by: Jerry James Stone

by: Noah Long

Image credit: © VANOC/COVAN By Luke Walsh

 
As a fuel source, coal is as filthy as they come – emitting about 67% more CO2 per unit of energy than natural gas.
 
The process of coal mining itself also releases large amounts of trapped methane gas into the atmosphere. The US Geological Survey estimates that there is an incredible 700 trillion cubic feet of methane trapped in domestic coal deposits.

Methane is twenty-one times as powerful as greenhouse gas as CO2, and according to the IPCC accounts for 9% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
 
There is so much trapped methane in coal deposits that it is more profitable in many areas to extract “coal bed methane” by surface drilling and leave the coal in the ground.
The much more common method of conventional coal mining simply allows this dangerous gas to escape into our atmospheric fishbowl.
 
But climate change is big news and coal is big business. As a result there is a vigorous PR campaign to try and rehabilitate the public image of the coal.

Enter a $1.8 billion project in Illinois to build a “clean coal” research facility to showcase emission-free coal power. They plan to capture the CO2 from the coal combustion and inject it deep into underlying rock formations. So what’s that catch?
 
Even if this project was a success when it is finally slated to go online 2012, it remains only one single plant and a small one at that. There are now about 600 conventional coal plants in the US burning on average about 1.4 million tons of coal each every year.

There are also over 150 fully polluting coal plants on the drawing board in the US.
 
About 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US come from coal. Throwing over $1 billion of taxpayer’s dollars towards a single token “clean coal” plant sounds like a very expensive Potemkin village for benefit of the coal lobby.
 
It is also telling that the US government was unsuccessful in getting their industry partners to pick up more of the tab for this boondoggle. Spending that kind of money on a plant that would only supply energy to 150,000 homes is an excellent example of dubious economics to this unproven technology.

At only 245 MW generating capacity and a cost of $1.8 billion, this so called clean coal plant would be about twice as expensive as building equivalent wind generating facilities and slightly more than solar – both of which are guaranteed to produce zero emissions forever.

Lastly, even if carbon capture technology would work, it does nothing to mitigate methane emissions from coal mining.
 

Coal is dirty. Don’t buy the whitewash. -Mitchell Anderson

By Michael Schirber

"Building a robust clean-energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future, jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," Obama said.
"This initiative is good for middle-class families. It is good for our security. It is good for our planet," he said.
High unemployment is one of Obama's most pressing domestic challenges and a monthly payroll report released on Friday served as a reminder that labor market conditions remain grim. U.S. unemployment was unchanged at 10 percent in December, while businesses unexpectedly shed 85,000 jobs.
"The jobs numbers that were released by the Labor Department this morning are a reminder that the road to recovery is never straight," Obama said.
Climate change, alongside health care and financial regulation reform, is a core goal of Obama's White House.
All require support from Congress, where his Democratic Party may suffer a setback in November congressional elections unless he can start to push the jobless figures down.
The tax credits have been granted to 183 projects across the country involved in technologies that include solar, wind, and other initiatives to improve energy efficiency.
On top of the employment resulting directly from the tax credit, Obama said it would lead to "tens of thousands" of additional new jobs.
The White House says the stimulus money has helped prevent the deepest U.S. recession in 70 years from getting much worse, and has renewed its push to boost job creation, which many analysts say warrants more public spending.
Obama held a jobs summit and met with bankers last month to boost lending to small businesses in the hope that would encourage them to hire more workers.
In addition, the House of Representatives has approved an additional $155 billion jobs package to boost hiring, although the Senate has yet to take up its version of the legislation and will first tackle Obama's signature health care reforms.
"We have to continue to explore every avenue to accelerate the return to hiring," he said.
Companies that will benefit from the clean-energy tax credit include Itron, based in Liberty Lake, Wash.; PPG Industries, based in Pittsburgh; and TPI Composites, based in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

By Marty Padgett
Car Expert

Gizmag is always on the lookout for alternative means of powering vehicles and saving precious fossil fuels. But, in truth, the vast majority of us still drive exclusively petrol-powered cars. And the even sadder truth, outlined in a new research from the University of Michigan, is that the average fuel efficiency of a US vehicle has improved only three miles per gallon since the days of the Ford Model T.
Michael Sivak and Omer Tsimhonia, of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, calculated the distance driven and fuel consumed for the entire US fleet of vehicles – incorporating cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses – between 1923 and 2006. Using those numbers, they were then able to analyze fuel efficiency on US roads at any time, and make telling comparisons between eras.
According to Ford, the Model T – which began mass-production in 1913 – averaged a fairly healthy 25 miles to the gallon. Nonetheless, by 1923, the year the study begins, the average fuel efficiency of the entire US fleet was 14 mpg. That figure remained about the same for more than a decade.
From 1935, however, fuel efficiency fell into steady decline, dropping to an alarming 11.9 mpg in 1973. When you think about the kind of vehicles released through that time – and the number of extras that steadily became standard – it’s almost not surprising. All those fins and chrome and power-assisted systems came with heavy penalties in efficiency. The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, estimates that air-conditioning alone decreases the fuel efficiency of a car by as much as 12%.
But, with the fuel crisis of the 70’s, fuel efficiency was compelled to improve, and in a hurry. From 1974 the economy of the US fleet improved five miles a gallon to 16.9 mpg in 1991. Curiously, since then – despite growing environmental awareness and publicly-voiced concern – improvement has been painfully slow, reaching just 17.2 mpg in 2006.
The underlying problem in recent years, of course, isn’t with new cars, some of which can achieve close to 40 mpg. It’s all those old vehicles out there, chewing up gas like there’s no tomorrow. As far as Sivak and Tsimhoni are concerned, it’s much more important to improve fuel efficiency at this end – from 15 to 16 mpg, say – than trying to get a Prius from 40 to 41 mpg.
By their estimates, for the US to reduce its total annual fuel consumption by 10%, fuel efficiency across the entire fleet of cars, motorbikes, truck and buses would have to rise nearly two percent. That may not sound like much, but it took 15 years for a 0.3% change. And when you’re talking about 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the average medium-sized sedan, making a change has never seemed more critical.

