9.
Energy for Transportation
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 9
2010 Oct 5. U.S. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels. By Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times. Excerpt: With insurgents increasingly attacking the American fuel supply convoys that lumber across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels.
…Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has pushed rapidly forward. After a decade of waging wars in remote corners of the globe where fuel is not readily available, senior commanders have come to see overdependence on fossil fuel as a big liability, and renewable technologies — which have become more reliable and less expensive over the past few years — as providing a potential answer. These new types of renewable energy now account for only a small percentage of the power used by the armed forces, but military leaders plan to rapidly expand their use over the next decade.
…“There are a lot of profound reasons for doing this, but for us at the core it’s practical,” said Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who has said he wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. That figure includes energy for bases as well as fuel for cars and ships.
…He and other experts also said that greater reliance on renewable energy improved national security, because fossil fuels often came from unstable regions and scarce supplies were a potential source of international conflict.
…While setting national energy policy requires Congressional debates, military leaders can simply order the adoption of renewable energy. And the military has the buying power to create products and markets. That, in turn, may make renewable energy more practical and affordable for everyday uses, experts say.
…Last year, the Navy introduced its first hybrid vessel, a Wasp class amphibious assault ship called the U.S.S. Makin Island, which at speeds under 10 knots runs on electricity rather than on fossil fuel…The Air Force will have its entire fleet certified to fly on biofuels by 2011 and has already flown test flights using a 50-50 mix of plant-based biofuel and jet fuel; the Navy took its first delivery of fuel made from algae this summer.
…This spring, the military invited commercial manufacturers to demonstrate products that might be useful on the battlefield. A small number were selected for further testing. The goal was to see, for example, if cooling systems could handle the 120 degree temperatures often seen in current war zones or if embedded solar panels would make tents more visible to enemy radar.
2010 August 10. Lithium: The Next Frontier in Alternative Energy. By Anton Polouektov. Excerpt: With peak oil occupying the minds of energy experts and the Gulf oil spill acting as a painful reminder of the dangers posed to the environment by our unquenchable thirst for fossil fuels, a rejuvenated interest in alternative energy is sweeping the nation. Electric and hybrid vehicles are currently the most viable alternative to gas-powered engines, and Lithium-Ion batteries are the most viable means of powering them...
....Lithium, the lightweight silver-white alkali metal that stores energy in lithium-ion batteries, has been attracting growing attention from automotive and energy companies over the past several years and the mineral’s meteoric rise to global prominence is seemingly set to continue unabated as a new generation of electric cars begins rolling off the assembly line...
....Critics of Lithium-based energy solutions argue that although Lithium is one of the most common metals in the Earth’s crust, the availability of easily accessible reserves of the mineral may be comparatively limited...He concluded that “the range of future demands for lithium is unsustainable.”...
...Ultimately, the strongest argument in favor of Lithium may be that it is one of the very few truly viable alternative energy solutions available to us today, even though it would not completely alleviate global dependence on oil and natural gas...
…"Better batteries can help us to use the electricity generated by solar and wind in our transportation system, leaving oil for heating and aircraft.” In the end, a switch from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries may be the first step towards finding a real alternative to fossil fuels, but before it is taken, some research still needs to be conducted to determine whether an increase in lithium-ion battery production is sustainable in the long term.
2010 July 23. Berkelely lab co-leads $122 million sunlight-to-fuel effort. By Suzanne Bohan, Contra Costa Times. Excerpt: Plants fuel the world with their ability to convert sunlight into a usable form of energy. Now, the Department of Energy is putting up $122 million to help humans capture the energy of the sun and create renewable liquid fuels through "artificial photosynthesis."
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena were selected to lead the ambitious research project, the Energy Department announced Thursday. Its aim is to master the basic science involved and develop applications that can be scaled up for commercial use....
…Instead of yielding a simple carbohydrate, artificial photosynthesis would be designed to create oxygen and liquid fuels such as hydrocarbons or alcohols that could be directly pumped into vehicles, without additional, costly refinement.
Photosynthesis "happens on the nano scale," said PAUL ALIVISATOS, [UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR and] director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. "There's really a new environment with all the nanotechnology that's been developed."...
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, said that it would create 100 new jobs, not including construction and other contract jobs. It also engages the work of an estimated 200 scientists statewide. Other universities involved in the artificial photosynthesis hub include SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford, UC BERKELEY, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and UC San Diego....
