Due to the fact that our current energy grid is roughly 51% coal-powered, electric cars and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) have taken some heat as being more polluting than their manufacturers claim, and as we get closer to the release of actual mass-market electric cars, the debate seems to get more intense. Although studies have shown that electric cars and PHEVs are cleaner than pure gas cars even when run off of mostly coal power, the debate still goes on—ad nauseum.

But from my perspective, that debate is a completely irrelevant smokescreen.

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Puff is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest.

Modern artists have often tackled environmental and ecological issues head on, such as through incorporating litter and refuse into sculptures, while other artists (such as photo, video and film artists) have sought to document industrial waste and/or have taken strong oppositional/advocacy stances in their works.

In recent years, many artists have sought to move beyond these “reactive”, commentary, and  documentary approaches and create objects and devices that serve practical purposes (if still a bit fanciful in appearance). One such artist/designer is Karolina Sobecka, whose car emissions monitoring device, ‘Puff’ , provides colorful feedback to the car owner on how “cleanly” (or efficiently) he/she is using/burning gasoline.

This author recently contacted Ms. Sobecka and asked her about this device (’Puff’) as well as her other designs, and her artistic/social/environmental goals.

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Overall, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels increased 29% between 2000 and 2008 and 41% from 1990-2008, and the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now at its highest in at least 2 million years, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The new report published this week by an international team of researchers who are part of the “Global Carbon Project” shows emissions trends through 2008 (including changes in emissions causes and in the amount of emissions remaining in the atmosphere) and brings up some major questions for the future as well.

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Oceans regulate our climate. They play a key role in keeping the world’s “homeostasis” in tact. However, their ability to absorb carbon & keep the climate in balance is dwindling, a new report shows.

In a year-by-year study from 1765 to 2008, researchers found that the oceans are struggling to meet increasing emissions demands. They cannot take in as much carbon as they used to.

The study, published in the November 19 issue of the journal Nature, found that the percentage of fossil fuel emissions the ocean has been taking in since 2000 has decreased by as much as 10%.

This is the first study of its kind or breadth. One previous study had attempted to measure the oceans’ industrial carbon absorption for one year — 1994. This does so for a period of 200+ years.

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This facility is PSEG Solar Source’s first large-scale solar project. It is one of the largest solar projects in the state of New Jersey, which is already 2nd only to California in its amount of installed solar capacity. The MARS headquarters adjacent to the solar garden is the workplace of about 1,200 employees and is where M&M’S® Brand Chocolate Candies are manufactured.

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Zerofootprint already helps corporations and governments in evaluating and reducing their carbon emissions through various methods. It also helps households through innovative technologies such as this one. This new TalkingPlug is for corporations or households (or anyone with electrical sockets) and will have an initial price tag of about $50. The price may go down considerably if it can make the product on a larger scale.

How does it work? What are its advantages compared to Google’s PowerMeter and other similar up and coming technologies?

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Like it or not, at least for the near future most of us are stuck with internal combustion engine powered cars. While a lot of hype is behind future cars and technology, from electric to hydrogen to everything in between, a lot of improvements can yet be made on the ICE engine.

To that end, the Department of Energy has awarded GM with $2.7 million to develop a working prototype of a Shape Memory Alloy engine. In theory, this engine could recycle the waste heat and turn it into electrical energy, perhaps one day even replacing alternators and improving fuel efficiency.

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A new study led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo says no, they aren’t green (when it comes to climate change). However, there are still many important factors to keep in mind before claiming this is the end of a long and complicated discussion.

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Because of their enormous body size, whales have been thought to contribute a considerable amount of carbon dioxide to the total greenhouse gas build-up whenever they exhale. However, Trish J. Lavery of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia claims they – the sperms whales of Southern Ocean, at least – are falsely-accused and that they live quite a carbon-neutral life.

During the October 13 Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Quebec City, Canada, Lavery talked about earlier calculations overlooking the whales’ capacity to offset their carbon dioxide emissions. The 210,000 sperm whales in Southern Ocean should be declared carbon neutral, according to Lavery. The carbon neutral status is achieved by bringing iron from the depths of the ocean to the surface whenever they feed. This extra iron in the water induces plankton growth which in turn traps carbon and prevents it from being released into the atmosphere.

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In a recent international conference on ‘Climate Change: Technology Development & Transfer’ held in Delhi, the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh began his speech by stating that climate friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods.

The panel, also chaired by the Maldives President after his country’s recent underwater stunt, called for the Northern countries to do (much) more than just emissions reduction. The statement also comes shortly after media reports suggest India could change its national position on climate change to drop the ‘deal-breaker’ tag put on it by the West.

The BIG question: Will India change its official position ahead of Copenhagen?

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Mercury pollution is next on the list of global health threats to face concentrated action with the goal of elimination.  According to Zero Mercury Working Group, yesterday the first significant steps toward a binding treaty to control mercury pollution were announced at a United Nations Environmental Program meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, in advance of negotiations that will take place in Stockholm next summer.

