| The budget for the State of New York includes an innovative $20 million program for the development of a cellulosic ethanol pilot facility, Governor George Pataki announced early this month. The pilot facility will produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass sources such as willow, switchgrass, paper mill wastes, and agricultural and forestry residues. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets will administer the program, using a competitive process to make the award. Currently, Iogen Corporation in Canada is the only commercial producer of cellulosic ethanol, generating about a million gallons annually from wheat, oat, and barley straw in their demonstration facility. In addition, several U.S. ethanol plants are engaged in research and demonstration projects with DOE, and DOE operates a pilot plant at its National Renewable Energy Laboratory. See the governor's press release and the Renewable Fuels Association's Cellulosic Ethanol Web page. The governor also announced that the state is supporting the development of dedicated crops for the biomass energy industry. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets awarded grants of $22,385 for Dutchess County Cornell Cooperative Extension and Cornell University to try growing a 15-acre crop of switchgrass, and $60,000 for the State University of New York - College of Environmental Science and Forestry to develop its first commercial willow plantation. The willow plantation will be located near a wood-burning power plant in Lyonsdale, about 40 miles north of Utica, and managed in cooperation with the power plant. Lyonsdale Biomass is a 19-megawatt power plant that also supplies steam to a nearby paper plant, and is partly owned by Catalyst Renewables. The willow plantation could provide fuel for the power plant or for a cellulosic ethanol facility. In addition, the state awarded a grant of $60,000 to Northern Biodiesel in Ontario, about 10 miles east of Rochester, to develop a rapeseed market for the biodiesel industry. See the Department of Agriculture and Markets press release and the Catalyst Renewables Web site. New York is also supporting the development of more traditional ethanol production facilities within the state. Governor Pataki announced on May 8th that the state will award nearly $6 million to Western New York Energy for its development of a dry mill ethanol plant in Shelby, about 30 miles northeast of Buffalo. When it begins production in January 2008, the $87.4 million facility is expected to convert 6 million bushels of corn into about 50 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol each year. See the governor's press release. Honda announced last week that it will introduce an all-new hybrid car in North America in 2009. The company says the new hybrid will be offered at a price "significantly lower" than the current Civic Hybrid. Honda will aim to sell 100,000 of the vehicles per year in North America, and 200,000 worldwide. The new hybrid vehicle will be produced at Honda's Suzuka plant in Japan. Honda is also hedging its bets by introducing an alternative approach to fuel economy: the company plans to start selling a new low-emission 4-cylinder diesel engine in the United States and Canada within the next three years. See the Honda press release.  |  The new Civic GX on display with "Phill," the home refueling appliance.
Credit: Honda | Meanwhile, Honda has completed its revamping of the Civic line with the introduction of the updated Honda Civic GX. Fueled with natural gas, the 2006 Civic GX achieves the equivalent of 28 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 39 mpg on the highway, and went on sale last week with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $24,440. According to Honda, buyers of the 2006 Civic GX will be eligible for a Federal tax credit of $4,000 for the car and up to $1,000 for the purchase and installation of 'Phill,' the convenient natural gas home refueling appliance. Honda estimates that drivers will spend about 65 percent less for fuel when driving a natural gas vehicle fueled at home. See the Honda press release. Drivers often complain of achieving lower fuel economies than the official ratings from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but you won't be hearing that anytime soon from the participants in the 18th Annual Tour de Sol, a green car show and competition held in early May in Saratoga Springs, New York. You'd be least likely to hear it from Wayne Gerdes, who drove a stock Honda Insight from Chicago to the event on a single tank of gas, achieving 90.4 miles per gallon (mpg) and winning first place in the event's Monte Carlo style Rally and Fuel Efficiency Competition. And if a Porsche is more your speed, consider Gavin Watson, who earned first place in the alternative fuel division of the rally by achieving 53 mpg with his veggie-oil-powered 1973 Porsche. The event also features the Tour de Sol Championship, which challenges entrants to build vehicles that reduce gasoline use and climate change emissions. In the Championship, West Philadelphia High School took top honors in the student hybrid and alternative fuel division with a sports car that accelerates from 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds and achieves a fuel efficiency of 55 mpg. In the battery electric division, the Burlington Electecs of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, took top honors with a student-built electric vehicle. See the full results and the press