Green Car Advisor
Coal
November 20, 2009
The California agency that sets the American standard for automotive emissions today unveiled a much-improved Website that helps consumers choose the least polluting cars on the market.
----------
Click on art to enlarge.
----------
The California Air Resources Board Website, using information collected for vehicle certification in the golden state, offers a practical and easy to use system that ranks vehicles according to their emission characteristics and provides tools to compare models.
The site allows visitors to view models by technology/fuel type, smog score, global-warming score and engine family. And there's a very smart tool that, with a click of your mouse, allows you to view all the tax incentives available for a particular model.
Last year, the agency adopted a state regulation requiring automakers to affix the Environmental Performance Label to California showroom models that convey the vehicle's smog and greenhouse-gas emissions. The simply illustrated graphic has two rankings, from one to 10, that depict vehicle emissions. The higher the score, the less polluting it is.
Driveclean.ca.gov puts these same rankings in an online format, making them practical for web research. The Website also provides information about clean-car technology and guides users to consider the emissions of the models they are evaluating.
We salute CARB, once again, for taking another significant step to make the world we live in a healthier place.
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- Scott Doggett November 20, 2009, 8:15 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Butanol, Coal, Compressed Air, Diesel, Emissions, Ethanol, Flex-Fuel, Fuel Cell, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Hydrogen, LPG, Legislation, Manufacturers, Methanol, Motorcycles, Natural Gas, Oil, Plug-ins and Electric, Solar, Tax Incentives
- Technorati Tags:
- Alternative Fuels and Vehicles
, California Air Resources Board, CARB, Electric Vehicles, Fuel Economy
September 22, 2009
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.
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- Scott Doggett September 22, 2009, 1:55 PM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Coal, Emissions, Energy Companies, Fuel Economy
- Technorati Tags:
- Algae Refining
, Alternate Fuel, Biofuels Digest, Biofuels Funding, Biofuels Research, Coal, Sugar
December 22, 2008
Cellulosic ethanol, which people from President-elect Barack Obama to struggling farmers from his home state view a promising biofuel, is actually worse than much-criticized corn ethanol because cellulosic ethanol results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more harm to wildlife, a major study has found.
The energy alternatives "that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, in a paper that reviewed and ranked major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air-pollution mortality and energy security.
"Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels," he said, adding that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.
Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed major energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability.
His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. His findings were published in this month's issue of Energy & Environmental Science.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (2)
- Scott Doggett December 22, 2008, 1:31 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Coal, Diesel, Emissions, Energy Companies, Ethanol, Flex-Fuel, Fuel Cell, Hydrogen, Oil, Plug-ins and Electric, Solar
- Technorati Tags:
- Alternative Fuel
, Battery Electric Vehicles, Energy & Environmental Science, Flex Fuel Vehicles, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles, Nuclear Energy, Solar Energy, Thermal Energy, Wind Energy
December 11, 2008
By John O'Dell and Scott Doggett
Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama's choice to head the Energy Department, has been a strong advocate of alternative fuels and a vociferous opponent of fossil fuels -- foreign oil in particular -- for years.
Most recently, the scientific interests of the 60-year-old Nobel laureate and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have centered on energy and finding ways to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources such as biofuels from plants.
But Chu seems to be at odds with Obama on the role of corn-based ethanol in America's future. The domestic ethanol industry had a huge friend in Obama for most of the past year, while Chu has never been a friend to corn-ethanol producers.
On a segment on PBS' The News Hour last year, Chu said "corn, at best, is a transition crop, but very quickly we want to transition away from corn to a grass that requires far less land for the amount of fuel, far less fertilizer, far less water."