2010 July 26. Exploring Algae As Fuel. By Andrew Pollack, The New York Times. Excerpt: SAN DIEGO — In a laboratory where almost all the test tubes look green, the tools of modern biotechnology are being applied to lowly pond scum.
…The goal is nothing less than to create superalgae, highly efficient at converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into lipids and oils that can be sent to a refinery and made into diesel or jet fuel.
…“There are probably well over 100 academic efforts to use genetic engineering to optimize biofuel production from algae,” said Matthew C. Posewitz, an assistant professor of chemistry at the Colorado School of Mines, who has written a review of the field. “There’s just intense interest globally.”
…The strains can potentially produce 10 or more times more fuel per acre than the corn used to make ethanol or the soybeans used to make biodiesel. Moreover, algae might be grown on arid land and brackish water, so that fuel production would not compete with food production. And algae are voracious consumers of carbon dioxide, potentially helping to keep some of this greenhouse gas from contributing to global warming.
…Not all these traits are being developed by genetic engineering, because in many cases scientists do not know what genes to use. Instead, the company screens thousands of strains each day, looking for organisms with the right properties. Those desirable traits can be further enhanced by breeding or accelerated evolution.
2010 February 18. Road Transportation Emerges As Key Driver of Warming. Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Excerpt: For decades, climatologists have studied the gases and particles that have potential to alter Earth's climate. They have discovered and described certain airborne chemicals that can trap incoming sunlight and warm the climate, while others cool the planet by blocking the Sun's rays.
Now a new study led by Nadine Unger of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City offers a more intuitive way to understand what's changing the Earth's climate. Rather than analyzing impacts by chemical species, scientists have analyzed the climate impacts by different economic sectors.
Each part of the economy, such as ground transportation or agriculture, emits a unique portfolio of gases and aerosols that affect the climate in different ways and on different timescales
…The new analysis offers policy makers and the public a far more detailed and comprehensive understanding of how to mitigate climate change most effectively, Unger and colleagues assert. "Targeting on-road transportation is a win-win-win," she said. "It's good for the climate in the short term and long term, and it's good for our health."
2010 March 9. The Lithium Chase. By Clifford Krauss, NY Times. Excerpt: ...As awareness spreads that lithium is a crucial ingredient for hybrid and electric cars, a global hunt is under way for new supplies of the metal.
Toyota Tsusho, the material supplier for the big Japanese automaker, announced a joint venture in January with the Australian miner Orocobre to develop a $100 million lithium project in Argentina. That deal came only days after Magna International, the Canadian car parts company that is helping develop a battery-powered version of the Ford Focus, announced that it was investing $10 million in a small Canadian lithium firm that also has projects in Argentina.
They were the latest in a series of deals and projects announced over the last year, reflecting a new urgency among companies to assure themselves future supplies of the metal.
...About 60 mining companies have begun feasibility studies in Argentina, Serbia and Nevada that could lead to more than $1 billion in new lithium projects in the next several years, while dozens of smaller projects are being proposed in China, Finland, Mexico and Canada.
The companies are competing for construction financing, and the future of most of the projects will depend on how popular electric cars eventually become. That is an open question since batteries remain expensive, recharging stations need to be developed, and consumer taste for cars that depend on regular stops at electric outlets remains untested....
2010 Feb 18. Orange
peels, newspapers may lead to cheaper,
cleaner ethanol fuel. EurekAlert. Excerpt: Scientists
may have just made the breakthrough
of a lifetime, turning discarded
fruit peels and other throwaways
into cheap, clean fuel to power the
world's vehicles.
University of Central Florida professor
Henry Daniell has developed a groundbreaking
way to produce ethanol from waste products
such as orange peels and newspapers.
His approach is greener and less expensive
than the current methods available
to run vehicles on cleaner fuel – and
his goal is to relegate gasoline to
a secondary fuel.
Daniell's breakthrough can be applied
to several non-food products throughout
the United States, including sugarcane,
switchgrass and straw.
...Daniell's technique – developed
with U.S. Department of Agriculture
funding -- uses plant-derived enzyme
cocktails to break down orange peels
and other waste materials into sugar,
which is then fermented into ethanol.
Corn starch now is fermented and converted
into ethanol. But ethanol derived from
corn produces more greenhouse gas emissions
than gasoline does. Ethanol created
using Daniell's approach produces much
lower greenhouse gas emissions than
gasoline or electricity....
