Volvo Says No to Carbon; Prius on Lithium

The Washington International Renewable Energy Conference was by all accounts a great success in terms of international interactions on business and policy, attendance, dialog, and education. U.S. industry is learning much from Germany and Spain about wind and solar power, and from Iceland about geothermal power.

The Bush effect: while attendees were of all political stripe, the consensus was that the president's speech did not go over well. Touting nuclear power as the cleanest of power sources and claiming that the U.S. is the leader in renewable energy diverges from the perceptions of those in the audience from both inside and outside the U.S. I overheard one of the hosts of the event saying he took considerable flak from the participating organizations for inviting the President to speak. It was also a first for me to get patted down and have the bomb squad go through my belongings just to watch a speech.

Toyota Prius owners queue up: Hymotion will retrofit a consumer's Toyota Prius with lithium ion batteries that boost the MPG to 100+ miles per gallon. Buying a new hybrid and getting the conversion will cost you about the same as waiting two years or more for the extended rage Chevy Volt. However, you won't be able to take short trips on battery power alone because Toyota's software for controlling the electricity use prevents all electric power for distances. Hymotion parent A123 Systems received a patent this week for its nanophosphate lithium ion battery technology. 

Volvo says no to CO2: Volvo displayed a fleet of "carbon neutral" trucks that can run on a variety of biofuels including biogas, ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, biomass-derived synthetic diesel, dimethlyether, or a hydrogen and biogas combination. Volvo is mirroring GM in designing fuel-agnostic engines and vehicles so that all of the alternatives can be considered. The company has a handy chart showing the environmental, energy efficiency and costs of each of the renewable fuels.

Henrik Landalv, Volvo's manager for environmental projections told me that the oil companies never warmed to methanol because it doesn't require refining, which would eliminate a supply chain revenue stream. He also said that bio-butanol, which is gaining interest as an alternative to ethanol because it has a higher energy value and isn't corrosive, won't become a mainstream fuel because it is chemically more complex and therefore it is more difficult for fuel companies to optimize the production process.

Amazon safe from ethanol: Marcos Jank, the president of the Brazilian sugar cane industry  (UNICA) said his country is working hard to dispel the myth that the Amazon rainforest is being cut down to make way for sugar cane to be used in ethanol production. He said it's an economic decision not to do so because the environmental conditions there (too much rain, not enough sunlight) means that yields are only half as much as in southern Brazil. Only 1 percent of the arable land is currently used to produce 50 percent of the country's energy needs.

Brazil has mandated the elimination of the manual cutting of sugar cane and replacing it with more efficient machines. The government there is ending the practice of burning sugar cane in the fields and will collect the fibrous material to burn at high temperatures as biomass. This will tap into another one-third of the energy value of the sugar cane plants.