May 2010 Archives
May 28 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
A nonpartisan study released by the Peterson Institute for International Economics claims the American Power Act would create 200,000 additional jobs each year. Still, some conservative lawmakers claim the bill would have an adverse economic impact. Some more liberal lawmakers are uncomfortable with some aspects of the legislation as well, such as the call for increased offshore oil drilling. The bill, introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), seems to be stalling in the Senate. Similar legislation passed in the U.S. House of representatives about a year ago.
The animal most associated with global warming – and Coca-Cola® – may be the polar bear, but a new study shows much smaller furry mammals like the gopher could also take quite a jolt if temperature increases continue. Researchers studied remnants from the planet’s last major bout of global warming, believed to be 12,000 years ago. They claim that in addition to the many large mammal populations that have suffered, the number of small mammal species has dropped 30 percent. “The small-mammal community that we have is really resilient, but it is headed toward a perturbation that is bigger than anything it has seen in the last million years,” said one of the study’s co-authors.
A Nepalese Sherpa who has climbed Mount Everest on 20 separate occasions claims glacial melting caused by global warming is making the ascent increasingly dangerous. A report from scientists at University College London said the Himalayan glaciers are retreating faster than many others around the world, at rates ranging from 10 to 60 meters per year. "It is difficult for climbers to use their crampons on the rocky surfaces," said Apa, who uses only one name. In addition to being a skilled mountain climber, Apa is also an environmentalist. His Eco-Everest trips have collected 7,630 pounds of trash from the slopes of the mountain.
May 28 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico threatens 32 national wildlife refuges in five states -- Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Zoos and aquariums are mobilizing to offer help from veterinarians, zookeepers and animal technicians and also provide animal food and vehicles. Oiled sea turtles have been placed at the Audubon Aquatic Center in Louisiana for care and cleaning, and the Minnesota Zoo is sending toothbrushes and towels to help remove the oil caked on the turtles, the New York Times Green blog reports.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the water quality at local beaches this summer is cleaner and safer thanks to recent improvements in sewage systems. San Francisco's Aquatic Park, China Beach and Ocean Beach near Sloat Blvd. got A's and B's year-round for water quality, according to a study by Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay; the firm studies pathogens and bacteria levels at 465 California beaches. In winter, however, heavy rains can cause untreated sewage to flow into the bay and ocean in some areas, raising bacteria levels at a number of beaches, including popular Baker Beach in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Former President George W. Bush scored some green points this week in a speech at the American Wind Energy Association's annual conference in Dallas. His ranch in Crawford, Tex., is equipped with a rainwater collector and uses geothermal energy, and Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University will be LEED-certified. As Texas governor, Bush signed a renewable portfolio standard that pushed Texas to the leading U.S. wind power producer. "The overall trend in my judgment is that new technologies will find new ways to power our lives," he said. "I fully believe that hybrid plug-ins will be a transition to electric cars" and new ways to generate electricity will be needed.
May 27 2010
The road to hellish global warming is paved with . . . asphalt.
Not only is asphalt the surface over which most CO2-belching land vehicles travel (or park)—America alone has more than two million miles of asphalt roadway—it’s a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in its own right.
Typically cooked at 300-325 degrees F, the production of asphalt creates about 45.6 pounds of CO2 per ton, according to the EPA.
With about 18 billion tons of asphalt pavement on
Fortunately, there’s something we can do about it. Led by advances in
The European Asphalt Pavement Association reports that lowering the mixing temperature by 18 degrees F results in reducing greenhouse emissions by about 50 percent. And one American expert estimates that adoption of warm-mix asphalt could lower
Warm-mix asphalt has been used sporadically in a number of states, including along Highway 1 in
Three leading asphalt producers in the
You don’t have to be an avid reader of Rock & Dirt magazine, or proudly display an “I Love Asphalt” bumper sticker on your 4x4, to be excited by such innovations if they pave the way to a cleaner, cooler world.
May 26 2010
I just learned from Microsoft that I'm a failure at energy efficiency.
That wasn’t the answer I expected, or hoped to hear, when I logged onto the company’s newly upgraded Microsoft Hohm website to check up on my home energy use.
"Starting today,” the Redmond-based software giant declared, “more than 60 million homeowners will be able to answer one simple question: ‘Am I an energy hog or an energy miser?’”
I guess I know now what they really think of me. Oink, oink.
