electric, natural gas and more).The House wants to make a total of $50 billion in loans available.
Nothing says "I really care about the planet" quite like a race car.
ByScott 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.
In Old Town, Maine, on the former site of an ethanol project that went belly-up last November, a century-old mill continues to produce pulp and paper.
But along with its usual pulp-making business, the mill is doing something unprecedented: Developing technology to produce bio-butanol, a jet fuel, from parts of trees that would otherwise go to waste.
Although production is still two years away, Reuters reports that the reinvention of Maine's Old Town Fuel & Fiber mill is already drawing interest as a potential model for a new wave of biofuel companies that could slash dependence on oil, create jobs and reduce the emissions that lead to global warming.
Loggers, the news service reports, see the mill as a lifeline for their crippled industry. Environmentalists see it as a test of the Obama administration's push for a big expansion in biofuels.
And chemical and oil companies are waiting to see if the mill can do what none has done before by extracting sugars from wood chips into a biofuel that many regard as more efficient than corn-based ethanol as a possible substitute for gasoline.
"There has been a lot of interested parties in what we are doing here," Old Town's president, Dick Arnold, told Reuters. "There have been several oil companies that have been interested in our extract and production of biofuels. There has been a number of chemical companies that have expressed the same desire."
Behind the project is Lynn Tilton, a New York venture capitalist who owns one of the nation's largest helicopter makers. Tilton's Patriarch Partners bought the mill in November, invested about $40 million and shifted its focus to cellulosic bio-butanol.
According to Reuters, Tilton can use bio-butanol in her own helicopter and aircraft businesses but is eyeing a potentially huge market after Congress decreed that the United States must use 21 billion gallons of "advanced" biofuels such as cellulosic ethanols, bio-butanol and "green gasoline" a year by 2022.
The Reuters report is well worth the time it takes to read.
It's clear that President Obama, who hails from a corn-growing state, is a big ethanol supporter - he's said so in a number of speeches, beginning back when he was running for the job.
Now it appears that the ethanol lobby also has a lot of support in Congress.
The proposal, which would be added to the energy and climate bill now being marked up in the House, comes as Democrats seek to mollify farmers and biofuels producers who claim the so-called land use assessment policy would unfairly penalizes them because it isn't applied to other types of fuels. They also have argued that the methodologies for assessing the carbon impact of land use changes haven't yet been proven accurate.
Proponents of the so-called land use assessment procedure maintain that demand for corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel can result in land covered by forests and grasslands - land that soaks up carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases - being plowed under to make room for biofuel crops that need fertilizers and insecticides that help create more greenhouse gases.
Assigning carbon impact assessments to the various alternative fuels is part of the way the EPA judges whether a fuel is one of the renewable fuels whose use is mandated by the 2007 federal energy bill. If the carbon footprint is too high, a fuel is excluded from the renewables classification.
Seattle, one of the country's major municipal purchasers of biodiesel - used for the fire trucks, pickups and other diesel-burning vehicles in its city fleet - is thinking of switching from plant-based fuel to one made from waste grease.
----------
Biodiesel made from used cooking grease is being tested in Seattle's city fleet.
----------
The city, noted for green initiatives that include a world-class mass transit system and a determination to foster use of electric and hydrogen vehicles, is concerned that soy-based biodiesel isn't all that good for the environment, according to a recent report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Not all alternative fuel are the same, city fleet director Brenda Bauer told a reporter for the city's major newspaper. "We are trying to stay ahead of the curve in terms of finding fuels that are responsible fuels that will help us reduce our petroleum consumption."
Crop-based biofuels, including diesel made from soy oil, have been heavily criticized for the amounts of land, water and energy use in their production.
By using locally produced biodiesel made from used cooking oils and other waste grease - let's call it greasel fuel - the city could be further reducing its carbon footprint.
The city uses about 73,000 gallons of biodiesel a month and will temporarily stop using the soy-based stuff while its tests grease-based fuel to see if it will work as well.
Although it has less of an environmental impact, the fuel isn't without problems of its own, one being the increase in "grease rustling" that's been experienced in communities where "greasel" fuel use has made grease-collecting into a profitable business.
Another is that greasel tends to coagulate and not run through fuel lines very well when temperatures fall - and it can get fairly chilly in Seattle.
Molecular genetics wasn't our best subject in school, so we're not sure just exactly how important this might be, but if it can indeed help streamline production of cellulosic biofuels that use waste material such as wood chips as the raw material, then we cheer the Israeli scientists who announced last week preliminary research that shows bacteria can be programmed, much like Pavlov's dogs, to respond to certain signals in a predetermined fashion.
The researchers found that certain bacteria are genetically hard-wired to anticipate stages in a sequence of events and alter their "behavior" to respond to a new situation before it occurs.
While that appears to make bacteria smarter than many business and political figures, the real significance of this "adaptive anticipation," the researchers said in a paper published in the journal Nature (subscription required) last week, is that it could increase the efficiency of a variety of microorganisms including those used to ferment plant material in biofuels production.
The breakthrough came while researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University were studying the behavior of e. coli in the digestive tract. The researchers found that one type of sugar the bacteria encounter - lactose - invariably is followed by a second type, maltose, and that when the bacteria encounter lactose, the event not only triggers the genes that enable it to digest that sugar, it puts the gene for digesting maltose into a sort of stand-by mode.
But if the maltose is encountered first, the bacteria don't activate the lactose genes - implying that the bacteria have "learned" to get ready for maltose when encountering lactose.
The researchers began removing maltose from the process, and, after scores of trials, the bacteria "learned" that maltose didn't always come after lactose. The bacteria then eliminated the anticipatory activation of the maltose digestive gene, turning it on again only in those instances when maltose actually was introduced into the process.
Catalytic Process Uses Almost No External Energy, Developer Says
A Wisconsin company's energy-efficient process for making biofuels has won a 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award, the Environmental Protection Agency announced this morning.
The award for work by a small business was won by Virent Energy Systems, of Madison, Wisc.
The company's catalytic process for making gasoline, diesel or jet fuel from plant sugars or cellulose requires little energy other than that generated internally by the fermentation of the plant biomass.
Virent said that its process can be modified to generate different fuels based on current market conditions and can compete economically with current prices for conventionally produced petroleum-based fuels.
The annual awards are administered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and entries are judged, by the chemical society and its ACS Green Chemistry Institute, on the basis of their potential for reducing pollution or reducing environmental impact.
The 2009 awards are to be presented in a ceremony tonight at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Wash
Like every other alternative fuel, hydrogen has its fans and foes, its pluses and minuses, its ups and, recently, its downs.
After being the favored ground transportation fuel of the future for most of the last eight years as the Bush administration pushed development of hydrogen fuel cells for automotive use, nature's most abundant - albeit hard to isolate - element has been cast aside by the Obama administration.
The new president's Nobel-winning energy secretary, Steven Chu, has proposed in his 2010 departmental budget to eliminate funding for automotive hydrogen programs - that's $100 million - and instead to focus hydrogen research on fuel cells to generate power for homes, businesses and other stationary power users.
For transportation, his choice of fuel research programs to back is no surprise, he's long been a supporter of biofuels and electric cars.
----------- Honda says its FCX Clarity (below, right) is production-ready, lacking only a fueling infrastructure and lower-priced components that can only come with increased production of such cars. ----------
That's got the hydrogen car crowd - and we confess to a great fondness for fuel cell vehicles ourselves - up in arms and questioning the validity of Chu's apparent decision to "pick winners" by concentrating DOE research finding on biofuels and battery-electric, or plug-in, cars while announcing that his team doesn't see any short-term chance for hydrogen to emerge as a widely available and used fuel.
But Chu, powerful as he is sitting atop the nation's official energy policy agency and operating with the endorsement and backing of the president, isn't all-powerful. He has to answer to Congress, and Congress is subject to lobbying.
So the pressure politics have begun.
Short-Sighted?
With DOE budget hearings about to start, the chairman of the Senate's energy and Water Appropriations Committee - the committee that sits in judgment over the energy Department budget - has come out swinging.
A fan of hydrogen, Sen. Byron Dorgan recently called the DOE's budget recommendation to eliminate automotive hydrogen research funding "a very short-sighted recommendation." Hydrogen and fuel cells "are part of this country's future," said the North Dakota Democrat.
Backing Dorgan in support of restoring at lest some hydrogen programs funding for automotive research are automakers with huge investments in the technology.
They include Toyota and Honda, no slouches when it comes to making informed choices about technologies, as well as Daimler and our own General Motors Corp.
(We say "our own" because as part of the taxpaying public, we now share ownership of the faltering car company with the rest of America.)
Unlikely Allies
GM, in case you've been living in a cave or up in space for the past few weeks, is in bankruptcy now and the government, as its majority owner, has a rather big stake in the company's survival and future success.
Granted, GM hasn't been all that great at picking the proper trends and technologies as it looked to the future.
But this time the General is on the same team as Toyota and Honda rather than turning up its nose and sniffing that the Japanese car companies don't know what they are talking about.
Ferrari has disclosed plans for a hybrid concept car, the British magazine Autocar
reported Tuesday, with the unveiling likely to occur before the end of this year.
Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa was quoted as saying the vehicle won't debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show, but probably at an American show "soon thereafter."
The Frankfurt show will be held Sept. 17-27 this year. The first major American auto show to be held thereafter will take place in Los Angeles Dec. 4-13 (Dec. 2-13 if you count the press days).
Earlier this month Autocar revealed patent drawings for a hybrid, all-wheel-drive concept car and a turbocharged engine.
Felisa reportedly told Autocar that, in order to meet stringent 2014 European emissions regulations, Ferrari is looking at three solutions. They are: turbocharging, biofuel cars and hybrids.
