Will Microsoft Be the Google of EV Charging Stations?

Cellphone apps and other corporate tech partnerships are quickly filling the void of governments to provide information to the public about where to find an EV charging station. In an industry so heavily subsidized by the feds (you can get a $7,500 rebate for buying just about any EV model on the market), you would think the associated infrastructure for cars would get attention from the public sector.

However, if you take a look at the recent budget cuts that were approved in Washington DC several weeks ago, it's becoming clear that projects dependent on federal funding for green projects - this runs the gamut from high-speed rail, electric vehicles, public transit, and other sustainable urban planning methods - are facing a grim future.

The highlights from the impending doom scenario?

• $34 million cut from the Renewable Energy Program (Agriculture)
• $80 million gone from the Environmental Quality Incentives program (Agriculture)
• about $900 million cut from FEMA - God help us if when we see another hurricane like Katrina (Homeland Security)
• $50 million from Climate Change programs (Interior)
• $25 million from FTA Energy Efficiency Grants (Transportation) that funded much of California's EV charging infrastructure

And....the big ticket items:

• $2.9 billion eliminated from high-speed rail (HSR) funding, before even a single mile of it has been built in the US! The "flagship" line under construction between LA and SF might well be the only one at this rate. This comes as many of the more idiotic Red States are having the gaul to reject HSR funding and return it to the feds! No thanks, Obama :) You can take your cutting-edge infrastructure and thousands of construction jobs, because WE DON'T NEED THEM! Is it just me, or do Republicans have a near-perfect record of laying waste to the projects big cities need for their economic survival?
• $3 billion gone from highway construction - part of these cuts make sense, there is definitely a solid argument that highways encourage poorly-planned, sprawling development patterns. But do Republicans hate both trains and highways, or just hate any kind of movement in general??? I just don't get it.
• $600 million gone from public housing programs like HOPE VI and Section 8

And things looked so good for environmental projects back in 2009 when Obama passed the ARRA. So this is the funding void we're dealing with for EV infrastructure.

Thankfully, big corporations like Microsoft and Google are seeing the tremendous opportunity that investing in EV infrastructure holds.

The database is called the Microsoft Utility Rate Service (MURS), and it will be available via subscription to government agencies, power providers, auto makers, and electric vehicle charging equipment companies. It will allow consumers to search the full range of EV charging utilities to find the best deal on charging electricity nearest them.

More info from the Inhabitat story:

According to Warren Dent, director of business development at Microsoft, MURS will be offered in at least 17 different markets — mostly on the East Coast and West Coast — but also including cities like Detroit, Denver, and Chicago.

To get going, Microsoft is collaborating with one-to-three utilities in each region to get access to the data, and is expecting that its partnerships with companies like Duke Energy, Xcel Energy, and Portland General Electric will provide it with more relevant information. The pricing information will then be sent from the utility companies to Microsoft, which will relay that information to MURS subscribers. MURS sends the data directly to the plug-in vehicle, eliminating the need for interaction with drivers.

Currently, Ford is utilizing on Microsoft’s service to allow its drivers to charge their cars when utility rates are lowest.

Hmm....so kind of like a Craigslist for where to plug in your EV batteries? Hopefully this will level the playing field as far as EV charging networks are concerned and allow more innovative companies enter the market and offer cheaper alternatives we can take advantage of. Microsoft may be a dinosaur among the high-tech world, but here its program sounds like a winner!


Via: Inhabitat 

Paris Starts All-Electric Car Sharing Service

We've all heard of Paris' famous bike-sharing program, Velib. It has become a model for many other citiesaround the world rolling out their bike share systems. With low-cost stations, mobile and credit-card payment systems, and a cost per bike of around $1,000, bike share systems seem relatively simple to run and maintain.

But what about a similar service that rented out electric cars in the same way? Like an all-electric, omnipresent version of Zipcar? Now we're talking about a bit more overhead.

Paris is about to launch the world's first all-electric car-sharing service with publicly accessible stations, called Autolib, modeled just like its successful Velib bike-share system. The program could be operational as soon as September of this year! More details from Inhabitat:

Here’s how it will work: cars will be stored both in parking garages and on the street as part of a public-private partnership between Autolib and the city of Paris. No word yet on how much the program will cost, but Autolib claims that it will be significantly lower than the approximately $7,000 per year that it costs to own a car in the city.

