Green Options

California has just updated its Air Resources Board website to give consumers a wide range of information about all the alternative power cars coming out next year, from electric cars to diesel hybrids.

The new site—driveclean.ca.gov—offers well-organized data that ranks vehicles according to various emission and cost characteristics and provides tools to compare models on a variety of qualities, including the new incentives that low carbon emission vehicles qualify for: up to $5,000 for cars, and up to $15,000 for electric trucks or vans.

One aspect of the site is revolutionary: For the first time Americans will be able to compare models based on how many grams of CO2 each spews per mile.

Asia is investing hundreds of billions of dollars more than the US in clean technology, according to a new report by two research institutions. In the future, the US may be importing trillions of dollars of needed clean technology (and losing countless jobs to Asia) as a result.

In total, the report showed that China, Japan, and South Korea will invest about $509 billion in clean tech over the next 5 years, whereas the US (with our greenest President in decades, maybe ever) is only expected to invest $172 billion (about 3 times less) — this is assuming the climate and energy legislation in Congress passes.

If the US were to invest the same percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as South Korea, it would invest almost $140 billion per year ($700 billion over this five year period)! Compared to China, the anticipated per-GDP investment ratio is 1:4 (US to China).

In 2008, Japan almost matched US R&D spending on energy and achieved almost the same number of international clean energy patents despite having dramatically lower GDP.

The financial investment is not the only thing giving these countries a major advantage in this field, though.

DOE’s new renewable energy Venture Capital unit ARPA-E has just funded an entirely new kind of liquid battery innovation from MIT professor Donald Sadoway, that works like an aluminum plant running in reverse; producing power instead of consuming it.

Under the ARPA-E program at the DOE, the Obama administration has provided record-setting funding for advanced breakthroughs in renewable energy technology - that could propel America to the front of the post-oil age economy.

Just 37 technologies were selected for their potential transformational impact in the world, out of 3,600 applicants. Of the 37 winners; Sadaway’s has received the most funding; with $7 million.

Move over CO2—you’ve been ousted, along with methane, as the biggest offenders of global climate change. According to a new a study by Purdue University and NASA, the major chemicals most frequently cited as leading to climate change, namely carbon dioxide and methane, are actually outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention. The majority of “greenhouse gases” are created by humans.

The results were discovered when researchers studied more than a dozen chemicals, or greenhouse gases as classified by their warming properties defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From there, the team developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appeared in the November 12, 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry, just in time for the convergence of world leaders in Copenhagen.

If we need just one more reason to be convinced that the era of fossil fuels is quickly winding down, 30,000 square feet of evidence is going up right now in the suburban Detroit town of Warren, Michigan. That’s where the U.S. Army is building its new Ground System Power and Energy Laboratory (GSPEL), and it’s no accident that the site is deep in the heart of the U.S. auto industry.

The high tech GSPEL complex features eight separate laboratories, all dedicated to the development of more sustainable military vehicles and related systems: increasing energy efficiency, using more renewable resources, focusing on ready access to energy and power, and reducing environmental impacts. It’s all part of the military’s overall drive to shed fossil fuels—both foreign domestic—and focus on energy security for the 21st century.

The normally conservative International Energy Agency is now saying that we must act faster to prevent climate change. Not only to prevent catastrophe, but also because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to achieve the greater and greater cuts that are necessary to keep worldwide temperature rise to 2 degrees Centigrade or a 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit global average.

2 C is the least we can realistically hope and aim for now. This would be less disastrous than the 4 C or the completely catastrophic 6 C (10.8 F) average worldwide temperature rise we would headed for under a business-as-usual continuation of current overall trends in carbon emissions.

Faith Birol, the IEA Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency said that the world must speed up the reduction in fossil energy use and make a transition faster to clean renewable energy, not only because because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and possible implications for the global economy.

A new report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), attempts to bring to the world’s attention the truly great economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the benefits of taking these into account when making policies.

The value of the world’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity is something lacking in most economic analyses. Lack of value for what is truly priceless doesn’t just hurt the environment, however. It is also a sort of economic suicide. This new report, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and supported by key EU, UK, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian bodies, attempts to bring all of this to our attention more and show some positive case studies of how taking the environment into consideration can actually save us money.

As the report says: “the failure of markets to adequately consider the value of ecosystem services is of concern not only to environment, development and climate change ministries but also to finance, economics and business ministries.”

Kyoto legislation worked. The EU is on track to meet - and actually exceed the carbon emissions target it set of 8% reductions below 1990 levels by 2012, the Commission’s annual progress report on emissions shows. The EU-15 (the first fifteen signatories) will meet and exceed their initial target to get 8% below 1990 levels and 10 of the remaining 12 member states will meet and exceed their reduction goals of 6% below 1990 levels by 2012.

This contrasted with economic growth of around 44% over the same period, through 2007. Currently, as of 2009; EU-27 emissions are now estimated to be 13.6% lower than the base year level 1990.

According to two unnamed sources as reported in the Guardian—one current International Energy Agency (IEA) employee and one former—the IEA has been purposely painting an overly rosy picture of the remaining available world oil supplies to avoid panicking the public. Apparently this obfuscation has been a result of heavy pressure from the United States.

As one whistleblower put it, “Many inside the [IEA] believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.”

In a historic shift, the conservative American Medical Association has just voted to reverse its long held position that marijuana has no medical value; the group is also planning to entirely review it current cannabis policy. During a meeting in Houston this week, the AMA’s House of Delegates adopted a new position which demands that:

“Marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery methods.”

To spur the switch to electric cars the Obama administration is proposing a “build one, get one free” rule for makers of electric cars. For each full electric vehicle they build, it could be used to count as two zero emissions vehicles towards the new low carbon emissions rules they have set.

In may, the Obama administration moved the deadline for low carbon cars closer to 2016. Under this proposed new rule each electric car would count two times when figuring the average fuel efficiency of a new-vehicle fleet, making the average easier to meet—if the automaker adds electric cars to its fleet.

But an environmental policy group in Washington would prefer to see regular old-fashioned gasoline vehicles built to be more fuel efficient.