Here’s how it works. After logging into the site and giving it your home address, up pops an aerial photo of your dwelling and basic information about square footage, year built, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and heating and cooling systems.
Microsoft Hohm then applies various algorithms, developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, to estimate your total home energy usage, compare it to averages for similar homes in
At first the program gave me a score of 82. I felt pretty smug—that was higher than the average for
But then I told it in more detail about my heating system, windows, thermostat settings and the like, and my score dropped to a mere 63, just average for homes of similar size and vintage in
In my defense, our entire energy bill for the last 12 months was less than $750. (We’ve worn a lot of sweaters and heavy socks this spring.) That compares to an average of $1,866 for similar homes in
The website gave me several suggestions for saving energy, like lowering my hot water temperature from lukewarm to barely tepid, and replacing my two remaining incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents.
But some of its proposals were off the charts, like installing triple-paned, argon gas wood frame windows at a cost of up to $9,000. That might save me $75 a year, according to the website.
Just for comparison, I tried PG&E’s home energy analyzer for the first time. To my surprise, because it hasn't gotten much publicity, it offered an even more customized analysis of potential home improvements. I liked the fact that it warns of potential options that are likely not cost effective, as well as those with reasonable payback periods. It also provides lots of free tips for minimizing energy waste.
Best of all, PG&E’s energy analyzer compared me very favorably to other customers. If I have to look in a mirror, this is the one I want.
Note to Microsoft: unless you change my grade in the next 30 days, I might just switch to Apple.
May 25 2010
My colleague Matt Nauman filed this dispatch from Vacaville, Calif.:
For those who still consider electric vehicles as a short-range technology unready for prime time, a trip to a fast-food restaurant in
Located next to a Sonic drive-in restaurant just off I-80 is what will soon be (once certified) the first publicly accessible Quick Charger in the
With it, certain EVs can go from a 20-percent charge to an 80-percent charge in less than a half hour—just enough time to grab a Bacon Cheeseburger Toaster and a Cherry Limeade for the road. In contrast, a regular 110-volt household charger takes 12 hours for a full charge.
That location isn’t by happenstance, as
Last week, Mitsubishi invited the motoring press to test Japanese production versions of its diminutive iMiEV in a drive from
In
This Quick Charger, which also serves the Nissan Leaf, was built in Japan, but Eaton and a few other companies have licensed the technology and plan to introduce them to the North American market.
Efraim Ornelas, senior program manager with PG&E’s Clean Air Transportation Department, said the Quick Charger will help the utility understand how EV drivers react to the interface and evaluate the charger’s impact on the grid.
PG&E, which sees great potential for electric vehicles, has been testing a pre-production version of the iMiEV for about a year now. Ornelas and his colleagues have put just over 10,000 kilometers on the iMieEV he has been driving. The utility will add 10 Chevy Volts to its fleet later this year as part of a DOE demonstration project with GM and the Electric Power Resarch Institute.
May 24 2010
Recycling newspapers and plastic bottles is all fine and good, but what the world really needs is more intensive recycling of rare specialty metals that have become critical to the electronics and clean tech industries, according to a new report sponsored by the United Nations.
As discussed in NEXT100, so-called "rare earth elements," and scarce platinum-group metals are vital to production of hybrid car motors and batteries, wind turbines, energy-efficient light bulbs, catalytic converters and many other "green" technologies. Yet all are expensive, available only in relatively tiny quantities, and often concentrated in only a handful of supply countries like
A new draft report by the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, sponsored by the UN Environment Programme, notes that “despite concern among the clean tech industry over scarcity and high prices, only around one per cent of these crucial high-tech metals are recycled, with the rest discarded and thrown away at the end of a product's life.”
Unless recycling rates are dramatically increased, the report warns, these vital raw materials could become "essentially unavailable for use in modern technology."
In addition to stretching supplies of important raw materials, better recycling of cell phones and other electronics gear would save millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the report adds. (Today, less than 10 percent of cell phones worldwide are recycled properly.) Such recycling could also unlock new supplies of more common but important metals such as copper and steel.
As Thomas Graedel, professor of Industrial Ecology at
One of the phenomena of our modern, industrial age is that increasingly metal stocks are "above ground" in structures such as buildings and ships and products from cell phones to personal computers.
For example around 240 kg of copper per person in the
Yet these above ground supplies of both common and specialty metals represent an extraordinary resource for sustainable development not only in terms of supplies but also the opportunity for reducing energy demand while curbing pollution, including rising greenhouse gas emissions.