Chu sees tremendous promise in other biofuels, particularly biofuels that would propel automobiles. In an interview with an Australian radio personality last year, he said transportation fuel is the most valuable form of energy we have -- even when that fuel is electricity.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- Scott Doggett December 11, 2008, 3:27 PM
- Categories:
- Biofuels, Coal, Emissions, Energy Companies, Ethanol, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Legislation, Natural Gas, Oil, Plug-ins and Electric
- Technorati Tags:
- Barack Obama
, Biofuel, Department of Energy, Energy Department, Ethanol, Hybrid, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Steven Chu
November 6, 2008
In case Afghanastan, Iraq, formation of a transition team and coping with a national recession weren't concerns enough for Barack Obama on election day plus one, several of the country's biggest business lobbies held their hands out Wednesday for policy largesse from the President-elect.
The National Assn. of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Industry Political Action Committee all urged Obama to see things their way in making energy independence and economic stimulus his top domestic priorities.
The GOP-friendly business organizations were joined by a major green investment coalition that called on Obama to pursue environmentally friendly policies.
The manufacturing industry group, according to a report by the subscription-only E&E News, which specializes in energy and environmental issues, called on Obama to abandon federal mandates for use of alternative fuels and instead expand domestic production of fuel from oil shale.
The trade group also asked in an open letter to Obama, that his the administration support incentives for energy production from coal as well as development of carbon capture and storage technologies to reduce coal's environmentally damaging impacts.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- John O'Dell November 6, 2008, 3:01 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Coal, Oil
- Technorati Tags:
- Business Agenda
, Energy Policy
November 5, 2008
Clean Energy Fuels Corp., the company founded and controlled through majority stock interest by Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, issued a press release today following the defeat
of a California ballot measure that would have resulted in rebates for natural-gas-powered vehicles at great taxpayers' expense
.
Here is the press release in its entirety:
California voters yesterday turned down Proposition 10. Named The California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuels Initiative, the measure was a $5-billion, first-in-the-nation public investment to provide funds for a wide variety of clean energy projects across the state, including consumer incentives for clean alternative vehicle fuels and the construction of renewable energy generation facilities, such as solar and wind power plants.
"Everyone talks about reducing the use of imported oil, lowering greenhouse gas emissions and cleaning the air through the use of alternative energy resources, and California's voters considered supporting these critical goals in a meaningful way," said Andrew J. Littlefair, President and CEO, Clean Energy. "The passage of Prop 10 would have provided an important funding mechanism to rapidly turn these goals into a reality throughout the state.
"We supported the initiative, and while Prop 10 may have served as a catalyst to accelerate our growth, its failure does not reduce our opportunities. We believe our core business is strong and pledge to continue to help California and the nation meet our critical goals of reducing imported oil while increasing the use of clean, alternative energy for the health and welfare of all our citizens," Littlefair noted.
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- Scott Doggett November 5, 2008, 10:31 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Coal, Diesel, Emissions, Energy Companies, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Hydrogen, Legislation, Natural Gas, Oil
- Technorati Tags:
- California
, Clean Energy Fuels Corp., Natural Gas, Proposition 10, Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuels, T. Boone Pickens
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
President-elect Barack Obama made many pledges, laid out lots of goals and otherwise built a substantial political platform to appeal to environmentalists and green-car proponents during an 18-month White House bid that culminated in victory several hours ago. Among those pledges and goals:
- Increase Fuel Economy Standards. Obama and Joe Biden will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per year while providing $4 billion for domestic automakers to retool their manufacturing facilities in America to produce these vehicles.
- Get 1 Million Plug-In Hybrid Cars on the Road by 2015. These vehicles can get up to 150 miles per gallon. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we should work to ensure these cars are built here in America, instead of factories overseas.
- Create a New $7,000 Tax Credit for Purchasing Advanced Vehicles.
- Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Obama and Biden will establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard to reduce the carbon in our fuels 10 percent by 2020. Obama and Biden will also require 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels to be phased into our fuel supply by 2030.
- Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas. An Obama-Biden administration will establish a process for early identification of any infrastructure obstacles/shortages or possible federal permitting process delays to drilling in the Bakken Shale formation, the Barnett shale formation, and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
- Invest in a Clean Energy Economy and Help Create 5 Million New Green Jobs. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will strategically invest $150 billion over 10 years to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, encourage energy efficiency, invest in low emissions coal plants, advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid.
