by Christopher DeMorro

The recent French presidential elections saw the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, deposed in favor of his socialist competitor Francois Hollande. Among the many perks Hollande will soon enjoy is his choice of presidential limos. Hollande has named the Citroen DS5 diesel-hybrid as his preferred limo, a choice we can only applaud.

When Barack Obama became President of the United States, it was widely theorized that he would also rock a hybrid limousine. Alas, he instead with truck badged as a Cadillac, a heavily armored beast that tends to bottom out if not properly driven. Hollande’s choice of the DS5 diesel-hybrid is a much more practical and plebeian choice of vehicles. Then again, President Sarkozy was known for being driven around in his limo with the windows down as French photojournalists chased him down on motorcycles and scooters. There is obviously less of a concern for safety in France as far as the President is concerned.

The diesel-electric Citroen that will be Hollande’s “limo” utilizes a diesel engine and small motor to power the rear wheels. It can reportedly get between 24 and 34 mpg, depending on how it is driven, which is rather respectable for a small SUV. Diesel-hybrids are the best of both worlds, and hopefully U.S. automakers will catch on to the potential for excellent fuel economy out of such setups soon.

As for Hollande, we approve of his choice of limos. Now if only we could get Obama to ditch the Cadillac for a Volt limo, that would really piss off the conservatives.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by Peter Asmus

Europe has been operating huge wind turbines offshore for more than a decade, while here in the U.S., this cutting edge clean technology seems perennially “five years off.”

The infamous project proposed offshore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts has been under deliberation for more than 10 years. During that time, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and seven other countries have already installed 53 offshore wind farms totaling 3,813 megawatts (MW) of carbon free electricity. That is enough power to keep the lights on for more than 2.8 million American homes, or a city larger than the size of Chicago.

The international wind power industry is watching Washington, DC to see if lawmakers will extend the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power. But their eyes are also focused on Trenton, the state capital of New Jersey, to see if state regulators there will help launch America’s long-awaited offshore wind energy industry.

In August of 2010, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed into law the Offshore Wind Economic Development Act, which authorizes up $100 million in ratepayer-funded subsidies for offshore wind developments in the Atlantic Ocean that connect to the New Jersey grid. Special “offshore renewable energy credits” (ORECs) help make projects more economic, but unlike the Solyndra federal government loan guarantees, these subsidies are only awarded after projects meet a cost/benefit criteria and produce renewable energy delivered state consumers. In addition, a “Clean Energy Manufacturing Fund” offers additional grants and loans based on local job creation. Many experts consider New Jersey’s offshore wind program to be the most well conceived state policy initiative in the nation.

Perhaps the most unusual company pursuing the Garden State’s offshore wind power opportunity is Fishermen’s Energy, based in Cape May, New Jersey. Several of the East Coast’s largest commercial fishing companies have partnered to create the company, which has been developing a 25 MW project for several years. In contrast to Cape Wind and other ambitious proposals, the New Jersey-based consortium chose a step-by-step approach: a demonstration project. It is siting its five turbine windfarm within the three-mile state-controlled boundary off Atlantic City, a city looking to extend its image – and economy – beyond casino gambling. If building America’s first offshore windfarm were a race, Fishermen’s Energy might look like the tortoise to Cape Wind’s hare.

Showcasing a savvy approach, Fishermen’s Energy has trimmed pre-development costs and shortened the development cycle to what may be less than half that of the Cape Wind project by doing the following:

- Sited its first project in state waters, thereby eliminating redundancy in permits/paperwork and limiting federal agency reviews to the Army Corps of Engineers
- Relied upon shore-based anemometers, radar, and new laser-based technologies to collect data, eliminating the need for site-based meteorological towers in the ocean
- Engaged environmentalists and recreational fishermen in dialogue about the merits of its pilot project in advance of large-scale developments off the New Jersey coastline
- Discovered data on avian and sea life studies performed by a credible third-party company – Geo-Marine – that covers almost 127 miles of coastline (including its project site), to help secure its permits from the Department of Environmental Protection
- Used one of its company’s vessels – an 85-foot former fishing boat – to install a buoy at the installation site to monitor whale activity for two years
- Recruited financial support from XEMC, a Chinese industrial giant known as “China’s GE,” in planning for a 5MWdirect drive wind turbine