It should be interesting to see how Paris deals with the problem of theft, which has notoriously plagued the Velib bike-share system. An estimated 80% of the initial 8,000 bikes (valued at $3,500 each) were either stolen or damaged in the year 2009, according to The New York Times. Parisians are also known for lighting cars on fire when they get angsty, as well. Perhaps dousing the Autolib cars with flame-retardant finish would do the trick?

Then again, having the support of one French billionaire, to the tune of a $131 million initial investment, should help make sure the cars stay in good shape. Tycoon Vincent Bollore has dropped this change in return for supplying the Autolib system with its first model vehicle, the Pininfarina Bluecar, according to Autoblog Green. The car's lithium battery pack allows a range of 155 miles, roughly the distance you could feasibly drive doing a day's worth of only short jaunts across the city neighborhoods. You'd have to be crazy to want to do long-haul trips on an Autolib car...have you seen their traffic?



If the program launches successfully, this could do wonders for Paris' infrastructure, as well as its reputation as one of the world's greenest cities. They are even looking at banning SUV's and other gas guzzlers from their city center! Can you imagine a New York or San Francisco doing the same? That Paris is even considering measures like these is a testament to their commitment to multimodal transportation - bikes, subways, and above all, walking truly take precedence here. To get people out of their cars, you must first give them a valid choice - that is the lesson American cities are still learning.

Like congestion pricing, with its successful implementation in London, ideas tend to spread among the global cities first (to New York and then San Francisco) and then trickle down the urban hierarchy.

Which means that by 2030, Seattle will have completed three multi-million dollar studies, hired international consultants to review the studies and conclude they're garbage, submitted the proposal to public comment and town meetings, then put it to a vote and, after it's voted down by the public, finally discover that Seattle's more expensive housing and lack of parking is itself the most effective form of "congestion pricing". Oh, you wanted electric car-sharing, too? That can wait until the next election cycle. We're just masters of the process, now, aren't we?

ChargePoint Launches EV Charging Stations in Bellevue, WA and Washington, DC

One of the latest and most promising developments in EV charging station technology has been launched right here in the Seattle area!

ChargePoint America, a $37 million grant program run by Coulomb Technologies, has recently opened public charging stations in Bellevue, WA, as well as Washington DC. The program was funded in part from a $15 million Department of Energy grant from the ARRA stimulus package of 2009. Thank you, Obama!!!

The ultimate goal is to set up 4,600 stations across the country, in nine regions: Austin, Texas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Fla., Sacramento, Calif., the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area, Bellevue/Redmond, Wash., and Washington DC and is a strategic partnership between Coulomb and three leading automobile brands: Ford, Chevrolet and smart USA. If ChargePoint succeeds, maybe we won't be so apt to relegate such dinosaur status to our dying Detroit brands. 

Already ChargePoint has set up stations at the UW Bothell campus, Bainbridge Island, and the ultra-pricey Aspira condo building in Downtown Seattle (sadly, for Louis Vuitton-toting residents only). 

These latest two stations have been installed at the Bellevue City Hall and are open to the public. In order to promote ChargePoint stations for EV drivers in the Northwest, they established a sub-contractor, ChargeNW, where subscribers can get discounted home charging units and even find the nearest station on their Smartphone app. 

Via: Inhabitat

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Part Deux

As the world becomes ever more integrated via the Internet, a huge potential source of political mobilization can come from a new version of a familiar campaign tool: the political icon.

Whereas newspapers used to have a monopoly on this medium with editorial cartoonists on staff, today this powerful art form has been crowdsourced to the masses. 

The infographic is something I touched on several weeks ago as a rising trend that can distill complex political issues into easy-to-understand graphics. While we once had Uncle Sam and Smoky the Bear, we now have a new crop of graphic designers coming into the fray of the climate change talks in Cancun.

How do you explain the phenomenon of climate change to someone who is uneducated in science? To a person who is illiterate, even? Graphics like these may hold the answer. They have just enough punch to be provocative, without the vitriol and one-sidedness of a campaign speech or an idiotic soundbite. 

Check it out!

Isn't everything recyclable?

Kind of like "mi casa es su casa", no?

