Cleantech Group released findings on Wednesday showing that the cleantech sector “accumulated $1.59 billion across 134 companies” and this was 10% more than the $1.2 billion it had accumulated in the second quarter.
The process of turning California’s Highway 101 into an electric roadway is beginning, and for a short period of time the charging stations that will be installed can be used for free. Beginning in October, Solarcity will be installing vehicle charging stations alogn Highway 101 between San Francisco and Los Angeles in order to reward those who have already made a move to adopt a cleaner lifestyle with clean technology in their vehicles.
French energy minister Jean-Louis Borloo will announce a plan on Thursday for the country to invest 1 billion Euros ($1.46 billion US) in the infrastructure needed to encourage the adoption of electric cars. That investment will buy 4.4 million charging stations, upgrade the power grid, purchase a government fleet of electric cars, and provide subsidies to EV buyers and auto manufacturers.
France hopes that this amount of investment will be enough to get 2 million electric cars on its roads within 10 years.
Just about this time last year I reported on the very promising and innovative Mcgyan® biodiesel process. It was one of the most popular stories gas 2.0 ran that year, and rightly so: the breakthrough seemed to deliver the possibility of making biodiesel in mere seconds from start to finish, reducing costs by half the price of other biodiesel, producing no waste, using no chemical reactants, and using any animal fat or vegetable oil as a feedstock.
At the time the company in charge of the project, Ever Cat fuels, had only succeeded at making a small-scale pilot operation of 50,000 gallons per year. But, as of 2 days ago, the process has been completely commercialized.
A handful of strongly funded programs are geared to get more people bicycling to and from rail stations in England.
These are super progressive trains that are energy efficient as well as lightning fast. China intends to invest a total of $300 billion in high speed trains by 2020.
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.
Earlier this year, Colorado passed House Bill 1331, “Incentives for Efficient Motor Vehicles,” which creates new tax credits of up to $6,000 for the purchase of, or conversion to, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.
Background: plug-in hybrid and electric car retrofits.
The new credit will be a substantial discount off the average price of a plug-in conversion, which generally run around $10-14,000. On top of the Federal Tax Credit of 10% (up to $4,000), plug-in retrofits could start to make a lot of sense for some car owners.
LanzaTech, a small company based in New Zealand, has developed a proprietary microbe that feasts on the carbon monoxide in waste gas from steel mills and converts it to pure ethanol. Last year the company launched a pilot facility at the New Zealand Steel plant near the city of Auckland, and its microbes have been happily churning out ethanol without the need for expensive pre-conditioning to remove contaminants.
LanzaTech has found that the same low-cost technology can be applied to biomass syngas, but the real excitement is in the success of this first-ever attempt to capture and convert steel mill waste gas into a clean, sustainable fuel.
Many commuters have GPS installed in their cars, or have purchased portable devices to try to get them where they’re going. A recent study by NAVTEQ, a data provider for navigation systems has demonstrated that using a GPS device can not only save drivers time spent in traffic, it can also reduce emissions from vehicles by up to 21%.
[...]
Subscribe to our RSS feed or newsletter
Some Rights Reserved • Green Options Media • San Francisco, California • Legal