All these innovative steps – and more – add up to project savings, a critical accomplishment in light of the tight fiscal constraints imposed by the state OREC program.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) is currently reviewing the company’s proposed pilot project. By modestly committing consumer dollars to the pilot project, New Jersey would lock in its leadership of an entirely new industry: offshore wind power. If the Fishermen Energy’s pilot project is allowed to move forward, more than 500 MW of additional offshore wind capacity could come online to serve New Jersey within the next five years, creating as many as 11,000 manufacturing, installation and ongoing operation and maintenance jobs for the Garden State.

Photo by phault/flickr/Creative Commons

by John Gartner

While many government officials nervously await the outcome of the November elections and speculate as to its implications for the cleantech sector, one federal department is likely to be relatively unaffected regardless of the outcome: Defense.

According to panelists at the recent “Mission Critical: Clean Energy and the U.S. Military“ event in Denver, the military’s growing commitment to reducing its use of fossil fuel, for both national security and economic reasons, will not waver regardless of who’s in charge in the White House or the Congress.

Senator Mark Udall of Colorado rattled off a series of statistics that underline the reasons for the military’s emphasis on becoming as green as the army’s uniforms:

- The military is 25 percent of government’s energy burden
- The Pentagon is biggest consumer of fossil fuels in the world, burning 300,000 barrels of oil per day at a cost of more than $30 million in fuel per day
- A $1 increase in the price of oil increases DoD’s energy cost by $100 million per year
- 1 out of every 50 convoys in a combat zone results in a casualty, and the Army has accrued more than 3300 fatalities in convoys since 2001
- Convoy and security costs $100 per gallon for combat zones

Udall emphasized that the military is implementing many fuel-reducing technologies because of the high human price paid in getting fuel to the front lines. “Saving energy saves lives,” he said, adding that adopting clean energy technologies is “one of the most patriotic things we can do.”

Despite any changes that might occur in the leadership in the executive or legislative branches, the military will continue to be an early adopter of clean technologies that enable it to become more energy independent. These includes making military bases self-sufficient (and less vulnerable to attack) by creating microgrids, and purchasing a large number of hybrid and electric vehicles for its non-combat fleet.

While investors may be endangering the cleantech industry by exiting or staying out of the market, the military remains committed to deploying solar and wind. The military will generate 25 percent of its energy from renewables by 2025, according to Mark Mahoney, director of the Army Regional Environmental and Energy Office. Mahoney said one benefit to renewable adoption is that a platoon can reduce the load it carries by 700 pounds simply by replacing portable generators with solar chargers.

Fort Carson, Colorado, recently achieved the challenging trifecta of becoming a “net zero” facility for energy, water and waste. Fort Carson became the second such army facility, joining Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. The military’s unrelenting commitment to clean energy is consistent with its overarching mantra of preparedness. According to Mahoney, we can’t “afford to wait until the next international energy crisis … or national tragedy forces us to act.”

by Christopher DeMorro

File this next story under Half-Baked.

Yesterday, Toyota finally announced the crucial details for its RAV4 EV joint project with Tesla Motors first announced almost two years ago. And what does Toyota have to show for two years, and $100 million (at least) of investment? A $49,800 all-electric SUV with 100 miles of range. Toyota expects to sell just 2,600 of these in the next three years.

I wonder why?

There is no doubt in my mind that Toyota is better than this. Toyota is THE leader hybrid car technology and sales. Over a decade after the Prius debuted, there is still no other gasoline car that comes even close to that kind of fuel efficiency. With the Prius C and Prius V, Toyota has widened the fuel economy gap to a canyon. I may not like Toyota, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to cars.

