Category Archives: Energy

Spain leaps forward with its ambitious high-speed rail network expansion – On track to bypass France and Japan

April 21, 2009 at 1:49 pm

Spain's system of 218-mile-an-hour bullet trains, the AVE[mdash ]meaning 'bird' in Spanish[mdash ]has increased mobility for many residents, though critics say it has come at the expense of less-glamorous forms of transportation.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images via WSJ

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

Bullet Train Changes Nation — and Fast

CIUDAD REAL, Spain — To sell his vision of a high-speed train network to the American public, President Barack Obama this week cited Spain, a country most people don’t associate with futuristic bullet trains.

Spain’s system of 218-mile-an-hour bullet trains, the AVE — meaning ‘bird’ in Spanish — has increased mobility for many residents, though critics say it has come at the expense of less-glamorous forms of transportation.

Yet the country is on track to bypass France and Japan to have the world’s biggest network of ultrafast trains by the end of next year, figures from the International Union of Railways and the Spanish government show.

The growth of the Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed rail network is having a profound effect on life in Spain. Many Spaniards are fiercely attached to their home regions and studies show they are unusually reluctant to live or even travel elsewhere.

But those centuries-old habits are starting to change as Spain stitches its disparate regions together with a €100 billion ($130 billion) system of bullet trains designed to traverse the countryside at up to 218 miles an hour.

“We Spaniards didn’t used to move around much,” says José María Menéndez, who heads the civil engineering department at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. “Now I can’t make my students sit still for one second. The AVE has radically changed this generation’s attitude to travel.”

High-Speed Frenzy

Spain opened its first high-speed line, between Madrid and Seville, in 1992. At the time, the decision to run the line to sleepy Seville, host to the World Expo that year, was deeply controversial. Critics said it would be a costly failure for then-Prime Minister Felipe González, and that he built the line just to take him to Seville, his hometown, on the weekends.

 

But the AVE-which means “bird” in Spanish- proved to be a popular and political success. Politicians now fight to secure stations in their districts. Political parties compete to offer ever-more ambitious expansion plans. Under the latest blueprint, nine out of ten Spaniards will live within 31 miles of a high speed rail station by 2020.

By last year, the sprawling network of lines that stretches out from the capital, Madrid, reached Málaga in the south, Valladolid to the north and Barcelona in the country’s northeast. Now, residents of Barcelona can be in Madrid in just over two-and-a-half hours-a journey that takes around six hours by car.

 

The University of Castilla-La Mancha’s campus here has grown sharply in size and importance. “The school is here because of the AVE,” says Mr. Menéndez, the department head. “Without it, it would be impossible to attract the high-level staff we need.”

Around a third of Mr. Menéndez’s students are from a different region of Spain — almost unheard of in a country where students mostly stay close to home.

Click here to read the entire article (Free regn. required)
Read more Comments Off

Electric cars not enough to meet transport emissions targets – UK Energy Research Council warns Brits must reduce their dependency on cars to meet country’s climate targets

April 20, 2009 at 7:09 pm

Transport account for 22% of emissions in the UK - more than half of that comes from cars

 (Source: Guardian, UK;  Photo: thingermejig @ Flickr)

Government must encourage motorists to get out of their cars and walk or cycle, say scientists

Britons must reduce their dependency on cars if the UK is to meet its climate targets, scientists warn today. In a new study they said that simply switching wholesale to cleaner or all-electric cars, as announced by the government in its low-carbon car strategy last week, would not be enough for the transport sector to cut its carbon emissions.

The report by the UK Energy Research Council (UKERC) said the government had to tackle driver behaviour as well as car technology to reduce transport emissions. That means incentivising overall changes in the way people travel by encouraging walking and cycling, for example, and also discouraging the use of cars through taxation or other levies.

Last week the government announced a £250m plan for incentives of up to £5,000 each to consumers to buy low-carbon or electric cars from 2011 to help decarbonise transport.

Speaking ahead of this week’s 2009 budget announcements, Jillian Anable, head of transport research at UKERC, said the electric car plans were welcome but not enough to tackle the transport emissions problem alone. “They’re being billed as policies to affect the low-carbon car market and that’s very one-dimensional. [The government needs] a set of policies around low-carbon transport transformation so the grants that we see need to be more widely […] targeted to low-carbon travel behaviour.”