Ferrari has already produced a car that can run on biofuel. It is the ethanol-gulping F430 pictured here, which debuted at the Detroit Auto Show in January of last year.
As for a Ferrari hybrid, Felisa first spoke of one more than a year ago during an interview with the Germany's Auto Motor und Sport. But soon after the automaker's PR people said Felisa misspoke.
Fill'er Up With That Wheat Straw Gas, Please, While I Sip My Wheat Grass Smoothie
Drivers at a single Shell gas station in Ottawa, Canada, can fill their cars and trucks for the next month with what the fuel company claims is the world's first retail blend of gasoline and 10 percent cellulosic ethanol.
The ultra-low CO2 cellulosic ethanol, made from wheat straw, comes from a pilot plant in Ottowa operated by Iogen Energy Corp. in partnership with Shell.
A Shell spokeswoman said the station will only be pumping the "CE10" biofuel blend for the next 30 days because the plant can only produce 40,000-liters a month (this is Canada remember - metric system), equal to 10,567 gallons, and that's not enough to spread the supply around.
In a statement issued this morning, Dr.Graeme Sweeney, Shell's executive vice president for future fuels, said that "while it will be some time before general customers can buy this...we are working with governments to make large-scale production economic."
Shell and Iogen, said the spokeswoman, "felt a month was sufficient to highlight the opportunity."
The Shell station is selling the regular grade of CE10 blend for 92.8-Canadian cents per liter, the U.S. equivalent of $3.16 per gallon and on par with brand-name conventional gas in the area.
Downsizing Won't Kill Automaker's Initiatives, but Demand for Quick Profits Could
As General Motors Corp. begins reshaping itself in a complex, government-assisted bankruptcy process that leaves taxpayers as its major investor, one thing remains clear -- the automaker's future depends on its ability to develop cars that are both fuel-efficient and desirable.
To do so in an era of economic uncertainty marked by sluggish car sales, wildly fluctuating fuel prices and consumer confusion about the best car-buying strategies as we wait for the new generation of advanced technology vehicles to appear is going to require a degree of discipline that so far has been woefully lacking at GM and other domestic auto companies.
So it was heartening to see this morning that GM accompanied its filing for a pre-planned Chapter 11 reorganization
with the promise that even as it pares expenses to the bone it would "continue and increase its investment and leadership in fuel economy and advanced propulsion technologies."
---------- Chevy Volt "extended range EV' is one of the cars on which GM is betting its future. ----------
The "leadership" claim is a bit much -- marketing never stops.
But the rest of that vow, contained as it was in a statement undoubtedly edited and approved by the Obama administration, shows that GM so far is on the right path, and is pursuing it with government backing.
The Chevrolet Volt, GM's gamble on a potentially game-changing fuel-efficiency technology, will continue on schedule for launch in late 2010, according to this morning's statement.
Additionally, GM said it will continue development of conventional gas-electric hybrid technology, with 14 models due in the market by 2012, and will continue outfitting cars and trucks with flex-fuel systems so that by 2014 a full 65 percent of its vehicles will be capable of using ethanol or other alternative fuels, such as biodiesel.
We know GM also has been working on battery-electric and fuel-cell electric drivetrains and expect that R&D effort to continue as well.
Go Long
There will be many stumbling blocks to be overcome in the GM bankruptcy, but with the purse-string controlling government so far signing off on the automaker's intent to make fuel-efficiency and the development of petroleum-free powertrains a centerpiece of its recovery effort, things are getting off to a good start.
If the Feds succumb, though, to the cult of immediacy that has hamstrung so much of American industry for so long -- the demand by investors and market analysts for ever-increasing growth and profitability at the expense of solid long-term planning -- then all bets are off.
For decades, the big oil companies and the farm lobby have been fighting about ethanol, with the farmers pushing to produce more of it and the refiners arguing it was a boondoggle that would do little to solve the country's energy problems.
--------- Right, an ethanol plant in South Dakota. ---------
So why are technicians for British Petroleum, the giant oil company, now working at an experimental ethanol plant in the old Louisiana oil town of Jennings, helping to make it more efficient?
The erstwhile enemies, it turns out, are gradually learning to get along, as refiners increasingly see a need to get involved in ethanol production, according to a report in Wednesday's New York Times. Ethanol, made chiefly from corn, now represents about 9 percent of the country's market for liquid fuels.
And the percentage is growing year after year because of federal mandates. With the nation's thirst for gasoline, and the ethanol that is blended into it, expected to revive when the economy does, the oil companies want to be in a position to take full advantage.
The interest expressed by big oil companies is coming in the nick of time for small companies that desperately need capital and cannot find it these days in the private markets.
Space will be the final frontier for tourists if Sir Richard Branson has his way.
Getting there won't be easy on the wallet - but it won't be so hard on the planet, either, contends the British adventurer and Virgin Group founder, who touched down at Washington's National Press Club recently.
"Very environmentally friendly," Branson said, according to a Greenwire report (subscription required). "The [carbon] cost of us putting someone into space will be less than flying to London and back on a commercial plane."
Five years and $150 million into his Virgin Galactic venture, Branson has a bona fide spaceship to show for it.
Over the past few months, pilots have conducted several test flights of the space-launch vehicle Eve, a model of which is pictured here with Branson. The mother ship is designed to ferry SpaceShipTwo and its two pilots and six astronauts more than 50,000 feet above the Earth's surface.
From the stratosphere, SpaceShipTwo would blast to a sub-orbital altitude of about 360,000 feet using hybrid rockets.
A "whole new era of space travel" may be nigh, boasted Branson, who plans to go boldly where just a few tourists have gone before. SpaceShipTwo is slated for completion by the end of the year, he said, followed by about 18 months of testing. A ticket to ride is $200,000.
Eve's jet engines will run on kerosene initially but are also capable of running on butanol, a biofuel that can be made from algae. SpaceShipTwo's rockets will burn nitrous oxide - but only briefly - as the spaceship would require no fuel for takeoff, re-entry and landing.
Carbon-dioxide emissions per passenger on a Virgin Galactic spaceflight would be about 60 percent of a passenger's carbon footprint on a round-trip flight between New York and London. About 70 percent of a spaceflight's CO2 emissions would come from mother ship Eve, which must carry SpaceShipTwo into the stratosphere.
Most Americans likely expect the price of gasoline to one day reach the record highs we saw last summer. The question is not so much will the price soar again, but rather when will it.
According to the Energy Information Administration's 2009 outlook report released today, oil prices will return to $110 per barrel in 2015 and could go up to $200 per barrel in 2030, depending on supply
You'll recall that the nationwide price for a gallon of regular unleaded topped $4 when the barrel price of oil reached $147. But with taxes on gasoline expected to rise, the per-gallon price of gasoline will likely be significantly higher than $4 when the barrel price of oil revisits $147.
World energy consumption - the driving force behind higher gasoline prices - is forecast to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030, the report says, with almost two-thirds of that coming from developing countries and fossil fuels that continue to dominate energy supply.
Developing countries are projected to increase demand by 73 percent by 2030 in the outlook's base reference case - EIA's analysis under current laws and policies - whereas developed countries will grow by 15 percent, the report says.
Liquids, including biofuels, will reportedly continue to be the primary energy source in the world's transportation sector unless there are "significant technological advances" and despite several policy changes.
Unconventional resources such as oil sands and biofuels will become increasingly competitive, accounting for about 13 percent of the world's liquid supply by 2030, according to the report.
The U.S. in particular will see an increase in biofuels, mostly in advanced cellulosic rather than corn-based ethanol, acting Administrator Howard Gruenspecht said at the report's release event in Washington.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the 2009 Hydrogen Road Tour today at Stop 6 of a 9-day, 28-stop, 1,700-mile road trip, telling a group of reporters at the site of the state's first integrated (H2 and gasoline) station that California remains committed to a future where hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles replace gassy rides regardless of what Washington does.
Speaking at a Shell station in West Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger reminded reporters that the California Air Resources Board, which sets vehicle-emissions standards for the state, recently passed a low-carbon fuel standard - the world's first such standard.
It will, he said, ensure that the cleanest fuels, including hydrogen, will always have a strong market in California.
"And the reason why this is so important is that on the federal level, they [politicians] make decisions based on where the oil price is. That means that sometimes the federal government, when the oil price goes up, they go in the direction of renewable energy and alternate fuels. And when the oil price goes down, they abandon those policies," the "Governator" said, his back to a row of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles made by Daimler, Honda, Toyota, KIA, Volkswagen and Nissan.
"Well we don't do that here in California. We only march in one direction and that is forward. And we're not going to slow down. In 2010, we will have seven new hydrogen refueling stations in California and we will invest another $40 million over the next two years in hydrogen stations."
The governor reminded the automotive press that 20 percent of the new vehicles sold in the United States are sold in California, which is home to 25 million cars and trucks. (Those vehicles, not incidentally, consume 50 million gallons of gasoline and diesel a day and produce 40 percent of the state's greenhouse gases.)
As a result of California's vehicle market share, and that fact that Washington often follows the state's lead regarding tailpipe-emissions regulations, automakers can count on there being a large market for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles and companies considering investments in an H2-refueling infrastructure can rest assured there will be vehicles requiring the fuel, he said.
There's nothing like $2.4 billion in federal grants to attract lots of applicants.
In one of the U.S. government's biggest efforts at shaping industrial policy, the Energy Department has been soliciting applications since mid-March for $2.4 billion in funding aimed at turning America into a battery-manufacturing powerhouse.
At the deadline last week, the department had received 165 applications. Companies vying for the money include General Motors Corp., Dow Chemical Co. and Johnson Controls Inc. Michigan, Kentucky and Massachusetts are among the states weighing in with applications.