May 21 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Reports released by the National Research Council warn the longer we wait to begin making a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, the harder and more expensive it will be. Congress commissioned the report as part of a series focused on global warming. The authors claim a carbon pricing system is the most cost effective way to drive change. They also state we need to start a measurable budget for greenhouse gas emissions - adding that to really make an impact, we must depart from “business as usual emissions trends, which in the U.S. have been rising at the rate of one percent per year for the last three decades.”
Glacial melting in Greenland is being linked to coastal rising. A recent study completed by University of Miami scientists claims some coastal areas are rising by nearly one inch per year. If current trends continue, scientists fear that figure could increase to two inches per year by 2025. "Greenland's ice melt is very important because it has a big impact on global sea level rise," one of the study’s co-authors said. "We hope that our work reaches the general public and that this information is considered by policy makers."
The Obama administration submitted its revised plan for running the hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers while minimizing the impact on wild salmon runs. The plan covers 10 years of hydropower operations. It will help to combat global warming as hydropower is a source of carbon-free electricity generation. In addition, fish and wildlife experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the plan will not put critical fish habitat in jeopardy. The plan is supported by a majority of Northwest tribes and states. Its opponents include the state of Oregon, the Nez Perce Tribe and a coalition of fishing and conservation groups, who argue it favors power production and shipping interests rather than threatened and endangered fish.
Pacific island nations are asking the UN Security Council to break the stalemate in negotiations over a global warming treaty, comparing global warming to an invading army. In a letter to the UN, the 11 nations that make up the Pacific Small Island Developing States asserted the threat they face due to a warming world is comparable to damage inflicted on a nation resulting from armed conflict. The group said global warming is contributing to severe food and water shortages in the Pacific and already making refugees of people in Vanuatu, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
May 21 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
A poem about sewage treatment plants? Sixth grader Jeffrey Weiner was one of the winners in New York City's Water Resources and Poetry Contest, sponsored for 24 years by the city's Department of Environmental Protection. The contest for children in fourth, fifth and sixth grades raises awareness about the importance of the quality of the city's drinking water and its water supply and treatment systems. Here's Jeffrey's poem:
Treatment at wastewater plants must be quite quick,
To remove the pollutants so you don't get sick.
In a mere seven hours, the job is complete,
Compared to weeks in nature to perform the same feat!
Concord, Mass., has outlawed the sale of bottled water, the first U.S. municipality to adopt the ban. The city says the bottles are not reusable, contribute too much waste and use too much energy to manufacture. The International Bottled Water Association is threatening legal action to reverse the measure. The industry group says that based on figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic water bottles are recycled at a rate of 31 percent, making them the single most recycled product. The Concord ban is to go into effect next January 1.
Hewlett-Packard researchers see opportunities to power data centers with biogas extracted from livestock waste for companies like Google and Microsoft. "Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship," says HP scientist Chandrakant Patel, adding data centers in rural areas will give dairy farmers new opportunities, the New York Times reports. HP doesn't have immediate plans for a biogas-powered data center.
May 19 2010
By now, most of us know that putting solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on our roofs can be a great way to lower bills and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, many don't know about a more economical way to go solar -- solar water heating. It just got a lot more economical thanks to a new statewide program.
Solar water heating has been widely adopted outside the US. In China, for example, there are 27 million rooftop solar water heater installations. According to Lester R. Brown of Earth Policy Institute, these installations generate the same amount of electricity as 49 coal-fired power plants.
In addition, millions of Europeans are harnessing the power of the sun to heat their water and interior spaces. The European Solar Thermal Industry Federation has set a goal of 500 million square meters of rooftop collectors by 2020. That's one square meter for every person in Europe. (According to Brown, Cyprus is the world leader today with 0.93 square meters per person.)
Yet, here in the US, the rooftop solar water heating industry is just getting started. This slow start is not because the technology is unknown. It's because the solar industry in the US focused on selling solar water heaters specifically for swimming pools and PV for rooftops. Between 1995 and 2005, the industry sold 10 million square meters of solar water heaters for swimming pools.
As explained by Peter Gleick, an international water expert and president of the Oakland-based research organization Pacific Institute, "All the focus here is on photovoltaics and solar thermal (power) systems, but solar hot water heaters...are far more cost effective than photovoltaics, especially in the Southwest."