So what gives with the RAV4 EV? It seems so…quaint. 100 miles of range, for $50,000? It seems far-fetched that Tesla and Toyota couldn’t do better, especially given the fact that for the same price (after tax credits), you can get a Tesla Model X with 230 miles of range. Sounds to me like Toyota just needed Tesla to do the heavy lifting, and Tesla was more than happy to produce an inferior product to its own offering.

In other words, this is not a serious attempt at selling an electric RAV4. This is, as many are already calling it, a “compliance car”, designed and built to meet California’s zero-emissions vehicle regulations. The RAV4 will go on sale in select markets, all of them in California, later on in the summer.

After the $7,500 tax credit, the price will come down to $42,300, which is still a bitter pill to swallow (just ask GM). For that kind of scrilla, why not just get a fully-loaded version of Toyota’s own Prius V?

It saddens me to see Toyota cheapen itself with such a half-baked effort. Obviously, real-world performance matters, and a consistent 100 miles of range would be enough mileage for 95 percent of real-world trips. Also, 0-60 mph in “Sport” mode takes just 7.0 seconds. Even in “Normal”, the sprint from 0-60 is an average 8.6 seconds. From a 240V charging station, the RAV4 EV will take about six hours to fully charge. The drag co-efficient of .30 gives it the lowest drag of any SUV in the world…and lower than many cars too. So in fairness to Toyota, it sounds like they really have created an electric vehicle with performance more on par with its gas counterpart. That is worth something…but is it worth the cost in range?

The really disappointing thing to me is that Toyota’s freshman effort at an all-electric RAV4 offered similar performance, at least in terms of mileage. People tend to focus on critical numbers like range. 100 miles in an SUV means a lot more reliance on remote charging stations for family trips

Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe Toyota just wasn’t ambitious enough. What say you readers?

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

Saudi Arabia's energy advisor is recommending the country diversity its energy mix by adding 41 gigawatts (GW) of solar, 17 GW of nuclear, 4 GW of geothermal and waste-to-energy capacity over the next 20 years, reports Reuters.

Electricity consumption is rising rapidly because of its growing population and subsidies. It's now supplying electricity from crude oil, which it would rather preserve for exports.

The King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) says installing that much solar would meet a third of projected peak power demand in 2032, leaving a sixth for nuclear and cutting oil and gas to meet half the demand.

16 GW of solar would be photovoltaic (PV) and 25 GW would be concentrating solar, which they favor for its energy storage ability.

KA-CARE expects the recommendations to be approved, after which it will develop implementation plans. It has to be approved by the board of directors, which includes the crown prince, foreign minister, oil minister, finance minister and industry minister.

So far, Saudi Arabia has an infinitesimal amount of solar - just 50 megawatts. Building up to 41 GW would be a boon to the industry - Germany, which leads the world, has 25 GW in total.

Paddy Padmanathan, CEO of Saudi developer Acwa Power, told Reuters, "The minute you start to value fossil fuel at the right price, the market price, it makes absolute economic sense" to add that much solar.

Interesting how aware he is of the inevitable price on carbon.

In February, Saudi-based IDEA Polysilicon, which is financed by Gulf investors, announced it would build a $1.1 billion solar polysilicon plant there as a step toward moving away from oil dependence.

Photo by edward musiak/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

by Martha Shaw

It’s called ABNJ or Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, and makes up 64 percent of the surface of the world’s oceans. Yet, this part of the planet has no protection from the massive destruction by private interest fishing operations. At the United Nations yesterday, a Program on Global Sustainable Fisheries Management and Biodiversity in ABNJ was introduced to protect the biodiversity of this area, which some consider to be the last global “commons” on Earth.

Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction

Organized by the Global Ocean Forum, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), about 30 experts from those groups as well as UNEP, the World Bank, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, International Sustainable Seafood Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy gathered to share the details of a new program that will devote $44 million to manage the long-term health of this frontier which is depreciating rapidly. Throughout history, it’s been “every man for himself” out there beyond the watchful eyes of citizens, giving way to total anarchy dominated by highly sophisticated $10 billion dollar/year fishing operations equal to 6.3 million tons caught per year.