Follow the rest of the progress of the Cancun talks here on their official media website.

Via:  Inhabitat

New Electric Bike Models to Make Waves in California Bike Share System

Last week I described a bike-sharing pilot project that will put 10,000 bikes on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area by 2012. An unintended consequence of bike-sharing systems, both in California and elsewhere, is that they may well end up being a boon for an electric bike industry surging across North America.

San Francisco's green neighbor to the north, Sacramento, is now experimenting with a four-week trial of a bike sharing system using the innovative BionX electric bike as a featured model. The bike features a battery, electric motor and handlebar control panel, all connected with sophisticated energy-management software. The electric motor system can even be custom-installed on non-electric Trek and Diamant bikes.

Forgive me, but this picture of a corporate doucher should have been a headline for Stuff White People Like

The testing period of Sacramento's bike sharing program will be among employees at the California division of the EPA, hardly a tepid audience for bike sharing. Adding to Sacramento's unsung appeal as a bicycling capital is its rate of bicycle commuting that is among the highest in the country.

If this Sacramento bike sharing project goes smoothly, it could easily lay the groundwork for other smaller and medium-sized cities to get their bike sharing systems up and running. I'm talking to you, Portland :). The ability to step onto a bike and pedal (or not) around the city for pocket change is all the more enticing with electric bikes thrown into the fray.

Another model that will hopefully join the bike-sharing menu is this badass piece of machinery right here, the M55 Beast Hybrid. This powerhouse of a bike can reach speeds of 40 mph, as good as any vespa or scooter, and can go for 75 miles on a single charge. Upon further investigation, the bike is made of carbon-fiber and titanium alloys, which probably means that like the Tesla Roadster, it is a beautiful unicorn of a machine that mere mortals will never get their hands on. Sadness....

Via: Inhabitat

Bike-Sharing Hits New York, San Francisco, and Everywhere In Between!

Back in March of this year, when this blog was a wee babe, I wrote about bike sharing programs that have become wildly popular in Paris, London, Barcelona, Boston, and Washington DC.

Bicycles are one of our oldest and most enduring forms of carbon-neutral transportation, but it is only within the last five years or so that they have been re-evaluated as key pieces of our urban transit infrastructure, rather than fun recreational toys.

Bike-sharing programs embrace the budding concept of "collaborative consumption," in which traditional capitalism is replaced by networks of consumers who band together via the Internet to provide shared needs.

Examples of collaborative consumption abound, especially in more progressive and tech-savvy cities. On Craigslist, people shop for used furniture, job postings, and even casual sex! The free, minimalist, and communal nature of Craiglist and other online classifieds has spelled death for the local news business. ZipCar provides a shared, publicly available fleet of cars for short trips in urban centers, so regular people can avoid the expense and hassles of car ownership. Travelers increasingly use Couchsurfing instead of booking hostel rooms, creating a stable network of peer-reviewed, intimate accommodations, and even lifelong friendships along the way. Urban gardeners aching to get a plot of land and frustrated by the lack of public garden space have taken to "garden-sharing", where homeowners advertise their open space via iPhone applications.

A full history of the collaborative consumption movement is available here, via GOOD. 

Let's go around the horn and take a look at some of the big developments taking off in American bike-sharing sytems:

SAN FRANCISCO

A $7.9 million pilot project is set to provide bikes in San Francisco and along the Caltrain corridor in San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View and Redwood City for use by registered subscribers. Over 1,000 bikes are scheduled to be available in late 2011. 

The system is aiming to replicate the success of European bike-sharing, with automated charging stations and annual, daily, or monthly subscription fees for users, along with hourly rates. Like many of the most famous systems, the first 30 minutes would be free of charge, to encourage riders to use the system for short trips close to home. 

The pilot program would begin with about 500 bikes and 50 stations in the San Francisco city center, focusing on the City Center, Tenderloin, Market Street, and Transbay Terminal areas. An additional 400 bikes would go into the urban centers of CalTrain corridor south of the city.

After the program is fully operational by 2013, the bike-sharing system in the Bay Area is planned to expand to over 13,000 bikes! 2,750 of the bikes would be in San Francisco and another 10,000 in Santa Clara County. This is on the scale of the famous Velib system in Paris, which boasts 20,000 bikes.

