The stimulus bill was like pouring gasoline on a fire, said Lee Tien, a privacy law attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San francisco. It was a slow-moving fire before,
rounding out the top three is petroleum and chemical engineering, with a nine percent gain for the year.
Petroleum & Chemical engineering: 42,304 patents in 2010; up 9%from 2009. Domestic Appliances: 36,816 patents in 2010;
Petroleum and Chemical engineering It's all about chemical engineering in this industry, which represents 70 percent of all patents and the most active, with a 14 percent boost from last year.
and create a sustainable low carbon, clean energy economy. Deforestation accounts for up to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas pollution.
The hydrogen and catalysts turn the biomass into a liquid fuel on the mobile platform.
The move to aluminum is all about fuel efficiency. Overall the new F-150 truck will drop 700 pounds by replacing steel with aluminum in its body panels.
How much fuel is saved will depend on the type of engine. With the most efficient option, the 2. 7-liter Ecoboost engine with start-stop technology, Ford estimates the truck could get close to 30 miles per gallon (mpg.
since the early aughts the impact on total energy efficiency is muddled. That's because ton for ton, aluminum production is highly energy-intensive:
at least five times as intensive as steel production, says Larry Kavanagh, president of industry association Steel Market Development Institute.
taking weight off the less efficient Ford f-150 will result in a greater reduction in energy,
and overall energy consumption compared to vehicles designed largely on lightweight steel. That assessment applies credit for wrought aluminum that is recycled, rather than primary production aluminum,
A Ford spokesperson told me it's too soon to talk specifics with regard to the lifecycle energy picture
and stricter fuel-efficiency requirements are forcing automotive industry suppliers to constantly innovate to make ever lighter high-strength steel to address automakers'lightweighting goals.
Just a slice of the energy pieat the end of the day you can get 5 percent further reduction in weight with aluminum beyond
Increasing fuel efficiency is vitally important for reducing the overall transportation sector's overall greenhouse gas emissions.
But it accounts for only the wheel to tank part of a vehicle's energy footprint.
That's something the steel industry with its relatively lower energy footprint compared to aluminum composites, carbon fiber and other cutting-edge automobile materials would welcome.
Respondents are fairly evenly split between those who agreed that energy -and money-saving smart systems will be significantly closer to reality in people's homes by 2020
including Carolina peas, raw peanuts, benne, barley and camelina, a microscopic oil seed from antiquity.
I'm going back to Spain with renewed energy and ideas Adriã Â said. Then he looked down at his unembellished arms.
and biochemical and biofuel company Virent Energy have developed successfully a drop in gasoline and jet fuel made from pine trees in a $900,
000 demonstration project funded by the U s. Energy department, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure and the BIRD Foundation.
The jet fuel was sent to the U s. Air force Research Laboratory for analysis where it passed rigorous testing,
including thermal stability specification tests conducted under some conditions where conventional jet fuels would fail,
Tim Edwards of the fuel branch of AFRL said in a release today. Virent has made fuels and chemicals from sugars in cellulosic biomass before.
But this project used Virdia's sugars generated from pine trees, which Virent cofounder and chief technology office Randy Cortright said leveraged its own conversion process
and established a viable route to drop in hydrocarbons from biomass. Virdia uses acid hydrolysis to convert cellulose found in biomass into fermentable sugars and lignin,
Virdia's end product can be used to make renewable fuels including diesel and jet fuel; biochemicals;
the pine tree-based jet fuel has a long way to go before its commercially available.
As opposed to gasoline or diesel, testing jet fuel requires far more product, noted Andrew Held, Virent's senior director of feedstocks.
Virdia CEO Phillippe Lavielle said the two companies will continue their collaboration and continue testing.
And you need all three to make a viable cellulosic drop in fuel, he said. Photo:
Wood chip-to-sugar maker scales up to replace oil and food crops Novozymes: New enzyme cuts cost of next-gen biofuels USDA bets (again) on advanced biofuels Poet s cellulosic ethanol strategy:
a perennial herb that gave them energy as they wandered through the forests. This plant was used later by the Tropical Botanical garden
and--especially in dense cities--energy savings. But cities shouldn't let all that get to their head.