When the winners are decided - as soon as the end of July - the Energy Department may anoint Livonia, Mich., or Indianapolis or Glendale, Kentucky, as the future U.S. hub of car batteries.
Given the availability of these funds, and Energy Secretary Stephen Chu's May 7 proposal that more than $100 million be cut from his department's hydrogen program in the 2010 budget the administration is submitting to Congress, you might think the National Hydrogen Association would wonder if funds needed for fuel-cell development are being diverted to electric vehicles.
"That's not the case," Debbi Smith, the trade group's executive vice president told us today. "The recent actions by Secretary Chu are actions that he had to make in a tough fiscal climate, but it is not the opinion of the automakers at all and it's not the opinion of our members here at the National Hydrogen Association or of the U.S. Fuel Cell Council."
Smith noted that there have been statements by various automotive executives that it is "not as though one technology is ready more than the other right now. Batteries are also not ready for prime time."
It's going to take biofuels, batteries and fuel cells - "all three of them, if we're serious about reducing our nation's dependence on oil and if we're serious about reducing greenhouse gases," she said. "It's going to take just about everything we can throw at these huge problems."
The Detroit 3 and eight other major automakers adamantly oppose a bill in Congress that would force them to produce more flex-fuel vehicles, and their opposition has merit.
At a time when lawmakers and the White House are pressuring America's carmakers to produce vehicles that are fuel efficient and competitively priced, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California has introduced legislation that would create an "open fuel standard" requiring automakers to produce more cars and trucks capable of running on high blends of alternative fuels, assuming the fuels and infrastructure supporting them are available.
Democratic Representative Eliot Engel of New York says that's not enough. He's said that he might introduce legislation that would require half of new U.S. cars and trucks to be flex-fuel capable starting in 2012, with the mandate jumping to 80 percent by 2015 - regardless of fuel availability.
To count as flex-fuel capable, internal combustion engines would need to be able to run on blends of E85 (a fuel mixture containing 85 percent ethanol by volume) or M85 (a methanol fuel mixture), and diesel vehicles would need to be able to operate on biodiesel.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing the automakers, contends that adding flex-fuel technology will increase the price of each vehicle by at least $100 to $300.
A high-volume engine such as the one pictured here can be converted to flex-fuel capability for $300 or less, the alliance says. But Alliance President Dave McCurdy noted in a letter to members of Congress last week that a mandate would increase costs dramatically because the technology cannot be applied easily to some powerplants.
All politics is local, which explains why Republican and Democratic legislators in corn states are joining forces to oppose some parts of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal to measure the "life-cycle emissions" created by the production of a fuel's feedstock (say, corn).
It stands to reason that the EPA must get a better handle on the overall environmental impact of the complex string of related but hard-to-measure events that come into play as more crops are grown for fuel feedstocks. That means studying such things as the increased acreage needed to grow feedstock crops, associated well drilling, mining, transporting and refining the biofuel and how it performs when burned to power vehicles.
It also is reasonable for regulators to get a better understanding of "indirect land use change" (ILUC) that can occur as corn, soy and other crops are cultivated for use as biofuel feedstocks rather than being directed into the traditional food chain.
Environmentalists say the increased use of traditional food crops as biofuels feedstocks can prompt other farmers to plant replacement crops. Too often, environmentalists contend, that new acreage is carved out of native forests and grasslands that now help soak up carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said that the National Renewable Fuel Standards proposed earlier this month - including the ILUC proposal - are still subject to peer review and change.
But ethanol industry representatives don't want to wait for the EPA rules. On Thursday, several ethanol industry told members of the House Agriculture Committee that Congress should restrict what the EPA can do when it comes to the ILUC rule.
Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol told committee members that the proposed ILUC rule was based on "a controversial and untested theory," and that "ideology is getting ahead of science" as the EPA and the California Air Resources Board craft their low-carbon fuels initiatives.
The Website AgricultureOnline is reporting that House Ag Committee Chair Collin Peterson is angry that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a framework for assessing the greenhouse-gas footprint of ethanol.
The Minnesota Democrat (left) has vowed to use his clout to crush the historic Waxman-Markey climate-change bill - unless Congress passes a bill that would revoke the EPA's proposed rules.
Last Thursday, the committee introduced a bill that prevents the EPA from holding U.S. ethanol and biodiesel responsible for deforestation of tropical jungles. The EPA has thrown so-called indirect land use into its first estimates of the carbon footprint of fuels.
That would make corn ethanol from new plants and much of the nation's soy-based biodiesel no longer eligible for federal mandates that require oil companies to use biofuels. The mandates, called the Renewable Fuel Standard in the 2007 Energy Bill, require the nation to use 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022.
The next day, Peterson told AgricultureOnline that he will work to defeat any climate-change legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives until his "Renewable Fuel Standard Improvement Act" becomes law. And he has let the House leadership know how he feels.
"I've told them I want this passed. I want it signed by the president before I'll support anything else," he told the Website Friday.
The Democrat has threatened to aid Republicans in shooting down Waxman-Markey, and said he thinks he might have enough votes to defeat the bill when the full House votes on it.
Today we'll fill you in on a proposed plant in Rialto, California, that would turn urban woody green waste and processed sewage sludge into low-carbon synthetic fuels. And, while burning that waste, the plant would generate 35 megawatts of renewable electricity for sale to local electric utility companies.
The plant proposed by Los Angeles-based Rentech Inc. would produce about 600 barrels per day of pure renewable synthetic fuels that would be compatible with existing fuel pipelines and engines.
Rentech executives describe the process as turning low-value biomass into high-value energy and power. Rentech has been operating a demonstration plant in Commerce City, Colorado, that produces 420 gallons a day of synthetic jet and diesel fuel.
Toyota reported its first financial loss in decades and is forecasting another hefty loss for this year, but the still world's largest automaker is protecting product development and R&D that pertains to small cars and advanced technologies, particularly those related to the environment and energy.
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Toyota says it won't abandon advanced vehicles such as this electric car concept.
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"We will maintain a high level of R&D in areas we consider indispensable to our future -- advanced, cutting-edge technologies in environment, energy and safety," Takahiko Ijichi, Toyota Motor Corp. senior managing director, said in a conference call Friday morning with analysts and media.
Ijichi said Toyota will continue work to cut costs in its development and production of compact vehicles and hybrids. The next-generation Toyota Corolla will be a model for such cost-cutting, he said. And lessons learned on the Corolla, which initially launches in Japan followed by the U.S. and Europe, will be transferred to all other Toyota and Lexus models.
He said Toyota is continuing cost reduction of its hybrid systems. He noted that size and weight reductions of the new third-generation Toyota Prius reduced costs by 30 percent compared with the second-generation model. Toyota has said it plans to introduce as many as 10 new hybrid models by 2010 and a battery-electric city car by 2012.
Not only will Toyota keep spending on green initiatives, it intends to accelerate development next-generation technologies in environment, energy and safety, with environmental goals topping its priorities list, Ijichi said.
Its goals include the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, mass-production of small battery-electric electric vehicles and the development of next-generation alternative fuel vehicles including fuel-cell electric cars and vehicles use biofuels.
Engineered Bacteria, Yeasts Can Slash Costs, Hasten Commercial Development
Cellulosic ethanol developer Mascoma Corp.
says it has achieved a breakthrough in enzyme development that moves the industry "years, or even decades" closer to low-cost, high-volume processing of biofuels from non-food feedstocks.
The New Hampshire-based company, in which General Motors Corp. is a key investor, is working on what is called consolidated bioprocessing, or CBP, which uses laboratory-engineered microorganisims to produce the otherwise expensive commercial enzymes needed to break down cellulose into a substance that is then processed into ethanol and other biofuels.
Mascoma said in an announcement today that its "major research advances" will permit the production of both the so-called cellulase enzymes and the resulting ethanol in a single step.
Get set for another round of debate on the impact biofuels have on the environment.
The EPA releases proposed rules today to implement the national mandate to increase the use of biofuels but has found that key biofuels made from crops won't hit the CO2 reduction targets set by the 2007 law.
All have fewer "lifecycle" emissions than do petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuel, but the EPA is considering indirect land-use impacts - the impact of cultivating land for biofuel feedstocks - in measuring the total greenhouse gas emissions from production of fuels such as corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel.
While the '07 law requires ethanol to produce 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline, the EPA proposal finds the most common type of corn-based ethanol is 16 percent better but could be made to meet the 20 percent goal.
It's been four years since David Ramey fueled up his unmodified 1992 Buick Park Avenue with butanol derived from biomass and made a 10,000-mile road trip that took him from Blacklick, Ohio to San Diego and back.
The trip, which included stops along the way to court members of the media and environmental agency personnel, was conceived as a way to prove that "biobutanol" had inherent environmental and fuel-economy benefits over its better-known cousin in the green fuels family, ethanol.
Flash forward to 2009 and biobutanol still isn't getting the respect that Ramey and other proponents say the fuel deserves. Ramey, for example, continues to make demonstration drives - he'll fuel up a vehicle with biobutanol for the Fourth off July parade in nearby Gahanna, Ohio.
"There has been very little funding for biobutanol research over the past 30 years and we are simply in the infancy of this new technology," Ramey wrote in a recent email to Green Car Advisor. "Many are talking about biobutanol but few are producing it."
That situation is about to change, according to biobutanol backers who describe the fuel as a worthy challenger to ethanol. When properly formulated, they say, butanol burns cleaner than ethanol, has a higher energy density, can be transported in existing petroleum-product pipelines and won't hurt seals, gaskets or other parts of internal combustion engines.
Algae cultures that could lead to green oil products are being grown in a UC San Diego laboratory.