NEW YORK CITY

New York is taking steps to create the largest bike-sharing system in the United States, one that eventually will turn a profit through advertising with a public-private partnership. According to Transportation Nation, the system will have 10,000 bikes available 24 hours a day by 2012. 

“New York is made for bike share,” said Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives,” so this announcement is very exciting. The characteristics that make bicycling an everyday form of transportation, New York has in spades: density, flat terrain, temperate climate, lots of short trips and an on the go lifestyle. This nimble and inexpensive way to get around will fit easily into New Yorkers’ constantly shifting errands and schedules.”

By using wireless technology, including a searchable map of solar-powered bike stations using GPS, New York believes it can replicate the success of the London system and quickly turn a profit.

WASHINGTON, DC

In our nation's capital, an earlier bike-sharing system run by SmartBike DC will be replaced by a newer expanded system, offering 1,100 bikes and 114 stations in the District and Arlington County. This is a dramatic increase from the current 120 SmartBike stations. 

Treehugger has more details on the upgrade:

"The new system will allow a wider range of membership opportunities. Annual memberships will cost $80, double the current SmartBike rate of $40, though for a much better service. People can also purchase monthly memberships for $30 or daily ones for $5. All memberships allow unlimited bike rentals, free for the first 30 minutes with usage fees (levels not yet specified) after 30 minutes."

MINNEAPOLIS

Minneapolis has just launched Nice Ride, the largest bike-sharing system in the US to date. It debuted in June 2010 with 700 bikes and 65 stations, where riders swipe a credit card, take out a bike, and go. As with other popular programs, long-term subscriptions can be purchased online for the low price of $60 per year. That's lower the cost of Netflix, people!

DENVER

Denver's program launched in April 2010, with 400 bikes and 42 stations. Already, it has logged 8,000 registered users and 800 annual members. 

One important byproduct of the rise of privately-funded bike-sharing systems is that they help point to the overwhelming lack of bike infrastructure in most US cities. Simply by creating a critical mass (no pun intended) of everyday cyclists, cities are quickly made aware of where the street networks need the greatest improvements to accommodate them. 

MIAMI

Miami, or as I like to refer to it, the "whitest city in Latin America," has started its "Deco Bike" system in posh Miami Beach. The program boasts 100 solar-powered stations and over 1,000 bikes. It claims that a single station can meet the needs of up to 200 commuters who would otherwise travel by Lambourghini. Not bad, Miami! You just might redeem yourself after your stint as Jersey Shore South. 

SEATTLE

Seattle is predictably falling behind in the race to provide public transit alternatives. We are good at one thing, though: Feasibility Studies! The City of Seattle commissioned a feasibility study through the UW Department of Urban Design & Planning. The study identifies possible corridors and phases where stations could be installed, potential ridership, and limitations. Any chance we could expedite this process we are so infamous for, Seattle?

Five Reasons Electric Cars Could Fail in the US

With the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf set to take over very soon a small chunk of the new car market, it's worth asking whether we can expect this to be a brief fad (a la Delorean) or a lasting consumer trend. The Ford Focus electric is slated to be released next year, and the very same question could be asked of that model as well.

Clearly, many key stakeholders are heavily invested in making sure that electric vehicles are successfully launched as a mainstay of the US car market. General Electric has announced it will buy 25,000 EV's for its company fleet in 2015 as part of its long-term corporate strategy. A number that large can hardly be written off as mere environmental lip service. Nearly half of these vehicles are expected to be the Chevy Volt, due to its dual electric-hybrid engine that is not fully dependent on an electric charge.

The City of Houston, Texas, long a bastion of the oil industry and its defenders, will be the first city in the US to have a privately-funded electric vehicle charging network. By the end of next year, Houston is expected to have between 50 and 150 charging stations throughout the city, operated by NRG Energy. The chargers will be Level 2 and 3, meaning that vehicles can be fully charged in as little as a half-hour, surpassing a major stumbling block of Level 1 "electric highway" efforts we have seen in California and Washington. Talks are underway to even expand the network into San Antonio and Austin. It may be the most ironic development yet if Texas, and not liberal California or New York, were to be the most EV-prepared state in the country.

Despite these positive developments, there are several reasons to question whether EVs really are here to stay or are just a passing trend.