While land degradation is visible, ocean degradation is invisible and this makes the task of protecting our high seas particularly challenging, as the area is unmonitored. The effect of loss of biodiversity in the open ocean, however, is very much felt in the decline of fisheries in coastal waters.

In the decade following the adoption of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, fishing on the high seas became a major international problem. The Convention gave all states the freedom to fish without regulations on the high seas, but coastal states, to which the Law of the Sea conferred exclusive economic rights including the right to fish within 200 miles off their shores, began to complain that fleets fishing on the high seas were reducing catches in their domestic waters.

The problem centered on fish populations that "straddle" the boundaries of countries' 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs), such as cod off Canada's eastern coast and pollock in the Bering Sea, and highly migratory species like tuna and swordfish, which move between EEZs and the high seas.

Running Low

By the early 1990s, most stocks of commercially valued fish were running low, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). As catches became smaller, coastal states complained that the industrial-scale fishing operations on the high seas were undermining their efforts to conserve and revitalize fish stocks.

There is a history of violence between fishing vessels and coastal states, most notable during the "cod wars" of the 1970s. Several countries, including Britain and Norway, sent naval ships to protect fishing fleets on the high seas. Spanish fishers clashed with British and French drift netters in what came to be known as the "tuna wars." Before the UN Agreement on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks was finalized in October 1995, several coastal states had fired shots at foreign fleets. In the northern Atlantic, Canada seized and confiscated a Spanish boat fishing in international waters just beyond the Canadian 200-mile limit.

The Effect of Fishing on Human Rights

At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, known as the first Earth Summit, governments called on the United Nations to find ways to conserve fish stocks and prevent international conflicts over fishing on the high seas.

The coastal states most concerned during the negotiations about the impact of high seas fishing on their domestic harvest included Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Iceland and New Zealand. They complained that only six countries were responsible for 90 percent of deep sea fishing: Russia, Japan, Spain, Poland, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan province of China. The United States also caught a significant amount of fish, especially tuna, and China soon became a major fishing nation.

Companies began to use refrigerated factory trawlers or "mother ships" that allowed fleets to travel vast distances from the home country and to stay at sea for longer periods without having to return to shore. This quickly became a human rights issue as these fleets undermined the livelihoods of local fishers, depriving poor people in coastal areas of a primary source of sustenance.

Onwards to Rio+20

On the table for Rio+20 next month, though not without conflict, is an end to government fishing subsidies, considered to be as damaging as fossil fuel subsidies. No agreement has been reached here, nor has a proposed phase-out of all deep-sea bottom-trawl fishing on the high seas by 2015. No deep-sea bottom trawl vessels or fleets have demonstrated that they can fish deep-sea species sustainably and prevent damage to deep-sea ecosystems.

Also at the negotiating table is a call for labeling, and for seafood buyers and retailers to only buy and sell fish from deep-sea fisheries that have clearly demonstrated no harm to deep-sea ecosystems.

Today, as global fish stocks decline, seafood becomes an increasingly expensive item for the rich and a rarity for the poor. With the world population expected to reach 8.2 billion by 2030, the planet will have to feed an additional 1.5 billion people, 90 percent of whom will be living in developing countries many of which depend on local fisheries.

Find out more about GEF/FAO Program on Global Sustainable Fisheries Management and Biodiversity Conservation in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction and other issues on the negotiating table for Rio+20.

Photo by Pen Waggener/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from CSRwire

In a significant move, Microsoft is doing what the federal government should do - place a price on carbon to drive rapid increases in efficiency.

Beginning on July 1, Microsoft announced it will be carbon neutral in all its direct operations including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings worldwide.

That's no small feat for a company with 92,000 employees spread across 100 countries.

In his blog, Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner says, "We are hopeful that our decision will encourage other companies large and small to look at what they can do to address this important issue.

The centerpiece of the plan is set an internal price on carbon, which will infuse "carbon awareness" into every part of the business, creating accountability in all business divisions. That will incentivize greater efficiency, increased renewable energy purchases, better data collection and reporting, and an overall reduction in environmental impact.