- Ensure 10 Percent of Our Electricity Comes From Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 Percent by 2025.
These bulleted items were taken verbatim from Obama's official Web site last night as the Democratic senator from Illinois gave his victory speech. In addition, Obama made many statements during his campaign that we expect him to honor.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- Scott Doggett November 5, 2008, 1:01 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Coal, Diesel, Emissions, Energy Companies, Ethanol, Flex-Fuel, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Legislation, Oil, Plug-ins and Electric
- Technorati Tags:
- Alternative Fuel
, Barack Obama, CAFE, Coal, Corporate Fuel Economy Standard, Diesel, Electric Cars, Electric Vehicles, Flex Fuel, Fuel Efficient, Hybrid, Joe Biden, Nuclear, plug-in hybrid
November 2, 2008
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
You can't always get what you want, but if you've got a big pot of money and a sweet-sounding environmental pitch, chances are you can get a proposition on a state ballot. In California, anyway.
And if there's enough money left in the pot to pay for volleys of TV ads after you've paid the people who gathered the signatures needed to put the proposition on the ballot, odds are it will become state law. In California, anyway.
And, because California is such a trendsetting state, if your proposition becomes law there, it stands a good chance of becoming law in other states as well.
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens knows this. It's why the Texas billionaire is bankrolling a proposition -- one that ostensibly would advance renewable energy and alternative fuels -- on California's November 4 general election ballot.
In truth, what it advances most is Picken's fortune -- while costing the state's taxpayers $10 billion.
To give you an idea of how little California can afford Pickens' proposition, consider that officials in Sacramento are expected to announce this coming week that the state's budget deficit has reached at least $10 billion.
The budget crisis is why Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson last month informing him that "California may need to turn to the Federal Treasury for short-term financing." A bailout, in other words.
At a time when the locomotive that drives America's economic train can least afford it, Pickens' initiative would nearly double California's deficit.
And despite the crushing cost the proposition would levy on all of the state's taxpayers, the ballot measure would benefit very few while throwing a tremendous amount of money behind an automotive fuel that isn't very green compared to other alternative fuels that could benefit from that kind of spending.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (3)
- Scott Doggett November 2, 2008, 10:46 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Coal, Diesel, Emissions, Energy Companies, Fuel Economy, Honda, Legislation, Natural Gas, Oil, Opinion, Plug-ins and Electric, Solar, Surveys, Tax Incentives
- Technorati Tags:
- 2008 Honda Civic GX
, 2009 Honda Civic GX, Alternative Fuel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California General Election, Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, Diesel, Emissions, Fuel Economy, Fuel Efficiency, Greenhouse Gas, Natural Gas, Oil, Poll, Proposition 10, Solar Energy, Survey, T. Boone Pickens, Tax Incentives, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Wind Energy
October 31, 2008
China should push electric cars to curb its dependence on imported oil and foreign automobile technology, although they offer smaller cuts in carbon emissions than alternatives such as gas-electric hybrids, according to the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company
.
In two decades it could create a world-leading industry and a domestic market alone worth up to $219.4 billion, even if less than a third of drivers go electric, the company said Wednesday in a quarterly report (subscription required).
"China has a compelling case for embracing electric vehicles," said the report, which weighed up oil imports, the cost to consumers, the potential for innovation, as well as carbon emissions.
"While a handful of firms in Japan and North America are making strides in developing electric vehicles, no nation has yet emerged as the clear leader in this sector," it added.
The world's number two crude oil consumer already churns out millions of automobiles for a growing middle class hungry for a better lifestyle. It relies on imports for nearly half its oil.
