Blogs / 80beats

In another step forward for biofuels, a commercial jet took to the skies yesterday over New Zealand to test a new jet fuel blend that uses oil from the oily jatropha plant. Air New Zealand announced that a Boeing 747 plane flew for about two hours yesterday, running on a 50/50 blend of conventional jet fuel and biofuel. Jatropha—a weedy bush from Africa that produces seeds rich in oil—was selected because it is not a food crop and can be grown on land unsuitable for food production. The roughly three tons of liquid jatropha biofuel came from plants grown in India, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, the airline says [Scientific American].

Air New Zealand is the second airline to test-fly a jet plane powered by biofuel. The first was Virgin Atlantic Airways, which in February flew a Boeing 747-400 from London to Amsterdam with one of its four tanks filled with jet fuel containing a 20 percent blend of biofuel made of coconut and babbasu oil [Greentech Media]. Meanwhile, other airlines are developing jet fuels derived from algae or oilseed plants: Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines both have test flights scheduled for January.

(more…)

The U.S. auto industry may be floundering in part because it failed to embrace fuel-efficient and alternative fuel cars, but U.S. companies can still position themselves to lead the way in the next phase of automobile manufacturing, a group of battery makers is arguing. Fourteen companies have announced that they’re teaming up and will seek $1 billion in federal aid to build a large-scale factory that produces lithium-ion batteries, which would be used in plug-in electric cars. Many experts believe battery technology and manufacturing capacity could become as strategically important as oil is today. Auto makers, including General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., say they plan to roll out plug-in electric cars by 2010 [The Wall Street Journal].

The consortium, which calls itself the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture, is modeled after a group formed in 1987 by computer-chip manufacturing companies that were struggling to compete with Japanese chip makers. The situation is similar now, experts say, as Asian companies dominate the battery market. “A small, fragmented (U.S.) battery industry will not long survive in the face of determined Asian competition,” Ralph Brodd, a consultant to battery manufacturers, said…. “(Other) countries understand that he who makes the batteries will one day make the cars,” he said [Reuters].

(more…)

President-elect Barack Obama has thrilled the scientific community with the leaked news that he plans to nominate a Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a passion for green technology for the post of energy secretary. The likely nominee, Steven Chu, currently heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and shared the Nobel in physics in 1997 for developing a method to cool and trap atoms.

Recently, however, Chu’s interests have shifted away from particle physics and towards finding scientific solutions for global warming. In an interview last year, Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several years ago. “I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed,” he said. “Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation” [Washington Post]. Since he became director of Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 2004 he has focused on making it a world leader in alternative energy research, spearheading research initiatives on solar energy and biofuels.

Obama is also expected to nominate Carol Browner, the EPA administrator under President Clinton, as the top White House official on climate and energy policy, and Lisa Jackson, who was until recently was New Jersey’s environmental protection chief, to head the EPA. Along with Chu, these people will be at the center of Obama administration’s energy and environment policy, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions growth and have energy efficiency play an important role in an expected economic stimulus package [CNET].

(more…)

A marine engineer and naval architect has designed a new way of drawing energy out of slow-moving rivers and gentle tides. The researcher says the unobtrusive device, which was inspired by the way fish move through the water, could be set down on riverbeds or suspended in the ocean just about anywhere. Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth’s currents are slower than three knots [Telegraph].

Engineer Michael Bernitsas’s device is called VIVACE, which stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. How does the technology work? A cylinder-shaped object in the water current causes alternating vortices to form above and below the cylinder. The vortices push and pull the passive cylinder up and down on its springs, creating mechanical energy. Then, the machine converts the mechanical energy into electricity [Greenbang]. Bernitsas explains that fish also create vortices as they swim, and in a large school each fish curves around the vortices left by the fish in front, using the tiny whirlpools to propel themselves forward.

(more…)

A newly discovered tree fungus could be on its way to the gas station. The fungus, Gliocladium roseum, is able to turn plant matter into gaseous hydrocarbons that are almost chemically identical to diesel fuel. “This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances,” said researcher Gary Strobel from Montana State University. “The fungus can even make these diesel compounds from cellulose, which would make it a better source of biofuel than anything we use at the moment” [LiveScience].

The fungus grows inside trees in the rainforests of Patagonia, in the southern part of Argentina and Chile. After discovering the new fungus wedged between cells in a stem from an Ulmo tree (Eucryphia cordifolia), Strobel and colleagues cultured the organism, collected the gaseous compounds it produced, and ran the compounds through a mass spectrometer to identify them. When he saw the printout, Strobel says, “every hair on my body stood up.” The list included octane, 1-octene, heptane, 2-methyl, and hexadecane–all common components of diesel fuels [ScienceNOW]. The gaseous compound, dubbed “myco-diesel,” is thought to be used by G. roseum to poison other fungi.