She added: “Without managing travel patterns themselves, it is very difficult to meet the technological challenges, including how the electricity is generated, at the scale and pace required. Without effective policies to manage demand for travel, emission cuts through vehicle technology will be made much more difficult and may come too late.”

Road transport accounts for 22% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, with more than half of that coming from cars. In trying to work out how to cut these emissions, the UKERC report reviewed more than 500 international studies looking at different policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from road transport. The scientists looked for methods and incentives that seemed to work best and where well-intentioned policies led to unintended consequences.

Friends of the Earth’s transport campaigner Tony Bosworth said the UKERC report was “further evidence that we need a green transport revolution. Low carbon cars, though important, are not enough to tackle transport’s contribution to climate change — we must also change how and how much we travel. The RAC revealed this week that people use their cars for over three quarters of journeys between two and three miles long — with proper facilities in place, there’s no reason why these journeys couldn’t easily be made by bus, bicycle or on foot.”   He added: “The government must rapidly steer its transport policy in a greener direction and make alternatives to cars more attractive by improving public transport services and make walking and cycling far safer.”

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We agree that in order to tackle climate change we need to do more than support electric cars. That is why in addition to the £400m to encourage development and uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles, we also spend £2.5bn a year on buses, £140m on cycling and require local authorities to factor in the impact on the environment when developing their transport strategies. Tackling climate change is one of the single most important issues we face, and transport is central to how we deal with it.

Read more 1

Sprinting for “green” stimulus dollars, plug-in hybrid manufacturer brings vehicles to Washington, DC; invites law makers to test drive

April 20, 2009 at 6:52 pm

(Source: New York Times)

AFS Trinity

The chase for stimulus dollars now includes a sprint up Capitol Hill, quite literally.

The stimulus package has $2.5 billion for batteries and hybrids, and one of the many companies seeking a slice, AFS Trinity, arrived in Washington on Sunday with two Saturn Vue S.U.V.’s — “crossover” vehicles that General Motors sells as hybrids, but which AFS Trinity has extensively modified as plug-in hybrids.

The company is inviting members of Congress and their employees to drive them, and a favorite stretch is a steep hill up Constitution Avenue on the north side of the Capitol building.

AFS Trinity, of Bellevue, Wash., added two kinds of batteries to the Vue: A bank of lithium-ion batteries with 16 kilowatt-hours of usable storage (enough to go more than 40 miles), and a small bundle of ultra-capacitors — devices that hold only a little bit of energy, but can deliver or accept it very quickly.

The ultra-capacitors smooth out the start-and-stop flow of that comes with everyday driving, buffering the main batteries in a way that extends their lifetime. And they deliver real “vroom,” even though the electric drivetrain is silent.

The original Saturn comes with a four-cylinder, 170-horsepower gasoline engine. As a plug-in, normal practice would be to charge the battery overnight and drive around without the engine for the first 40 miles or so, but AFS Trinity put a button near the cigarette lighter. Push it, and the electric motor kicks in, creating a 370-horsepower street rod.

The vehicle can also run in gasoline–only mode. And it can run in something called “charge-depleting mode,’’ in which it uses electricity from the battery to assist the gasoline engine. In that mode, it gets 68 miles a gallon, the company said, and it can operate that way for 60 miles — far longer than most peoples’ daily drive. 

From the outside, the prototypes look like ordinary Saturn Vue’s, except for the big lettering on the side that announce them as 150-mile-per-gallon vehicles (that number assumes the owner drives it in all-electric mode most of the time).

Edward W. Furia, AFS Trinity’s chief executive, is looking for $40 million to build 100 cars, probably for use by a government agency like the Postal Service, then $200 million for the next thousand vehicles. Eventually he would like $1.3 billion to re-tool a GM factory to produce hundreds of thousands of plug-in hybrids. The company’s long-term plan is to produce vehicles with a price premium of $8,000 above the cost of the regular, nonhybrid version. If it could reach that point, the consumer’s extra investment might be quite small, after federal and state tax credits.

Read more Comments Off

Charge on Run! General Dynamics RST-V Series-Hybrid With Cool In-Wheel Motors

April 20, 2009 at 4:53 pm

(Source: Jalopnik)

The General Dynamics Reconnaissance Surveillance and Targeting Vehicle is one cool piece of kit. It’s powered by four electric in-wheel motors and can export thirty kilowatts directly to the grid. It’s also got neat-o gauges.