In an effort to make up for lost time, California recently expanded its statewide solar initiative -- now limited to PV installations -- to include rebates for solar water heaters.
As the California Public Utilities Commission explains, the rebate program is designed to spur market transformation of solar water heaters. The typical system displacing natural gas will initially qualify for an incentive of $1,500, and the average electric-displacing system will qualify for an incentive of $1,000. Over time, as the market grows, these incentives will fall, so act soon!
Not just for swimming pools any more, solar water heaters finally seem ready for their debut in the American home.
May 19 2010
Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, coming to showrooms soon, will be clean, cool, quiet and fuel-efficient. But will they sell? That’s the billion dollar question.
Sales projections are all over the map—ranging from two to 10 percent of all new cars by 2020. A lot depends on how far battery prices come down and whether customers can be convinced to make do with limited range (for pure electrics) and recharging options.
The president of Honda’s R&D unit told Bloomberg News that he doesn’t believe electric vehicles have much of a future. “It’s questionable whether consumers will accept the annoyances of limited driving range and having to spend time charging them,” he said this week.
On the other hand, Nissan says it’s already racked up 17,000 pre-orders from American and Japanese buyers for its all-electric Leaf —well above its projected production capacity. That’s a good sign that early adopters will help drive the market.
But a recent news release from Ford brought home to me just how great a challenge it will be to sell these pricey cars into a mass market. Ford announced that its 2011 Fiesta, with 6-speed Powershift gearing, has just been rated by EPA at 40 mpg on the highway and 29 mpg in the city.
And get this—the starting price is just under $14,000.
With electric vehicles likely to cost $30,000 and up, let’s do the math. Assuming the Fiesta averages 34 mpg, and you travel 10,000 miles per year with fuel costing $3.50 per gallon, you’ll end up spending about $1,000 a year on gasoline.
A hybrid vehicle averaging 50 mpg would still cost you $700 per year for fuel. After 10 years, you would have saved only $3,000 at the pump, maybe less than a fifth of the price difference between the vehicles.
Now assume you could buy a super-clean vehicle with my patent-pending PMM™ (perpetual motion machine) engine, which requires no fuel at all. You’d still save only $10,000 on fuel over a decade, not nearly enough to make up for the high sale price of the greener car.
Fact is, the best and most fuel efficient gasoline-powered vehicles are hard to beat when it comes to base price, fuel economy and convenience. When customers compare a Ford Fiesta at $14,000 even to a well-reviewed Ford Fusion Hybrid at $28,000, I doubt you’ll see a stampede to the hybrid.
On the brighter side, the existence of sporty, thrifty models like the Fiesta means there’s no reason to put off higher fuel economy standards. The technology exists today to radically reduce fuel consumption—and thus oil imports, smog and greenhouse gas emissions as well. Yet the average new car sold last month got only about 22 mpg, according to Ward’s Auto.
I’m still rooting for electric vehicles, but we don’t absolutely need them to make a big improvement in auto performance for the sake of our environment and national security.
May 18 2010
On April 5, a multi-million dollar communications satellite broadcasting television signals to
In a warning issued when the event was first detected, NASA reported that “The source of the storming is an Earth-directed Coronal Mass Ejection associated with a weak solar flare . . . Systems that can be affected include electric power systems, spacecraft operations, high-frequency communications, GPS, and other navigation systems.”
This event could be a harbinger of the sun awakening from its long and quiet slumber—with potentially dangerous implications.
From 2004 until recently, the sun has been mostly a blank ball, with as low a level of sunspot and magnetic activity as anytime in a century. But as Ian O’Neill remarked last year,
Although there is a possibility this solar minimum may continue, it is just as likely the sun is just being lazy, waiting to surprise us with a stealthy explosion of magnetic fury. The sun could erupt with a rash of sunspots as the internal magnetic field becomes so stressed it rises through the solar photosphere, tearing apart the uppermost layers of hot plasma, creating dark patches of sunspot swarms. If this is the case, we can expect violent knots of magnetism to funnel multi-million degree plasma from the inner sun, high into the corona (the sun's atmosphere), creating arcades of bright coronal loops. When this happens, the scene is set for the biggest explosions in our Solar System: flares and coronal mass ejections -- both of which can be very bad for planet Earth.