The global nature of mercury pollution lies in its ability to travel long distances from its point of emission through the food chain.  In fish it accumulates in its most toxic form, methylmercury.  Zero Mercury hopes to achieve a treaty by 2013 that promotes more sustainable alternatives to mercury in products and industrial processes, with the broad goal of addressing all controllable emissions of mercury in the environment.

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RET’s basic technology is this: they have a retrofitable hydraulic propulsion system for large vehicles that stores energy in hydraulic cylinders with compressed gas. The vehicle, such as a city bus, then uses that stored energy to give it a boost when starting up. The technology is known as RPS, or Retrofitable Propulsion System, and reduces fuel use by 25 percent and emissions by 25 percent. But before you finish mumbling about how improved fuel economy doesn’t eliminate our dependence on fossil-fuel based energy, this system can improve the fuel and emissions of vehicles using all forms of fuel including ethanol, biodiesel, compressed natural gas, propane and more.

“We like to say that the vehicle is indifferent and fuel agnostic,” said Sam Jones, President of Recaptured Energy Technologies.

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An analysis done by Biofuels Digest has come to the very surprising conclusion that an electric car will produce 30% more carbon dioxide emissions over its lifetime than a car powered by E85 corn ethanol. Not only that, the study also found that the same electric car will produce 21% more carbon dioxide than even a gasoline powered car.

These claims assume that 100% of the electricity for the EV comes from coal-fired power plants and that a comparable car would get 35 mpg—both of which seem like unrealistic assumptions. So I dug around the internet today to try and come up with more realistic numbers.

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It is good to see that there are still some surprises in the world, and - in particular - in politics. Still, truly shocking political events - and reactions to them - are rare. Careful observers can see most Hill happenings coming from miles down the road and months ahead of schedule. We know some things will happen already, still our political and media culture waits out the inevitable before allowing events to capture headlines, ride roughshod over public opinion and exert themselves on political discourse.

Borrowing a page from Maureen Dowd’s “imaginings” playbook, this trip to 2010 explains how Washington’s worst-kept secrets will effect the climate change bill by collaring the President and Congressional Dems, and threatening our collective energy future.

FEBRUARY 10, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC

REACTION MIXED AS SENATE CLIMATE BILL GOES TO FLOOR
Critics Assail Compromises While Some Laud Any Action in Time of Political Turmoil

The Senate will likely take up floor debate of its climate bill this week after the proposed legislation was released from committee with considerable compromise put in place to help win votes from reluctant Senators who are facing election-year political pressure and mounting disappointing news about the economy and the war in Afghanistan.

The White House and Congressional Democratic leaders had hoped to have a climate change bill in place before the global climate change conference held in Copenhagen last December. Instead, American negotiators went to the United Nations conference with only the promise of continued domestic effort on greenhouse gas reduction, and observers felt that the Copenhagen conference’s result was all too similar to the Kyoto agreement it was supposed to build upon. While the world left Denmark with a resolution that features very strong aspirational emissions targets, there remains no enforcement mechanism in place, and it is unlikely that the world’s leading emitters will ratify any of the agreement’s most restrictive standards.

The Copenhagen failure took much of the momentum away from domestic climate change legislation, and action on energy and environmental reform has been further hampered as time gets closer to 2010’s mid-term elections and bad news on the economy mounts. Consistent with moribund projections, holiday sales figures were down for a second consecutive year, and the markets took a tumble as cautious investors reacted to retailers’ figures.

The tumble followed earlier market reaction to early January’s fourth quarter earnings announcements, which showed that in spite of stirring signs of economic strength, real recovery is still far from solidified.

The combination of slow sales and low earnings had brought markets back to a point where many observers felt valuation had leveled off from last fall’s slight recovery bubble. But, as final confirmation of double-digit unemployment became reality with last week’s announcement of jobless figures, the market dropped further.

All of the disappointing economic news made it impossible to get a climate change bill to the floor of the Senate without strong trade protections put in place for the domestic industries that are the most energy-intensive.

The protections spurred objections from global trading partners and concerns from observers worldwide that embedding carbon leakage tariff adjustments into the legislation amounts to protectionism and may further stunt economic recovery. Still, Senate negotiators had to include the provisions to win support from Midwestern Democrats who want both to claim progressive credentials by voting for a climate bill, but also needed any such bill to deliver not only protections - but also dollars - for heavy-emitting industries that employ their constituents.

The bill is expected to be debated next week after hearings on the President’s dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal are complete. In late 2009, Obama dismissed McChrystal from his post as commanding general in Afghanistan amid a very public disagreement about troop levels and strategy. The President has faced immense criticism from all sides after dismissing McChrystal. Republicans have criticized him for putting his own “yes man” in charge of executing the plan that McChrystal concocted because he subsequently adopted the recommendation to elevate troop levels. From his left, Obama has faced accusations that escalation is the wrong course and is a repudiation of the “call to action” that he received with his Nobel Peace Prize award last October.