(more…)

Earlier this month, the much-hyped electric car company Tesla Motors admitted that the hard financial times were taking a toll, and scaled back its goals to mass-produce flashy electric sports cars and sedans in the next few years. In that announcement, company founder (and space entrepreneur) Elon Musk revealed that the company would cut staff, close a Detroit office, and postpone production of its next generation vehicle, the Model S. Now the company has acknowledged that it was forced to cut almost 25 percent of its workforce, and analysts are wondering about its future.

The company is reportedly reeling because a number of investors withdrew their support or demanded tougher terms as financial markets collapsed over the past month. The company restructuring means that the Model S, a four-door sedan, won’t be ready until 2011, and the startup could lose its first-mover advantage: By 2010, everyone from General Motors to Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor, and Daimler expects to launch their own electrified vehicles. James N. Hall, who runs the auto consulting firm 2953 Analytics, sees trouble ahead. “If the market wants [electric cars] in the number Tesla is talking about,” he says, “a larger auto company will bury them on cost” [BusinessWeek].

(more…)

As the turmoil continues in the world’s financial systems and countries brace for an economic downturn, many environmentalists and green tech entrepreneurs are posing the question: How will this crisis impact the young renewable energy sector?

Some worry that ambitious projects won’t be able to get the financing they need from troubled banks wary of lending money, while others note that oil prices have dropped fast based on predictions of lower demand. Advocates are concerned that if the prices for oil and gas keep falling, the incentive for utilities and consumers to buy expensive renewable energy will shrink. That is what happened in the 1980s when a decade of advances for alternative energy collapsed amid falling prices for conventional fuels [The New York Times].

In Europe, environmental ministers are meeting to finalize the European Union’s goals for cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, but new discord has broken out. Nations like Italy and Poland have begun to argue that emission cuts must be scaled back to avoid further hardship for industry during the hard economic times. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said: “Our businesses are in absolutely no position at the moment to absorb the costs of the regulations that have been proposed” [BBC News].

(more…)

A green technology company that turns pond scum into biofuel has announced plans to build the first commercial-scale algae farm, a $92 million complex of greenhouses that are expected to eventually cover 247 acres. The company, GreenFuel Technologies, wants to recycle carbon dioxide from factories and power plants, and will use that gas plus sunshine to nourish its algae fields. The process provides two environmental benefits in one, as it simultaneously absorbs carbon dioxide emissions and provides a renewable source of fuel.

As prices for vegetable oils used to make biofuels has remained high, algae advocates have looked upon the slime as a possible savior. After all, algae are oily and could potentially produce more oil per acre than palm or other oil-yielding crops. Companies haven’t yet succeeded in producing algae affordably and at significant volumes in spite of years of research and development, but a number of venture-backed companies cropped up to take on the challenge [Greentech Media]. While the companies Sapphire Energy and Solazyme have also garnered attention and funding, GreenFuel Technologies seems to have beat the competition to the punch on commercializing its technology.

(more…)

A previously secretive solar energy start-up has revealed the details of its cutting edge technology, and has declared itself as a major player in the new solar industry. The company, Solyndra, says it has orders for $1.2 billion worth of its solar panels over the next five years. It has raised more than $600 million and already has 500 employees. And it plans to construct a second, larger plant in [California] next year [San Jose Mercury News].

Solyndra makes solar photovoltaic systems, but its panels aren’t exactly the industry standard; where almost all others on the market look like a flat sheet of dark material, Solyndra’s panels resemble a row of long fluorescent light tubes, each an inch wide and an inch apart [VentureBeat]. The company says that by coating the tubes with thin-film voltaic cells, it has made more efficient solar energy collectors. “With a cylinder, we are collecting light from all angles, even collecting diffuse light,” says CEO Chris Gronet [Scientific American].

(more…)

Look, up in the sky: It’s a biofuel-powered jet! It’s a hydrogen-powered plane! In fact, you can expect to see both of these alternative energy aircraft in the sky in coming years. The aviation industry is rushing to innovate as fuel prices continue to take their toll and as the public questions the impact air travel has on climate change.

In North Dakota, an engineering team working with DARPA has created a soybean and canola oil biofuel for jets that they say is indistinguishable from conventional jet fuel, with a similar density and freezing point. The research team is currently in the process of producing 25 gallons (95 liters) of the bio–jet fuel for ground testing in a jet engine as early as next month. “The thing that needs to happen is a purchase order to come through from the Air Force so we can get [the] investment to build that first plant,” [engineer Chad] Wocken says. “We could get a plant operational in two to five years if there were a commitment to buy the fuel” [Scientific American].