Just how bad? As previously discussed in NEXT100, a really big geomagnetic storm, the size of one that struck in 1921, could overload power transformers in much of
Prevention is the answer. With enough warning, grid operators can shut down sensitive circuits in time to proect them. But that's an extremely costly step, not to be taken lightly. In fact, grid operators failed to heed warnings of a solar storm in 1989 that took out most of
Fortunately, scientists just gained an important new tool for predicting solar weather. In February, NASA launced the Solar Dynamics Observatory, with four telescopes that permit unprecedented scrutiny of our neighboring star.
"SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society," said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in 
Lika Guhathakurta, NASA program scientist, told me that the instrument calibration on the satellite will be complete this week and the first true science based on its data will begin.
Guhathakurta said the data will help scientists understand the physics of the sun and thus the causes of coronal mass ejections and solar flares that cause such disruption on Earth.
"Space weather prediction today is where terrestrial weather prediction was 40 to 50 years ago," she said. "This mission’s [high-resolution] images are already showing us things we have never seen before. SDO is going to help us understand the sources of these blasts and help us predict them. If you can do good forecasting two to three days ahead of time, that gives you much better ability to take mitigating steps."
May 17 2010
Pulling weeds is never a glamorous task, but it’s always satisfying to make your garden clean and tidy. This weekend, a team of 15 PG&E volunteers who pulled weeds in Eastern Contra Costa Country enjoyed the far greater satisfaction of helping to rescue an endangered species of butterfly.
Lange’s metalmark butterfly, which is prettier than its name, is a very particular creature. It lives only in and very near the 55-acre Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1980 to save the butterfly and its critical habitat. It eats only naked stem buckwheat, a native grass that has been swamped by vetch and other invasive plants. And it hurries through life, setting aside a mere 10 days to mate and lay eggs while dodging hungry birds, lizards, mice and other heartless predators.
The reddish-orange insect is only barely hanging on, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. A century ago, they numbered in the tens of thousands. By 1984 their census was down to just 154. They climbed back up to 2,343 in 2000, only to collapse to fewer than 50 last year.
Volunteers are coming to the rescue by pulling invasive plants and planting buckwheat. This summer, some 200 larvae raised by breeders at
The PG&E volunteers, along with a handful of other colleagues, worked last weekend to restore butterfly habitat on 12 sandy acres owned by the utility adjacent to the wildlife refuge. PG&E has two transmission towers on its site, near the south bank of the
To volunteer your services at the refuge, call (707) 769-4200, or go to www.fws.gov/sfbayrefuges/antioch.
May 14 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
The first zero-emissions motorcycle race in the U.S. debuts on Sunday at the West Co
ast Moto Jam at Infineon Raceway north of San Francisco. The Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix U.S. Championship is an all-electric 11-lap, 25-mile race with no roar and no emissions but riders say there is plenty of speed. "I felt I was going just as fast as on a gas bike," says Shawn Higbee. Electric motorcycles cost 30-40 percent more than gas bikes but cheaper in the long run, says Raul Inarritu, an executive for electricmotorsport.com. "They need a lot less service. The only moving parts are two bearings and a chain."
New York City is developing a "solar map" to determine its solar energy potential. An airplane equipped with a laser system called Lidar for light detection and ranging takes pictures of the surface terrain and structures. The images help planners figure how much solar power can be produced on each roof, says the New York Times' Green blog. Solar arrays could generate an estimated one-fifth of the electricity consumed by the city's 8 million residents. San Francisco and Boston also have online tools to measure buildings' potentials for solar energy.
Hospitals are energy hogs, consuming 2 1/2 times the energy in a similar-sized commercial building, but they're taking steps to go green. Rush University Medical Center in Chicago is one of only four U.S. hospitals that are Gold LEED certified and fewer than 100 hospitals have LEED certification. The Rush hospital says it has launched a number of green initiatives including a strong recycling program -- for paper, glass, plastic and cans -- and it also converts kitchen grease to biodiesel fuel, vehicle and machine oil back to fuel products, and buys electronics from a supplier that includes recycling services. Last year, the hospital diverted 898 tons of materials from landfills, Reuters reports.
May 13 2010
CalRENEW-1’s more than 50,000 solar panels occupy almost fifty acres of land in a mostly industrial sector of Mendota, a town in the Central Valley north and west of
CalRENEW-1 is currently the largest solar plant in California serving PG&E. Across the border, near
Cleantech
May 13 2010
For a mere $109,000 you can buy a snazzy Tesla Roadster—an all-electric sportscar that zooms from 0-60 mph in as little as 3.7 seconds, and hits a quarter mile in only 12.9 seconds.