A city s geographic situation influencing the amount of energy required for heating, cooling and lighting;
and additional energy costs can be kept to a minimum. Any additional energy will be sourced from green suppliers.
If all goes according to plan, BBC reports, the project could reach full scale by March with the first produce reaching market by the end of the summer. h/t Grist Photo:
and energy and is made from materials that are completely and easily recycled, natural and nontoxic.
and fueled by pure, unrefined canola oil, and in a world first, urine will be collected from purpose-built lavatories to be used as soybean
Urine may seem an unorthodox energy source but it is actually a great source of fertilizer when diluted.
and local monitoring of weather changes that comes from NOAA and the Department of energy. We need mathematicians.
We have collaborations with the Doe in our challenge of producing an appropriate biomass that can be converted to biofuels.
helping to both conserve and reduce energy consumption while enabling onsite plant and food production. Bosco Verticale is designed to irrigate the plants by filtering
saves energy New soldier uniforms will harness solar power Finally, a urinal for girls More environmentally-friendly innovations:
Bye bye imported oil? New tech converts junk plastics into fuel Solar-powered trash cans World s cheapest light bulb Printable paper solar panels New battery can recharge itself using sunlight The future
is bright for solar-powered smartphones, tablets
Video: Lockheed martin debuts maple seed-inspired dronemaple seeds. Most people admire them for being pretty and delicate
No deforestation, hazardous waste or expenditure of fuels. And interesting enough, the living bridges are actually stronger than ones built from wood.
What EROI tells us about ROIONE of the key deficiencies of unconventional fuels is their low energy return on investment relative to conventional fuels.
because investment decisions are made on the basis of the financial, not energy, return on investment.
The analogue in energy, the energy return on investment or EROI (also expressed as EROEI,
for energy return on energy invested) is a ratio of the energy produced to the energy invested in its production.
have referred also to EROI as net energy, but that really confuses the terms. For parallelism with the language of finance, net energy should refer to energy produced minus energy invested,
whereas EROI should refer to energy produced divided by energy invested. How EROI begets ROI The relationship between ROI
and EROI is actually very simple and logical. The more energy you have to invest to produce a fuel,
the lower your EROI will be. The energy you invest has a cost. Therefore, the profit on the same barrel of oil will be higher
when it's produced from a high EROI source than when produced from a low EROI source.
This simple concept gets lost however, in the complex accounting of fuels in the real world.
The financial return on all unconventional fuels is distorted in one fashion or another by subsidies designed to encourage new development,
debt acquired to finance the projects, and complex accounting of the investments and returns. For example, as I discussed previously,
and the EROI of some fuels becomes very murky indeed. Corn ethanol offers a fine example of the problem.
More than $20 billion in subsidies over the past three decades have turned ultimately nearly 40 percent of the U s. corn crop into less than 10 percent of the country's fuel needs by volume,
and less than 7 percent by energy content. In 2009 the U s. taxpayer subsidized 75 percent of the price of each gallon of gasoline replaced with ethanol.
It has proven to be an expensive way to make a low-quality fuel (ethanol has about two-thirds the energy content of gasoline)
which reaches its scaling limit at a fairly low level. Careful observers who did the math on the EROI of corn ethanol knew it would run into cost
it was just barely a net energy-positive fuel at best. In the pithy observation of veteran energy analyst Robert Hirsch six years ago, making ethanol from corn is a process in
which a certain amount of energy in the forms of natural gas and diesel fuel are used to create an equivalent amount of energy in the form of ethanol,
with the primary output being money from government subsidies (not to mention soil erosion). Such a low EROI would imply a low profit margin,
thin enough to be swamped by the volatility of both corn and oil prices, as indeed it was in recent years.
However, only the ROI, in the form of increased energy independence, was taken into consideration in the politically-motivated push for biofuels.
we should now see the real costs of producing corn ethanol begin to be priced in to the cost of gasoline.
The EROI tipping point A small cadre of academic researchers have calculated the EROI of various fuels
At $61 a barrel, oil production can be profitable at an EROI of 5 but not at 2. When EROI is less than 10,
The decreasing net energy and increasing capital intensity of our energy production have contributed likely to the economic downturn.
One example King and Hall offer is that a 60 percent drop in EROI from 25 to 10 resulted in a 150 percent increase in oil prices, from $19 a barrel to $48.
