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Department of Energy - US Energy Secretary Chu Announces Finalized $5.9 Billion Loan for Ford Motor Company
Today, Secretary Steven Chu announced that the Department of Energy has closed on its loan offer of $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Company to transform factories across Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio to produce more fuel efficient models. The loan is part of the Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which supports the development of innovative, advanced vehicle technologies to create thousands of clean energy jobs while helping reduce the nation’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil. The loan for Ford Motor Company is the first to be finalized since the program was appropriated in the fall of 2008.
This announcement builds on steps taken by the Obama Administration earlier this week to require an average fuel economy of 35.5 miles per gallon in the year 2016. That standard will reduce oil consumption by an estimated 1.8 billion barrels, prevent greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 950 million metric tons, and save consumers more than $3,000 in fuel costs. The funding announced today will help Ford meet those targets.
The Cost of Energy» Graph of the week: The US transportation gap
You can quote numbers all day about how much oil the US uses and for which purposes, but few things drive the point home like the graph below. This shows US oil consumption for just transportation (broken out by mode), with a line plot of domestic production, revealing a humongous gap and explaining why so many peak oil adherents are so freaked out.
One Container Ship Pollutes As Much As 50 Million Cars : Gas 2.0
Much ado and attention has been paid to the pollutants emmitted from the tail pipes of cars and trucks in recent years, both here in the U.S. and across the pond in Europe. With an estimated 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. alone, it would seem that cars would be a major contributor to pollution and air quality issues here and abroad. But newly released data from Europe suggests that a single container ship may cause as much pollution as 50 million cars and release as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur oxide into the air annually. And there are 90,000 such ships of varying sizes across the world at any one time.
The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » Graph of the Week: Cars vs. Trucks
This week’s Graphs of the Week come from the US Dept. of Energy’s energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program, and they address a pretty basic fact of American transportation: The mix of cars vs. light trucks in new vehicle sales, and who’s driving them. (”Light trucks” is a term of art meaning pickup trucks, minivans, and SUVs. Add your own rude comment here about how “light” some SUVs are.)
Obama takes aim at climate-warming car emissions | Reuters
President Barack Obama took aim at climate-warming greenhouse gases on Tuesday and ordered the struggling auto industry to make more fuel-efficient cars under tough new national standards to cut emissions and increase gas mileage.
Obama said the standards, announced at a White House ceremony attended by auto industry and union leaders, would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and give five years of cost certainty to an industry battling to survive.
"The status quo is no longer acceptable," Obama said in an announcement that will pressure carmakers to transform and modernize the industry to produce more efficient vehicles.
The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » Document alert: Alternative transportation fuels
The US Dept. of Energy has issued a set of spreadsheets on the use of alternative fuel vehicles, available from two web pages:
EIA Alternative Transportation Fuels-Supplier Data
EIA Alternative Transportation Fuels-User and Fuel Data
A few observations:
Newsvine - Oregon Looks at Taxing Mileage Instead of Gasoline
Oregon is among a growing number of states exploring ways to tax drivers based on the number of miles they drive instead of how much gas they use, even going so far as to install GPS monitoring devices in 300 vehicles. The idea first emerged nearly 10 years ago as Oregon lawmakers worried that fuel-efficient cars such as gas-electric hybrids could pose a threat to road upkeep, which is paid for largely with gasoline taxes.
Bailout of the Day: Automakers to get $17.4 Billion, Detroit Auto Show Still On : TreeHugger
Lame duck president George W. Bush has approved today a $17.4 billion bailout for the Detroit automakers, proving once again that in this bizarro-Keynesian world, if you run your big business well, you get nothing, and if you don't, you get a reward.
"The government will have the option of becoming a stockholder in the companies, much as it has with major banks, in effect partially nationalizing the industry." Read on for more.
Newsvine - A Better America Without the Automobile
Fellow Americans we must stop investing in roads, highways and parking lots. The automobile must go the way of the horse as an antiquated way of getting around. Find a better way now, before desperation forces us to do so. Let's lead the world to a better future, not follow the status quo into pollution and sprawl.
I worked in the oil and gas exploration and production industry for 25 years. Few citizens fully understand the scope of the current oil and gas production infrastructure in this country. There are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells across this country all pumping oil and gas continuously around the clock. Pipelines criss-cross the sea bottom and the landscape carrying millions of gallons of fuel, yet the domestic production meets only a fraction of the current demand for the products. No amount of domestic drilling can meet the country's demand. This world must change its energy infrastructure and transportation systems, and America should lead the way.