Sporting a “custom microprocessor-controlled lithium-ion battery with 6,831 individual cells,” its powerful electric motor flattens your back to the seat while you accelerate to the finish line (assuming no cops are around to stop you).
Well, the funky Hungerford Volkswagen Club in the
The Black Current blew away the competition. With its souped-up electric power train, the mighty little car hits 60 mph in only 3.0 seconds, and reaches a quarter mile in 11.24 seconds (one and a half seconds faster than the Tesla) at a speed of 114 mph.
Hmm . . . maybe that’s the real reason Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard is reportedly now working for the Volkswagon group on electric vehicle concepts. Could he be planning to create a new line of Beetle drag racers for the common man and woman?
May 12 2010
While the dust continues to settle in the auto industry, the Google Earth Blog recently reported that General Motors released a project called the "GM Education Google Earth Project."
A far cry from bankruptcy bailouts, the project utilizes Google Earth technology to identify the various types of energy used around the world.
The project takes virtual globetrotters from the world's largest wind farm in Texas, to the world's largest refinery in Venezuela, to the Gobi Desert in China, where large-scale solar plants are proposed for construction. The project goes so far as to claim that the Gobi Desert alone has enough solar potential to supply almost all of the world's total electricity demand.
The Google Earth Blog has one gripe with the project. While the blogger calls it, "All in all...a neat project," the blogger thought the project should use different placemarkers for different sources of energy, rather than the default yellow pin for all sources.
It will be interesting to see how much traffic the project generates and from where. NEXT100 will be watching.
May 11 2010
Fifteen months ago, NEXT100 revealed the secret to fuel efficiency: “the biggest secret to designing high-mileage, low-carbon vehicles is not breakthrough battery or hybrid-drive technology, but rather lowering vehicle weight and drag without compromising safety or comfort.”
More and more automakers are finally taking this insight to heart as they redesign their fleets to meet the next generation of federal fuel efficiency standards. The result will be a big win for consumers and the environment.
BMW said last month that it plans to become the first high-volume user of strong and crash-resistant but ultralight carbon fiber composites in new car bodies, starting with its Megacity electric car in 2013. The German automaker is planning with SGL group to build a $100 million carbon fiber plant in
"By using carbon fiber, which is a little more expensive but 30 percent lighter, you don't need as many batteries for the same range," explained Ian Robertson, the head of BMW global sales. “There's a trade-off that actually works.”
Almost immediately, Daimler reported that it has teamed up with Toray Industries to begin making car parts out of carbon fibers, starting with the SL class. Toray will expand a factory in
Bright Automotive, a spinoff of Amory Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute, explains the critical importance of “lightweighting” to fuel efficiency:
The majority of the gasoline's energy goes toward moving the mass of the vehicle. Less mass requires less fuel—in fact, a mere 10 percent weight reduction leads to at least a 7 percent increase in fuel economy. . . . This more efficient vehicle can move faster and farther with a smaller and lighter powertrain (e.g., fewer batteries, and smaller, lighter engines and motors). This effect is called mass decompounding and makes it possible for us to take the next step of incorporating PHEV technology, achieving up to a 10x improvement in fuel efficiency over other vehicles . . .
In late April, the International Council on Clean Transportation released a detailed design study by Lotus Engineering, which concluded that for a mere 3 percent increase in component costs, automakers could slash the weight of a typical crossover utility vehicle by 38 percent, resulting in at least 25 percent lower fuel consumption.
Other things being equal, that means 25 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Sounds like a bargain to me.
May 10 2010
After all the rain and snow we’ve had this season, I was startled to read in a press release last week from the state Department of Water Resources: “
I can just imagine what the cautious water managers would have told Noah after the Great Flood: “Not so fast, Noah. One cupful per animal is all we can spare.”
All kidding aside, even one reasonably wet year doesn’t erase the deficit caused by three years of drought. The State Water Project’s premier Northern California reservoir, Lake Oroville, is still less than two-thirds full, so water contractors this year will receive only 40 percent of their requested deliveries.
Unfortunately, the same long-term deficit also affects the state’s hydroelectric resources. While the hydrology experts at PG&E are grateful for the wetter season, they point out that the type of precipitation we received as well as the long-term deficit in water stored in the sponge-like volcanic rocks in Northern California will keep customers from enjoying all the hoped-for benefits of cheap and clean hydropower.
