Ed Ring

Assembly Bill 32, signed into law by California Governor Schwarzenegger in late 2006, took a big step closer to implementation last week with the release of the much anticipated "Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan." Sturnella neglecta. AB32 California Global Warming Act Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan - CARB July 2008 Two key pages in the 77 page document are pages 11 (table 2) and page 17 (table 4).  The table on page 11 “Recommended Greenhouse Gas Reduction Measures,” has targeted emissions reductions by sector, expressed in “MMTCO2E” – million metric tons co2 emissions.  In this table, it only appears that 2 of the 160 million ton goal are going to be accomplished through land use regulations.  This may be misleading however, since they are leaving another 35.2...

We have reported on the state of cellulosic ethanol development, and the potential of cellulosic ethanol, in our recent feature entitled (not surprisingly) "Cellulosic Ethanol."  But if you take an interest in the future of biofuel, this is only half the story, if that.  What about biofuel derived from algae?  Despite the title of this post, it isn't an either/or choice, and comparing the potential of algae versus cellulose as a biofuel feedstock is an interesting topic - both claim immense potential and neither are here yet.  Will both of these biofuels end up in industrial scale production in the next few decades?  Here are some comparisons: (1)  Algae can be converted into ethanol or diesel, depending on the process.  Typically algae is associated with biodiesel, and cellulose is associated with ethanol. (2)  Cellulose has an extremely diverse array of potential feedstocks, but the...

WHAT IS IT, CAN WE MAKE IT COST EFFECTIVELY, AND WHEN? Last month, for the first time in history, the cars racing in the Indianapolis 500 were fueled by pure ethanol. This should put to rest any concerns about ethanol lacking sufficient energy density to function as a motor fuel. While the absolute amount of energy contained in ethanol is somewhat lower than gasoline - about 76,000 BTUs per gallon for ethanol compared to about 116,000 BTUs per gallon of gasoline - ethanol has higher octane, generally speaking 110 or more vs. 90 or less, allowing ethanol to run in higher compression, higher efficiency engines. A car optimized to run on ethanol can get comparable mileage...

One of the most useful ways to measure how efficiently we use energy is to calculate how many units of energy are required to produce a unit of wealth - this is known as energy intensity.  In theory energy intensity can be measured in a variety of ways, but a useful convention is to divide the total annual energy consumption for a nation, expressed in British Thermal Units (BTUs), by that nation's Gross Domestic Product for the same year.  The fewer BTUs per dollar of GDP, the better the score. BTUs are a universal energy measurement favored by economists - one BTU is defined as the amount of energy it takes to heat one cubic centimeter of water by one degree centigrade at room temperature.  One kilowatt-hour is equal to 3412 BTUs.  One gallon of gasoline has about 130,000 BTUs.  When looking at entire economies, the standard unit is one quadrillion BTUs.  The USA, for...

Al Gore has said Americans are addicted to "short term thinking." He is correct. Even in the business world, which is presumably rational, timelines often stretch no further than the next quarter's earnings reports. To think ahead by spans of generations or more is not very common. Sadly, however, Al Gore fails to emphasize - for reasons either cynical or simply because he suffers from the same affliction as most everyone else - that Americans are also victims of "scope insensitivity." That is a big phrase - "scope insensitivity" - but understanding the meaning of this phrase is key to understanding many of the policy failures of America, especially in recent decades. Scope insensitivity is the inability of a person, or voting block, or nation, to understand simple quantitative proportions, which if understood, would cast a policy issue in an entirely different light. Simply put...

We have never simply posted a press release, but they remain essential to keeping track of what's going on out there. Today we received two press releases, almost back to back, that have a lot to do with each other. The first one announced a major new partnership between Caterpillar, "the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, clean diesel and natural gas engines and gas turbines," with CleanAIR Systems of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The announcement continues: "CleanAIR's reduction technology will be installed on existing Caterpillar commercial engine applications to reduce diesel particulate matter, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and NOx." Literally minutes later, another press release arrived in the in-box, this one promoting a book entitled "The Coming China Wars," by Peter Navarro.  We certainly hope there won't be "China Wars" on the way, but as the book describes, China's challenges as such a...

We've reported before on TREC, "The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation," an initiative that campaigns for the transmission of clean power from deserts throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa." The mission of this group, affiliated with the Club of Rome, is to promote the construction of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines throughout Europe, the nations ringing the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.  At the same time, they are calling for the construction of solar thermal power stations in the Sahara Desert to produce electricity that can be efficiently transmitted to European markets via the HVDC cables. This is an ambitious project, to put it mildly.  We reported on HVDC transmission technologies...

The parallels between the internet revolution and the 21st century green revolution are many, but the most salient perhaps is this:  Wonderful progress is going to come out of this boom, but lots of business models and products are going to come and go, and we're going to look back at many of them and shake our heads in disbelief. GreenBuild.com is an excellent online resource for information about all things green relating to construction, and I sincerely hope they're around and thrive forever.  Every Friday they email me their "Friday's Green Video," and they are always interesting.  But today's video highlighted what can only be characterized as "bleeding edge green."  By comparison, in our post...

After visiting the GM technical center last April, which resulted in the feature story "GM's Volt EREV," it was clear the next big step for the Volt would be to get the actual production design batteries into prototypes and onto the test track.  That step has been taken, with an official announcement by GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz on his post of June 5th on the GM FastLand blog entitled "At Last: Behind the Wheel of Volt Test Mule." With a program as fast paced as GM's Volt project, the first major automotive development program in history that does technology development and vehicle development in parallel, it is amazing how dated a print magazine article can be, before it even goes to press.  In the July/August (it isn't even July yet!) issue of the Atlantic Monthly, a feature appears on the Volt entitled "Electro-Shock Therapy" by Jonathan Rauch.  If you read this feature closely, you will see the final interviews with GM officials cited in the story...

It would be fitting, after just reporting on a recent appearance by Former Vice President Al Gore (ref. Al Gore and Innovation), to review his latest book "The Assault on Reason."  The premise of the book is that modern mass media constitutes a relentless march towards "one way conversations," where money and power dictate what radio, then television, have force-fed into the minds of vulnerable and impressionable human psyches.  Gore then offers hope that the internet and the Democratic party can reverse this trend. Al Gore Will his greentech revolution save the earth, or merely revive socialist tyranny? Gore's concerns about mass media are certainly not unfounded, but what struck me...