Pundits had expected the Senate climb to be more difficult even than the House’s trials in passing the Waxman-Markey climate bill in early summer last year. Senate rules, election-year pressures and the fact that the House bill relied on heavy support from very populous blue states to win passage all spelled trouble for the Senate bill. Also, Obama’s own clout on the Hill was heavily damaged after last year’s failure to pass a strong health care bill.

Trade protections, heavy dilution of greenhouse has emissions targets, watered-down fuel and building energy efficiency standards, and huge cash handouts to utilities and the oil, gas and coal industries are just some of the elements of the final Senate bill that are drawing fire. As they did for the much-stronger Waxman-Markey bill, leading green groups like Greenpeace are opposing the Senate bill. Others insist that while the bill is imperfect, an incremental approach to energy and environmental legislation may be the best way to proceed.

Whatever the result, it now seems highly unlikely that the House and Senate could possibly agree on a bill in conference committee during this session, and any climate change legislation will likely have to wait until after mid-term elections. Of course, by that time, President Obama will be ramping up his own re-election bid and with hurt feelings among many of the constituencies that supported him in 2008 (gay rights groups and anti-war activists chief among them), Obama may choose to take on some more mainstream initiatives and leave climate change to the side for a while

Take it for what it is: my imagination. Except that we already know that most of this WILL certainly happen. What we don’t know yet, is how we’ll react.

PRESS RELEASE:

o Department of Energy Awards GM $2.7 Million Create Prototype with Partners
o Latest Example of Collaborative R&D Model to Speed Commercialization

WARREN, Mich. — The day is coming when the heat from your car’s engine exhaust is captured and converted to mechanical energy capable of powering your vehicle’s stereo, power seats and air conditioning.

General Motors R&D received a $2.7 million federal award Monday that will help build a prototype using Shape Memory Alloy, or SMA, that would generate electricity from the heat in automotive exhaust.

“When you heat up a stretched SMA wire, it shrinks back to its pre-stretched length, and when it cools back down it becomes less stiff and can revert to the original shape” said Jan Aase, director of GM’s Vehicle Development Research Laboratory. “A loop of this wire could be used to drive an electric generator to charge a battery.”

It is too soon to identify a vehicle where this technology could work, but hybrid or conventionally powered vehicles are possible applications.

“No one else anywhere in the world is doing this work as far as we know,” Aase said. “In a hybrid system, the electrical energy could be used to charge the battery. In a conventional engine, this could perhaps even replace the alternator without any load on the engine.”

The award from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Program Agency – Energy, or ARPA-E, was the only grant to an automaker among $151 million in distributed by the DOE. GM will work with HRL Laboratories; Dynalloy, Inc., a Tustin, CA manufacturer of shape memory alloys specially made to be used as actuators, and the Smart Materials Collaborative Research Lab at the University of Michigan.

“This award is significant for the gains in energy efficiency it could bring, and because it signifies how GM is doing business though collaboration and partnership,” said Alan Taub, GM vice president of global R&D.

“The days are gone when we would do this kind of groundbreaking work on our own. We need to continue to find ways to combine our deep technical knowledge with others who can help take our ideas from concept to commercialization,” he said.

The idea of an SMA heat engine “has been around for 30 years,” Aase said, but the few devices that have been built were too large and too inefficient to make it worthwhile.”

Even now, the technology is in the very early stages. Over the next two years, GM and its partners will work to create a working prototype.

“We’re taking advantage of a network of people that we’ve been working with for a number of years on shape memory alloys,” Aase said. “And we have some novel approaches to make this high-risk, high return project successful.”

Even as the world prepares for the grand climate meet at Copenhagen this December, a large part of South India has gone under water. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people have already lost their lives while millions are displaced and missing in this global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

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Mazda, one of the few manufacturers to stay out of the hybrid car craze, has announced they will raise over $1 billion for hybrid research by issuing 315.2 million shares of their stock. As someone who questions the practicality of hybrids, this news is rather disappointing to me personally. You might call me a “hybrid hater.”

But what about hydrogen, Mazda? Le sigh…

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Cruise ships lead the pack amongst the world’s top polluters in the transportation industry. If you’re a green-minded person who’s been dreaming of a tropical cruise this winter, but don’t want to lend your support to an industry that is a major polluter, you can reconsider because even cruise lines are trying to go green and do their part to reducing the world’s carbon emissions and overall waste pollution.

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I’ve spent a lot of time around the car hobby, and I’ve seen some pretty stupid people do some pretty stupid things. My favorite story involves a V6 Mustang and a leafblower strapped to the air intake, approximating a cobbled together stand-alone supercharger of sorts. Alas, no one ever explained to this man-child that if you add more air, you also need to add more fuel. His engine did not last too long.

But a UK company may be on the right track with an electric supercharger that actually works. Not only does it provide a 40-50% bump in power and torque, but also a 20% decrease in CO2 emissions.

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A new report ranks ten leading world cities on their greenhouse gas emissions. It also examines how and why the emissions differ.

As the report says, over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Leading cities of the world, global cities, are the places where greenhouse gas emissions really need to be cut. The greenest city from the study is Barcelona and the worst is Denver.

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