They call it "green gold," and its proponents are betting that the light, sweet crude oil that can be extracted from farm-cultivated algae will help the world to cut its dependence upon dirty and increasingly expensive gasoline and diesel fuels that are extracted from fossil fuels.
And, on Tuesday, San Diego -- which envisions itself as the green equivalent of the traditional oil industry's Houston -- unveiled a "broad-scale research effort" to turn that dream into a reality.
Though no dollar figures for financial support were discussed during Tuesday's press event on the UC San Diego campus, the research effort will build upon the creation earlier this year of the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology. The center was created to facilitate green fuels research being conducted by 272 scientists at UC San Diego, The Scripps Research Institute and other San Diego universities, research organizations and for-profit companies.
SD-CAB estimates that algal research in San Diego County already generates $16.5 million in payroll and $33 million in overall economic activity. Tuesday's announcement of an even broader research and development effort was made by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.
"By sharing and facilitating the interactions of these multiple researchers through this center, we hope to make sustainable algae-based fuel production and carbon-dioxide abatement a reality within the next five to 10 years," Fox said. "This consortium will strengthen our ability to obtain grants and attract resources to the area. Algal biofuels will allow us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and other economies, and will provide opportunities for a new economy and workforce."
It is a tall order, but San Diego claims to have the R&D nucleus needed to move toward that goal.
The Xconomy blog counts at least nine algal research efforts under way -- including work being done by defense contractors SAIC Corp. and General Atomics (which is better known as the creator of the unmanned Predator aircraft in service in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan).
Rule is Part of State's Controversial Greenhouse Gas Regulation Plan
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Despite an intense lobbying campaign from biofuel manufacturers, particularly in the ethanol industry, California's top air quality regulator approved the nation's first low-carbon fuel regulations Thursday, launching a plan that will require the carbon content of fuels used in the state to be reduced by10 percent by 2020.
The California Air Resources Board voted 9-1 to approve the new rule, which is likely to take months - or more - to fully implement and could well be subject to lengthy litigation by opponents who see it as biased against ethanol.
It is part of the state's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions originating in California by 25 percent and is designed to encourage use of low- and no-carbon fuels such as natural gas, hydrogen and electricity and to slash use of gasoline for transportation in the state during the coming decade.
The measure also contains controversial (particularly to the ethanol industry) language that requires biofuels to be assessed not only on the carbon content of the fuel but the impact transporting the fuel and cultivating land for growing the fuels' feedstock - even in foreign countries - might have on total carbon output associated with the fuel.
Neither petroleum nor any of the other alternative fuels is subject to the same land-use analysis.
Other States To Follow
As with the state's more controversial bid to regulate automotive tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases - typically done by increasing fuel economy to reduce the amount of carbon-based fuel burned per mile traveled - the measure is now likely to be adopted by as many as16 other states that have opted, under federal law, to follow California's emissions regulations rather than the more-lenient federal standards.
The auto and fuel industries believe that allowing some states to impose one set of rules while others follow a different set will impose incredible financial and logistic hardships on them at a time the economy is already severely depressed.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday took to Twitter
to drum up support for a cohesive national automotive industry policy that would lead to the design, manufacturing and sale of fuel-efficient vehicles.
When he wasn't sending Tweets, Schwarzenegger was addressing the Society of Automotive Engineers' 2009 World Congress in Detroit.
"With billions of people around the globe entering the car market for the first time and seeking energy-efficient but high-performance and stylish cars and trucks, America has an opportunity that exceeds even what the auto industry saw at its initial expansion in the 20th century," Schwarzenegger told SAE members. "This is an opportunity we must not waste, and as the world leader in innovation, design, marketing and technology, California is here to be the auto industry's partner for this new beginning."
Associated Press reported that the governor "has had conversations with federal officials and wants California to lead the country when it comes to setting low emission standards."
ORLANDO, Fla - A pair of heavy hitters with big plans for alternative fuels kicked off the annnual Alternative Fuels and Vehicles conference here Monday, energy investor and former oilman T. Boone Pickens continuing his campaign to make natural gas the nation's fuel of choice and former Army general and 2004 Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark pushing for greater use of ethanol in gasoline blending.
Pickens' post-breakfast appearance was a repeat of his frequent calls for a much-needed federal energy policy
and for inclusion of natural gas, of which the U.S. has a fairly plentiful supply, as a preferred replacement for gasoline and diesel fuels.
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T. Boone Pickens delivered his dual plea for a national energy policy and increased use of natural gas to kick off annual Alternative Fuels and Vehicles conference.
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He's updated his message, however, with a call to quickly convert many of the nation's heavy duty over-the-road cargo trucks - 18-wheelers - to natural gas as a rapid way to shave billions of dollars from the amounts we're sending overseas to buy imported oil.
According to Pickens - who also is predicting that oil will rise to at east $75 a barrel by year's end I(which would likely result in gas prices hitting $3 - $3.25 a gallon) - says that each big rig burning compressed or liquid natural gas would have the same positive environmental impact as converting 325 passenger cars to the clean-burning fuel.
In a press conference before his talk, Pickens - who is heavily invested in natural gas - told reporters that he sees the fuel as the best bridge between the present petroleum-based tranpostation system and one 20 years from now that will be based on electric vehicles - either plug-in battery or hydrogen fuel-cell.
To hear Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. tell it, developing the green vehicles that will be needed to break this country's dependence upon foreign oil will be the easy part.
The really tough stuff will involve gaining consensus on such touchy subjects as instituting a new federal gasoline tax and determining which technologies will get the nod as new electric-generating plants are designed, permitted and brought online.
"I actually think that the least disruptive piece will be the car piece," Ford said during a half-hour Q&A during a Fortune magazine green ideas conference on Monday at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. "We can get there relatively easy, but a lot of these other pieces are going to be big issues that we're going to have to solve as a nation."
"One thing that I'm encouraged about is that the [Obama] administration really wants to lead that discussion on a national basis," Ford said. "I am optimistic ... we can't go on with fossil fuel burning the way we are ... it's just not a path that this country wants to go down."
Auto racing, demanding of performance and downright disdainful for most of the past century of concepts such as curbing tailpipe emissions, is getting greener.
Formula One's governing body, the FIA, for instance, has a website promoting green initiatives, and there's a conference in Southern California today, in advance of this weekend's Long Beach Grand Prix, that focuses on opportunities in the racing world for environmentally friendly products.
Yokohama Rubber, for example, has just come out with a "green" racing tire that replaces 10 percent the compound's petroleum-based oil content with orange oil. That cuts down the amount of oil used in production and makes the tire easier - thus less energy-intensive - to recycle.
Most of the talk and development work, though, has been centered on increasing race cars' fuel efficiency and reducing racing's carbon footprint - engine and fuel stuff.
Bio-Racer
That hasn't been enough, though, for researchers at the University of Warwick in England.
Concerned about racing's environmental impact and its financial future given the high cost of building and maintaining cars and the wobbly economy that's put a big dent in sponsorship money, a team at the university-affiliated Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre set out to see if it were possible to build a competitive race car from environmentally sustainable products.
The short answer: Yes, although not every component can be earth-friendly.
The research team has designed and built a "proof-of-concept" Formula 3 race car that might best be described as a bio-racer.
It uses carrots, potatoes, flax fiber, soybean oil and other natural products in its various parts, makes extensive use of recycled carbon fiber and composite body panels, runs on biodiesel that can be made from vegetable oil or even waste from chocolate candy factories, and has radiators that clean the air that passes through them.
All that and it goes around corners at 125 miles an hour - or at least that's what it's designed to do: the researchers just fitted the engine last week and haven't completed on-track testing yet.
To stop, it uses non-carbon brake discs and the research team is working on - believe it or not - brake pads made from cashew nut shells!
World's First
The builders call themselves WorldFirst Racing and the car, which they say is the first to be made largely from sustainable and renewable materials, the WorldFirstF3 racer.
James Meridith, WorldFirst project manager and a university researcher, told Green Car Advisor that the car will make its first public appearance May 7 at Circuit Zolder raceway in Belgium at the kickoff for next year's Clean Week 2020 event.
It's rare to find an industry trade group and an environmental organization in agreement on much of anything when it comes to how greenhouse gas emissions should be regulated.
In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, the two organizations asked that the most controversial sections of the EPA's proposed rulemaking be quickly subjected to public review.
The part of the proposed rule that will pit environmentalists against industry interests will be the requirement that the EPA consider greenhouse gas emissions generated by indirect land-use changes that would occur as biofuel crops are planted and other acreage is cleared to make up for land lost to food production.
"We all recognize that there is a range of opinions on the methodology that should be applied to this calculation," the joint letter states. "For example, there is no consensus on any proposed time horizons, discount rates or global imaging for biofuels, which means initial numbers derived from EPA's proposed calculations will likely be modified in the final regulation."
Although it contains less energy than gasoline and thus cuts into fuel economy for vehicles that use it, ethanol helps replace gas and that makes it a valuable tool in the national effort to wean ourselves from petroleum-based fuels.
We don't believe it is particularly green, either, but none of this has kept ethanol from being the favored alt fuel of a whole lot of people.
In the latest pro-ethanol move we're aware of, a bipartisan group of congress members has just introduced a bill that would require by 2015 that 80 percent of all new autos and light trucks sold or manufacturers in the U.S. be capable of running on either E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, or M85, a methanol-gasoline blend in the same proportions.
(Methanol, a close cousin of ethanol, is widely used as a racing fuel, primarily for safety reasons - it is less flammable than gasoline. But is has even less energy content than ethanol.)
The measure, H.R. 1476, would require half of the new cars and light trucks sold or built here in 2012 to be E85 or M85 flex-fuel capable, ratcheting up to 80 percent three years later.