2010 Feb 14. Cities
Prepare for Life With the Electric
Car. By Todd
Woody and Clifford Krauss, NY
Times. Excerpt: SAN
FRANCISCO — If
electric cars have any future in
the United States, this may be the
city where they arrive first.
The San Francisco building code will
soon be revised to require that new
structures be wired for car chargers.
Across the street from City Hall,
some drivers are already plugging
converted hybrids into a row of charging
stations.
In nearby Silicon Valley, companies
are ordering workplace charging stations
in the belief that their employees
will be first in line when electric
cars begin arriving in showrooms.
And at the headquarters of Pacific
Gas and Electric, utility executives
are preparing “heat maps” of
neighborhoods that they fear may
overload the power grid in their
exuberance for electric cars.
...In cities like San Francisco,
Portland, Ore., and San Diego, a
combination of green consciousness
and enthusiasm for new technology
seems to be stirring public interest
in the cars.
The first wave of electric car buying
is expected to begin around December,
when Nissan introduces the Leaf,
a five-passenger electric car that
will have a range of 100 miles on
a fully charged battery and be priced
for middle-class families....
2010 Jan 31. An
Electric Boost for Bicyclists. By J. David Goodman,
The NY Times. Excerpt:
...Detroit may be introducing electric
car designs and China may be pushing
forward with a big expansion of its
highways and trains. But people like
Mr. Jiang, Ms. Wijzenbeek-Voet and
Mr. Chiu — as
well as delivery workers in New York,
postal employees in Germany and commuters
from Canada to Japan — are
among the millions taking part in
a more accidental transportation
upheaval.
It began in China, where an estimated
120 million electric bicycles now
hum along the roads, up from a few
thousand in the 1990s. They are replacing
traditional bikes and motorcycles
at a rapid clip and, in many cases,
allowing people to put off the switch
to cars.
In turn, the booming Chinese electric-bike
industry is spurring worldwide interest
and impressive sales in India, Europe
and the United States. China is exporting
many bikes, and Western manufacturers
are also copying the Chinese trend
to produce models of their own. From
virtually nothing a decade ago, electric
bikes have become an $11 billion
global industry....
2010 Jan 28. Biofuel advance made in Bay Area, researchers say. By Suzanne Bohan, Contra Costa Times. Excerpt: Researchers in Emeryville have engineered a microbe that produces biodiesel fuel directly from plant waste and grasses, according to a study published Thursday in the Journal Nature. The development was hailed as a major milestone in a federal initiative to develop new forms of transportation fuels to ease the country's dependence on foreign oil and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. "This is a very important advance," said Jay Keasling, chief executive of the Joint Bioenergy Institute and acting deputy director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, which manages the Joint Bioenergy Institute.
...Energy Secretary Steven Chu sent an excited message praising the advance, Keasling said. The institute, which opened in late 2008 with the mandate of developing commercially viable alternates to corn-based ethanol within five years, has a $125 million Department of Energy grant. ..."This was about making a fuel that would work with our existing infrastructure" for diesel, Keasling said. ...extracting fuel from tough plant material called "cellulosic biomass." The biomass can be taken from agricultural waste material or can be grown on marginal land unsuitable for farming. The bacteria, a strain of the laboratory workhorse E. coli, can convert materials such as straw, wood chips or grass directly into fatty acids used as fuels. ...The challenge now is going from laboratory flask to commercial-scale fermentation tanks to produce vast quantities of fuel. ...Worldwide for diesel fuel is growing, the Nature study noted. The Emeryville scientists also plan to manipulate bacteria to produce biodiesel for jet planes.
See also
"Carbon Cycle 2.0: Jay Keasling: Biofuels" (videolecture on YouTube, 2010 Feb 16 - 35 min)
2009 December 22. Solar
Car-Charging Comes to New York.
By Jim Motavalli, The
NY Times. Excerpt:
When the sun shines on the docks
of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the Beautiful
Earth Group's solar charging station
is making electricity to power
the company's leased, battery-powered
Mini E.
The Beautiful Earth Group, started
last year, builds and operates solar
and wind farms, the first of them
in the Southwest. Lex Heslin, chief
executive of Beautiful Earth, claims
two firsts: He got the keys to the
first Mini E (an electric version
of the Mini Cooper) in New York last
May and his company is operating
the city's first solar E.V. charging
station....
