Sustainablog

No doubt about it: the Chevy Volt looks like it will be one sweet ride (even the not-so-sporty production vehicle). But a group of electric vehicle enthusiasts here in the St. Louis area isn’t willing to wait for the hybrid Volt’s 2010 roll-out… so they’ve built their own fully electric vehicles.

Today’s Post-Dispatch features the Gateway Electric Vehicle Club, and a few of the EVs that members have built themselves. Retired college professor Charlton Jones (pictured above) bought a ‘74 Porsche 914 on Ebay, and with a little elbow grease and money (OK, a lot of money — $19,000) converted into a fully electric vehicle. On the Illinois side of the river, Ron Erb converted a ‘96 Ford Ranger to an EV (for a mere $7,500). Erb was able to offset some of his costs with a $4000 state tax rebate (unfortunately, we don’t have that in Missouri…).

Granted, neither of these vehicles are muscle cars: Jones’ Porsche takes a minute to get up to 60 mph, and Erb claims his Ranger can “go 80… but not very far.” And each requires significant charging time: 7 hours for the Ranger so it can go 35 miles. The cost for that recharge is hard to beat, though: 98 cents.

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After what seems like an endless period of record-high gasoline prices, gas station signs are changing almost constantly as the cost for a gallon of gas tumbles. Although the numbers vary depending on where you are, the trend is the same: prices have hit the bottom of the (oil) barrel.

As I write, the lowest average price in America for a gallon of regular unleaded is $1.683 in Oklahoma, while the highest is $2.866 in Alaska.1 Whatever the exact figures, they are far more than half of what they were when prices were at their highest.

As I have watched prices plummet, I have felt my joy and relief rising in an inversely proportional ratio. I also know how many others feel the same, given the fact that commuting is a necessity for many folks…and that many folks drive a lot farther than I do and do not have a hybrid to help reduce consumption.

High gas prices have had serious effects on people’s lifestyles across the world, not to mention other things such as cost of food and other goods. People have been driving less and still paying more for just about everything, causing serious problems for people on fixed incomes or with large families, for instance. We have also witnessed the virtual death of the SUV…though you can still find a Hummer barreling down the highway now and again, gas prices be damned.

Ironically, Americans are lucky when it comes to gas prices. Consumers in many other countries pay a great deal more for their fuel, due to lack of subsidies, higher taxes, or other factors. According to NationMaster.com, the top five for gas prices are Uruguay, United Kingdom, Israel, Argentina, and Japan. America comes in at #102, fairly low on the list of 141 countries; the lucky last is Turkmenistan, of all places!2

Still, gas prices are dropping worldwide, whatever that means country by country and state by state. But with all the joy I am feeling, and just about every other human being is feeling, I also wonder if cheaper gas is not really a good thing.

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By Jonathan G. Dorn

With the dramatic increase in oil prices earlier this year translating into higher prices at the gas pump in the United States, concerns over U.S. dependence on foreign oil are once again part of the national discussion on energy security. Combined with the growing understanding that carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are driving global climate change, the debate is now focused on how to restructure the U.S. transport system to solve these two problems.

While the idea of running U.S. vehicles on natural gas has lately received a great deal of attention, powering our cars with green electricity is a more sensible option on all fronts—national security, efficiency, climate stabilization, and economics.

Having a fleet of natural gas–powered vehicles (NGVs) would simply replace U.S. dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on natural gas, another fossil fuel. The United States has scarcely 3 percent of the world’s proved natural gas reserves, yet even without the increased demand that would result from a fleet of natural gas cars, the country already consumes nearly a quarter of the world’s natural gas. At current rates of consumption, U.S. proved reserves would only meet national demand for another nine years.

U.S. natural gas production has remained relatively constant over the last two decades and is unlikely to increase over the long run, despite growing consumption. Consequently, any rise in demand is likely to be met by increasing imports. Since the late 1980s, U.S. net imports of natural gas—primarily from Canada—have tripled. The U.S. Department of Energy projects that by 2016 the majority of U.S. natural gas imports will come from outside North America.

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After years of debate and planning, the St. Paul, MN city council has voted unanimously to move forward with a unique plan to produce biogas from manure and ethanol waste in rural farms and pump it miles to power an enormous paper recycling plant.

The energy-efficiency of recycling paper is not the best, so this plan is a welcome alternative-fuel twist to the standard process.

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It was a glorious summer for the giant of oil giants. Record prices for petroleum and so record prices at the pump unsurprisingly have retained ExxonMobil’s righteous crown as the most profitable company in the world: $14.8 billion in profit this past quarter.

According to the New York Times, Exxon has exceeded $10 billion in profit in nine of the last 12 quarters. Earlier this year, in the second quarter, the company posted a then-record profit. In the third quarter, Exxon reaped an increase of nearly 60 percent beyond that, setting yet another record while dropping its production by 8 percent for the quarter. Read the rest of this entry »

By Lester R. Brown

Over the last few years the nuclear industry has used concerns about climate change to argue for a nuclear revival.  Although industry representatives may have convinced some political leaders that this is a good idea, there is little evidence of private capital investing in nuclear plants in competitive electricity markets. The reason is simple: nuclear power is uneconomical.