Here's five reasons from The Infrastructurist for why EV's are not ready to take off in America:

1. Money

The Leaf has a sticker price of $32,780, and the Volt starts even higher, at $41,000. Of course those numbers go down $7,500 with a federal subsidy (or, as George Will puts it, “bribe”) on EV purchases. But that’s still a lot to ask for cars whose similarly sized competitors ask less than twenty grand. Complicating the picture is that gas prices are (somewhat) stable at the moment—and it sure doesn’t look like the gas tax will go up either.

2. Time

For most people, buying a plug-in also means buying a new plug. That’s because achieving a full charge with standard 120-volt sockets found in most homes will take 20 hours — clearly too long to make the morning commute. Upgrading to a 240-volt charger will cut that time to roughly 8 hours, or a typical night at home. But that can run you another two grand. There’s currently a federal subsidy for these, too, but it’s set to expire December 31, and Congress may not renew it. (And, if we did all buy EVs and charge them at once, apparently the power grid would totally fail.)

3. Range Anxiety

Far and away the biggest concern of potential electric buyers is range anxiety, or the fear of running out of power far from home. Public charging stations are few and far between at present. While people commute less than 40 miles to work on average—well within the range of most electrics—the distance one can travel in a fully charged EV varies based on factors like speed, road conditions, and air conditioning or heat use. In three typical scenarios, Popular Mechanics recently found that the Volt goes only on an average of 33 miles on its electricity (before switching over to an auxiliary gasoline engine).

4. Misinformation

Part of the fear of range anxiety stems from misinformation: A recent survey by the Electric Power Research Institutefound that 38% of people believe the maximum range of battery electrics to be 50 miles, when in fact it’s often double. The same survey found that 35% of people consider electrics “less reliable” and 20%  consider them less safe than gasoline cars — “misperceptions,” says environmental writer Jim Motavalli, that “are definitely going to color your attitude toward EVs.”

5. Man’s Inexorable Reluctance to Change

One leading authority, when asked about the future of automobiles, said that the limitations of battery power simply make gasoline motors “more promising.” That was Thomas Edison, speaking to the New York World in 1895. Although electric cars have been discussed since Edison’s day (some early American car manufacturers even preferred them), the gasoline engine won out, and its position has only grown stronger over time. Today EVs must fight not only battery power but also a deeply ingrained national habit. As the manger of electrics for BMW North America recently told USA Today, when it comes to electric cars, people “need a little more convincing.”

 Via: The Infrastructurist, Inhabitat

Biodiesel from Sewage Sludge Costs Just 10 Cents More than Regular Diesel!

The key difference between biofuels that are truly green (say, cellulosic ethanol) and those that aren't, like corn-based ethanol, is the biofuel's source: is it a valuable food product - like most blends of ethanol - or is it genuinely a waste product?

I think we can all agree that there is no doubt that sewage sludge is the very definition of a waste product. According to a new EPA report, biodiesel generated from the sewage sludge leftover after wastewater treatment costs just 10 cents more per gallon than conventional diesel.

The secret ingredient is the addition of oil-producing bacteria that create the biofuels as a waste product during photosynthesis. Research at Arizona State University showed that genetic engineering of these photosynthetic bacteria can help to maximize the biodiesel output they release. Potentially, this type of sewage-generated biodiesel could be on the market for as little as $3.11 per gallon (less than regular gas in Seattle, thank you very much!)

There are a few potential stumbling blocks here, though. According to Inhabitat, 

The best practices for getting biodiesel this way have hardly been worked out yet, according to the study by EPA scientist David Kargbo. Among the biggest problems is finding a way to collect sludge that is high in lipids — the material the reaction uses — ensuring that traces of pharmaceutical chemicals don’t make it into the fuel. Finally, regulators haven’t even begun to assess what it would mean to transfer large amounts of sewage sludge to private companies for processing into biodiesel.

Operationally, it seems like retrofitting all of our sewage-treatment plants to create large amounts of commercially-viable biodiesel could be very challenging. But compared to other biodiesel alternatives like waste vegetable oil from restaurants or soy-based biodiesel from the Amazon rainforest, the idea is looking more attractive every day.

Via: Inhabitat

I Thought Ford Was Dead...Now they're in the Algae Business, Too?

