Our World and Everything in It

WXYZ news announced this morning that Detroit area Coca Cola trucks would soon be running on hybrid electric motors. The trucks were purchased earlier this year from Eaton Corp.

Eaton is an impressive corporation as far as transportation and the environment. There website states: “We create innovations in hybrid power and low emission vehicles as a leading provider of diesel-electric hybrid power systems for truck and bus applications on three continents. Eaton is also developing hydraulic hybrid power systems technologies for use in refuse trucks, delivery vehicles, buses and other applications. Eaton has a hybrid truck drivetrain center outside of Kalamazoo and is a Cleveland-based Corp.

http://www.eaton.com/EatonCom/Markets/Truck/index.htm.

Coca-Cola ordered 120 of the hybrid trucks, the largest North American commercial order from Eaton’s hybrid systems according to WWJ. Coke previewed these trucks when they purchased 20 of them last year. They evidently liked their performance.

The article below said that Coca-Cola did extensive tests and found that “Eaton’s hybrid-electric drivetrain equipped trucks decreased emissions by 32 percent and fuel consumption by up to 37 percent.” This kind of fuel savings could start a trend.

http://www.wwj.com/Coke-to-Buy-Hybrid-Delivery-Trucks-From-

Eaton/1729913

Researchers at Purdue offered details for converting carbon-containing waste products like paper, wood, plastic, and rubber as an alternative energy source on September 29 during the 6th Global Conference on Sustainable Product Development and Life Cycle Engineering in Busan, Korea according to an article on Environmental News Service.

The various sources of carbon containing waste would need to be mulched into tiny bits in the millimeters. The tiny pieces would be fed into a gasifier where they break down to gas containing “hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and other hydrocarbons.” The most desirable of the gases are the hydrogen and carbon monoxide or synthesis gas better known as syngas.

Syngas can be used as is to run a turbine for electricity or converted further for gas or diesel. The solid wastes can be used for jet fuel, ethanol, and other biofuel production. 

We have plenty of waste in the U.S. to work with. The article stated that the U.S. generates “1.3 billion tons of biomass - including agricultural and municipal wastes” annually. It also says that it is quite possible to replace “15 to 20 percent of transportation fuels consumed daily in the U.S. with liquids derived from this flexible process…based on the present consumption level, which is about 390 million gallons per day.”

We’re finally using our noggins to utilize much of our solid waste for energy production. No need to “Drill, Baby, Drill” after all. I never thought there was a need to drill for more. I think it’s quite feasible to get away from oil and most fossil fuels once and for all in the not too distant future from some of the progress and inventions I’ve seen.

After all, India has been using cow dung for energy production for awhile. It was only a matter of time before we caught on. It’s a sad statement for the U.S. though that it has taken so long. We are catching up with a country that was considered partly third world for its squalor not all that long ago. But ingenious inventors in India decided to do something about the waste and the country’s energy needs leading the way for us to realize that most refuse is indeed fuel in another form.

Read more: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2008/2008-10-16-091.asp

There is a coalition of Western states and Canadian provinces called the Western Climate Initiative that collaborate for ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the region. The states are Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Quebec, Utah, and Washington; and four Canadian provinces: British Columbia and Manitoba in the west, and Ontario and Quebec in the east. Last week this Initiative proposed a regional market based cap and trade program.

An article by Environmental News Service said, “The emissions trading program is intended to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.” It also said that, “The carbon reduction strategy will cover nearly 90 percent of the region’s emissions, including those from electricity, industry, transportation, and residential and commercial fuel use.” Impressive.

I especially liked the decision to let the market determine the most cost effective way to reduce emissions in a particular are. What troubles me is that a vast area of Canada is trying to voluntarily clean up as are some of our western states while many states like Michigan have failed to even produce a decent RPS, Renewable Portfolio Standards. Outside of fences in the sky, I would surmise that our pollution would continually slide over into cleaner territory. Not fair is it?

