(Source: Green Inc, NY Times)

Raising crops to produce electricity, which will in turn power cars, is more efficient, a new study says, than raising crops to create ethanol to use as fuel in cars.

According to a study by three California researchers, an acre planted with corn for ethanol will provide far fewer miles of transportation fuel as the same acre growing trees or switchgrass, which are then burned in power plants that provide the power to charge the batteries of electric cars.

In fact, even ethanol made from cellulose, a technology that does not now exist in commercial form, is not as efficient a use of biomass as burning it in a power plant would be, the researchers found.

In a paper published in the current issue of Science magazine, Chris Field, a professor of biology at Stanford and director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution, Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, and David Lobell of Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, write that the size of the advantage would depend on many factors.

These include the number of miles per gallon any particular vehicle will go on ethanol, and what a battery weighs per kilowatt-hour of energy stored. As batteries get lighter, for example, it takes less energy to move them.

But the researchers estimated that a small battery-powered S.U.V. would go nearly 14,000 miles on the highway on the energy from an acre of switchgrass burned to make electricity, compared to about 9,000 miles on ethanol.

If one grows a tree or annual crop, for example, which pulls carbon dioxide out of the air, burns it in a power plant that captures and stores escaping CO₂, and then replaces it with another crop, which pulls yet more carbon dioxide out of the air, the process becomes carbon negative.

The “miles per acre” question, and the amount of farmland diverted for use in producing transportation fuel is a sensitive political question, with American use of corn for ethanol blamed in part for last year’s run-up in global grain prices.

(Source: Good Magazine)

Amidst the clutter of alternative vehicles that are already in the market and the ones just arriving in the market, how would one decide on the “right” vehicle?  Our savvy folks at Good magazine have published an excellent resource that makes this decision-making process less-complicated and easy to navigate.

Whatever happened to hydrogen?

The idea is great: Take the most abundant element in the universe, turn it silently into electricity, and the only byproduct is a wisp of steam. To its fans, the hydrogen fuel cell is a transportation miracle that will cork our carbon output and curb our addiction to foreign oil. To its critics, it’s vaporware.

(Source: NY Times)

Ethanol producers reacted with dismay to California’s approval of the nation’s first low-carbon fuel standard, which will require the state’s mix of fuels to be 10 percent lower in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

In a 9-1 vote late Thursday, the state’s Air Resources Board approved the measure (seebackground here).“The drive to force the market toward greater use of alternative fuels will be a boon to the state’s economy and public health — it reduces air pollution, creates new jobs and continues California’s leadership in the fight against global warming,” said the California board’s chairman, Mary D. Nichols, in a statement.

But the ethanol industry is concerned that the regulations give a poor emissions score to their corn-based product, in some cases ranking it as a bigger emitter than petroleum.

“This was a poor decision, based on shaky science, not only for California, but for the nation,” said General Wesley Clark, who co-chairs the pro-ethanol group Growth Energy, in a statement.

The decision, he added, “puts another road block in moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and stifles development of the emerging cellulosic industry.”

Note: Late last night, TransportGooru made detailed post (shown below), immediately following the Calif. Air Resources Board announcement on the adoption of this standard. 

California adopts first-in-the-world regulation to minimize the amount of carbon in fuel

(Source: CBS, LA Times, SF Chronicle)

California took aim today at the oil industry and its effect on global warming, adopting the world’s first regulation to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the fuel that runs cars and trucks.

Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli via CBS

The regulation requires producers, refiners and importers of gasoline and diesel to reduce the carbon intensity of their fuel by 10% over the next decade. And it launches the state on an ambitious path toward ratcheting down its overall heat-trapping emissions by 80% by mid-century — a level that scientists deem necessary to avoid drastic disruption to the global climate.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the regulation immediately after the vote.

“California’s first-in-the-world low carbon fuel standard will not only reduce global warming pollution – it will reward innovation, expand consumer choice and encourage the private investment we need to transform our energy infrastructure,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

At the all-day public hearing prior to the vote, backers of corn-based ethanol criticized the regulation because it counts – as part of the carbon intensity – the indirect effects of manufacturing the fuel. With corn-based ethanol, that means counting the impact of creating new crop land when existing land is converted to growing corn for fuel instead of food.

Backers of the regulation applauded in the auditorium after the vote.

(Source: Los Angeles Times)

As the state moves to reduce the carbon footprint of fuel, an engineer hopes to build a plant in Lancaster that will convert garbage into an alcohol-based mixture.

California’s proposal “is the first time anyone has attempted, for environmental purposes, to change the content of what goes into cars and trucks,” says Mary D. Nichols, state Air Resources Board chairwoman. “It would revolutionize transportation fuel.”
 