The carbon price will be based on the market prices for renewable energy and carbon offsets. Microsoft will purchase renewable energy and carbon offsets for any emissions they can't eliminate through efficiency measures.

"We believe climate change is a serious challenge requiring a comprehensive and global response from all sectors of society. This carbon charge-back model is one way we seek to both reduce our impact and test new approaches which we hope are broadly useful for other organizations," says Turner.

Other steps Microsoft is taking:

After doing a smarter buildings pilot on Microsoft's Redmond campus, they learned that buildings can become dramatically more efficient by introducing software to better use current building systems. A capital-intensive retrofit isn't necessary.

By integrating powerful analytics that add intelligence to existing building infrastructure, our buildings got smarter, more efficient and less costly to operate, they say.

Software solutions are projected to save $1.5 million dollars in energy costs in FY 2013, with an 18-month payback.

Microsoft is working with CarbonSystems to implement an Enterprise Sustainability Platform, which automatically captures and extracts environmental data from multiple sources, uncovering more opportunities to reduce its carbon footprint.

A whitepaper outlines ways the IT industry can think about where energy is used and potentially wasted as a first step to drive efficiency throughout the industry.

Earlier this month, Microsoft was recognized as the third largest purchaser of renewable energy in the US by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power a year is enough offsets 46 percent of its electricity use.

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

A U.S.-based company that used genetic engineering to develop a technology to convert sugar into biofuel has announced that it will stop producing the fuel, at least temporarily, because the process simply isn’t profitable. Amyris, a San Francisco firm that also produces cosmetic products, had engineered a type of yeast that can eat sugar and secrete an oil similar to diesel. While the company had some success using this process in the production of biofuels, including for use by buses in Brazil, it achieved greater profits selling the chemicals for use in other products, such as moisturizers and fragrances, according to a report by MIT’s Technology Review. According to the report, the average selling price for the company’s products is about $7.70 per liter ($29 per gallon), which is far higher than the cost of petroleum-based diesel. And even the $7.70 price was propped up by the amount the company can earn by producing moisturizers. According to Amyris officials, the company will stop producing biodiesels by mid-year, but the firm remains interested in developing commercial-scale fuel plants in the future.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

by Christopher DeMorro

There has been a lot of debate over the fast-charging standards of future electric vehicles. While Tesla has been busy perfecting its own “supercharger”, the world’s leading automakers, among them GM, VW, and Ford, have come out with a universal fast charger for future plug-in automobiles.

This united, single charger will mean that makers of EV charging stations will have a single template to follow. The Society of Automotive Engineers has been working with automakers to help develop a single standard, rather than allowing each automaker to develop their own system.

This universal charger is said to be a Level 3 charger that can rapidly charge EV’s in as little as 15-20 minutes. Not quite the 5-minute fillup of current petrol cars, but this rapid charger could help speed acceptance of electric vehicles among the car-buying public.

All three American automakers are on-board with this new system, as is Audi, BMW, Porsche, VW, and Daimler (parent company of Mercedes). Interestingly enough, these are all European and American automakers, even though Japanese car companies are producing far more electric and plug-in vehicles.

Were the Japenese companies frozen out? Did they simply choose not to participate? Or are Japan’s automakers developing their own charging system? This one has me scratching my head, that’s for sure.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

Budget shortfalls, launch failures, and mission changes have caused a decline in U.S. earth observation satellites over the last five years, a trend that could undermine the nation’s ability to forecast weather and monitor natural disasters and climate change, according to a new report. The report, published by the National Research Council (NRC), said that a lack of satellite-based earth monitoring technologies “will have profound consequences on science and society.” One factor slowing progress is a shortage of reliable medium-class launchers to send satellites into space, the NRC said. The report said that NASA is making up for some of the shortfalls in earth observation systems by increasing sub-orbital missions and jet flights, and by cooperating on missions with other countries that have launched earth observation satellites. “It’s likely our capabilities will decline fairly precipitously at just the time they’re most needed,” Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and chair of the committee that wrote the report, told the New York Times. “If nothing is changed, we’re predicting to be down to 25 percent of our current capabilities by 2020.”

Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360