If China continues current growth rates it will almost double oil imports by 2030, the report said, but greater use of electric cars would cut this growth by around a quarter.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- Scott Doggett October 31, 2008, 7:50 AM
- Categories:
- Batteries, China, Coal, Emissions, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Plug-ins and Electric
- Technorati Tags:
- China
, Electric Cars, Electric Vehicles, EV, Hybrid
October 8, 2008
While scientists and entrepreneurs toil away at developing clean, sustainable alternatives to the fossil fuels that both power and pollute the planet, we shouldn't overlook alternative fossil fuels - oil from tar sands and liquids from coal - according to researchers at the Rand Corp.
In a study of the economic and environmental trade-offs of these alternative fossil fuels being released this morning, the non-profit think-tank found -- not surprisingly -- that if crude oil prices fall substantially, there would be little economic benefit in exploiting tar sands or coal-to-liquid technology.
With petroleum products from crude oil accounting for 95 percent of all energy used in the U.S. transportation sector, the development of alternative sources can be critical for both economic and security reasons, though, and security benefits could trump price and environmental considerations, the study suggests.
Major Concerns
The environmental issues are considerable.
Present methods for oil sands production are water-intensive and can degrade local water quality without proper cleansing technologies, cautioned Michael Toman, lead author of the report.
Development of oil sands fields (left)
also can cause wide-scale land and habitat disturbances that must be addressed, he said.
Fuel production from both oil sand extraction and coal liquefaction also produces considerably more carbon dioxide - a key greenhouse gas linked to global warming - than does conventional crude oil.
Production and use of fuel derived from oil sands generates about 20 percent more CO2, while production and use of liquid fuels from coal produces about twice the CO2 emissions of conventional fuels, the report says.
Carbon dioxide emissions from both processes can be reduced through capture and storage techniques - called carbon sequestration - in which the CO2 is scrubbed form the air and pumped into underground storage, Toman said, but the technical and economic feasibility of large-scale sequestration "has not yet been demonstrated."
Crude Prices Are Key
Both sources are economically competitive with conventional crude if oil prices remain at or above the $94-per barrel high-price level estimated by the federal Energy Information Administration in its 2007 study of oil pricing scenarios for 2025, the Rand researchers found. (The EIA study's price suppositions were quickly overrun by real world processes that have driven oil well over $100 a barrel for most of the past year).
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (0)
- John O'Dell October 8, 2008, 3:05 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Coal
- Technorati Tags:
- Alternative Fuel
, Coal Liquefaction, Oil Sands, Rand Corp. Study
July 31, 2008
With almost daily announcements of initiatives aimed at chopping the price of fuel at America's pumps, West Virginia, one of the nation's most prolific coal-producing states, is making a serious move to leverage the lumpy black stuff for transportation fuel by fast-tracking construction of a commercial-scale plant utilizing a proven coal-to-gasoline process.
The coal-to-liquids plant, which will be the first in the U.S., could be up and running as quickly as three years from now, according to published reports, at a cost of some $800 million.
The planned facility is in Marshall County, located not far from the major cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland in the state's Northern Panhandle. It will be operated in a joint venture between Pittsburgh-based Consol Energy Inc. and Houston's Synthesis Energy Systems Inc.
The plant will employ standard coal and waste coal from a nearby Consol mine and could draw on coal from two other nearby mines.
The joint venture, called Northern Appalachia Fuels LLC, will employ SES's U-Gas process to gasify coal to synthetic gas then convert it to methanol, the primary product of the process.
Synthetic Energy then uses its proprietary methanol-to-gasoline process to convert the methanol to gasoline. The company is negotiating with Exxon-Mobil Research and Engineering to license the process.
Continue reading...
- Posted by
- Permalink | Comments (4)
- Scott Doggett July 31, 2008, 3:01 AM
- Categories:
- Alternative Fuels, Coal, Emissions, Ethanol, Flex-Fuel, Fuel Economy, Legislation, Methanol
- Technorati Tags:
- coal-to-gasoline
, Consol Energy Inc., Exxon-Mobile, Fuels LLC, methanol, Synthesis Energy Systems Inc.
The California agency that sets the American standard for automotive emissions today unveiled a much-improved Website that helps consumers choose the least polluting cars on the market.
