Weekly Clean Energy Roundup:May 30, 2007

News and Events

• DOE Awards $22.7 Million for Basic Solar Energy Research
• DOE Invests $19 Million in Advanced Vehicle Technologies Research
• New York City to Shift Taxi Fleet to Hybrids by 2012
• GE Unveils Hybrid Locomotive for Freight Trains
• Iowa Establishes a $100 Million Clean Energy Fund
• Minnesota Act Sets Efficiency and GHG Goals while Boosting Renewables
  

DOE Awards $22.7 Million for Basic Solar Energy Research

DOE announced last week that it has awarded $22.7 million to 27 projects aimed at improving the capture, conversion, and use of solar energy. These basic research projects will help increase the amount of solar power in the nation’s energy supply and will focus on two technical areas: the conversion of solar energy to electricity and the conversion of solar energy to chemical fuels. Directly converting sunlight to chemical fuels will help overcome the problem of the lack of nighttime solar resource and provide solar-derived energy in forms useful for transportation, residential, and industrial applications. DOE selected projects at 23 universities and two DOE national laboratories: Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Fourteen projects will receive $9.9 million over three years for research in the conversion of solar energy to electricity. The projects will involve such technologies as nanomaterials, organic solar cells, solar cell materials that can produce multiple excited electrons from a single photon, and “dye-sensitized” solar cells, which employ dyes to capture the energy in solar photons. Thirteen projects will receive $12.8 million over three years for research on the conversion of solar energy to chemical fuels. While some of these projects involve developing catalysts for such chemical conversions, most are aimed at mimicking the photosynthetic process that plants use to convert sunlight into stored chemical energy. See the DOE press release.

DOE Invests $19 Million in Advanced Vehicle Technologies Research

DOE announced last week that five next-generation vehicle research projects will receive up to $19 million to further the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles. Projects will focus on reducing the cost, weight, and size of electric drive and power conversion devices while increasing vehicle efficiency. The teams’ research will focus on the following areas: high-speed electric motors that can produce at least 55 kilowatts of power; three-phase inverters that can operate at high temperatures while controlling and regulating the speed of electric motors; combined traction motors and power electronic inverters; bi-directional direct current-to-direct current converters; and advanced “soft-switching” inverters. Soft-switching inverters reduce switching and power loss by only allowing their internal transistors to switch between modes when the voltage across the transistor is near zero.

Industry teams based in California, Michigan, New York, and Virginia will share the cost of the projects, bringing the total investment to $33.8 million from the current fiscal year through fiscal year 2010. The teams will be led by Delphi Automotive Systems, General Electric Global Research, General Motors Corporation, U.S. Hybrid Corporation, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Team members include DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as four universities. See the DOE press release.

New York City to Shift Taxi Fleet to Hybrids by 2012

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last week that the city’s fleet of 13,000 taxicabs will shift entirely to hybrid vehicles by 2012. The New York Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) will phase in new emissions and mileage standards over the next four years that will force a shift to hybrid vehicles. According to the mayor, the shift will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from the city’s taxicab and for-hire vehicle fleet by 50 percent within the next decade. It will also benefit the cabbies, cutting fuel costs by $10,000 per year for the average taxicab.

The TLC first approved eight hybrid models for use in the city back in October 2005, but there are currently only 375 hybrid vehicles in the city’s fleet. According to Ford Motor Company, 288 of those vehicles are Ford Escape Hybrids. See the press releases from Mayor Bloomberg and Ford.

GE Unveils Hybrid Locomotive for Freight Trains

General Electric Company (GE) unveiled a prototype hybrid locomotive for freight trains last week in Los Angeles, California. Like its automotive cousins, the 4,400-horsepower Evolution Hybrid prototype features a series of batteries that capture and store the locomotive’s braking energy and use it to help accelerate the train from a stop. According to the company, the hybrid system will reduce fuel consumption and emissions by as much as 10 percent compared to most of the freight locomotives in use today. GE isn’t disclosing the type of batteries used in the locomotive, describing them only as innovative, lead-free, and rechargeable.