President Obama has also called for a low-carbon standard for the nation’s $400-billion transportation fuel market. A version similar to California’s is incorporated in climate legislation pending before Congress.

But by measuring the “cradle-to-grave” effect of various fuels, the new rule would favor ethanol such as Klann’s, made from non-food sources. Even “low-carbon” corn ethanol — such as the kind produced in California using gas-fired electricity and efficient machinery — has a far higher carbon footprint than so-called cellulosic fuel from landfill waste, trees, switchgrass or sugar cane.

“This is fantastic for us,” said Klann, who uses recycled sulfuric acid to transform paper, construction debris and grass clippings into ethanol. “The paradigm is changing from oil to sustainable fuels. The ones with the lowest carbon footprint will be the winners.”

By 2020, the air board estimates, new-technology fuels along with electricity to power hybrid and electric cars would replace a quarter of the gasoline supply. And that is a critical element of the state’s sweeping plan to reduce its global warming emissions. 

Battered corn ethanol investors have mounted an intense lobbying effort against California’s proposal. Several, including Pacific Ethanol, California’s biggest, had planned to diversify from corn into cellulosic ethanol. They argue that by diminishing the value of their existing plants, the new rule also would cripple their advanced biofuel efforts. 

At issue is the Air Resources Board’s complex modeling, which would calculate each fuel’s carbon footprint not only by its “direct” emissions from drilling or planting to refining to burning, but also “indirect” emissions caused by clearing forests or fields to compensate for food crops such as corn or soy that are diverted to fuel. Opponents say the science behind the indirect modeling is inaccurate. 

Among entrepreneurs like Klann, the mood has never been more hopeful. In an Anaheim lab, the 57-year-old electrical engineer guides a visitor through a maze of pipes, filters, heat exchangers, fermentation tanks and vats of acid like a small boy showing off a chemistry set. “We’re in the forefront of this industry,” he said of his patented “concentrated acid hydrolysis” process. “We expect to have the first plant to produce cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale.”  

Financing for his Lancaster plant, which recently obtained its final permits, has been delayed by the credit crunch. But if it comes through, the facility will process 170 tons of garbage a day to produce 3.7 million gallons of ethanol a year. Estimated cost per gallon: about $2, Klann says.  

He already has plans for 20 more facilities across the country. Next on the block: a plant outside Palm Springs, partly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, that would produce 19 million gallons annually. 

Click here to read th entire article.  For interested readers, here is a TransportGooru article on California’s ambitious new fuel regulation standards. 

Tightening the “Green” Screw! California regulators consider instituting first-in-the nation low-carbon fuel standards

(Source: San Jose Mercury news & Calif. ARB)

SACRAMENTO—California air regulators are taking another step to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, considering first-in-the nation standards to require the use of so-called low-carbon fuels.

The California Air Resources Board, which will debate the standards Thursday, considers the regulation a framework for a potential national policy advocated by President Barack Obama on the campaign trail last year. Democrats have included a goal for low-carbon fuels in the latest climate bill they have introduced in Congress.

“We see this as a model for the rest of the country and the world to follow,” said Air Resources Board member Dan Sperling, a transportation expert and professor at the University of California, Davis.

 The proposed regulation calls for reducing the carbon content in California’s transportation fuels 10 percent by 2020, but representatives of the petroleum and ethanol industries are objecting to how the state proposes to achieve that.

California oil producers and refiners are skeptical that cleaner fuels and vehicles powered by hydrogen and natural gas will be available in time to meet the new standards. They are asking the Air Resources Board to delay a decision until next year.

“This is the most transforming fuel regulation we’ve ever done,” said Kathy Rehis-Boyd, executive vice president of the Western States Petroleum Association. “We think there’s still more homework to do on this. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

“We have a long history of what I call ‘fuel du jour’ approaches,” Sperling said. “What we need is a broad policy framework that doesn’t pick winners.”

The Air Resources Board is not just targeting the emissions of the fuel once it is burned in a vehicle. It also wants to account for all carbon emissions related to the production of the fuel.

For example, refineries could choose to stop buying a heavy crude oil extracted from Canadian oil sands, which takes more energy to convert into gasoline. But accounting for emissions during the entire production cycle of a fuel also would discourage certain fuels from being used in California.

Corn-based ethanol, for example, burns cleanly in a car engine. But making it can take a heavy toll on the environment: Massive tracts of land must be cleared, which requires fuel-powered tractors, then coal- or natural gas-fired plants convert the corn into fuel and petroleum is used to transport the end product to distant markets.