This finding meshes nicely with the net energy cliff model proposed by geologist Euan Mearns,
which shows an exponential decline in the energy available to society as EROI falls below 10:
because the EROI of domestic U s. oil production is now approaching 10, having fallen from around 100 in the early days of oil (Cleveland, 2005).
Even in the few prospects where we can still drill a well that will produce over 100,000 barrels of oil per day,
like the deepwater Gulf of mexico, the EROI varies from 4 to 14 (Moerschbaecher, 2012). Hall and Murphy have also found that a given fuel must have an EROI of at least 3 to deliver a net benefit to society because of the associated infrastructure needed to support
and use the fuel, and that an overall EROI of at least 10 may be required to sustain a complex society.
It takes a significant energy surplus to support things like higher education, entertainment, personal vehicles, a middle class with health care, outsized amounts of credit,
and yes, subsidies for low-EROI fuels. You can run from EROI, but you can't hide All of these studies come to a similar conclusion:
As we continue to substitute unconventional fuels for conventional fuels and the overall EROI falls below 10,
it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to continue running our complex society. Prices will go too high for the economy to tolerate
and kill demand before unconventional substitutes can scale up to replace declining higher-EROI fuels. Biofuels can't do it;
In the words of Heun and de Wit, There are not perfect and scalable substitutes for oil at the present time.
In so many ways, conventional oil is special. We are losing the race between oil depletion and the pursuit of substitutes and better extraction technology.
Drilling technology cannot overcome depletion because depletion is giving us declining EROI and intolerably high prices for substitutes.
The researchers conclude that a smooth transition away from oil is unlikely without a deliberate policy effort to steer us toward alternative energy sources
Bedazzled by the sheer magnitude of unconventional resources trillions of barrels of oil equivalent! they cannot see how the low energy return of some (not all of those resources will ultimately force us to leave them in the ground as their cost of production proves intolerable.
ROI cannot escape EROI forever. The magic of credit, government subsidies and creative accounting can forestall the recognition of ROI for awhile,
but eventually the true cost of producing energy, both in dollar and energetic terms, becomes a limit on production.
we continue to invest in fuels with poor EROI. To navigate the future of energy,
investors should be looking to EROI, not ROI, as a guide. All researchers on EROI and economics point up the need for additional studies, particularly on shale gas oil shale,
we need models that include both the economic effects of resource substitution and the geological effects of depletion across the entire energy sector.
because so far, our official energy agencies have failed to build any such models. We are simply drifting ever closer toward the net energy cliff, in blissful ignorance of EROI limits,
with visions of unconventional resources dancing in our heads. Photo: The business model of the underpants gnomes, from the instant-classic South Park episode
Some landfills recover the methane for energy. Some recover it, but just burn it. Some do not recover it.
According to the EPA, about 35 percent of waste is in landfills that use the methane for energy.
but don't recover energy. And about 31 percent is in landfills that just release it to the environment.
Even when we say methane is a good energy source which is true, it's only good
we consider the energy and emissions that are associated with building the landfill, operating the landfill,
If the methane is recovered for energy, then it's actually a net negative because we avoid the production of energy from fossil fuels.
It's a positive benefit to the environment. Â We're thinking about all the different factors that influence the total global warming gases going into the atmosphere from the landfill
For one thing, approximately 31 percent of the total energy consumed by the company is from renewable sources.
My transferring the charges for pollution from greenhouse gas release from fossil fuels into offsets invested in the protection of forest.
and buy to how we use energy. I believe the most critical element is cultivating in people an awareness of how our actions impact those around us.
J. B. Hunt Transport Services, one of the nation s largest transportation companies, recently partnered with Washington Gas Energy Services (WGES),
the company says they cut fuel and greenhouse gases by 50 percent. I spoke recently with Gary Whicker, senior vice president of Engineering Services at J. B. Hunt.
The source is almost 100 percent oil. But typically--behind driver wage--fuel is second highest expense.
The fuel efficiency of the railroad--it s metal on metal: metal wheel and metal rail.
so it s a great way to reduce driver wage and fuel. Every time you burn diesel fuel you re generating greenhouse emissions.
So just by managing our resources wisely, we had unintended an benefit. So what do these trains run on?