The drive-in station ... has 5.6-kilowatt
capacity from 24 Sharp 235-watt photovoltaic
panels and can recharge the Mini
E in three hours.
Mr. Heslin does say, however, that
solar car-charging will inevitably
be somewhat limited in New York City.
Skyscrapers not only block the sun,
he said, but are also shaded by other
buildings. And, he said, the rooftop
footprints of the stations are too
small for large-scale generation. "There
are a few locations in New York City
where it will work, but they are
the exception rather than the rule," he
said
...Tesla Motors and SolarCity opened
a charging corridor between San Francisco
and Los Angeles (at four Rabobank
branches) in September.
...Coulomb Technologies, based in
Silicon Valley, has built 450 charging
stations around the world, and several
of them have been hooked into solar
panels. According to its chief executive,
Richard Lowenthal, Coulomb has formed
a partnership with Envision Solar
to integrate its ChargePoint technology
into, among other places, a "solar
grove" at Dell headquarters
in Round Rock, Tex. Dell's system
has two solar-to-electric charging
stations and 11 large "solar
trees" producing 131,000 kilowatt
hours annually. The "trees" (elevated
platforms with 516 BP solar modules)
double as shade for 56 parking spaces....
2009 August 19. Toyota,
Hybrid Innovator, Holds Back in
Race to Go Electric. By Hiroko
Tabuchi, The NY Times.
Excerpt:
...Mitsubishi Motors started leasing
its all-electric vehicle, the i-MiEV,
in June. Next year, Nissan Motor
is set to release its electric car,
the Leaf. But Toyota does not plan
to introduce an all-electric car
until 2012. Instead, later this year,
it plans to introduce a plug-in electric-gasoline
hybrid, and only a few hundred initially.
...Electric technology could help determine
winners and losers in the auto industry
of the future, but Toyota has been
highly skeptical of electrical vehicles.
“The time is not here,” Masatami
Takimoto, Toyota’s executive
vice president, said during a factory
tour this year.
Electric cars “face many challenges,” he
said, adding that “to commercialize
pure E.V.’s, we need a battery
that far exceeds the current technology.”
If Toyota is right, its competitors
will have spent billions on a technology
that will be slow to take off.
But if electric cars win drivers over,
Toyota’s rivals could take the
lead.
...Toyota executives rattle off reasons
to be skeptical of electric cars: They
do not travel far enough on a charge;
their batteries are expensive and not
reliable; the electrical infrastructure
is not in place to recharge them.
...Toyota is instead building on its
hybrid technology, bringing out a plug-in,
gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle later
this year that runs a short distance
on batteries before the hybrid system
kicks in....
2009 August 16. A
New Test for Business and Biofuel.
By Kirk Johnson, The NY Times. Excerpt:
IGNACIO, Colo. — ...With the
twin goals of making fuel from algae
and reducing emissions of heat-trapping
gases, a start-up company co-founded
by a Colorado State University professor
recently introduced a strain of algae
that loves carbon dioxide into a
water tank next to a natural gas
processing plant. The water is already
green-tinged with life.
The Southern Utes, one of the nation’s
wealthiest American Indian communities
thanks to its energy and real-estate
investments, is a major investor
in the professor’s company.
It hopes to gain a toehold in what
tribal leaders believe could be the
next billion-dollar energy boom.
But from the tribe’s perspective,
the business model here is about
more than business. “It’s
a marriage of an older way of thinking
into a modern time,” said the
tribe’s chairman, Matthew J.
Box, referring to the interplay of
environmental consciousness and investment
opportunity around algae.
...The Colorado State professor,
Bryan Willson, who teaches mechanical
engineering and is a co-founder of
the three-year-old company Solix
Biofuels, said working with the Southern
Utes on their land afforded his company
advantages that would have been impossible
in mainstream corporate America.
The tribe contributed almost one-third
of the $20 million in capital raised
by Solix, free use of land and more
than $1 million in equipment....
...More than 200 other companies
are also trying to find a cost-effective,
scalable way to achieve the same
end — turning algae into vegetable
oil fuel, according to the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federal
research center in Golden, Colo.
Just last month, Exxon said it planned
to throw $600 million into its own
algae project, dwarfing Solix’s
financial base about fiftyfold. Like
most oil-to-fuel efforts, the Solix
project focuses on making biodiesel,
which can be used in a regular diesel
engine....
2009 July 31. The
Food, Energy and Environment ‘Trilemma’.