If as many governments are taking an initiative to curb emissions, it won’t be long before all of our states follow suit or risk looking like the bad guys spewing debris into their clean skies. Perhaps this will also help us understand what we have done to other nations at the receiving end of our pollution trail.

Read more: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-23-04.asp.

Well if you are a proponent of offshore drilling because you want to see pump prices decrease even though you’ve been told over and over it won’t alleviate the high gas problem—then celebrate. The quarter century ban will be allowed to expire after congress recesses for the election.

You may be wondering why I’m taking this so quietly? Well it’s because this bill serves as a stopgap and pushes much needed legislation through. As the article in the AP said: “Lifting the drilling ban gives considerable momentum to the underlying bill, which includes the Pentagon budget, $24 billion in aid for flood and hurricane victims and $25 billion in loans for Detroit automakers in addition to keeping the government open past the Oct. 1 start of the 2009 budget year.” It also doubles funding for heating for the poor to $5.2 billion dollars. Good timing for what might be a bad winter.

Plus, by time anyone actually gets around to drilling, we’ll be on to new and better things. Although congress is opening up drilling off both the east and west coast, it’s still up to the states whose shores will accommodate the drilling and pretty much the new president and his policies.

Enough said. I don’t really think this drilling thing will get much momentum. And by the time the public finally realizes how long it will actually take to see any refined gasoline from it, they will be disenchanted with the idea because it just doesn’t suit America’s penchant for instant gratification. Add to this increasingly powerful storms that continually threaten offshore drills and it’s just a matter of time that we deem the whole fossil fuel thing obsolete, especially when some of the really great alternatives debut and a greener economy starts providing many new jobs.

Working for green industries will serve to educate workers about environmental needs who will pass the information along to family and friends. These jobs will showcase the many possibilities and opportunities available besides fossil fuel energy.  And that will be the end of that—a good thing.

Read the whole article: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gB6bi0EyTozdEPy0KGisTQNaS2PQD93CNNRG0

Startech is an award winning environmental energy company that has devised an engine fueled by hydrogen that produces “green” electricity, meaning it leaves no carbon footprint. The electricity is meant for stationary facilities not cars, at least not currently.

Startech has a line of patented products like, “Startech Hydrogen, derived by [their] StarCell™ system from processing a wide variety of wastes in [their] Startech Plasma Converter.”

Get a load of this system!!!

The Plasma Converter System safely and economically destroys wastes, no matter how hazardous or lethal, and turns most into useful and valuable products. In doing so, the System protects the environment and helps to improve the Public Health and Safety. The System achieves closed-loop elemental recycling to safely and irreversibly destroy Municipal Solid Waste, organics and inorganics, solids, liquids and gases, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, industrial by-products and also items such as ‘e-waste,’ medical waste, chemical industry waste and other specialty wastes, while converting many of them into useful commodity products that can include metals and a synthesis-gas called Plasma Converted Gas (PCG).

I know a little about PEM’s, Polymer Electrolyte Membranes, that separate hydrogen from bio-fuels because I’m working on a product for patent, but Startech has one heck of a converter here that looks like it can transform just about anything prior to processing through the Star Cell for hydrogen extraction. 

This is the type of exciting new technology waiting to be unleashed that will not only bolster our energy supply but create jobs. This one converter will trigger all types of spin offs, and as more and more alternative sources for energy become available, prices will drop. That is if we ever get away from the stranglehold of fossil fuels.

Successes like Startech can and will create a whole new and dynamic industry, an industry that has not yet been monopolized. It’s a green industry that offers promise for a truly free market system at least among alternative energy sources, and a great way to dig ourselves out of the outrageous debt we’re about to face.

If ever we needed a brand new “Green Industrial Revolution” that offers many opportunities and that will boost the economy in a whole new way, it’s now and quickly. Think of new stocks available in brand new companies offering great promise for the future that we could all get behind.  I don’t know about anyone else but it’s time for new wealth for a new generation of pioneering Americans and a cleaner, brighter future for our world and everything in it.

http://world-wire.com/news/0809220001.html

I recently watched Planet Green’s presentation about Contessa Foods developing a green frozen food manufacturing plant. It’s the only such plant awarded a LEED award by the US Green Building Council. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED is a third party certification program and nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

This plant was designed to conserve as much as possible and as a result, Contessa Foods cut both their energy consumption and related emissions by 50% within one year. 