By Michael Mulcahy

A picture of FREE

Jim Fets

JEEP COMMANDER
20.3 gallons of premium gas at $2.699
17.2 mpg vs. EPA highway rating of 18 mpg

A boxy seven-seat SUV is obviously no candidate for a fuel-economy championship, but we had to bring one along as a shooting platform for photographer Jim Fets and his ample gear. We contemplated a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe on E85 ethanol, but a quick check of the availability of that fuel on our route and a reminder that we were trying to do this on a single tank (a gallon of E85 contains less energy than a like amount of gasoline, so you burn it faster) had us thinking otherwise. Michigan has four E85 stations—not much better than in 1990 when we ran a story about the flex-fuel Ford Taurus.

Anyway, we had this Commander in the fleet, and the news editor reminded us it had a Hemi with the Multiple Displacement System. MDS shuts down half the cylinders when you’re just cruising at highway speed, a circumstance that described about 80 percent of what we were planning.

With 330 hp and 375 lb-ft of Hemi V8 power to motivate nearly 5000 pounds of SUV, the Commander had recorded fuel economy as low as 12 mpg in around-town use. A mindful driver on a long highway drive can attain nearly half again that efficiency: 17.2 mpg. The only feedback for the driver, though, is the “miles to empty” gauge, which started sending our managing editor mixed messages late in the day. Rather than risk running the 20-gallon tank dry, he topped off 285 miles into our drive. It only took 17 gallons, suggesting a remaining range of 51 miles—not quite enough to have completed our route, though it might have done the job if we had been willing to hold back just a little on speed. Which brings us to the next-best performer.

A picture of FREE

Jim Fets

CHEVROLET CORVETTE
12.8 gallons of premium gas at $2.699
27.3 mpg vs. EPA highway rating of 27 mpg

Who puts a 400-hp V8 sports car in a fuel-economy run? Well, we do. The Corvette not only made the trip on one tank, it had more than 100 miles range left. If you drive a Vette like you drive a hybrid, would it contend? Not quite, at 27.3 mpg, though here’s an idea: The Displacement on Demand feature on other small-block V8s is not yet used in Corvette. We suspect that if the DOD were, the mileage ratings could have stretched into the low-30-plus-mpg range, rivaling the Honda Accord hybrid.

Corvette drivers are more accustomed to measuring efficiency in terms of time, extolling the car’s ability to make short work of the run to 60 mph or the quarter-mile pole. Putting it in this group was our way of assuring we wouldn’t be dawdling around—drive as if the readout on the dashboard fuel-economy gauge is all that matters and soon you’ll be going slowly enough to make our little daytrip into an overnighter.

The Vette paced the group at 75 to 80 mph with manual operation of its automatic transmission holding it in sixth gear, the drivers treading gently, ever so gently, on the accelerator as the big V8 buzzed along, hovering at 1700 to 1800 rpm all day long. Shift up as soon as the car lets you—24 mph for fourth, 33 for fifth, 40 for sixth. You lose a little miles per gallon past 65 mph, a tradeoff for reasonable travel time, but the Corvette makes hay of the “haste makes waste” argument at speed. As long as you hold the throttle steady, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re doing 65 or 85 mph, the fuel economy changes little.

One disadvantage of the automatic was that it made it virtually impossible to use the cruise control even for brief periods. Hit a slight uphill grade (slight upgrades are all this flatland offers) and the cruise control would kick the gear down to fifth or even fourth, revving up the power and degrading the economy.

In a group of purist sports cars, the Corvette tends to stand out as the roomy, comfortable, quiet one, leading some to mistake it for a GT. Among these family cars, though, the exhaust rumble, the road noise from the wide tires and the sharp ride motions set it apart and make its sporting intent clear. We also found it useful in a fuel-economy sense to maintain momentum by charging through off-ramps—traffic permitting—at high lateral g-loadings, the better to keep the trans up there in overdrive. Performance that delights speed freaks can sometimes serve another purpose.