Ford may not have willingly accepted federal bailouts to save itself from its catastrophic management policies, its bloated unions, and its shoddy models that doomed it to dinosaur status by 2009. A quick visit to Detroit will confirm just how desperate times are for the American auto industry.

But increasingly, Ford is looking more and more relevant by the day. I think they were about the last major player you would expect to get involved in something as innovative as cellulosic ethanol.

According to Inhabitat, Ford has hired a team of scientists to investigate algae-based biodiesel as a major source of new energy for future models.

One of the scientists described the basis for this research program:

“Algae have some very desirable characteristics as a potential biofuel feedstock and Ford wants to show its support for any efforts that could lead to a viable, commercial-scale application of this technology. At this point, algae researchers are still challenged to find economical and sustainable ways for commercial-scale controlled production and culturing of high oil-producing algae.”

I never thought I would live to see the day that: 1) Ford has sustainability-focused scientific research rather than just churning out the latest SUV; 2) they could possibly be ahead of the curve in one day releasing a mass market vehicle that runs on algae biofuel.

Though I'm half cringing when I say this, you go Ford!

Institutional Car-Sharing Takes Off!

What do the New York City Dept. of Transportation and the BMW headquarters have in common?

Both are on the cutting edge of institutions that use car-sharing, in which drivers reserve a shared fleet of vehicles for a flat administrative fee, to save both budget $ and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Car-sharing differs from traditional rental car agencies and carpooling in several ways:

• Carsharing is not limited by office hours
• Reservation, pickup, and return is all self-service
• Vehicles can be rented by the minute, by the hour, as well as by the day
• Users are members and have been pre-approved to drive (background driving checks have been performed and a payment mechanism has been established)
• Vehicle locations are distributed throughout the service area, and often located for access by public transport.
• Insurance and fuel costs are included in the rates.
• Vehicles are not serviced (cleaning fueling) after each use, although certain programs such as Car2Go continuously clean and fuel their fleet

In short, car-sharing is a low-cost, low-maintenance, and low-emissions of way of getting access to cars to people only when they need it. In most cases, car-sharing has thrived in dense urban areas where access to walking, transit, and biking is widespread. For urban residents who need just the occasional one-off car trip, there is a huge cost-savings versus car ownership and the high insurance, maintenance, and purchase cost it entails.

In the US, the most successful car-sharing company has been ZipCar, which claims to remove 15-20 personal vehicles from the roads for every car-sharing vehicle it puts out and reduce an average of 5,500 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for the average user. 

While individual drivers are the fuel that powers companies like ZipCar, institutions with larger user bases and even greater potential cost savings have started to catch on. This change from personal to institutional use could be the catalyst for ZipCar to become an economic engine in its own right, with a political influence to rival a Ford or a GM.

According to GOOD, New York City's Dept. of Transportation is beginning to replace its former in-house fleet with car-sharing to cut costs in the wake of the city's budget problems. About 300 department employees will share access to 25 ZipCars for work-related trips, saving the department $500,000 annually. Nearly all of the Manhattan-based cars will be Toyota Priuses. 

New York will join Washington DC and Philadelphia, where this car-sharing program has already been successful. The project will likely spread to other NYC municipal departments, further cementing the city's newfound green reputation. Mayor Bloomberg, you're all right!

According to Inhabitat, BMW is implementing a similar car-sharing program at its own headquarters in Munich, Germany. Cars will be available to all BMW employees and the general public at costs ranging from $22-45 per hour, which is not as expensive as it sounds, considering some of the available models run $100,000. If all goes well, the program could expand to all of BMW's facilities across Europe. A car-sharing platform that can rent out ANY model of Beamer any time, day or night? I could sign up for that.

What are the wider implications of institutional car-sharing? What we have long known as "the company car" may be soon obsolete, replaced with a more efficient, publicly available, and sustainable alternative.

Algae-fueled Planes One Step Closer to Reality

So we've already seen bio-fuel powered aircraft and algae-fueled biodiesel cars....why not combine the two and get the maximum environmental benefit?

Biofuel made from algae, also known as cellulosic ethanol has the advantage of requiring far less carbon emissions to produce than corn or sugar-based ethanol. It is cleaner burning and less damaging to the environment overall. It also avoids the ethical dilemma of burning foodstuffs to create fuel for cars, which seems especially insensitive to developing countries struggling with legitimate hunger problems of their own. According to PhysOrg, Algae is also useful for its ability to consume atmospheric carbon dioxide, where other plants would be used for agriculture.