Newsvine - A Better America Without the Automobile
Fellow Americans we must stop investing in roads, highways and parking lots. The automobile must go the way of the horse as an antiquated way of getting around. Find a better way now, before desperation forces us to do so. Let's lead the world to a better future, not follow the status quo into pollution and sprawl.
I worked in the oil and gas exploration and production industry for 25 years. Few citizens fully understand the scope of the current oil and gas production infrastructure in this country. There are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells across this country all pumping oil and gas continuously around the clock. Pipelines criss-cross the sea bottom and the landscape carrying millions of gallons of fuel, yet the domestic production meets only a fraction of the current demand for the products. No amount of domestic drilling can meet the country's demand. This world must change its energy infrastructure and transportation systems, and America should lead the way.
GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered | CommonDreams.org
Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?
First let them remake what they destroyed.
GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.
GM met the rise of the hybrids with "light trucks."
GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all.
Peak Energy: Bullet Trains For California
AP reports that Californian voters passed a measure to build a high speed rail network in the state - Calif. voters approve $10B bond for bullet trains. Hopefully they can find the money for it
California voters are green-lighting the nation's most ambitious high-speed rail system, approving a nearly $10 billion bond to put speeding bullet trains capable of topping 200 mph between the state's major metropolitan areas.
The measure, which passed with 52 percent support Tuesday, will fund the first phase of what is projected to be a $45 billion, 800-mile project built with state, federal, local and private money.
Backers sold the proposal as an innovative alternative to soaring airfares and gas prices. In the closing weeks of the campaign, they touted estimates that it would create nearly 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs.
Green Bike Project gets rolling
Giving away bicycles to commuters to get them out of their cars is no longer strictly a private enterprise. The state and King County are trying it as well.
A new "green bike" program announced Thursday is aimed at getting 300 workers to reduce their commute trips by 60 percent between now and May.
Motorcyles Designed to Run on Air : Discovery News
We may be driving on air in the next few years. That is, we may be driving vehicles powered by compressed air, instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.
Researchers Yu-Ta Shen and Yean-Ren Hwang of the National Central University in Taiwan have developed an air-powered motorcycle, which uses the energy in compressed air, rather than gas, to drive the motor.
Postbulletin.com: Derailment is IC&E's third since May; Highway 26 partially reopened - Wed, Jul 30, 2008
The derailment of an Iowa, Chicago & Eastern railroad train near the small town of Reno early Tuesday is the railroad's third along the Mississippi River in far southeastern Minnesota or northeastern Iowa since May.
Auto Costs Versus Bike Costs -- Including Hidden and Indirect Automobile Costs
The cost of operating an automobile has intrigued me since I started riding a bike as an adult. From asking owners, I estimated in 1965 that a car cost about 25¢ a mile to operate, which caused a fellow student to scream at me. In the late 70's, when I was an owner, I figured the operating cost at 14¢ a mile, which was unrealistically low. We tend to believe what we want to believe.
Cold War-era nuclear waste set to roll through Georgia | ajc.com
Regular shipments of radioactive waste left over from the Cold War era may begin this fall with trucks moving through northwest Georgia en route to New Mexico.
The estimated 60 to 120 truckloads a year of waste from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee will be buried nearly a half-mile deep in an underground salt formation. The transports to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., are expected to take three years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The shipments are awaiting approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Associated Press: Bulgaria sends uranium fuel to Russia
Bulgaria has sent its remaining highly enriched uranium to Russia for safeguarding from terrorist or other potential misuse.
Nearly 14 pounds of the spent fuel were received Thursday at a Russian nuclear facility, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced. A first shipment of 37.3 pounds of fresh uranium fuel was sent to Russia in December 2003.
Cold War-era radioactive waste to go through Birmingham on way to salt mine- al.com
Birmingham is on a route for regular shipments of radioactive waste scheduled to begin this fall, with trucks moving from Oak Ridge, Tenn., along Interstates 59, 20 and 459 and on to Carlsbad, N.M.
In Carlsbad, the estimated 60 to 120 truckloads a year of waste from Tennessee will be buried a half-mile deep in containers in an old salt mine. The transports to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad are expected to take three years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Nuclear Highway: Radioactive On The Road, Manhattan Project Nuclear Waste To Be Taken From Tennessee To New Mexico Via Truck - CBS News
Motorists across the South could soon be sharing the highway with nuclear waste generated decades ago in developing the first atomic bomb.
Tons of this so-called "transuranic waste" have been waiting for years to leave what is now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a final home in New Mexico, where the government has built a permanent vault in salt beds nearly a half-mile deep.
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