A picture of FREE

Jim Fets

HONDA ACCORD V6 HYBRID
10.3 gallons of regular gas at $2.599
33.9 mpg vs. EPA highway rating of 34 mpg

With 255 hp on tap, there’s plenty of mojo in Honda’s performance-oriented hybrid, and you pay less of a penalty than you do in the Vette if you choose to use what it has. This mix of both economy and performance is what landed the Honda dead-center in our fuel-sippin’ exercise at 33.9 mpg. The Honda had no trouble keeping up on the highway, though locking it into top gear wasn’t as easy as with some cars. Instead, the software wanted us to give the car control.

On the interstates that made up about 300 miles of our journey, the Honda was the one car that clearly rewarded use of cruise control—a driver on his own could occasionally light the “eco” indicator on the dashboard that tells you the V6 is running on half its cylinders (just like the Jeep’s MDS). Use cruise control, which hands over the throttle and transmission management tasks to the ECU, and that “eco” indicator lit up more often and stayed lit longer.

It also tended to smooth out the ride experience—most of our drivers complained there were abrupt changes among the various modes of hybrid operation and that once you were up to cruising speed the Honda felt heavy and clunky. There was also plenty of road noise, attributable, as with the Prius, to the hard, fuel-economy-oriented tires.

A picture of FREE

Jim Fets

TOYOTA PRIUS
8.3 gallons of regular gas at $2.599
42 mpg vs. EPA highway rating of 51 mpg

Well, it didn’t make its 51-mpg EPA highway estimated, but 42 mpg on a long road trip would please most American drivers. Part of the shortfall was due to the pace we maintained. At a more hybrid-friendly 55 to 65 mph, the dazzling dashboard display showed numbers closer to 50 mpg, but it was also telling us we were averaging 44 to 45 mpg when our tank reading said otherwise. That instant feedback loop, monitoring economy in short increments of time and distance—not to mention letting the driver see exactly where the energy is going to and coming from—is a big part of why Prius drivers are so prone to telling the rest of us, “You have to drive it differently.” We found that isn’t quite true; the Prius responds to the same economy-minded driving techniques experts have been advising for 30 years or more. Steady throttle openings, gentle accelerations, concentrate on maintaining momentum and avoiding abrupt starts and stops, and it rewards you. The difference in the Prius is it offers up immediate gratification of the video-game variety, right there on the dashboard, no waiting to fill the tank and do the math yourself.

However you measure it, the second-generation Prius is much better suited to long road trips than was its forebear. It rides better, has more gumption to carry you over grades without fuel-sucking downshifts or a floored gas pedal, and even its braking performance (influenced by the regeneration feature, which varies according to the state of battery charge) is more even and predictable. It did really well. It just wasn’t the mileage champion.

A picture of FREE

Jim Fets

VOLKSWAGEN JETTA TDI
7.0 gallons of B20 biodiesel at $2.749
49.9 mpg vs. EPA highway rating of 42 mpg

Our fuel station was offering up B20 biodiesel, 20 percent of which comes from vegetable oil, animal fats and other sources, meaning that from an environmentalist’s perspective the German diesel didn’t just beat the Japanese hybrids, it trounced them. Not only that, it had more than half of its 14.5-gallon tank left at the end—it could have made the same trip again without refueling! Our example was pretty much a stripper, absent even the usual VW trip computer, so we had no instant feedback loop on our performance. Maybe if we’d had that, we could have nudged the economy from 49.9 mpg into the 50-mpg range.

As it was, we just drove gently, stayed with the caravan and employed the manual mode on the six-speed automatic transmission when it seemed useful. Spoiled by the Vette, perhaps, we sometimes screwed that up because first gear in the Jetta is so low that pulling away from a light runs you up beyond 3000 rpm rapidly, turning fuel into roar with not much accelerative reward. Most of us ended up slotting it into “D” and leaving it there.

At about 11 seconds to 60 mph, the Jetta’s published road-test numbers are not as good as the Prius’ (around 10 seconds, thanks to massive electric motor torque at 0 rpm), but at highway speeds its 177 lb-ft at 1800 rpm and 100 hp at 4000 rpm feel stronger than the Toyota and smoother than the Honda. The diesel spins harder than the Vette at 80 mph, running at 2500 rpm or so, but still it is a long-legged German car with autobahn-able credentials.

For comfort, quiet and highway handling, our drivers found the TDI had significant advantages over every other car in the test. It would have been our choice, in other words, for an easy daytrip on the interstates, regardless of fuel economy. And we topped the hybrids by driving with just a little attention to fuel economy, not making it an obsession. Maybe this German family sedan was inspired by our mission—we understand VWs make a lot of beer runs in their homeland.

Although we had our qualms before the storm, we think our little road trip shows the technologies are out there to promise massive gains in fuel efficiency in short order, should circumstances warrant it. Imagine a Prius-like hybrid that ran on biodiesel instead of gasoline. We may not be there yet, and adapting diesels to use the cylinder-cutoff technology found in the Jeep and Honda might be a tough task, but look how far we’ve come already.
-autoweek.com