By John Lorinc, The NY Times.
Excerpt: At the 2009 Bio World Congress
on Industrial Biotechnology, held in
Montreal last week, industry players
and scientists found themselves pondering
two seemingly contradictory concerns.
One focused on how rapid advances in
genetic engineering and biotechnology
can expand the market for cellulosic
ethanol and other “second-generation
biofuels,” which are touted as
low-emission substitutes for corn ethanol
(itself a partial substitute for gasoline).
The other involved the problem of ensuring
that exponential growth in the global
biofuel market — which is projected
to grow 12.3 percent a year through
2017, according to one recent study
of the industry — will not hurt
the environment and divert vast tracks
of arable land needed for food or grain
production.
A paper published in Science earlier
this month, referred to the triple
challenges of energy, environment and
food as the biofuel “trilemma.” The
authors identified five “beneficial” sources
of biomass: perennial plants grown
on abandoned farm fields, crop residue,
sustainably harvested wood residue,
double or mixed crops, and industrial/municipal
waste.
“In a world seeking solutions
to its energy, environmental, and food
challenges, society cannot afford to
miss out on the global greenhouse-gas
emission reductions and the local environmental
and societal benefits when biofuels
are done right,” the authors
state. “However, society also
cannot accept the undesirable impacts
of biofuels done wrong.”...
2009 July 13. Exxon
to Invest Millions to Make Fuel
From Algae. By Jad Mouawad,
The NY Times. Excerpt:
...On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce
an investment of $600 million in
producing liquid transportation fuels
from algae — organisms
in water that range from pond scum
to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves
a partnership with Synthetic Genomics,
a biotechnology company founded by
the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.
The agreement could plug a major
gap in the strategy of Exxon, the
world’s largest and richest
publicly traded oil company, which
has been criticized by environmental
groups for dismissing concerns about
global warming in the past and its
reluctance to develop renewable fuels.
...Exxon’s sincerity and commitment
will almost certainly be questioned
by its most galvanized environmentalist
critics, especially when compared
with the company’s extraordinary
profits from petroleum in recent
years.
“Research is great, but we
need to see new products in the market,” Kert
Davies, the research director at
Greenpeace, said. “We’ve
always said that major oil companies
have to be involved. But the question
is whether companies are simply paying
lip service to something or whether
they are putting their weight and
power behind it.”
...Currently, about 9 percent of
the nation’s liquid fuel supply
comes from biofuels — most
of it corn-based ethanol. And by
2022, Congress has mandated that
biofuel levels reach 36 billion gallons.
...According to Exxon, algae could
yield more than 2,000 gallons of
fuel per acre of production each
year, compared with 650 gallons for
palm trees and 450 gallons for sugar
canes. Corn yields just 250 gallons
per acre a year....
2009 May 7. U.S.
Drops Research Into Fuel Cells
for Cars. By Matthew
L. Wald, The NY Times. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Cars
powered by hydrogen fuel cells, once
hailed by President George W. Bush
as a pollution-free solution for
reducing the nation’s dependence
on foreign oil, will not be practical
over the next 10 to 20 years, the
energy secretary said Thursday, and
the government will cut off funds
for the vehicles’ development.
Developing those cells and coming
up with a way to transport the hydrogen
is a big challenge, Energy Secretary
Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related
details of the administration’s
budget for the year beginning Oct.
1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred
to focus on projects that would bear
fruit more quickly.
The retreat from cars powered by
fuel cells counters Mr. Bush’s
prediction in 2003 that “the
first car driven by a child born
today could be powered by hydrogen,
and pollution-free.” The Energy
Department will continue to pay for
research into stationary fuel cells,
which Dr. Chu said could be used
like batteries on the power grid
and do not require compact storage
of hydrogen.
...“We’re very devoted
to delivering solutions — not
just science papers, but solutions — but
it will require some basic science,” Dr.
Chu, who won a Nobel Prize for his
work in physics, said at a news conference....
2009 Spring. Solar
Fueling Stations: Building a Zero
Emissions Transportation Future. (PDF) By Sara Schedler, Friends
of the Earth newsmagazine. Excerpt:
...Transportation currently accounts
for more than one-third of all U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions and is rapidly
growing. In order to quickly and
substantially reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from transportation and
achieve energy independence as a
nation, we must fundamentally transform
our vehicles and the fuel they use.