Algae, which grows like crazy with little need for fertilizers, for taking valuable food crops off the table or for clear-cutting forests and plowing under grasslands, is a promising feedstock for a new generation of biofuels.
One project hopes to turn the slimy stuff into a profitable crop for the Mississippi Delta region's beleaguered catfish farmers, battered by rising feed and fuel costs.
A recent report from the Associated Press tells how former catfish farmers Hall Barrett III and his sister, Liz Jordan, are leasing their old catfish ponds to PetroSun Biofuels Inc., which intends to use them to grow algae for use in biodiesel and bioethanol production.
It's ironic because algae - although not the type that is commercially valuable - was once the bane of the catfish farmers, fouling their ponds and imparting an odd, musty flavor to the fish that fed on it.
But while algae grows rapidly, don't expect mass-produced biodiesel and bioethanol to begin flowing from slime refineries anytime soon.
It ill be a decade or more before that happens, says biofuels consultant William Thurmond, who looks at algae's prospects in an upcoming report, "Algae 2020," that's scheduled to be published next month.
Federal support of the technology does give biofuels-from-algae big market potential, though, Thurmond said in a recent online seminar covered by subscription-only E&E News.
Retired general and one-time presidential candidate Wesley Clark waved the flag Friday while urging the Environmental Protection Agency to push the present 10 percent limit on ethanol in gasoline blends to as high as 15 percent.
Ethanol is "made in America, it's American ingenuity, it's American jobs," Clark proclaimed during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The co-chairman of the pro-ethanol group Growth Energy also praised farmers who grow the crops, mainly corn, that ethanol comes from: "I think there's no better environmentalists, no better workers, no better entrepreneurs, really, than America's farmers ... They're the original free market people in America."
Clark's "no better environmentalists"comment likely was included as a response to criticism of corn-based ethanol as environmenmtally harmful because of the large amounts of energy required to produce it and the potential, if demand is increased substantially,that forests and grasslands that now absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be plowed under and converted to acreage for ethanol feedstocks.
111 University and Industry Scientists Sign Letter Claiming Proposal Penalizes Biofuels
Does a wide-reaching California effort to lessen global warming unwittingly give petroleum-based energy an unfair advantage over the emerging biofuel sector?
It does according to a group of 111 scientists who sent a four-page letter (with 12 pages of signatures) opposing a portion of the plan Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The scientists, many from prestigious institutions such as Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA and MIT, warn that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) risks penalizing the emerging biofuels industry if it adopts a proposed carbon scoring system as part of its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).
The letter echoes concerns voiced by the New Fuels Alliance, which represents the interests of producers of corn-based ethanol, soy-based biodiesel and developers of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels made from feedstocks such as switchgrass, miscanthus and woodchips.
"These regulations will stifle advanced biofuels investment and derail the industry," Brooke Coleman, head of the New Fuels Alliance, said in a statement issued Monday.
"California is moving the opposite direction of President Obama, who stated in a recent speech it is critical to support advanced biofuels."
The scientists support California's legislative mandate that, by 2020, oil companies engineer a 10 percent reduction in carbon levels in fuels sold in the Golden State. That goal is outlined in Assembly Bill 32, which Schwarzenegger signed into law early in 2007.
They also agree with CARB on the need to better understand the direct and indirect impacts of producing fuel.
But they maintain that the low carbon fuel standards CARB will review in Sacramento at an April 23-24 meeting unfairly subject biofuels to an indirect land-use measure that isn't required of, say, petroleum-based fuel extracted from Canadian tar sands.
Saddling biofuel companies with that added requirement, the objecting scientists caution, "is the equivalent of picking winners and losers, which is in direct conflict with the ambition of the LCFS."
The dispute turns on a CARB proposal to incorporate the indirect effects of producing alternative fuels -- think deforestation and other potential land conversion issues that could occur as a result of increased demand for agricultural production.
The scientists acknowledge that land-use practices must be carefully studied to "ensure that future fuels dramatically reduce GHG emissions without unintended consequences."
They cautioned Schwarzenegger that singling out biofuels for hard-to-quantify indirect land-use effects would give petroleum products "a better carbon score and a competitive advantage. For drivers in California, it means they will be buying more dirty petroleum products and less of the cleaner renewable fuels."
Illustration of Lotus Engineering's omnivore engine doesn't disclose much about its inner workings.
It's not a particularly lovely beast, but Lotus Engineering says its prototype "omnivore" engine will thrive on all kinds of fuels and that's likely to make it a winner in the world to come -- when petroleum is fading away and biofuels from a variety of sources and in a variety of chemistries are developing to fill the void.
Lotus says the blocky internal combustion engine has the "potential to significantly increase fuel-efficiency" for sustainable alcohol-based fuels (ethanol, methanol. propanol and butanol ) and can also run on gasoline.
The prototype one-cylinder engine will be displayed at the Lotus Cars stand at the Geneva Motor Show next week (media days begin Tuesday and the show opens to the public Thursday for an 11-day run).
Lotus Engineering -- the research and consulting arm of Lotus Cars -- says the engine is a two-stroke, single-cylinder monoblock (the cylinder head and block are one piece) that uses a unique variable compression system and direct fuel injection.
The design can utilize high octane, alcohol-based biofuels better than the four-stroke (intake-combustion-power-exhaust) engines now used in cars and trucks, the company said.
We'll let our engineering gurus explain the precise working of the system in a later posting, but the short version is that Lotus claims the engine design and mechanics permit asymmetric exhaust timing, a continuously variable exhaust opening point and a compression ratio that changes to meet load demands.
It is collaborating on development of the Omnivore engine with Queen's University of Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and Orbital Corp. Ltd. of Australia, and said the program is being sponsored by Britain's Renewables Materials Link program, which helps fund collaborative industry and scientific segment research into uses of renewable materials for sustainable development.
The Omnivore program is one piece of Lotus' research into the processes involved in operating an engine on mixtures of alcohol-based biofuels and gasoline.
A previously displayed effort was the Lotus Exige 270E Tri-fuel concept (gasoline, ethanol, methanol or any combination of the three) shown a last year's Geneva Motor Show.
Cellulosic ethanol pioneer Mascoma Corp.
said Wednesday it has begun producing the alcohol-based fuel from wood chips at its demonstration refinery in New York,
The company, which has benefited from investments by General Motors Corp. and a number of heavyweight venture capital firms specializing in green energy, uses a genetically modified bacteria to break down the usually hard-to-digest cellulose in wood chips and other biomass.
The fermented biomass is used to produce so-called cellulosic ethanol (because it comes from cellulose).
Mascoma' $30 million demonstration refinery in Rome, N.Y., has the capacity to produce up to 200,000 gallons of ethanol a year, and the biofuel is to be used by General Motors in its test car fleet.
Mascoma says it wants to use the same technology in a commercial plant it is planning for Northern Michigan, where chips from nearby lumber mills would provide the necessary biomass.
But the company says its process also can be used to break down the cellulose in other materials, including portions of sugarcane and corn stalks, that are not part of the human food chain.
Mascoma says the 40-million-gallon Michigan plant would cost at least $200 million to build and that it still is attempting to raise the necessary funds.
The nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff than can choke the life out of lakes and ponds with thick green algae "blooms" might someday help fuel our cars and trucks.
That's the hope of a California company, QuantumSphere, that has received a $100,000 research grant from the California Energy Commission's Energy Innovations small grant program for a year-long project to develop an algae biogasification process that can turn the aquatic vegetation and other biomass material into methane, hydrogen or other synthetic gases.
Because algae grows so rapidly, is so rich in carbohydrates and needs so little care, it is considered a prime feedstock for biofuels - if a cost-efficient method of breaking it down can be developed.
QuantumSphere, which will use engineered nano-metals as catalysts for turning algae into gases, says the slimy green stuff (it comes in other colors, too) can produce as much as 60 percent of its biomass in the form of oils or carbohydrates.
The oil can be turned into biodiesel and the carbohydrates into alcohols - for ethanol production - or into synthetic gases for fuel or industrial use.
"Our vision for this project was to use this process to take wet algae produced in a place like the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley of California and convert it into renewable fuels," said Subra Iyer, QuantumSphere's principal technologist.
"The Salton Sea is a place for large amounts of agricultural runoff which sometimes creates large algae blooms. If successful, we envision a large plant" on the shore of the inland sea that could convert large amounts of algae into renewable fuels, he said.
Iyer said the process QuantumSphere plans to use is designed to convert any biomass, including leaves, algae, vegetable waste and corn stalks, into fuel.
The company's plan calls for it to build a small-scale demonstration plant to show the feasibility of its conversion process.
Opel Ampera plug-in hybrid is among the green stars of the upcoming Geneva auto show.
By Nick Kurczewski, Contributor
When the Geneva auto show opens its doors to the media March 3, the exhibition halls will be jammed with a wider range of smaller, smarter and more fuel-efficient cars than ever before.
Green vehicles were once a sideshow, with headline-grabbing debuts of outrageous supercars and luxury sedans in the main ring at Geneva. But like easy credit and cheap gasoline, those days are gone.
Intelligently designed, fuel-efficient, low-emission vehicles are now the key to survival for the world's car manufacturers.
Even high-end manufacturers like Bentley Motors are getting in on the act. Rather than its usual lineup of sport-tuned touring cars that gulp gasoline the way a band of rugby fans down lager at a pre-game fest, the English luxury brand will unveil a bio-fueled concept -- albeit one with more than 600 horsepower.
Other stars of the show will include the Opel Ampera, the European version of the Chevrolet Volt; Mitsubishi's i-MiEV Sport Air, an electric sports car concept; and the shape-shifting Rinspeed iChange electric vehicle.
Green Car Advisor offers an advance look at these and other soon-to-be-unveiled eco-stars of the Geneva show.