Now if Contessa can do this within a year, why can’t everyone figure out ways to really lower their consumption of energy? It is the easiest and most prudent thing to do right now. We have high gas prices and want to drill yet we’ve hardly scratched the surface at conservation. Speed limits haven’t been lowered, people haven’t even been told to stop running outdoor lights. We did these things without a whole lot of griping in the 70’s, but now we have the audacity to just demand more without cutting back first. Remember the years no one had Christmas lights around their houses? You were the bad guy if you put them up.

Contessa Foods is a good guy. According to Contessa’s CEO, John Z. Bazevich,  “Until now, the USGBC has never LEED-certified a frozen-food manufacturing facility. As a leader in our industry, we didn’t wait for environmental standards to be established. Instead, we collaborated with LEED and decided to raise the bar for the entire industry and to do the right thing for the long-term sustainability of our environment.” Attaboy!

Imagine if all manufacturing had that attitude? Think of the money they could save too.

Contessa stands out in 5 areas of the LEED rating system with:

• A solar-power array that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by more than 730,000 pounds each year, producing an effect similar to conserving 276 acres of pine forest – roughly the size of 209 football fields, including end zones – each year.
• A heat-recovery system that captures waste heat from the refrigeration system and redirects it to preheat water for the plant’s boilers.
• Variable frequency drives that adjust the amount of power supplied to motors at specific times or under specific conditions to minimize energy use.
• An innovative loading dock that prevents the loss of refrigerated air, reducing temperature fluctuation – and energy use – in the loading dock area.

What I saw on TV was an impeccably clean plant where all the rooms within are distinctly cut off from the others, the idea being to keep heat with heat and cold with cold.

Their motto at Contessa: “Reduce, Redirect, and Reuse. It’s a good model to follow for sure.

Read more about what Contessa accomplished:

http://myseafoodshow08.bdmetrics.com/portal/ViewPressRelease.aspx?id=35922&cid=4217488

The U.S. Department of Energy has said the main thing holding back a major upswing in the installation of renewable energies like wind and solar power is better methods for storing that power when the wind dies, and the sun goes down.

I’ve seen the race to come up with super small and simple properties that can hold a charge on Discovery Channel’s EcoTec series. One researcher was developing batteries from bacteria as thin as a piece of cellophane. It’s not hard to believe that in the near future we will have super small batteries that hold a mega charge that is if we allow progress to happen and quit running back to a source that will eventually run out like oil.

The latest in new energy storage comes from the University of Texas at Austin. They’ve come up with a carbon structure that is only one atom thick called graphene. Graphene, “could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors, which now are manufactured using an entirely different form of carbon.” Ultracapacitors are the other means of electrical storage besides batteries. This technology “could greatly improve the efficiency and performance of electric and hybrid cars, buses, trains and trams, even office copiers and cell phones.”

And think of the storage capacity for wind and solar. In 2007, “U.S. wind power installation grew 45 percent.” Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor that is working on the graphene project said that if installation grew that much every year for the next 20 years, “total energy production from wind alone would almost equal the entire energy production of the world from all sources in 2007.”

That’s impressive. We keep hearing that many of the green energy propositions are impossible but with ever evolving methods, materials, and discoveries happening every day who is to say what is possible? We need to unleash and nurture this ingenuity and quit hindering progress. I’m tired of fueling cars at the pump, and plugging in cell phones constantly to recharge them, basically because I forget to do that until I’m in a hurry.  There’s got to be a better way.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-16-091.asp.

Gas will more than likely shoot to $6 per gallon because Ike is now the size of Texas itself and will more than likely destroy rigs and pipeline. So we are to drill elsewhere for more? Isn’t that perpetuating a problem?