release on the Tour de Sol Web site. A device that employs passive optics to concentrate sunlight onto a solar cell earned a first-place prize worth $47,500 at the 2006 Ignite Clean Energy Competition, held on May 9th. Stellaris Corporation claims it can cut the cost of solar power modules by 40 percent with its passive optics, which do not require a tracking mechanism. The start-up company now has $15,000 in cash, $25,000 worth of office space, and $7,500 worth of legal services to make its dreams into reality. The MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge sponsored the competition, which featured two elimination rounds to whittle down a long list of potential clean energy technology companies to just 10 competitors in April, then chose five winners on May 9th. The two second-place awards went to Solasta (also known as The Eagle Axis), a Boston College faculty team developing ultra-high-efficiency solar cells using nanotechnology; and Feed Resource Recovery, a Babson College student team that uses food and other organic wastes and an anaerobic digester to produce methane fuel and a highly effective organic fertilizer. Two third-place awards went to NatEl for its hydropower technology for low-head dams and Synergetic Power Systems, an MIT-student team, for its rooftop-mounted parabolic concentrating solar collectors. See the Ignite Clean Energy Web site. The U.S. Air Force and DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) joined one electric utility, five corporations, two organizations, and three individuals last week as recipients of the 2006 Climate Protection Awards, presented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Air Force was honored for buying more than a billion kilowatt-hours of green power in 2005, making it the largest buyer of green power in the country. The Air Force also invests in significant on-site biomass, wind, and solar power. NREL was the first federal participant in the EPA Climate Leaders Partnership (CLP) and was one of five CLP members to set and successfully meet its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal of 10 percent per square foot from 2000 to 2005. Additionally, NREL's analytical contribution to the EPA Mobile Air Conditioning Climate Protection Partnership will allow the automotive community to prevent the equivalent of more than 35 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions each year while saving the average consumer hundreds of dollars over the life of their vehicle. The utility and corporate winners of the Climate Protection Awards include the Arizona Public Service Company, which cut its greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels by 2000 and plans to reduce its carbon intensity another 10 percent by 2010; Baxter International, which cut its greenhouse gas intensity by 35 percent between 1996 and 2004; DENSO Corporation, which developed a way to dramatically increase refrigeration efficiency while slashing greenhouse gas emissions; IBM Corporation, which cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 6.2 percent per year from 2000 to 2005 by using energy efficiency and buying renewable energy; Johnson & Johnson, the largest corporate purchaser of green power and a significant generator of on-site power from landfill gas and solar energy; and Yokota Tohoku, Inc., manufacturers of food containers that are recycled with far less energy and greenhouse gas emissions than competing products. See the EPA press release and the full list of winners. DOE launched industrial Energy Saving Assessments last week at two plants in Alabama, as well as plants in Maine and Utah. The Dixie Group facility in Atmore, Alabama, tufts, dyes, and coats carpet for residential, contract, and custom markets. Wise Alloys in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, produces 950 million pounds per year of aluminum sheet products used in the beverage and food industries. The facility also melts and prepares 500 million pounds of scrap cans for recycling per year. Sappi Fine Paper's Somerset Mill in Skowhegan, Maine, has three paper machines that annually produce 760,000 tons of high-gloss, coated papers used in high-end catalogs and magazines. The plant also produces its own bleached chemical pulp. The Holcim, U.S. facility in Morgan, Utah, is one of the leading manufacturers of cement and mineral components in the United States. DOE's free three-day energy assessments are helping major manufacturing facilities to identify energy-saving opportunities, primarily by focusing on steam and process heating systems used at the plants. See the DOE press releases on the visits to Atmore, Muscle Shoals, Skowhegan, and Morgan, as well as the Wise Alloys and Sappi Fine Paper Web sites. DOE's Energy Saving Teams have completed visits to 33 large federal facilities and are in the process of visiting 200 energy-intensive manufacturing facilities as part of the national "Easy Ways to Save Energy" campaign launched in October 2005. The first 44 industrial Energy Saving Assessments have identified a total of $149.3 million per year in potential energy cost savings. If implemented, these energy-saving measures could reduce natural gas consumption by more than 14.8 trillion Btu per year, which is more than the amount used by 200,000 U.S. homes. See the results of many of these industrial Energy Saving Assessments on the "Save Energy Now" Web site, provided by DOE's Industrial Technologies Program. |
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