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Weekly Clean Energy Roundup:February 23, 2005

News and Events DOE Project Leads to New Hydrogen Fueling Station in California DOE Awards $87.5 Million to 12 Vehicle Efficiency Projects EPA Launches Clean Energy Partnerships with 12 States and D.C. Massachusetts Offers $25 Million for Renewable Energy Credits First Hybrid SUV Makes List of Top Twelve Green Vehicles DOE Offers $1 Million to Help Industries Save EnergyEnergy ConnectionsLNG Terminals Move Ahead in the Gulf of Mexico News and Events DOE Project Leads to New Hydrogen Fueling Station in CaliforniaChevronTexaco opened its first hydrogen fueling station in Chino, California, last week, joined by Assistant Secretary of Energy David Garman and representatives of Hyundai-Kia and UTC Fuel Cells. The station is a major part of the DOE’s Hydrogen “Learning Demonstration,” which brings together automobile makers and energy companies to test fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen fueling systems in real-world conditions. Hyundai Tucson and Kia Sportage SUVs, powered by fuel cells manufactured by UTC Fuel Cells, will operate throughout Southern California and refuel at the ChevronTexaco hydrogen station. The hydrogen is produced on-site from natural gas, but the station will also have the future capability to convert other renewable fuel sources, such as ethanol, into hydrogen for refueling fuel cell vehicles.“On […]

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Could the Monarch Butterfly be on its Last Wings?

Poor weather among reasons insect population down 75 per cent By Mark Hume As she worked in her garden last summer Theresa Fowler noticed that something vital was missing.The species assessment specialist with the Canadian Wildlife Service didn’t find a single monarch butterfly caterpillar. Canada’s national insect, a big, brightly coloured butterfly that each year brings the countryside alive from British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley to the East Coast, had all but vanished. Usually the milkweed plants Ms. Fowler nourishes on her property, because they are the only plant on which monarch larvae can live, are crawling with the distinctly marked caterpillars. “There weren’t any last year,” she said. “None.” A report yesterday pointed to an alarming collapse in the monarch butterfly population. Mexico’s Environment Department said that 75 per cent fewer monarch butterflies have appeared in 2005 compared to previous years, blaming cold weather and agricultural practices in Canada and the United States. The dramatic orange and black butterflies that Ms. Fowler usually sees on her property in Shawville, Que., north of Ottawa, and which are found across much of southern Canada, migrate nearly 5,000 kilometres each fall to Mexico. A second, smaller wintering area exists in California. But most […]

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Senators Warm Up to Emissions Curbs

by John Fialka, February 22, 2005 Republican opposition to “greenhouse gas” curbs is slowly easing, as concerns mount over damage from climate change. In Alaska, where severe storms, flooding and permafrost melting have caused widespread damage, the two Republican senators say they are willing to reconsider carbon-dioxide regulation after voting against it two years ago. Sen. Ted Stevens, in an interview this week, said he is now willing to discuss ways to reduce man-made emissions if they can be shown to be contributing to the damage. He didn’t rule out the possibility of switching his position to favor the bill — reintroduced last week by Sens. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat — that would require industry to reduce emissions to 2000 levels by the year 2010. “This is an issue of conscience more than anything else,” Mr. Stevens said, referring to the damage in Alaska. “It’s the most difficult challenge I feel as a senator from my state.” Alaska’s junior senator, Lisa Murkowski, expressed similar sentiments in a separate interview. “I need to be sensitive that there are changes going on right now,” she said. “If that change is due in part to what […]

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Seattle Mayor on a Mission to Warm U.S. Cities to Kyoto Protocol

by Tomas Alex Tizon One day last month in this normally sun-starved corner of the country, when the temperature reached into the low 60s, residents donned shorts and acted as if summer had come early. That bothered Mayor Greg Nickels ? not the shorts, but the warm weather. The temperature hit the 60s again this month, and with mountain snowpacks alarmingly low and scientists already predicting drought this summer, Nickels said he feared “the profound changes” associated with global warming had reached home. Last week, on the day the Kyoto Protocol went into effect, Nickels announced he would lead a campaign to get U.S. cities to adopt its terms, beginning with Seattle. He said his goal was to recruit 140 cities to match the 140 countries that signed the treaty. The mayors of 10 cities, including Los Angeles; Santa Monica; Portland, Ore.; Minneapolis; and Oakland, have signed on. The Kyoto Protocol, the first major international effort to reduce the industrial emissions that many scientists believe are creating a warmer climate, went into effect without the support of the world’s biggest polluter. The United States, which produces about one-fourth of the world’s heat-trapping exhaust, initially signed the treaty in 1997 but […]

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