Snow levels in the Northern Sierra were at 202 percent of normal on May 6, and 148 percent statewide. At Squaw Valley, snow levels reached 530 inches, deep enough to bury even an Abominable Snowman. Great news, right?
Well, it turns out that a major reason for the huge snowpack is that colder-than-usual weather turned drops of precipitation into flakes. Instead of running into the ground and into reservoirs, the water now sits above ground. As a result, hydropower generation during the winter was lower than I had imagined from all the stormy weather—only about 70 percent of average from January to March, according to PG&E hydrologist Jan Grygier.
If the weather turns hot all of a sudden, he warns, a fast snow melt could overwhelm reservoir capacity and have to be spilled. That would mean a short season for peak hydropower production followed by only average levels in the summer.
Worse yet,
“This is a bad situation that has just gotten worse,” said Steve Wright, administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration, on May 7. “We had hoped a wet spring would help snowpack across the Columbia River Basin, but that didn’t happen. We are now looking at the fifth lowest runoff since the hydro system has been in existence.”
So, get out your prayer books and ask for a continued cool spring and early summer to slow the snow melt. If your luck holds, pray for a wet winter next season to bring equal parts rain and snow, so the groundwater can recharge and our snowbanks bulge once again.
May 07 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may push lawmakers to act on climate change legislation. One White House advisor said the accident gives the legislation a much better chance of passing this year. But some lawmakers feel the exact opposite. Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), once a strong supporter of a comprehensive climate bill, now says the current political environment makes it “nearly impossible” to move forward with productive bi-partisan discussions on the issue, claiming the oil spill will cause lawmakers to be divided over offshore drilling.
Things could get really, really hot over the next couple centuries, according to researchers on two different continents. Findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia calculated that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, humans will not be able to tolerate the warming they predict will occur. Researchers note these are worst case scenario based findings that look at the maximum amount of temperature and humidity a mammal can take before overheating.
Many reports have linked global warming to problems in the Earth’s oceans and now scientists are getting ready to study how a warming climate may have an effect on biodiversity in our freshwater systems. The EPA recently awarded a grant of nearly $250,000 to Saint Louis University to predict how global warming will impact U.S. rivers and streams.
May 07 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
Mother's Day is Sunday, a day you better not forget, so if you need some last minute help there's plenty of eco-friendly ideas a mouse click away. With thanks to Grist.org's gift guide, Mom will be happy with her organic flowers, organic desserts, reusable tote bags, green-cleaning gift certificates, donations to women-friendly organizations and, of course, an organic brunch and a great big hug and kiss for Mom.
Internet giant Google continues to move into the energy sector. It has made a $38.8 million investment in two wind farms in North Dakota generating about 170 megawatts of power, enough juice for more than 55,000 homes. The project was developed by NextEra Energy Resources, a unit of FPL Group. In February, Google got approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell electricity on U.S. power markets. The authorization will allow subsidiary Google Energy to better manage its own energy costs and to possibly add electricity marketing services.
The carbon-conscious super rich may someday navigate the seas in solar-powered super-yachts. A British boat designer plans a 58-meter-long boat covered in photovoltaic film and solar-paneled fixed sails. Recent yacht shows in Monaco and Abu Dhabi have sparked inquiries from wealthy potential clients, the Guardian reports. The projected price tag is 40 million pounds sterling.
May 05 2010
Sandwiched between three enthusiastic electric car entrepreneurs at the Electric Car 2.0 conference today, PG&E’s EV guru Saul Zambrano emphasized that it will take a village—or rather, a myriad of stakeholders currently participating in a statewide regulatory proceeding—to figure out the right institutional arrangements to support the nascent market for plug-in vehicles in
Zambrano, whose wordy title is director, integrated demand side management core products, praised the state for being ahead of the curve in thinking about—if not yet answering—the tough questions of who should be able to sell power, under what circumstances and at what prices, to EV owners needing to “fill up” their batteries at home, on the road or at work.
“There are many different ways a utility can support the adoption of these vehicles,” Zambrano said. “At one extreme, we could ask regulators to let us be the only ones to own charging stations at homes or businesses. The least aggressive approach is for us to just keep doing education and awareness campaigns and set price incentives.”
Non-utility vendors such as Coulomb Technologies in Campbell and Better Place in Palo Alto are vying for big shares of the future charging market.
Whatever approach the state finally chooses must “protect the reliability and safety of the grid without stifling innovation,” Zambrano said.
