Post Tagged with: "University of California"

Job Alert: Senior Engineer/Scientist (Clean Vehicles Program) – Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, DC or Berkeley, CA

December 5, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Union of Concerned Scientists

Union of Concerned Scientists (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Job Description

Senior Engineer/Scientist
Clean Vehicles Program
Union of Concerned Scientists
Location choice: Washington, DC or Berkeley, CA Office

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the leading science-based organization at the center of today’s most exciting and important policy debates, seeks an individual to work with a top-notch, multi-disciplinary team in our Clean Vehicles Program to advance sound transportation policy to cut oil use and protect public health. UCS is seeking a senior engineer/scientist to conduct research and analysis and serve as a lead spokesperson focused on solutions that save oil and reduce climate emissions, fuel economy, electric vehicles, and related technology and policy issues. Candidates must have a strong background in vehicle and fuel technology and transportation policy and excellent written and oral communication skills.

Responsibilities

The Senior Engineer/Scientist will help lead UCS efforts to evaluate potential transportation sector policy and technology solutions to cut projected US oil use in half within twenty years and significantly reduce transportation related pollution.

The person in this position will

  • generate reports on oil savings, fuel economy, and electric vehicle technology, develop related policies;
  • serve as a technical expert and a lead spokesperson to media, government and key allies;
  • provide technical information and expertise through testimony, written materials and public speaking;
  • actively promote promising legislation at federal and state levels;
  • assist in developing and managing regulatory campaigns on key oil and transportation-related issues.

Desired Skills & Experience

Qualifications and experience

This position requires five to seven years of related experience for candidates with masters or equivalent experience, including background in research and policy development and analysis. Candidate must have experience communicating technical issues to a non-technical audience through written products and presentations. Candidate should have knowledge of the transportation field, including vehicle and fuel technology, infrastructure, and industries. Candidate should have familiarity with current oil and transportation issues and their political/social/environmental/economic ramifications.  Position requires an understanding of public policy aspects of transportation and related climate and oil issues and the role of technical analyses and advocacy in shaping public opinion and policy debates.

Applicants must have strong quantitative and research skills; strong writing and verbal skills; proficiency with spreadsheet and word processing software; ability to write well for scientific and general audiences; familiarity with economics and public policy; and a team orientation.  Experience with project management, policymakers and the media a plus.

At UCS, comparable training and/or experience can be substituted for degrees when appropriate.

Company Description

The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading U.S. science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in Berkeley, Chicago and Washington, D.C. For more information, go to www.ucsusa.org.

Additional Information

Compensation, Hours and Location: This is a full time position based in either UCS’s Washington, DC or Berkeley, CA office. For candidates who meet all position requirements, the salary is in the high $70,000s. UCS offers excellent benefits and is an equal opportunity employer continually seeking to diversify its staff. Information about UCS is available at http://www.ucsusa.org

To Apply: Please submit a cover letter, a technical writing sample and a general audience writing sample, salary requirements, how you learned about the position and resume via email to jobs@ucsusa.org and include “Senior Engineer/Scientist” in the subject line. Email materials in Word or PDF format only. No phone calls please. Deadline: December 14, 2012 or until filled.

Posted: November 28, 2012

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Is Farming for Electricity More Efficient?

May 11, 2009 at 10:53 am

(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.

Click here to read the entire article. 
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