This piece of military could-be is part of a larger push from the US Army to reduce their fuel consumption and use smarter technologies to make future land vehicles better in the field and more useful tools for soldiers. The RST-V is a technology demonstrator built entirely by General Dynamics to show what’s possible on a smaller-sized vehicle built around a series hybrid drive system.  (For those interested in reading about the Pentagon’s forays into alternative fuels take a look at this article : Pentagon Prioritizes Pursuit Of Alternative Fuel Sources).

It uses a small diesel-engine powering a generator to charge on-board batteries or power the in-wheel electric motors. Instead of mounting the wheels to studs on the motor as is normally done on hub-motor concepts, this concept works a bit differently. First the wheel is assembled on a bearing riding on an stub axle, then on goes the 90 kW peak, 50 kW continuous pancake motor mount installed on the splined hub shaft, then on top of that a pancake gear reduction unit which interfaces with an eccentrically mounted geared track one the rim of the wheel. Very, very clever. Each wheel gets an independent motor controller so even if three motors get shot out, forward motion is still possible.  Aside from being able to operate in all-silent mode, it can also export over 20 kW of power to the grid.

Click here to read the entire article.

Read more Comments Off

New report from Brookings Institute – “Making Transportation Sustainable: Insights from Germany”

April 17, 2009 at 3:57 pm

(Source: The Brookings Institute)

To help improve the energy efficiency and overall environmental sustainability of the U.S. transportation system, we will need to adopt policies that foster changes in the way Americans travel. A new Brookings report “Making Transportation Sustainable: Insights from Germany” finds that Germany may offer valuable lessons. Like the United States, Germany is a federal republic but it has taken impressive steps to improve transportation options, link transportation planning to land use, and advance other reforms – all while empowering metropolitan action.

Lessons for the United States:

Public policy can play a major role in reshaping America’s transportation system. The German experience offers five lessons to the United States for improving transportation sustainability through changes in travel behavior:

Get the Price Right in order to encourage the use of less polluting cars, driving at non-peak hours and more use of public transportation
Integrate Transit, Cycling, and Walking as Viable Alternatives to the Car, as a necessary measure to make any sort of car-restrictive measures publicly and politically feasible
Fully Coordinate and Integrate Planning for Land Use and Transportation to discourage car-dependent sprawl and promote transit-oriented development
Public Information and Education to Make Changes Feasible are essential in conveying the benefits of more sustainable policies and enforcing their results over the long term
Implement Policies in Stages with a Long Term Perspective because it takes considerable time to gather the necessary public and political support and to develop appropriate measures.

Click here to download the report.  Here is the read-only version of the report.

Read more Comments Off

EPA Considers Higher Ethanol Mix for Gasoline

April 17, 2009 at 12:11 am

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

Allowing 15% Gasoline Blends Would Help Industry, but Poses Car-Warranty Issue

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has opened the door to allowing higher mixes of ethanol in gasoline, a potential boon to farmers and the struggling ethanol industry, but opposed by auto makers whose consumer warranties typically are tied to the current EPA standard.

The agency Thursday said it is seeking comment on whether to allow ordinary gasoline to consist of as much as 15% ethanol, an additive that has been heavily promoted by farm states. For decades, the EPA has allowed gasoline to include up to 10% ethanol.

The EPA’s move came in response to a petition filed last month by the trade group Growth Energy to allow motor fuel ethanol blends of as much as 15%, citing an Energy Department study that found “no operability or driveability issues” with blends as high as 20% ethanol.

Corn is loaded into a truck at a farm in Valley Springs, S.D. Higher percentages of ethanol mixed into gasoline would be a boon to farmers. About one quarter of all corn produced in the U.S. is used to make the fuel additive.

Corn is loaded into a truck at a farm in Valley Springs, S.D. Higher percentages of ethanol mixed into gasoline would be a boon to farmers. About one quarter of all corn produced in the U.S. is used to make the fuel additive.

Most car warranties, however, have followed the 10% standard, which means consumers who use blends with greater than 10% ethanol could get stuck paying the bills if there’s damage to fuel lines or other components unless auto makers agree to shoulder the costs.

Auto makers offer so-called flex-fuel vehicles designed to accept up to 85% ethanol fuels. But many current and older model cars aren’t designed for ethanol concentrations above 10%.

Alan Adler, a spokesman for General MotorsCorp., said if the EPA allows higher ethanol blends “we want to be sure that we’re not on the hook for vehicles” that end up having problems with higher blends.