Plug-in electric vehicles, fueled
by renewable energy sources such
as solar, offer a vital solution
to achieving these goals. ...Recognizing
the important role plug- in vehicles
can play in solving our greenhouse
gas and oil dependence problems,
President Obama has set goals of
putting one million plug-ins on the
road by 2015, requiring that at least
50 percent of all federal fleet purchases
be plug-ins by 2012, and converting
the White House fleet to plug-ins
(security-permitting). Today, a plug-in
charged from the cleaner California
electric grid can reduce emissions
by up to 62 percent compared to a
conventional car. But, when the electricity
used to fuel plug-in cars is produced
from 100 percent renewable sources
such as solar energy, greenhouse
gas emissions from cars can approach
zero. Friends of the Earth is pursuing
this vision and working with legislators,
regulatory agencies, and businesses
to develop solar-powered charging
stations (i.e. sun fuel stations)
that can fuel plug- in cars directly
from the sun. A solar fueling station
is essentially a carport upon which
solar panels are mounted and underneath
which cars park and charge from provided
outlets. These stations not only
charge cars, but can also feed the
grid with clean energy or provide
energy for the onsite host building(s)
when cars are not being charged.
...Solar fueling stations will also
significantly contribute towards
the emerging green economy and help
support a burgeoning green collar
workforce. Importantly, by using
existing built space such as parking
lots to generate fuel, solar fueling
stations encourage infill development
and cut down on the use of virgin
land for solar power generation.
...there are approximately 90 million
parking spaces in California and
if just one-third of all parking
spaces in the state were converted
to solar fueling stations, they could
generate enough fuel to power the
average daily commute for the majority
of Californian cars on the road....
2009 April 5. India's
electric car captures imagination. By Daniel Pepper,
San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt:
Indian cities are typically clogged
with hulking buses, braying bullock
carts and motorbikes - stacked with
as many as five people - that cause
commuters to idle for hours in traffic.
Despite such urban chaos, many Indians
pine for a vehicle that they can call
their own. A Mumbai auto manufacturer
has answered the call, introducing
the world's cheapest car on March 23.
At $2,000, the Tata Nano is a five-seat,
air-conditioned, gasoline-powered car
that environmental activists predict
will further pollute smog-filled Indian
cities.
While the Tata Nano has received much
international publicity, India's other
automotive innovation - the Reva-i
- has quietly become the world's best-selling
electric car...
The Maini Group, the Bangalore company
that manufactures the car... has sold
more electric vehicles than any other
company - 3,000 - to at least 20 major
cities throughout Europe, Asia and
Latin America....
...The Reva-i is not yet available
in the United States. Like many European
models, strict safety and testing regulations
make the price of entering the U.S.
market prohibitively expensive....
Nevertheless, the Reva appears to be
catching on globally.
...Unlike the much-anticipated GM Volt,
due in 2010, the Reva is all electric,
with no gas option. The plug-in vehicle
turns on with the flick of a dial and
rolls almost silently into traffic.
Its manufacturer, the Maini Group,
is about to introduce its third-generation
model, which will be the same shape
and size as its two previous versions.
...Reva expects to triple its sales
in 2009. There are 3,000 on the road
in Europe, Asia and Latin America,
and a state-of-the-art plant in Bangalore
near completion is expected to eventually
churn out 30,000 cars a year....
2009 April 1. China
Vies to Be World’s
Leader in Electric Cars. By Keith
Bradsher, The NY Times. Excerpt:
TIANJIN, China — Chinese leaders
have adopted a plan aimed at turning
the country into one of the leading
producers of hybrid and all-electric
vehicles within three years, and
making it the world leader in electric
cars and buses after that.
The goal, which radiates from the
very top of the Chinese government,
suggests that Detroit’s Big
Three, already struggling to stay
alive, will face even stiffer foreign
competition on the next field of
automotive technology than they do
today.
“China is well positioned to
lead in this,” said David Tulauskas,
director of China government policy
at General Motors.
To some extent, China is making a
virtue of a liability. It is behind
the United States, Japan and other
countries when it comes to making
gas-powered vehicles, but by skipping
the current technology, China hopes
to get a jump on the next.
...But electric vehicles may do little
to clear the country’s smog-darkened
sky or curb its rapidly rising emissions
of global warming gases. China gets
three-fourths of its electricity
from coal, which produces more soot
and more greenhouse gases than other
fuels.