European aerospace company EADS is developing a Diamond DA 42 that is fueled partially with cellulosic ethanol from algae. The plane debuted at the Berlin Air Show in June 2010.

According to Inhabitat, the algae-based fuel has such high energy content that the plane would require a half-gallon (1.5 liters) less fuel per hour than with conventional fuel.

Even the Pentagon is taking notice. A new federal DARPA project aims to test a 50-50 blend of cellulosic ethanol on military planes within the next year. If that is any indication, it may be only a matter of time before the fuel makes the transition to regular commercial aircraft, one of the biggest and most entrenched contributors to climate change.

Via: Inhabitat

Rem Koolhaas Has Grand Alternative Energy Plans for Europe

How exactly will Europe reduce its emissions 20% in ten years, as the EU Covenenant of Mayors wants to do? Renowned architect Rem Koolhaas has a few ideas up his sleeve.

While architects typically are not known for their grand policy proposals on climate change (sticking rather to the energy efficiency of single buildings), Koolhaas has proposed a series of sweeping, regionally-tailored alternative energy developments that will put the EU on the path towards sustainable energy and lower carbon emissions.

Koolhaas' plan aims to reduce overall European emissions 80% by 2050, an even more aggressive target than the Covenant of Mayors signed onto. The current political crisis of the EU, however, puts this plan that is contingent upon supranational cooperation into question.

Check out these graphics!

Before and after in Barcelona....

Via Inhabitat

Toyota's New Prius Hybrid Minivan Adds Green Cachet to the Soccer Mom Demographic

Capitalizing on the wild popularity of its Prius model in the US, Toyota has announced its latest model: the Prius minivan.

Using a lithium-ion battery and capable of seating up to 7 people, this model will likely solidify Toyota's dominance in the American green vehicle market. According to Autoblog and Inhabitat, Toyota has plans over the next several years to develop up to 8 new hybrid models, include a coupe, of which several will likely carry the Prius name.

Via: Inhabitat

Solar-Powered Airplane Hangars Can Recharge Planes Emissions-Free!

Bio-fuel powered airplanes are a promising new wave of technology that can cut the emissions of airplanes and helicopters by up to 70% compared with conventional aircraft. However, German engineers PC-Aero have developed a solar-powered airplane hangar capable of charging aircraft for up to three-hour flights - all with ZERO carbon emissions!

According to Inhabitat, there's no word yet on how long it would take to charge the aircraft. The prototype developed was a single-seater. Hopefully, with successful development of solar-powered hangar technology and similar investment to what we've seen for electric car charging stations, this technology can be developed for two-and four-seater private jets, and perhaps even one day for commercial airliners.

Via: Inhabitat

Promising New Research on Cellulosic Ethanol

Cellulosic ethanol is one of the most promising developments in the bio-fuel arena that large fleets have the potential to cultivate. Unlike other bio-fuels, such as corn or soy-based ethanol, which according to a recent EPA report may in fact create larger carbon footprints than conventional petroleum gasoline, cellulosic ethanol has the potential to yield up to 200% more biodiesel oil than soy-based alternatives. One of the least-developed bio-fuels, cellulosic ethanol is derived from algae in a process that extracts biodiesel from the fats in the algae material. See the diagram below for a more detailed explanation of the extraction process:

This makes cellulosic ethanol one of the most carbon-efficient fuel options on the market apart from the more unlikely hydrogen fuel-cell options. According to Evergreen Fleets, cellulosic ethanol represents an 85% reduction in net carbon emissions per gallon than conventional petroleum gasoline. Unfortunately, the algae-growing operations necessary to produce commercially viable quantities of cellulosic ethanol have not been established to a sufficient scale for fleets to purchase large amounts of this new fuel.

Current research at Sandia National Laboraties (begun in 2007) has focused on breeding the optimal strains of algae that have the highest fat ratios. According to Ali Kriscenski at Inhabitat, "the biggest challenge is to make algae biocrude within a fraction of the time that nature’s biomass decomposition occurs and to do it economically, for less than $60 a barrel."