Earlier this year Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. recalled 214,500 Lexus vehicles sold in the U.S. that were vulnerable to corrosion problems in their fuel-delivery pipes when some ethanol fuels were used.

Pushing against the auto industry’s objections are farmers, investors in ethanol-fuel start-ups, big agricultural commodities companies and some environmental groups that argue the U.S. would be better off substituting home-grown biofuels for foreign oil.

Click here to read the entire article.
Read more Comments Off

Eco-Motorists Slow Down, Coast, for Big Mileage Gains, but Their Strategies Might Drive Others on the Road Crazy

April 16, 2009 at 11:49 pm

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

Efficient Drivers Cut Emissions, but Stir Up Hot Air

Cruising around this desert metropolis in her four-door pickup truck, Morgan Dresser doesn’t look like an environmental trendsetter.

Recently, though, the 26-year-old did something revolutionary. She began “eco-driving” — a technique that combines a racecar driver’s skill with the proverbial grandmother’s pace. By learning to drive all over again, Ms. Dresser estimates she has boosted her truck’s fuel economy to 21 miles per gallon from 15, a jump of 40% that surpasses the mileage advertised by its manufacturer, Toyota Motor Corp. With that shift in behavior, she has done more to curb oil consumption than most people zooming around in the latest hybrid cars.

“Who would have thought a truck could get good gas mileage?” she says. “It’s possible with any vehicle, big or small.”

A new technique to curb fuel consumption is on the rise: “eco-driving.” Eco-driving teaches drivers not to slam the gas pedal and brakes, but rather, learn how to maintain a more constant speed. Jeffrey Ball reports. 

Even without futuristic technologies, drivers can achieve eye-popping fuel economy in their current cars with nothing fancier than their brains and some lighter feet. The idea is to maintain momentum much as on a leisurely bicycle ride: accelerating only gradually, coasting whenever possible and constantly adjusting speed to minimize the need to stop.

The challenge will be to get Americans, who love the open throttle as much as the open road, to ease up instead of variously slamming on the gas and the brakes. In the meantime, as early eco-drivers lower their own emissions, they are certain to raise some hot air from the impatient drivers around them.

 “I’ve been honked at. I’ve been flipped off. I’ve been yelled at: ‘Grandma!'” says Ms. Dresser, a former back-country firefighter. “I just laugh.”Trials in Europe, Japan and the U.S. are finding that drivers commonly improve their fuel economy upwards of 20% after deploying a handful of eco-driving techniques. Among them: Driving more slowly on highways, shifting gears earlier in cities and shutting off the engine rather than idling at long stops.

Click here to read the entire article.

Read more Comments Off

GM calls for plug-in vehicle standards, says Standards Necessary for Consumer Acceptance of Electric Vehicles

April 16, 2009 at 7:55 pm

(Source: Autobloggreen & GM Fast Lane)
One of the factors that has helped to make cars so ubiquitous over the past century is standards. By standardizing things like fuel fillers, inflation nozzles on tires, 12V power sockets and countless other elements, automakers have been able make owning and operating a car much more practical. After all, if you had to drive around to 20 different gas stations to find one with a nozzle that fits your tank, it would be a real nuisance to drive. Most of those industry standards are defined by committees of the Society of Automotive Engineers. One of the standards currently being worked on is SAE J1772 which will define standard connectors for plug-in vehicles.  GM’s Fast Lane blog notes “with SAE J1772™, we’re defining what a common electric vehicle conductive charging system architecture will look like for all major automakers in North America, but more importantly, we’re working to resolve general physical, electrical and performance requirements so these systems can be manufactured for safe public use.

Through SAE, our industry is working together to answer fundamental questions about plug-in electric vehicles such as battery electrochemistry, optimal battery-size and state of charge, and lifecycle among other issues, but zeroing in on the ergonomics, safety and performance of the charging interface is one of the most basic ways we can help build consumer confidence in plug-ins.

Think about it, if you have no reservations or confusion about charging your vehicle, you’re probably going to be more likely to drive one. Drivers shouldn’t have to worry about electromagnetic compatibility, emission and immunity when they need to plug-in – that’s what engineers like me get paid to do.”

Read more Comments Off

Convenience is King – You can take the train to work, but your office is still a mile away from the station. Might as well drive, right? How we can solve the last-mile problem?