A report by McKinsey & Company
last autumn estimated that replacing
a gasoline-powered car with a similar-size
electric car in China would reduce
greenhouse emissions by only 19 percent.
It would reduce urban pollution,
however, by shifting the source of
smog from car exhaust pipes to power
plants, which are often located outside
cities....
2009 Feb 27. On
the Fast Track.
by Craig Canine, OnEarth Magazine
- NRDC. The rest of the developed
world has high-speed rail. We don't.
That's finally about to change.
...Several states are improving existing
rail lines with the goal of offering "medium-fast" (around
110 mph) service within the decade
(see "Slow,
Slow, Quick-Quick, Slow," this issue),
but California has pulled into the
lead as the probable site of America's
first true high-speed (top operating
speed: 220 mph) system.
Supporters hope it will be whizzing
passengers between Los Angeles and
San Francisco by 2020. Once the technology
has a foothold in the United States,
its rapid spread will become more
and more likely as the economic,
environmental, and practical benefits
sink in.
State-of-the-art high-speed rail
systems don't come cheap, but the
price of not building them will be
astronomical, in both economic and
environmental terms. As far as the
planet's climate is concerned, high-speed
rail can't come fast enough.
Trains, even painfully slow ones
powered by diesel engines, are inherently
efficient compared with other ways
of moving people and cargo. The reasons
have to do with basic physics. Steel
wheels on steel tracks have much
lower rolling resistance than rubber
tires on pavement. One train uses
less energy to overcome wind resistance
than the number of trucks or cars
that would be needed to haul an equal
load the same distance. A single
freight train can take as many as
280 trucks off the highway and uses
a quarter as much fuel as an average
truck to move a ton one mile. Amtrak
passenger trains, hardly paragons
of up-to-date technology, consume
on average 18 percent less energy
per passenger mile than airplanes
and 27 percent less than cars. So
policies that encourage and expand
rail transport will yield net reductions
in both oil dependence and greenhouse
gas emissions.
... High-speed trains take the environmental
advantages of conventional passenger
rail and supercharge them. All of
today's high-speed rail systems run
on electricity drawn from overhead
wires, which powers motors in the
trains' locomotives. Electric motors
are roughly three times more efficient
than internal combustion engines
in converting energy into mechanical
force. Recent generations of high-speed
trains use superefficient motors;
regenerative braking (which captures
energy that would otherwise be lost
as heat, then converts it back into
electricity and returns it to the
grid); and advanced, lightweight
materials to boost their comparative
efficiency even further.
Independent research commissioned
by Eurostar, which operates high-speed
trains between London and Europe
through the Channel Tunnel, has shown
that a passenger who flies from London
to Paris (214 miles) or Brussels
(199 miles) generates 10 times more
carbon dioxide than one who rides
on a high-speed train.
2009 February 26. $25
Billion to Promote Electric Cars
Is Untouched.
By Leslie Wayne, The NY Times. Excerpt:
The Energy Department has $25 billion
to make loans to hasten the arrival
of the next generation of automotive
technology — electric-powered
cars. But no money has been allocated
so far, even though the Advanced
Technology Vehicles Manufacturing
Loan program, established in 2007,
has received applications from 75
companies, including start-ups as
well as the three Detroit automakers.
With General Motors and Chrysler
making repeat visits to Washington
to ask for bailout money to stave
off insolvency, some members of Congress
are starting to ask why the Energy
Department money is not flowing yet.
The loans also are intended to help
fulfill President Obama’s campaign
promise of putting one million electric
cars on American roads by 2015.
...Energy Department staff members
said they were still sifting through
loan applications, dozens of which
arrived on the filing deadline of
Dec. 31. On top of that, another
$2 billion is coming to the department
from the $787 billion stimulus package.
That money will be used to develop
the advanced battery technology needed
to power electric cars, batteries
more durable, safer and cheaper than
anything available today....
2009 February 21. British
Fight Climate Change With Fish
and Chips. By Elisabeth
Rosenthal, The NY Times. Excerpt:
NUNEATON, England — As he has
done frequently over the last 18
months, Andy Roost drove his blue
diesel Peugeot 205 onto a farm, where
signs pointed one way for “eggs” and
another for “oil.”
He unscrewed the gas cap and chatted
nonchalantly as Colin Friedlos, the
proprietor, poured three large jugs
of used cooking oil — tinted
green to indicate environmental benefit — into
the Peugeot’s gas tank.