Opel Ampera
As General Motor's European subsidiary, it makes sense that Opel would get a version of Chevrolet's much-hyped Volt hybrid.
Luckily for Opel, the Ampera also seems to have gotten the good looks in the GM family tree. While the Volt has been criticized for a somewhat bland exterior, the Ampera has a more aggressive and modern design that better lives up to the promise of the state-of-the-art drivetrain.
Like the Chevrolet Volt, the Ampera will be capable of running up to 40 miles on electric power alone, before switching to a small internal combustion engine that recharges the battery pack.
Opel says that the Ampera's lithium-ion battery pack can be charged from a standard European 230-volt outlet.
The Volt slated to arrive in U.S. showrooms near the end of next year, so expect the Ampera to make its European debut in 2011.
Mitsubishi i-MiEVs
Mitsubishi will debut a European version of the i-MiEV electric car it expects to launch in Japan later this year. Both are based on the Japanese company's tiny "i" city car.
The i-MiEV uses a 47-kilowatt (62-horsepower) electric motor that draws power from a 330-volt lithium ion battery pack. Range is estimated at 100 miles.
The European model will be slightly wider than the Japanese model, and perhaps a bit more powerful -- to cope with European safety standards and higher speed limits.
A U.S. version of the i-MiEV, if we get one -- and we think we will -- is likely to be based on the Euro model.
A sport version of the i-MiEV will also break cover in Geneva.
Very little is known about the concept, called the Sport Air, though we expect it likely will be a closer-to-production version of the huggable-cute i-MiEV Sport concept seen at the Tokyo auto show in 2007.
Chevrolet Spark
Not every important green car in Geneva will have an electric motor or hybrid power plant under its hood.
At first glance, the Chevrolet Spark looks like another sharply styled little Euro-hatch.
That's the point.
Frugal and attractive small cars like the Spark are key to the survival of General Motors -- and to weaning many American car buyers from opting for the super-size option in their dealers' showrooms.
The five-door Spark hatchback first appeared as the Beat concept car during the New York auto show in 2007.
The production version looks almost identical to that concept. When it goes on sale in Europe in early 2010, the Spark will feature a choice of economical 1.0- and 1.2-liter 16-valve engines.
U.S. sales are to follow in 2011.
Tata E-Nano?
A spokesman for India's Tata Motors told us to expect a surprise in Geneva.
Known for basic and cheap economy cars, Tata -- India's largest auto manufacturer -- is unlikely to pull a dust cover off some supercar.
Our guess: the top-secret news is the unveiling of an electric-powered version of the company's subcompact Indica hatchback, or the Nano city car (left).
Tata Motors has been working hard on developing electric versions of its current lineup for the European market. The company last year bought a majority stake in Miljo Grenland Innovasjon, a Norwegian company specializing in electric car technology.
The collapse of the global auto industry has hit Tata Motors hard, especially now that it owns struggling British luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover, but we're not counting it out of the electric car sweepstakes.
The four-door Nano hatchback will be the cheapest car in the world, priced at roughly $2,000 when it goes on sale in India later this year.
A low-speed battery-electric version suitable for urban centers or gated communities could be just what Tata needs to get its toe into the European or U.S. markets.
Rinspeed iChange
Rinspeed's annual dream machines in Geneva have been capable of hovering above land and water, tilting, running on bio-waste, and adapting the cabin environment to match a driver's state of mind.
The wacky Swiss company is now ready to debut its latest crazy creation, a shape-changing electric car called the iChange. Power comes from a 130-kilowatt electric motor.
This concept car's most intriguing feature is the adaptable seating arrangement. The iChange has what Rinspeed refers to as "1, 2, 3 seating," courtesy of an "electronic trick tail."
The exterior body-panels of the iChange can be reconfigured depending on how many passengers are on board.
Rinspeed says the result is not only a zero-emission car, but one whose ultra-low aerodynamic drag helps reduce power consumption from the electric motor to give it more range. Details to come at the show, we hope.
Bentley BioFuel Car
Bentley couldn't simply unleash a bio-fuel car onto the world. It had to make it the fastest Bentley ever.
We can live with that, considering the speed and grace of this strangely alluring yet contradictory concept. Sneak preview photos provided by Bentley show a car very much resembling its current gas-powered Continental GT.
Larger lower intakes and outlets in the hood now feed extra air to the W12 engine, reconfigured to run on a mix of gasoline and ethanol.
Oomph is estimated to be well in excess of 600 horsepower.
Ethanol helps raise the octane level of the fuel, which boosts power and gives this bruiser Bentley the performance credentials needed to keep its blue-blood clientele happy.
If the ethanol comes from biowaste instead of valuable food crops, those Bentley bluebloods may even be able to claim they are turning blue-green.
EDAG Light Car Open Source Concept
German engineering firm EDAG will display a high-tech car that is completely recyclable, electric powered and featuring state-of-the-art LED technology.
From the sneak peeks of the car we've seen, the finished product looks great. Too bad EDAG slapped a painfully awkward name onto this otherwise very promising concept car.
The body of the Light Car is constructed of lightweight basalt fiber. As strong as pricey carbon fiber commonly used in race-car construction, the basalt-fiber platform is cheaper to produce, provides high levels of occupant safety, and is entirely recyclable.
Power for the Light Car is provided by small electric motors located in each wheel.
The car's headlight and taillight housings aren't real hardware but instead are projected onto the exterior using LEDs. According to EDAG, owners can customize the shape and size of the lights (though there was no word as to the legalities of this clever option).Here's a company video animation that explains how it would work.
LEDs in the tail provide vehicles that are following the Light Car with information that could include driving tips like the Rinspeed's braking force (back off, I'm hitting the brakes HARD) and public service info like real-time traffic updates.
Peugeot 3008 Hybrid
French automaker Peugeot will show its new 3008 MPV, a small crossover that employs a 2.0-liter diesel-electric hybrid powertrain and four-wheel drive. The system should be available in European models of the 3008 by 2011.
Sized to compete with small sport-utes like the Nissan Rogue, the 3008 hybrid will combine 36-hp electric motor with the diesel engine. The electric motor will provide power to the rear while the engine drives the front wheels.
Peugeot has no sales presence in the States, but we wouldn't be shocked if the 3008's hybrid system shows up here in another automaker's cars someday.
Keep in mind, the standard gas-powered version of the 3008 (above, left) uses the same 1.6-liter motor as the BMW Mini Cooper. A hybrid/all-wheel-drive version of the Mini Crossover Concept (a Mini-based sport-ute shown at last year's Paris auto show) sure makes sense to us.
Diesel-powered cars and trucks are gaining popularity in the U.S., and that's got many people in America's biodiesel industry all excited.
With more diesel vehicles on American roads and concern about global warming at an all-time high, sales of biodiesel in the land of the free ought to be brisk. But they aren't.
The problem, as the producers, brokers, distributors and retailers of biodiesel will tell you, is that automakers are being total party-poopers when it comes to warranty issues.
Never mind the fact that Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of the engine that bears his name, experimented with fuels ranging from powdered coal to peanut oil.
If you use a blend that contains more than 5 percent biodiesel (or less than 95 percent petro-diesel), you can kiss your vehicle warranty good-bye.
Doesn't matter if the higher blend -- say 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent petro-diesel -- was certified to stringent standards. Most automakers will nullify a warranty the moment they learn that a blend higher than B5 has gone into the fuel tank.
The biodiesel industry says it's not right. They say 20 percent biodiesel (B20) or even 100 percent biodiesel (B100) are wonderful fuels that don't do an engine any harm.
And now two of the industry's trade groups are trying to force this issue, pointing to the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, a 1975 federal statute governing car warranties that prohibits any automaker from voiding a car's warranty based on the type of fuel used in that car.
Three days before Christmas, we joyously reported
that Idaho was looking to convert mountains of manure into natural gas for vehicles and homes.
Today, we're delighted to report that Hilarides Dairy of Lindsay, California, has gone a step farther: It's converted two of its diesel 18-wheelers to run on clean-burning biomethane made from the dairy's formidable stockpiles of cow crap.
In addition to curbing the amount of greenhouse gases that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere as the manure decomposed, by producing biomethane from cow waste the dairy is reducing the nation's dependence on foreign fossil fuels.
And the production will "give us some protection from volatile energy prices," said owner Ron Hilarides (pictured). Who'd have thunk so much good could come from cow patties.
The bio-gas making process begins with flushing manure from stalls housing 10,000 cows into a covered lagoon, where bacteria breaks it down. The resulting methane gas is then pumped to a refinery that removes carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and other impurities.
The purified methane is pressurized - made into compressed natural gas - before being pumped into the 18-wheelers, which are fitted with Cummins engines that have been converted from compression-ignited diesels to spark-ignited methane-burners.
The dairy generates 226,000 cubic feet of bio-gas per day - enough to slash the dairy's diesel consumption by 650 gallons a day, Hilarides said, adding that he intends to convert five pick-up trucks to run on biomethane.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Toronto stock broker George Georgiou with manipulating the market in four stocks, including Hydrogen Hybrid Technologies Inc., "the only commercially viable application of hydrogen in the consumer marketplace today", according to the company's Web site, and Northern Ethanol Inc., which "intends to develop three ethanol plants," according to its Web site.
The other companies were Avicena Group Inc., which offers "cellular regenerative therapies" to people who can't handle aging gracefully; and, Neutron Enterprises Inc., "the leading global provider of Web-based stock market simulations."
The SEC alleges that, from 2004 through September 2008, Georgiou, who controlled the publicly traded stock of each company, manipulated the market to artificially inflate each company's stock price or to create the false appearance of an active and liquid market. Ultimately, he allegedly realized at least $20.9 million in ill-gotten gains from his manipulation schemes. Further proof that a sucker is born every minute.