Most of them also burn diesel fuel. In different applications, some will use all electric engines.
And for our industry it s standard to have a fuel surcharge, and it s about half for the train.
there s not chance we ll have a fuel spill. So that s a social benefit and an environmental benefit.
they ll look at ways to reduce their use of water and energy. Their next question is how do I transport to my customers,
Burning 100 gallons of diesel fuel emits 1 metric ton of carbon emissions. This year we will ship over 1 million loads via intermodal service.
Your car runs on gasoline. There s no easy way to change that, but you can buy the J. B. Hunt carbon offsets
He began his career as an internal auditor at Exxonmobil. Deneve joined Apple in 1990 where he held several sales
but Chicago is well on its way to become a much more energy-efficient one. How will it get there?
of course--notably those involving enabling energy efficiency, electrical vehicle infrastructure, more cost-effective renewable energy technologies,
Interactive map shows nuclear disaster hotspots
Artificial plants could beat bed bugsbean leaves effectively trap bed bugs Bean plant leaves won't bite bed bugs back,
which itself leads to energy consumption and byproducts. Å My interest is to show a way of recycling based on reusing,
and illuminated by low energy consuming LED lights at night The trees themselves are transformations of the plastic bottles, giving them a second life.
Mass. that uses a process called pyrolysis to turn waste into energy. The company hopes the plant will help reduce its carbon footprint and boost its use of renewable energy;
as a side benefit, it's also making the U s. banknote--a k a. Â the greenback--even greener.
How did Crane get involved with renewable energy sources? DC: Crane and Co. is a paper company,
Here in Berkshire County, we're certainly among the top three energy users from the Western  Massachusetts  Electric company.
 Currently, we have the benefit of a trash-to-energy plant established a few decades ago.
if we can come up with a renewable energy solution for our operations, but the caveat is we're not in the energy business,
and we don't want to be. We just want to be able to purchase renewable energy. A number of years ago we started looking pretty seriously at biomass.
We need a lot of energy and we need it on-demand. When we start up a 400-horsepower motor in the middle of the night,
you can't use solar panels for that. I'm keenly interested in renewable energy. We started looking around
and came across a group of folks that we had known from a former energy project.
They had started a company called Reenergy over in Albany N y..That company had gained the rights to the technology where you can take an organic feedstock and turn it into liquid fuel.
We have demand for both thermal energy as well as electricity. This fuel can be used to drive generators, much more efficient than the steam process.
We're looking to really do away with fossil fuels, in a lot of our operations within our existing infrastructure.
SP: Which is turned why you to biomass specialist  Envergent. DC: Envergent was really putting the finishing touches on the development side of bringing this forward.
The timing was right for us to move ahead with the project. The size of the original plant that we had looked at for the traditional biomass approach...
We're taking our energy dollars and instead of purchasing electricity generated outside our state from fossil fuels,
we're pouring our dollars into our local economy. Â It's kind of a labor-intensive process.
It doesn't fluctuate up and down like crude oil prices. There's a tremendous follow-on effect. SP: What's most important to Crane about going green?
but from a dollar standpoint, the volatility for energy today is a real strain for us.
We're also looking at reviving a smaller hydroelectric plant that will generate more energy.
We're looking for multiple ways to solve the energy question and move toward a sustainable supply.
On top of that, we get a major portion of our thermal energy from a plant nearby, but that same plant takes care of the solid waste from the Berkshire County area.
When someone steps up to the plate against us, they'll need to show their product and their renewable energy.
Now replacing the energy that goes into producing it? Well, geez, it's going to be one of the greenest products at the company.
but it takes more energy to produce--you have to do mining to get the materials.
The wood in the pyrolysis process comes out in this liquid--pyrolysis oil. They were extracting the chemicals for food additives from it.
In petroleum refining, there's a technique called FCC--fluid catalytic cracking--that makes gasoline, predominantly.
Often, where the energy resource is is far away from where you want to consume that resource. Â Shipping is done always on a per volume basis. Â Think of this as packaging for the industry.
or energy that we purchased, store it and use it when we need it. Photo:
transportation, energy, green building, foodif Baltimores planning director has his way, the citys east and west sides--known for blocks of abandoned
Whats new in your energy department? We have a partnership with the Coast guard in which we use methane extraction from a city landfill to power a new Coast guard facility.