The company estimates that the energy dissipated in braking a 207-ton locomotive over the course of a year is enough to power 160 households for a year. And if every locomotive today were as efficient as GE’s hybrid, the North American rail industry could save $425 million in fuel costs each year. See the GE press release and the GE Transportation Web site
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GE’s Evolution Hybrid prototype isn’t the first hybrid locomotive, but it’s the first to be designed for long-distance travel (a “road” locomotive). RailPower Technologies Corporation currently produces a hybrid locomotive for use in moving railroad cars around within a rail yard. This yard switcher, called the “Green Goat,” runs entirely on battery power and employs a small diesel engine to maintain the charge in its lead-acid batteries. The company is also developing a “road switcher,” a locomotive designed to move railroad cars outside of a rail yard. See the RailPower Web site.

Iowa Establishes a $100 Million Clean Energy Fund

Iowa Governor Chet Culver approved two bills last week that establish a new state fund for clean energy research and development. The state will provide the new Iowa Power Fund with $25 million per year for the next four years. The fund will support research, development, commercialization, and deployment of biofuels, renewable energy technologies, and energy efficiency technologies, while also seeking to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The fund will also educate the public about these technologies and will aim to increase the demand for them. The $100 million fund will be run by an 18-member board, with oversight from a seven-member committee of legislative and university leaders.

To administer the Iowa Power Fund, the legislation also creates a new Office of Energy Independence. The new office will lead the state’s outreach and public education efforts for clean energy and will coordinate and monitor all existing state and federal grants, programs, and policies relating to renewable energy, renewable fuels, and energy efficiency. By mid-December, the director of the office will also prepare an Iowa energy independence plan that will include cost-effective options and strategies for the state to achieve energy independence from foreign sources of energy by the year 2025. The director will provide an annual report on these goals every November and will update the energy independence plan every December. See the governor’s press release and the text of the two bills, HF 918 and HF 927.

The effort will complement a bill signed in April, establishing the Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council to consider and determine the best strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state. It also establishes a greenhouse gas inventory and registry within the state. See the governor’s press release and the text of the bill, SF 485.

Minnesota Act Sets Efficiency and GHG Goals while Boosting Renewables

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed a bill last week that establishes a goal for the state to cut its energy consumption by 25 percent by 2025. The Next Generation Energy Act of 2007 requires utilities and electric associations to set an annual energy-savings goal equal to 1.5 percent of their retail energy sales. The bill directs the state’s public utilities commission to adjust utilities’ performance incentives so they align with that annual goal and to establish a way to decouple utility profits from sales in a way that removes financial disincentives for utilities. Selling less energy usually means less profit for utilities, and so long as that direct coupling between sales and profits is in place, utilities are financially discouraged from helping their customers to save energy. To help utilities achieve their goal, the bill also sets a state goal of earning Energy Star labels for 1,000 commercial buildings and green building certification for 100 commercial buildings by the end of 2010.

The Next Generation Energy Act also sets the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals at 15 percent by 2015, 30 percent by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050. The act gets the ball rolling on those goals by requiring a plan to meet the goals by February 2008. That plan must include a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Until that system is fully implemented, the act prohibits utilities from building or buying their power from a facility larger than 50 megawatts in capacity that would increase greenhouse gas emissions (with some exceptions). The plan also expands the state’s efforts to encourage community-based energy projects beyond wind power to include all renewable energy projects. See the governor’s press release and the text of the bill, SF145.

In mid-May, the governor also signed a bill that requires any building that is constructed or maintained with state funds to consider using solar thermal or geothermal systems when installing or replacing their heating or cooling systems. The requirement also applies to privately owned buildings that are receiving state funds for replacing their heating or cooling systems. See the text of the bill, SF538.

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