The complaint alleges that Georgiou's manipulation of Hydrogen Hybrid Technologies relied on "a pump and dump scheme" in which he arranged for the publication of a promotional mailer sent to 7 million addresses across the U.S. Georgiou allegedly coordinated manipulative trading with the publication of the mailer, and ultimately received more than $3.8 million when he dumped his shares into the artificially inflated market.
The complaint also alleges that part of Georgiou's manipulation of Northern Ethanol stock involved the payment of an illegal kickback to a person Georgiou believed was a corrupt registered representative, but who was in reality an undercover FBI agent. Nice!
We couldn't locate a photo of Georgiou, so we went with the SEC logo. We did locate photos of one George Georgiou, a staff photographer for Playboy, but we gather he's not the same GG the SEC snared. Would be interesting if he was. Most SEC complaints are dull as dirt; this complaint is a compelling read.
On a much sadder note, two portraits of slavery conditions and gangland-style field management in Brazil's sugarcane industry have emerged in recent days. We're reporting it because sugarcane is the basis for much of the country's ethanol production.
Germany's Der Spiegel describes in riveting detail the brutal powers of the country's feitor, or field foreman, over hiring, firing, payment and conditions affecting the hundreds of thousands of Brazilians who work the nation's cane plantations. Meanwhile, the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy is reporting on slavelike conditions in its explosive report "Migration and Mechanization in Brazil's Biofuel Cane Fields."
Comedian Jon Stewart (and yes, he is a comedian, even if you do get all your news from his program) had green car advocate Daniel Sperling on his Daily Show to discuss government support of alternative fuels and plug-in hybrids.
Sperling -- a member of the California Air Resources Board and head of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis -- said he believes the day will come when "the vast majority" of the cars on the road will use batteries, fuel-cells and advanced biofuels for power and suggested that it would only take "tens of billions" of dollars to get the ball rolling.
We think it might take a bit more than that, but we just collectively threw $350 billion at Wall Street and have spent nearly $600 billion on the War in Iraq so far (according to the National Priorities Project), so it appears we've got the bucks to throw at problems if we really believe they are problems.
Stewart, of course, lightens things up in his interview, but there's still plenty of food for thought in his 6.5-minute exchange with Sperling.
You can watch it by clicking on the video screen above.
It's seemed for the longest time that if a clean, economical form of ethanol was ever going to be developed, the cost and effort would be left largely up to researchers in the U.S. and Europe.
The companies want to develop a low-cost method of producing cellulosic ethanol - the kind that comes from the cellulose in wood chips, prairie grasses and waste biomass instead of that in food crops such as corn and sugar cane.
The Japanese cellulosic ethanol research isn't aimed at a particularly quick fix, though.
Reuters says the group's goal is to be producing about 1.6 million barrels a year by early 2014 and to get the cost down to the equivalent of $70 a barrel by 2015.
Among the companies joining Nippon Oil and Toyota in the consortium are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sapporo engineering - a subsidiary of Sapporo Breweries, which churns out a lot of biomass waste from beer-making.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
---------- Graphic courtesy U.S. Department of Energy
Wal-Mart Stores says it soon will begin testing two new hybrid systems and three alternative fuels in some of its heavy-duty Class 8 trucks - the ones that haul those big Wal-Mart cargo trailers down the highway.
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Trucks like this one with a Peterbilt-Eaton hybrid drive are part of wal-Mart test fleet.
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The company said it will test a diesel-electric hybrid system in the Detroit area. The system, developed by ArvinMeritor, uses the electric motor mostly in low-speed, high-demand situations, such as accelerating from a dead stop while pulling a full trailer.
The diesel engine begins taking over with the electric motor's contribution to propulsion power diminishing as the truck accelerates until it is operating as a conventional diesel truck at highway speeds.
A Peterbilt-Eaton "hybrid assist" system will be used on five trucks in trials Southern California, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and the Washington-Baltimore area.
Unlike the ArvnMeritor system, it will provide an electric power boost for the internal combustion engine in high-demand situations such as acceleration and hill climbing.
It also will serve as the trucks' auxiliary power unit to keep heating and cooling systems and other electrical components operating when the truck is stopped - eliminating the need to keep the diesel engine running to generate auxiliary power.
The company is hoping the hybrid systems will result in improved fuel economy and reduced fuel costs and emissions.
Finally, Wal-Mart said it will test biodiesel and reclaimed grease fuel (made from cooking grease used in food outlets in Wal Mart stores) in a fleet of 15 trucks at its Buckeye, Az., distribution center; and liquid natural gas in five trucks in the Southern California high-desert area east of Los Angeles County.
For a variety of reasons we're not big Wal-Mart fans, but we've got to applaud the company's efforts to look at alternative fuels and powerplants in its relentless hunt for ways to slash operating costs.
Bentley Motors will debut a biofuel-powered coupe or sedan in early March at the 2009 Geneva Auto Show and the vehicle will enter production later this year, the company said.
As we reported last month, the British luxury-car maker is developing ethanol-powered versions of all of its large-engined models in an effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from its entire product range by 40 percent within three years.
A statement the company released on Tuesday said nothing more than we reported in the first paragraph of this story, but our sister site - Edmunds.com's very own Inside Line - managed to pry a few additional details out of Bentley spokesman David Reuter today.
Reuter said the biofuel Bentley will be more expensive than the Bentley Continental GT Speed, which sells for $203,000, and it will be more powerful than the 600-horsepower, 13-miles-per-gallon coupe.
However, unless the biofuel car is intended to run on E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent petrol) - very unlikely - and gets substantially better fuel economy than the Continental GT Speed, describing the yet-to-be-named Bentley an eco-sensitive car would be a rather enormous stretch.
That said, we applaud Bentley for taking a step in the right direction. And from what we can see of the car from the teaser photo the automaker supplied (above), the biofuel Bentley is a beauty.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will help the struggling ethanol industry identify the most efficient ways to produce the alternative fuel so more plants can stay in business, Tom Vilsack said in his first news conference as agriculture secretary.
Vilsack said the USDA should research, develop and promote "best practices" to improve efficiency at corn-based ethanol plants, which have been hit hard by volatile corn prices, followed by a sharp drop in demand for the biofuel, which is more expensive than gasoline.
"We need to make sure that the biofuels industry has the necessary support to survive the recent downturn, while at the same promoting policies that will speed up the development of second- and third-generation feedstocks for those biofuels that have the potential to significantly improve America's energy security and independence," Vilsack said.
His comments came less than a week after Panda Ethanol Inc. filed for bankruptcy for a plant it owns in Texas. VeraSun Energy Corp., the second-largest U.S. ethanol producer, filed for bankruptcy protection in October, and has closed 12 of its 16 plants.
Vilsack emphasized that the USDA needs to speed up work on biofuels made from non-food plant sources, as well as develop wind energy and other renewable sources of power.
The 2008 farm bill has several measures that should be quickly implemented to boost demand for new types of biofuels, he said, including tax credits, grants and loans for converting corn-based plants to use new feedstocks.
Vilsack also vowed that the USDA would be the "national leader in climate change" debate.
"This, of course, will involve conservation, greater efficiency with the energy we have and expanded opportunities in biofuels and renewable energy," Vilsack said, reading from prepared remarks.
President Obama has said he hopes to double renewable-energy production in the U.S.
The first loan guarantee from the Agriculture Department's biorefinery assistance program has gone to Colorado-based Range Fuels to help complete a cellulosic ethanol refinery in Georgia.
Range, which specializes in turning wood chips and other woody biomass into fuel, received an $80 million loan under the program.
The company broke ground on its Soperton, Georgia, cellulosic facility at the end of 2007 and said the first phase is scheduled to begin producing ethanol in 2010.
The loan guarantee program is designed to promote development of facilities and technologies aimed at producing ethanol and other biofuels from non-food resources.
GM Still a Big Backer, Even If Not as Publicly as in Past Years
By Dale Buss, Contributor
Of all the contrasts between this year's Detroit auto show and last year's -- most created by the intervening global economic melt-down and resulting car sales crash -- perhaps none is more striking than what happened to ethanol.
---------- Ethanol-capable vehicles such as GM's flex-fuel Yukon were common at last year's Detroit auto show, not so common this year. ----------
At the North American International Auto Show here a year ago, ethanol and ethanol-burning vehicles were the belles of the ball. Ethanol was promoted at almost every major automaker's press conferences and cropped up in interview after interview. Ethanol-using vehicles were everywhere.
This year, it's almost impossible to find mention of ethanol anywhere out on the 700,000-square foot auto show floor at Cobo Hall.
The talk has all been of electrification of the transportation system, electric vehicles, batteries for electric vehicles, and ventures to develop and build better batteries.
But ethanol hasn't gone away -- it is just lying low.
At least one automaker remains bullish on the long-term prospects for the fuel, especially the cellulosic variety.
By now we should all agree that corn ethanol is bad. For starters, it drives up the price of a grain that millions of poor people depend on, and corn requires enormous amounts of ocean-ravaging fertilizers.
Corn ethanol has come to be viewed as so undesirable that much of the industry is doing whatever it can to shift out of it and into ethanol produced from non-food biomass and waste materials.
With that in mind, we're delighted to report two related developments.
The Canadian biofuel company Enerkem announced this week that it's begun starting up a biofuel/biochemical production plant in Westbury, near Montreal. Once the startup phase is completed, Enerkem says it will be the "first producer of liquid fuels and green chemicals to commercially use renewable, non-food, negative-cost feedstock."
Enerkem's feedstock of choice is used electricity poles, a source the company doesn't have to pay for but actually gets paid to haul away. The company says one ton's worth of poles is good for 95 gallons of ethanol. Eventually, the plant is expected to produce 1.3 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year.