Most university research has focused on creating apparatuses that will do exactly that: create a pressure-cooker environment to extract fats from the algae and convert it to biodiesel in an economical timeframe.

One such project at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, titled "BioGrow", uses old computer parts to create such a vessel for algae production. Using an Apple G4 CPU tower, PVC pipes, acrylic panels, an Apple iMac CRT, and high density foam for insulation, graduate students modified the old computer to allow the iMac CRT to turn on different light spectrums and to adjust the temperature. The makeshift tank contains a water pump that aerates the algae for a faster energy conversion process. The byproducts can be used for feedstock, fertilizer and high-end pharmaceuticals because algae is so rich in protein and nutrients. In addition, this method helps alleviate the problem of electronic waste, which often leach toxic heavy metals into the soil and groundwater when they end up in landfills.

Another group of scientists at Stanford University attempted a slightly different method by inserting electrodes directly into algae pools, attempting to intercept the electron flow that occurs during the natural process of photosynthesis. This method is a type of photosynthetic electrolysis that produces no emissions other than oxygen, distinguishing it from the more mainstream production method of cellulosic ethanol. However, this experiment was not able to produce enough energy per algae cell to be commercially viable for mass production.

At the University of Michigan, researchers have also been experimenting with a pressure-cooker apparatus that will reduce the time and money needed to convert algae into biodiesel. According to Sarah Parsons (also of Inhabitat),

"The pressure cooker works by heating microalgae up to about 300 degrees, forming an algae soup. The high temperatures combined with the pressure breaks the plants down, releasing the native oil and causing proteins and carbohydrates to decompose, adding to the fuel yield. Cooking the “soup” for 30 minutes to an hour yields a crude bio-oil, which can then be converted to fuel."

This process has the advantage of eliminating the need for high-oil content strains of algae, allowing microscopic and less-oily species of algae to be used and removing the need for drying out the algae outdoors. An indoor production mechanism of cellulosic ethanol, rather than drying out algae in vast outdoor pools, has the potential to be widely cultivated, assuming reasonable installation costs, even by individual fleets themselves.

So what does the future look like for cellulosic ethanol? Sapphire Energy, a San Diego-based energy startup, has pioneered the first cellulosic ethanol-powered vehicle, the aptly-named Algaeus.

Claiming to reach fuel efficiencies of 150 miles per gallon on a fuel blend of 5% cellulosic ethanol, the company outfitted a plug-in hybrid Toyota Prius to run across the country on 25 gallons alone! The possible fuel economies of future cellulosic ethanol vehicles is staggering if you imagine how efficient the models would be if, instead of a 5% blend, an E85 or B40 blend were produced, as has already been manufactured for corn and soy-based biodiesel.






Via: Inhabitat, Discovery News

Aircraft as Fleet Components - Bio-diesel Capable Helicopter Launched in Australia

Helicopters and other aircraft have not yet been incorporated into green fleet modernization schemes, simply because most public agencies that have participated in programs like Evergreen Fleets do not have aircraft as a fleet component.

However, many large institutions such as port authorities, airports, major corporations (hello, Boeing!) and hospitals do have to take the fuel expenses of their aircraft into account when attempting to reduce their emissions. I had not even considered the impact of aircraft on overall greenhouse gas emissions earlier during this project, simply because of the magnitude of the private car fleet on the equation.

According to Tree Hugger, many passenger airlines have experimented with bio-fuel capable aircraft, although helicopters have not experienced similar attention.

"Australia-based Delta Helicopters is developing what it says is the first biofuel-capable diesel helicopter in the world. Dubbed the D2, Delta claims that the helicopter will use significantly less fuel while getting 30-40% more range per gallon than standard engines." (Inhabitat)

The D2 helicopter would also burn about 70% less fuel per hour than turbine aviation engines. There's just one catch: you have to build the helicopter yourself!

Delta plans to sell the D2 as a DIY kit for farmers in remote areas who already have diesel for use in farm machinery. When fully constructed, the helicopter is worth approximately $200,000.

Whether these helicopters can be re-tooled so that they can be manufactured en masse (or at least constructed in urban industrial settings) remains to be seen. Regardless, this is an important indication that we need to look at the big picture - all forms of transportation by air, land, and sea - when diving into green fleet modernization.