(more…)

Chrysler, the smallest of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, surprised the industry this week by revealing three new electric vehicles, the first of which it plans to begin shipping to dealers in late 2010. In unveiling a minivan, a Jeep Wrangler and a sports car, Chrysler’s executives spelled out plans for a future in which most, if not all, automobiles would use electric motors for propulsion — essentially sounding the death knell for the internal-combustion engine [Los Angeles Times].

The car company has struggled financially over the past decade, so the ambitious plan surprised analysts, many of whom thought Chrysler lacked the size and financial resources to develop an electric car on its own [The New York Times]. By announcing that its first electric models will hit showrooms in 2010, Chrysler puts itself in direct competition with General Motors, which has a similar timeline for its electric car, the Chevy Volt, which was unveiled last week. Nissan is also working on several electric cars of its own.

(more…)

The first commercial energy station powered by ocean waves started up yesterday three miles off the Portuguese coast. The machine, which resembles a giant red sea snake, generates electricity that’s transmitted via an underwater cable to the nation’s power grid. Two more machines are expected to be added in the coming weeks, allowing the “wave farm” to generate a total of 2.25 megawatts, enough to supply 1,500 households with electricity [Reuters]. If successful, a second phase will see energy generation rise to 21 megawatts from a further 25 machines providing electricity for 15,000 Portuguese homes [CNN].

Environmentalists love the idea of generating power from the natural motion of waves and tides, as the ocean’s energy is bountiful, reliable, and creates no greenhouse gases. But the technology has been slow to mature. Last year, a wave-power machine sank off the Oregon coast. Blades have broken off experimental tidal turbines in New York’s turbulent East River [The New York Times]. A problem with offshore moorings also delayed the Portuguese project for about a year. But wave power proponents say that some problems are inevitable with a new technology, and that most of the kinks have now been ironed out.

(more…)

Google and General Electric have announced a partnership aimed at upgrading the United States electric power grid and pushing forward the development of renewable energy. The companies plan to conduct a joint lobbying effort in Washington to encourage the government to invest in developing a “smart grid,” and will also work together on projects like geothermal energy systems and integrating plug-in electric cars into the grid. The deal combines each company’s strengths: GE will make the hardware — from wind turbines to metering switches, and Google will make the software — applying network technologies to the grid [Portfolio].

The announcement follows a speech given two weeks ago by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which he laid out a blueprint for how the United States could switch over to generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030, while also eliminating half of the gasoline-powered cars from the roads. While Google hasn’t offered to follow through on that comprehensive proposal, which carried the hefty price tag of $2.7 billion, the partnership with GE seems to indicate that Google wants to put many of its suggestions into practice.

(more…)

A “sustainable chemical” company called Genomatica has developed a way to use sugar and genetically engineered bacteria to produce a common industrial chemical that’s usually produced using petroleum, and which is found in everything from Spandex to car bumpers. By using sugar from sugar cane as a feedstock, industrial chemical companies can get a cheaper alternative to petroleum-derived chemicals, while investing in processes that are less polluting and nontoxic, said Genomatica CEO Chris Gann [CNET].

Genomatica produces the chemical, 1,4-butanediol (BDO), by feeding pure glucose derived from sugarcane to E. coli bacteria, which has been engineered to produce BDO. “We have engineered the organism such that it has to secrete that product in order for it to grow,” says [company president] Christophe Schilling…. “The interests of the organism are aligned with our interests: It grows faster when it produces more” [Scientific American].

(more…)

During a celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of General Motors, the company unveiled a prototype of its long-awaited electric car, the Chevy Volt. Experts say the Volt, which is expected to hit showrooms in late 2010, has the potential to both revitalize the struggling car company and to change American’s expectations of what an automobile can do: GM has said that the Volt should be able to drive 400 miles on a full charge and a full tank. “We’re reinventing the automobile,” [GM executive Rick] Wagoner said…. GM has placed huge bets on the car, reportedly investing at least $500 million in its development [Los Angeles Times blog].

The Volt’s technology differs from the system used in Toyota’s hybrid Prius, which has two motors. The Volt will have only one electric motor, powered by its new battery, and will go up to 40 miles without using a drop of gas. For the nearly 80% of Americans who drive less than 40 miles a day, that would mean they could effectively eliminate gasoline from their lives. After 40 miles, the Volt’s gas engine switches on, but unlike the Prius’s, it doesn’t make the car move so much as an inch [Time]. Instead, the gas engine generates electricity to charge the car’s battery, allowing the driver to go several hundred more miles before either filling up the gas tank or plugging in the car.

(more…)