We especially like this fuel source because it reduces greenhouse-gas emissions in two ways: by using materials that would otherwise produce methane (a major greenhouse gas) when landfilled, and by producing a low-carbon fuel for cars, buses and trucks.
The other development on the ethanol front that we're pleased to report is POET's announcement this week that it has begun producing cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs.
Falling Fuel Prices Are 'Disincentive' For Consumers, Analyst Group Says
U.S. automotive executives are using the bully platform offered by the Detroit auto show to step up calls for an increase in the funding that Congress is considering - has already allotted in some cases - to finance development and production of advanced vehicles, biofuels and battery technologies that can help reduce the nation's dependence on oil.
What's missing is a call for a sensible fuel tax policy that encourages people to buy the fuel efficident cars the government says automakers must build.
Congress already has approved $25 million in loans to automakers and suppliers to use in retrofitting facilities - or building new ones - for the manufacture of advanced cars and trucks. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler has requested a combined $22 billion of the pot and would like to see the money increased.
President-elect Barack Obama, who is to be sworn in as the 44th president on Jan.20, has indicated a willingness to do just that, perhaps even doubling the $25 million loan pool.
Want More
But the automakers would like to see additional funding made available in the $800 billion economic stimulus plan Congress is now developing at the behest of the incoming Obama Administration.
"It's an issue of economic security, of national security, of energy security," GM research and development chief Larry Burns told reporters during the North American International Auto Show's media preview days this week.
It would be devastating, he said, for the U.S. to merely go from being dependent on foreign oil to being dependent on foreign nations for the advanced batteries and other components needed to make electric vehicles - battery-electric, fuel-cell electric and hybrid-electric .
Granted, GM needs federal funds to survive right now and Burns has a lot at stake - his job, for instance - in promoting federal funding that helps the industry.
But we still agree with him.
We'd rather see a few hundred billion tossed to the companies working on lithium-ion and more advanced batteries, clean biofuels, fuel cell and electric charging and hydrogen fueling station infrastructure development than to be handed to the corn ethanol industry or to big banks so they can continue bolstering their reserves.
Need Tax Plan
Analysts in the London offices of Global Insight economic and business forecasting and consulting, looking at the U.S. situation from an outsider perspective, suggest that things could work well if federal tax policy encouraged purchases of and investments in more fuel-efficient vehicles.
As the nation's stockpiles of corn grow amid a slumping demand for ethanol, the nation's largest producer of the fuel has begin making cellulosic ethanol form corncobs at a test plant in South Dakota.
Cellulosic ethanol - produced from hard-to-break-down cellulose - is thought to be more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly than grain ethanol made from grain ethanol, which is largely made from corn starches.
Ethanol-maker Poet LLC opened its pilot cellulosic refinery, capable of annual production of up to 20,000 gallons, late last year and said this week that it produced more than 1,000 gallons in its first month of operation.
The $8-million fuel plant can provide a blueprint for commercial-scale production, Poet CEO Jeff Broin told reporters in a conference call today.
A report in the subscription-only E&E [Energy and Environment] Daily, said Poet, which is based in Sioux Falls, S.D., is planning to convert a 50,000-gallon-a-year grain ethanol plant in Iowa to a dual facility that could produce ethanol both from the sugars in corn kernals - the conventional way - or by breaking down the cellulose in corn cobs.
The refinery is scheduled to begin production in 2011 with capacity more than doubled to 125 million gallons a year.
Poet, which operates 26 refineries, has the capacity to produce more than 1 billion gallons of ethanol from grain corn annually.
The privately held company is working with Danish biotech company Novozymes to develop enzymes that cost-effectively break down thecellulosic plant fiber found in corncobs, E&E reported.
Broin said that as much as 5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol could be produced in the U.S. each year from corncobs. Cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, yard waste and other woody biomass, he said, could boost production to about 85 billion gallons a year, he said.
The corn-based ethanol industry dominates federal programs to support renewable energy, having taken two-thirds of all subsidies for renewable energy sources in 2007, the latest year for which such information is now available.
Corn-based ethanol received $3 billion in subsidies in 2007 -- almost twice as much as solar, wind, geothermal and other biomass combined, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group, which analyzed data from the Energy Information Administration.
Among tax benefits for renewable energy sources, corn-based ethanol received three-quarters of all benefits, the nonprofit group found.
Ethanol industry groups say they support greater investment in all kinds of renewable technologies, including wind and solar, but that it should not come at the expense of ethanol.
"This is an apples-and-oranges comparison, since ethanol does not compete in the power generation sector with wind, solar and geothermal technologies," Renewable Fuels Association spokesman Matt Hartwig said.
The report comes as lawmakers consider what, if any, additional incentives to include for ethanol in the economic stimulus package. Some lawmakers are seeking additional loan guarantees and tax credits for ethanol plants.
In a speech on the economy today, President-elect Barack Obama vowed to double the production of alternative energy in the next three years, but he did not specify which types of energy production he would include.
Environmental Working Group is among dozens of groups that have pressed lawmakers to repeal some of the tax incentives and subsidies for corn-based ethanol. The groups say that ethanol drives up food prices, pollutes waterways and accounts for too much federal spending.
Frankly speaking, we'd like to see some of the subsidies and tax credits diverted from the corn-based ethanol industry to efforts to perfect cellulosic ethanol, a promising biofuel made from wood, grasses or the non-edible parts of plants.
Okay, so what do your family car, a box of laundry detergent, the beans you're eating because you can't afford anything else in this economy and that Christmas tree you now have to get rid of have in common?
Well, if researchers at Pennsylvania State University are successful, the last three items could be combined to make fuel for the first.
A Penn State research team is genetically modifying woody plants for use in biofuels by adding a bean-based protein that makes them vulnerable to the enzymes used in laundry detergents.
Woody plants use a material called lignin to help form a tough outer layer that shields their soft cellulose insides from beetles and other pests. The lignin also gives the plants rigidity so they can grow upright.
But it also makes it hard to break them down and extract the cellulose for use in making cellulosic ethanol. That's the big reason we use easy-to-extract starches from corn for most ethanol production in the United States.
But the university says that two researchers, John Carlson and Ming Tien, have developed a way to introduce a protein that makes it easier to break down the lignin and extract the cellulose from woody plants and trees.
Right now, a lot of research is centered on using expensive, genetically engineered fungus and bacteria to do the work.
"There is lots of energy-rich cellulose locked away in wood," molecular geneticist Carlson said in an interview with the university newspaper.
"But separating this energy from the wood to make ethanol is a costly process requiring high amounts of heat and caustic chemicals. Moreover, fungal enzymes that attack lignin are not yet widely available, still in the development stage, and not very efficient in breaking up lignin."
Another approach is to reduce the amount of lignin in the plants, but that, scoffed biochemist Tien, is "like trying to engineer boneless chicken. It just doesn't make sense" because the plants would have no structure to keep them upright while growing.
That ought to be Washington's response to the Renewable Fuels Association's request this month for $1 billion in financial aid to struggling ethanol producers so they can finance current operations.
But wait, there's more. The RFA -- the ethanol industry's lobby -- has also suggested to the incoming administration that it create a $50-billion federal loan guarantee program to finance investment in the ethanol producers' expansion.
And furthermore, the RFA has told Obama & Co. that any automaker that receives federal aid should be required to only produce vehicles that can run on any gas-ethanol blend up to 85 percent ethanol, beginning with the 2010 model season.
Now, if the struggling U.S. ethanol producers were producing cellulosic ethanol, which holds promise as a truly "green" product, that would be one thing. But the struggling ethanol producers the RFA is talking about are, with few exceptions, folks who only produce corn ethanol.
Here's the deal with corn ethanol: So many research papers have been written on how un-green corn ethanol truly is that people who cover green-car news could do nothing but report on those studies and still they wouldn't have time to report on all of them.
Reporting on unfavorable corn-ethanol studies is like covering crime in Los Angeles. Sometimes there are so many fatal drive-by shootings and other unnatural deaths in the County of Angels during an eight-hour shift that a crime reporter simply can't get to them all.
Liposuctioning unwanted blubber out of pampered Los Angelenos may not seem like a dream job, but it has its perks. Free fuel is one of them, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine
.
For a time, Beverly Hills doctor C. Alan Bittner (pictured) turned the fat he removed from patients into biodiesel that fueled his Ford SUV and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator.
Fat -- whether animal or vegetable -- contains triglycerides that can be extracted and turned into diesel. Poultry companies such as Tyson are looking into powering their trucks on chicken schmaltz, and biofuel start-ups such as Nova Biosource are mixing beef tallow and pig lard with more palatable sources such as soybean oil, according to Forbes.
Mike Shook of Agri Process Innovations, a builder of biodiesel plants, says this year's batch of U.S. biodiesel was likely more than half animal-derived since the price of soybeans soared.
A gallon of grease will get you about a gallon of fuel, and drivers can get about the same amount of mileage from fat fuel as they do from regular diesel, according to Jenna Higgins of the National Biodiesel Board. Animal fats need to undergo an additional step to get rid of free fatty acids not present in vegetable oils, but otherwise, there's no difference, she told Forbes.
Greenies like the fact that waste, such as coffee grounds and french-fry grease, can be turned into power.
"The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel -- and I have more fat than I can use," Bittner wrote on lipodiesel.com, which is no longer online. "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly but they get to take part in saving the Earth."
Using fat to fuel cars might be environmentally friendly, but it's definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles, and Bittner is being investigated by the state's public health department.
While waiting for final government approval of its sale of the ailing Hummer brand to China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp., GM is hoping to give it a sales boost with the introduction next month of a flex-fuel engine for the 2010 H3 and H3T models. 
Nothing says "I 