Mr. Friedlos operates one of hundreds
of small plants in Britain that are
processing, and often selling to
private motorists, used cooking oil,
which can be poured directly into
unmodified diesel cars, from Fords
to Mercedes.
...Here, ...the direct-to-the-tank
approach is gaining a bit of mainstream
popularity, attracting people like
Mr. Roost... The oil, he said, is “good
for the environment and it’s
cheaper than diesel, even now that
prices have dropped.” It costs
$4.88 per gallon, which is about
10 percent less than diesel costs
now — and about one-third less
than diesel cost at its peak last
year. Used cooking oil will never
erase the need for filling stations,
nor will it, by itself, reverse climate
change, transportation experts say.
“You can’t eat enough
French fries” to serve all
the cars driven in the West, said
Peder Jensen, a transport specialist
at the European Environment Agency.
At most, he said, cooking oil might
supplant a few percent of diesel
fuel consumption. But he said that
it was one of many small adjustments
that, added together, could have
an important effect on reducing emissions
of greenhouse gases....
2009 Feb 18. CITY
OF SAN FRANCISCO UNVEILS CHARGING
STATIONS FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES.
Campbell, Calif. Based Coulomb
Technologies Powers Public Charging
Stations at San Francisco City
Hall to be Used for Fleet and Car-Share
Plug-in Automobiles. SAN
FRANCISCO - Coulomb Technologies,
the leader in electric vehicle infrastructure,
today announced the City of San Francisco
has installed its Smartlet Networked
Charging Stations at City Hall. The
charging stations are a part of a
two-year public demonstration conducted
with the City of San Francisco -
a pilot project to power San Francisco's
plug-in fleet and car-share plug-in
vehicles. Coulomb's charging infrastructure
is providing the City of San Francisco
special networked features that address
electric vehicle fleet needs. Unveiling
of the charging stations came today
in a press conference with Mayor
Gavin Newsom and Coulomb CEO Richard
Lowenthal announcing the City's Green
Vehicle Showcase outside City Hall,
and is part of the Bay Area's regional
EV initiative.
"Our goal is to transform the
Bay Area into the EV Capital of the
United States, and a networked infrastructure
is essential for the adoption of
electric vehicles," said San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "San
Francisco is proud to be the first
city to feature charging stations
with technology to support our city's
clean electric fleet vehicles and
car-share fleets."....
2009 January. The
Interdisciplinary Study of Biofuels-Understanding
questions and finding solutions
through biology, chemistry, and
physics. Philip D.
Weyman. NSTA, the Science Teacher.
Excerpt: From media news coverage
to fluctuating gas prices, the hot
topic of energy is hard to ignore.
However, little connection often
exists between energy use in our
daily lives and the presentation
of energy-related concepts in the
science classroom. The concepts of
energy production and consumption
bring together knowledge from several
science disciplines to both enhance
student understanding and seek solutions
to important global problems. Students
learn the second law of thermodynamics,
photosynthesis, and Ohm's law in
the classroom, but they may not see
the direct application of these concepts
to their daily lives-from the electricity
that powers their computers to the
ethanol-blended gasoline that fuels
their cars. Students may have even
more trouble relating to the world's
rapidly emerging energy crisis. As
global demand for energy increases,
supplies of liquid transportation
fuels used to power our cars, trucks,
and airplanes decrease, leading to
a potential crisis in their cost
and availability (Hudson 2005). In
addition, increasing evidence points
toward planetary climate changes
resulting from carbon dioxide emissions
associated with burning fossil fuels.
Substituting biofuel for fossil fuel
is one potential solution to these
energy problems. This article provides
an overview of activities and discussions
teachers can use to address the questions
raised about biofuels in biology,
chemistry, and physics classes....
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 9 |
|
GSS
Energy Use Up-To-Date
Homepage
Chapters
-
How People Use Energy
- Energy
Basics
- Fossil
Fuels
- Field
Trip to a Power Plant
- America
Plugged In
- Energy
in Society
- Energy
for Lighting
- Energy
for Heating and Cooling
- Energy
for Transportation
- Our
Energy Future
TOPICS
ForgeFX
Interactive 3D simulation by
Prentice Hall - 4-STROKE ENGINE
- allows the student to explore how
a four stroke engine works and to
gain an understanding of the different
strokes involved.
Fuel
efficiency data
AAA
Gas watcher's guide
|