In an excellent recent analysis, “The Nuclear Illusion,” Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh put the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant at 14¢ per kilowatt hour and that from a wind farm at 7¢ per kilowatt hour. This comparison includes the costs of fuel, capital, operations and maintenance, and transmission and distribution. It does not include the additional costs for nuclear of disposing of waste, insuring plants against an accident, and decommissioning the plants when they wear out. Given this huge gap, the so-called nuclear revival can succeed only by unloading these costs onto taxpayers. If all the costs of generating nuclear electricity are included in the price to consumers, nuclear power is dead in the water.

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Suppose we suspend our “precautionary principle” and understanding about the Three Mile Island crisis. You know, that 1979 national emergency caused by a partial meltdown triggered by a loss of reactor cooling water. Unfortunately, over the last three decades, neither plant owners nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have adequately addressed the basic flaws in U.S. nuclear safety that led to the Three Mile Island accident, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

And suppose we just forget about what to do with the nuclear waste from the reactors, lethal to all life for more than 10,000 years. Even if we can contain the nuclear waste (a big “if” for many of us to swallow in these days of unforeseen financial market meltdowns), why pass this waste on to future generations, on to our great, great, great grandchildren?

That we’ve been unable to agree politically on a safe place to store nuclear waste (in Yucca Mountain, Arizona) masks the fact that we still need to move this toxic waste from as many as 104 currently operating nuclear reactors scattered throughout the continental U.S. Nice targets for those terrorists we’ve been unable to locate or perhaps for the swelling homegrown terrorist types as of late, folks who have come on hard times and can think of better things to do with a $700 billion bailout package and don’t like the way things are headed in Washington D.C. By the way, these nuclear reactors with a 40 year lifespan aren’t cheap, therefore they’ve been partially subsidized by American taxpayers for years.

What Senator McCain and Senator Obama seem to leave out in all their debates and public discourse is that America is no more energy independent with nuclear power than it is with oil. A key rationale for expanding nuclear power generation touted by those concerned about climate change – including both Presidential candidates: Nuclear power plants generate energy by splitting uranium atoms, resulting in no carbon dioxide emissions, standing in stark contrast to those CO2 emissions created by burning coal or oil. But the U.S., as it turns out, has even less uranium than oil as a percentage of domestic production.

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Greg Frenette, a lead engineer at Ford Motors, said last week that it may take at least 20 years before hydrogen-powered cars become widely available because obtaining the fuel is so costly and difficult. However the latest news from the Reuters Global Environment Summit is that these zero emissions cars could become a reality in California very soon. The state plans to build out “Hydrogen Cities” to support the hydrogen car industry.

How Does the Hydrogen Car Work?

Fuel cells create electricity in a chemical process that combines hydrogen and oxygen, emitting water vapor as a by-product. instead of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Since the conversion of the fuel to energy takes place via an electrochemical process rather than combustion, the process is clean and highly efficient. The hydrogen car reduces greenhouse gas emissions while also reducing dependency on crude oil. Read the rest of this entry »

“Nobody is asking us to love others more than we love ourselves,” said the “poet president” of Tanzania Julius Nyerere. “But those of us who have been lucky enough to receive a good education have a duty also to help to improve the well being of the community to which we belong; is part of loving ourselves!”

Step 1: Click once a day at TheHungerSite.com.

You’ll fund the donation of 1.1 cups of food. While you’re there, take a look at their equally worthy sister sites.

Step 2: Play at FreeRice.com.

Study for the GRE, test your English abilities, or simply bone up on your vocabulary. While you do, your clicks will generate funding for donating free rice to the hungry. Better yet, share this online game with students you know.

Step 3: Sign the petition at HelpSweden.org.

This tongue-in-cheek organization turns our concepts of poverty around and asks for a renewed commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. Read more about what makes HelpSweden a good idea.

Step 4: Put some of your paycheck into Kiva.org.

You’ll get your money back and you’ll have helped somebody to build a business or a home. Read the rest of this entry »

Sound familiar?  Unless you’ve had your head stuck in the sand for the past couple of months, you’ve heard variations on this statement from both Barack Obama and John McCain… countless times. High gas and utility prices have collided with a stagnant economy,  and energy issues (and the environmental issues accompanying them) have come to the front and center of the ‘08 election cycle.

My colleagues at Red, Green and Blue have done a thorough job of covering the policy proposals of the presidential candidates. But the devil’s in the details, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday held a fascinating discussion last week on the issues that aren’t being covered in the political rhetoric: namely, the economic and technological challenges that both government and the private sector will have to address to get us to a clean energy future. Host Ira Flatow, New York University professor emeritus of physics Martin Hoffert, and Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in energy studies and associate director of the energy program at Rice University Amy Myers Jaffe took a look at the bigger picture of our energy challenges, and the kinds of leadership a new presidential administration will have to exert in order to facilitate rapid, even revolutionary, changes in how we power ourselves.

Among the questions raised during the discussion:

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