A large electric vehicle can represent a load three times greater than a typical home in
Other panelists representing California-based electric vehicle makers all agreed that the this state’s market is poised for a big takeoff, making wise policy choices all the more important.
Battery prices, the single biggest contributor to the sticker price of EVs, are coming down 5 to 10 percent a year, noted Dan Mosher, CFO of CODA Automotive in
Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla Motors, said that the relatively long range of EVs with today’s lithium-ion batteries—well over 100 miles on a charge—means owners won't need to worry about running out of juice until they get home to recharge. Since most households have two cars, drivers can manage long-distance travel with a second gasoline- or hybrid-powered car.
And Marques McCammon, chief marketing officer at Aptera and an alumnus of Chrysler, said history shows that automotive trends start in
Electric Car 2.0, the fifth in the Berkeley Stanford Clean Tech Conference series, was supported by PG&E and was held today in PG&E's main auditorium in San Francisco. The keynote speaker was Diane Grueneich, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission.
May 04 2010
Nature played a dirty trick on us when it came to platinum. First it bestowed on this supremely durable, silvery metal many qualities of immense value both in jewelry and in industrial applications, especially as a chemical catalyst for vehicle emissions control devices and fuel cells.
Then it deposited this element in extremely scarce quantities and in only a few countries (especially
So a new discovery from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) of an effective replacement for platinum as a catalyst for the production of hydrogen from water could be a very big deal indeed. If hydrogen could be produced cheaply enough, it could be used for clean electric power generation or as a transportation fuel. The only byproduct would be water vapor.
A team at LBNL says it has identified a molybdenum compound that works about as well as platinum but costs only one-seventieth as much.
“In addition,” said Hemamala Karunadasa, one of the co-discoverers, “our catalyst does not require organic additives, and can operate in neutral water, even if it is dirty, and can operate in sea water, the most abundant source of hydrogen on earth and a natural electrolyte. These qualities make our catalyst ideal for renewable energy and sustainable chemistry.”
LBNL scientists aren’t the only ones seeking a breakthrough in cheaper catalysts. Other academic scientists have their eyes on cobalt compounds and on ceramic materials that could replace platinum in fuel cells.
Finding a workable and far cheaper catalyst for electroloysis would be a huge achievement but wouldn’t revolutionize the energy industry overnight. That’s because hydrogen is an energy carrier, like electricity, not an energy source, like the sun or fossil fuels. Even with a good catalyst, hydrogen takes more energy to produce than it delivers back as energy when burned or fed into a fuel cell. Thus the so-called "hydrogen economy" would require major new infrastructure for hydrogen production, gas storage and gas transportation, all of which make it an expensive proposition.
Still, cheap electrolysis could be an ideal companion to a big wind farm that produces lots of energy at times when it’s not otherwise needed. Divert that energy to splitting some water into hydrogen and oxygen and voila, you could have an excellent source of standby energy--just like a big battery--available when energy demands peak but the winds die down.
May 03 2010
My colleague Joe Molica provided this latest dispatch in the long-running family saga of Dapper Dan and Diamond Lil:
Shortly after noon today, the offspring of Dapper Dan and Diamond Lil, the media-savvy peregrine falcons that have been squatting on top of the PG&E headquarters building in downtown San Francisco, were banded, soon before their first flights. The aluminum bands, which note their 77 Beale St. home address, don’t interfere with the young birds’ lives but allow scientists to learn more about the amazing comeback story of these animals, the fastest on earth.
May 03 2010
In the contest of corporate green-upmanship, Walmart has just won some serious bragging rights. The popular but controversial mega-retailer is already a green purchasing pioneer. Now it’s a wind energy pioneer as well.
Last Thursday, the Sam’s Club in
The turbines will generate about 76,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to meet the needs of a dozen typical homes in PG&E’s service area.
If successful in Palmdale, Walmart plans to install microturbines at other sites, including a store in
Additionally, Walmart now buys enough commercial wind power in
Walmart isn’t the first company to pursue on-site wind generation. Adobe powers its
Sales of small wind turbines in the
But don’t run out and buy a turbine for your backyard or roof without a lot of careful research. You could be in for a big disappointment.
Most areas don’t have sufficient wind to make them economical—a typical home system can cost $5,000/kW--and even if they do, zoning regulations and neighborhood opposition may make it more trouble than it’s worth.
Still, happy owners abound. Check out the American Wind Energy Association’s web pages for local success stories from
