Monthly Archives: January 2007

Energy Research on a Shoestring

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GOLDEN, Colo. — Thirty years after it was founded by President Jimmy Carter, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the edge of the Rockies here still does not have a cafeteria.

The hopes for this neglected lab brightened a bit just over a year ago when President Bush made the first presidential call on the lab since Mr. Carter and spelled out a vision for the not-too-distant future in which solar and wind power would help run every American home and cars would operate on biofuels made from residues of plants.

But one year after the president’s visit, the money flowing into the nation’s primary laboratory for developing renewable fuels is actually less than it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. The lab’s fitful history reflects a basic truth: Americans may have a growing love affair with renewables and the idea of cutting oil imports and conserving energy, but it is a fickle one.

[NYTimes]

European Commission to drop plans for stricter CO2 regulations?

Environmentalists have expressed grave concern that the European Commission could be about to drop plans to ensure that new cars produce a quarter less carbon dioxide by 2012. The Commission had been expected this week to announce plans to force car makers to meet this tough target, despite warnings from the industry that it would push up prices and put jobs at risk.
The European Commission was to have announced two measures today, both of which have now been delayed:

  • A plan to impose mandatory restrictions on CO2 emissions from passenger cars would have obliged car makers to use technology to make cars more efficient, or to sell cars with smaller engines.
  • The other measure – a review of the fuel quality directive – would have obliged oil companies to produce fuels that released 10% less CO2 by 2020, taking into account emissions from all stages of the production and consumption process “from well to wheel”.

via::BBCNews

Blindness on Biofuels

The politics are simple enough. Americans dislike high fuel prices; auto companies dislike tougher fuel economy standards. By contrast, everyone seems to win with biofuels: farmers, consumers, capitalists. American technology triumphs. Biofuels create rural jobs and drain money from foreign oil producers. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, this enticing vision is dramatically overdrawn.

The great danger of the biofuels craze is that it will divert us from stronger steps to limit dependence on foreign oil: higher fuel taxes to prod Americans to buy more gasoline-efficient vehicles and tougher federal fuel economy standards to force auto companies to produce them.

via::WashingtonPost

Fuzzy Math


Max Shulz, “Addicted to Big Government” [article from the New Review]:

The White House is touting two ways to achieve that 20 percent reduction in 10 years. The first calls for raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. But raising CAFE standards has it backwards. Making vehicles more efficient actually will increase gasoline consumption. By lowering the price per mile of driving, Americans will drive more, not less, and overall consumption will rise. That, after all, is the history of our experiment with CAFE standards. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were introduced in the mid-1970s. Since then, motor gasoline consumption has gone up. Americans now consume one-third more motor gasoline each year than in 1975, the year Congress introduced CAFE standards.

Is he serious? Americans use more gasoline now because such a large percentage of the population drives SUVs, which are subject to lower CAFE standards because they are classified as ‘light trucks’! (In 2005, 55% of all new vehicles sold were light trucks – In 1975 that figure was 25%) Suburban sprawl might have something to do with it as well.  Perhaps Shulz, and the New Review, advance such dubious statistics because they have a problem with government regulation in general – just a hunch…

Portugal: 45% of power from renewable energy by 2010


LISBON (AFP) – Portugal wants renewable energy sources like wind and wave power to account for nearly half of the electricity consumed in the country by 2010, Prime Minister Jose Socrates said.

The Socialist government will work to ensure that 45 percent of the nation’s electricity output in three years comes from renewable sources, he said during a debate in parliament, up from a previous target of 39 percent.

“This new goal will place Portugal in the frontline of renewable energy and make it, along with Austria and Sweden, one of the three nations that most invest in this sector,” said Socrates, a former environment minister.

via::AFP/Yahoo!

VW’s Powertrains of the future

The mind-boggling array of vehicles present ran on six different fuels and included four different diesel-derivative engines: a current-production Polo BlueMotion diesel; a next-gen Jetta “Clean TDI” coming to the U.S. in ’08 under the BlueTec banner; a New Beetle convertible running on SunFuel, a diesel fuel manufactured from biomass-plants, woodchips, and other forms of biological waste-and a Touran running VW’s Combined Combustion System (CCS), a mixture of gas and diesel that is said to burn more completely and is therefore cleaner than either fuel on its own. We also sampled two compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles, a Touran and a Passat running VW’s new TSI turbo- and supercharged engine; a half-baked hybrid Touran; and a Touran powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

Read all about the various technologies in more depth at Car&Driver

via::AutoBlogGreen

Bush to Offer Bold Energy Plan


President Bush will lay out a bold plan in his State of the Union tonight for Americans to cut their consumption of all gasoline by 20 percent over the next 10 years, ABC News has learned.

Such a dramatic reduction in gasoline consumption would require new standards of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy system, known as CAFE, and an increased availability in the U.S. auto market of vehicles that run on alternative fuels.

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan said in an exclusive interview with ABC News:

“On the demand side, it means we need to have more fuel-efficient vehicles, and the president is going to propose that Congress give him the authority to reform and modernize the passenger-car fleet, just as we’ve done for the light-truck fleet.”

And on the supply side, “The president is going to propose a new, much more aggressive mandatory fuel standard for renewable and alternative fuels”

via::ABCNews

U.N. climate panel to project wrenching change

OSLO (Reuters) – A U.N. climate panel will project wrenching disruptions to nature by 2100 in a report next week blaming human use of fossil fuels more clearly than ever for global warming, scientific sources said.
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A draft report based on work by 2,500 scientists and due for release on February 2 in Paris, draws on research showing greenhouse gases at their highest levels for 650,000 years, fuelling a warming likely to bring more droughts, floods and rising seas.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have some good news, however, by toning down chances of the biggest temperature and sea level rises projected in the IPCC’s previous 2001 study.

via::Reuters/Yahoo!News