One of the initiatives of our Office of Sustainability is getting out the energy message to the general public.
With the Baltimore Neighborhood Energy Challenge (BNEC), the city is partnering with the Baltimore Community Foundation and Constellation Energy to do energy audits,
and provide free energy upgrade fixtures. The key thing is that BNEC is seen as a grassroots effort.
Were trying to find ways to raise energy awareness and sustainability awareness among our low-income residents.
Our goal is to reduce energy use by 15 percent by 2015. What other kinds of incentives do you have for city workers and businesses?
000 to see how the beef-based fuel would fare in the 3, 200-horsepower engine of a P32-8 locomotive.
Amtrak travel is already more energy efficient than most other forms of intercity transportation. If the test shows this use of a renewable fuel in our locomotive is successful, its a home run for our passengers, for our partners and for the planet.
Each day Amtrak runs more than 300 trains over about 21,000 miles of track in North america. Should B20 become functionally and economically feasible,
In the name of reducing emissions and fuel usage, however, I'd rather Americans just choose trains over planes
I'm okay with the bovine fuel as long as Americans don't start claiming domestic energy as an excuse to eat (even more) cheeseburgers.
Top Image: Flickr/Cameliatwubottom Image: Heartland Flyer
Beijing invests millions in laser writing scheme for pork productsbeijing-Â With a few days left before Chinese New Year,
that would make the industry less energy and pollution-intensive. Countryman loading a butterfly experiment that flew on STS-129 Tell me about some of the hardware youve developed to put the experiments on a spacecraft.
Dozens of companies and hundreds of scientists are working hard to engineer algae to produce green--literally and figuratively--fuel.
The endeavor is at the crossroads of energy and science, and the trend is spreading worldwide.
or more times more fuel per acre than the corn that is used to make ethanol,
Quoted in the article is Sapphire Energy cofounder Stephen Mayfield and Synthetic Genomics founder J. Craig Venter (the guy behind the first self-replicating synthetic cell),
Turning algae into oil the NASA way Scientists create high-capacity batteries from algae Pressure-cooking method makes an algae-based biofuel Plane takes first flight on 100
Green algae used to make plastics that dont contain petroleum The algae bloom of alternative energy Video:
Growing the next'green'fuel Clean, sustainable hydrogen from algae could reduce U s. dependence on foreign oil Solazyme founder Harrison Dillon:
Why the U s. Navy wants our green jet fuel What'synthetic life'could mean for the energy industry The Algaeus algae-fueled Prius hits the road Just look at that diversity!
Algae can impact our environment, consumer electronics, cars, military--you name it. But the debate really comes down to this:
Agriculture, of course, is a big one, alongside healthcare, financial services, energy and defense. The New york times'Randall Stross profiles a few of these companies,
and they can be built into energy-efficient buildings, Eduardo Ferraz of the Polytechnic institute of Tomar told New Scientist.
The exterior is clad with more than 400,000 locally sourced sticks of firewood which Li hopes will attract birds that will contribute mud
Fuel usage has also been cut by 20 percent. The sales team can also use Sun World's data in conjunction with industry buying trends to figure out the best timing for campaigns.
all designed to help harvest renewable energy and manage waste in more natural ways than currently in use.
Sora Stoda 21 years old decided to start a potato chip factory using local potatoes and local oil.
which panelists discussed the impact of rising oil prices on the cost of plastic building materials;
Blaine Brownell Assistant Professoruniversity of Minnesota School of architecture There are a lot of plastics that come from oil, but  were increasingly seeing plastics that come from renewable material.
Jay Bolus Vice president of Technical Operationsmbdc Alternatives to petroleum based plastic: Corn-based, cellulose-based, soy based, sugar based.
or to use petroleum-based plastic; or to switch to steel and aluminum. Recycling came about as a waste management strategy;
and derived by something other than petroleum? Green chemistry is all about thinking about end of life considerations before you design the molecule and put it into the environment.
but manmade materials, most derived from oil today, will fall across some spectrum of green.
I would say its not just transiting from petroleum-based to bio-based. The first thing we have to do is make people aware that alternatives exist
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