We’ve been told by science, not politicians that man may have a hand in the rapid global warming we’re seeing. The administration in play for the past 8 years is an oil administration. They would do and say whatever to keep oil flowing and have. As a result, Americans are doubtful about global warming; more so than citizens of other developed countries that don’t simply shrug global warming off on Al Gore. Other countries are trying to affect change.

Meanwhile, this administration has flat out lied to us about a war, what would make us think especially after the latest news that government regulators party with oil lobbyists that maybe we’ve been lied to by this government about the environment?

And what about all the offshore drilling that everyone wants? Those rigs aren’t hurricane proof either. Hurricane Hannah ran up the side of the east coast, the gulf is getting lambasted now, and the west coast took a beating late winter and early spring this past year. There really is not safe place for a rig, except maybe in your backyard.

But why should we open up our backyards to more oil exploration in the first place when we have almost 70 million acres leased for oil that is producing NADA—absolutely nothing. That type of production would boost our oil by 5 million barrels per day, and enough time to progress with alternatives. Alternatives will insure we no longer have to worry about pipelines and oil rigs getting damaged from what will assuredly be intensified storms due to global warming we’re helping to grow. 

The real fear is that hurricanes running too closely together might join into one mammoth and frightening proposition. Ditto for tornadoes.  Oil is only an interim fix, we need to harness the power of some of that nature we’re seeing attack us.

I wonder how much energy Ike is putting out?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes.

Professor Rose Ann Cattolico of the University of Washington began her study of algae back when the other fuel crisis hit in 1973. Only unlike those that eventually gave up the search for alternative fuels Cattolico continued on for more than 30 years.

The results of her tenacity may help the entire world shed their need for crude in a very short period. For the U.S. it may happen within a decade. Her studies are so promising that according to an article on UW News website, “Allied Minds, an investment company that works with universities to commercialize early-stage technology, invested in the University of Washington biology professor’s work, forming a startup company called AXI.”

What Prof. Cattolico basically did was create an entire database of different types of algae. Different algaes produce lipids, or oil, as a result of photosynthesis. All algaes are different so that one type of algae may produce oil that is perfect for two stroke engines, another for home fuel, and another for jet or car fuel. There are so many forms of algae that genetic engineering is unnecessary. 

Cattolico stated, “Algae grow rapidly and do not require the use of productive farmland. Algae also can use various nutritional sources, including wastewater.” What a boon to be able to use wastewater to feed the algae. If it works in anyway like biodigestion, the effluent and/or any solids leftover are pure fertilizer.

According to Erick Rabins of AXI, “Entire infrastructures, from specialized growing facilities to processing plants, will have to be created. [] The most optimistic assessment that I’ve heard is that it could be six to eight years before there’s something that’s useable, but the tools and techniques to make it possible are being created right now.” he said.

The professor emphasizes what many environmentalists have been saying all along: “What we need is a Manhattan Project for fuel. If we can get a Manhattan Project for fuel, it won’t take 25 years.”

http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=43454.

An article in the New York Times stated:

The technology [compressing and storing air] has been around for decades, though the only major plant in the United States opened in Alabama in 1991. Another plant was built in Germany in the 1970s. But compressed air storage is getting a fresh look because so many windmills have been built across the country in recent years, and energy producers are increasingly looking for ways to avoid building power plants that rely on expensive oil and natural gas.

Who knew? And this is supposed to be old hat? I hope it’s stored way down below because compressed air reminds me of the movie No Country for Old Men. That little tank of compressed air was mighty powerful to say the least.

I don’t know about this technology. There certainly are plenty of abandoned mines and old gas lines to use. Perhaps if the alternative energy industry ever gets fully loosed, we will see improvement upon improvement so that wind technology no longer involves huge, noisy turbines that don’t always produce energy. Look at mainframe computers of yesterday compared to the laptop of today. It’s a matter of getting started. Once the ball starts rolling, improvements are inevitable, especially for wind power, which increased five fold between 2000-2007. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/nyregion/26wind.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.