April 16, 2009 at 7:28 pm

(Source: Good Magazine)

A couple of months after the presidential election, and a couple of weeks after Barack Obama signed his stimulus bill, the giddiness among transport advocates was enough to induce a contact high: $8 billion for high-speed trains, and another $8.4 billion for mass transit! They were excited for good reason: For years, the country has starved for any attempt to develop green transit, and finally we had the money.

But what if most mass transit is doomed to fail? It isn’t the mere lack of trains and subways that keep people in their cars. It’s what urban planners call the first- and last-mile problem. You know it, intuitively. Let’s say you’d like to commute on public transit. But if you live in a suburb—and ever since 2000, over half of Americans do—it’s unlikely that you live close enough to a station to walk. The same problem arises once you get to your destination: You probably don’t work anywhere near the closest bus or train station. So even if public transit is available, commuters often stay in their cars because the alternative—the hassle of driving, then riding, then getting to your final destination—is inconvenient, if not totally impossible. “Denser areas don’t have these same problems,” says Susan Shaheen, who heads the Innovative Mobility Research group at the University of California, Berkeley. “The problem is really about land use in the United States.”

It sounds nearly impossible to fix: Our suburbs won’t soon disappear, even if some are withering in the present housing decline. But here’s the good news: For the first time in three decades, solving the last-mile problem seems just within reach, owing to vehicle fleets and ingenious ride-sharing schemes that lean on mobile computing, social networks, and smart urban planning. “To make public transit viable, you have it make it just as easy as getting in a car,” says Shaheen. “It can be done.”

The challenge, according to Dan Sturges, the founder of Intrago Mobility, which creates vehicle-sharing technology, is that “no one’s yet putting these innovations together as a system, and the public doesn’t understand the broader problem. But if implemented all together, the things being invented now will make owning a personal car into a joke.” The enemy is really the car’s unequaled convenience; commuters need multiple, equally easy choices before they’ll give up the steering wheel. Several such choices are in the works.

“Right-Size” Fleets

Zipcar—which is now being copied by Hertz and U-Haul—is a godsend for city dwellers who only occasionally need a car. But it can also be used to solve the last-mile problem, when linked with public transit. “We’re at the tip of the iceberg with those systems,” says Sturges. However, for many commutes, a car is overkill. What if the closest bus is just a mile and a half away? A “right-sized” vehicle, suited to your particular last-leg commuting need, is ideal. These might be anything from a Segway (dorky as it may be) to an electric bike or a high-powered electric golf cart. But the vehicles themselves aren’t the solution, since commutes can change every day (say you’re visiting a client one day, and eating lunch at your desk the next).

Click here to read the entire article.

Read more Comments Off

Chrysler enters the Electric Vehicle fray with sizzling hot Dodge Circuit

April 16, 2009 at 4:36 pm

(Source: AutoBlogGreen, CNNMoney)

Dodge Circuit, a two-seat roadster, could be Chrysler’s first step into electric cars, provided the company survives.

A battery-powered 268-horsepower two-seat sports car is in line to become Chrysler LLC’s first electric car, provided the carmaker lives to see another day.   

To survive, help is needed from Italy’s Fiat but, as negotiations with the Italian automaker bog down and the two week deadline to hammer out a partnership approaches, the company’s future – as well as its aspirations for an electric hot rod – are increasingly in doubt.

Chrysler’s first electric car, set to be introduced late next year around the same time as General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt, will be a sports car with a zero-to-60 time of under five seconds and a top speed of 120 miles hour.

It looks like the Dodge Circuit EV may have won the “who wants to be the first electric Chrysler concept to go into production” contest. Although they still haven’t officially made an announcement, Chrysler’s viability plan did list an “EV Roadster” as part of their 2010 product line. Based on the lightweight Lotus Europa and using drivetrain parts pilfered from UQM, the concept drew some fairly positive responses when it took on the newDodge Challenger in an impromptu drag race and later, when it got its crosshair makeover. Its 150 to 200 mile range is significantly higher than many other electric vehicles in the works and should add to its appeal.

“To be able to meet a 2010 timeline, you have to be pretty far along in development, and right now we are,” said Lou Rhodes, head of Chrysler’s electric car program, in a recent CNNMoney.com interview.

The Circuit is similar to the Tesla Roadster, a $109,000 sports car produced by a small California company. Pricing for the Circuit has not been announced but will likely undercut the Tesla.

Read more 1
1 … 37 38 39 40 41 … 53