by Timothy Hurst

A United States District Court has ruled against LG Electronics in a case the company brought against the Department of Energy for the revocation of Energy Star labeling on 20 refrigerator models. DOE said that these 20 models–all with “French Doors”–were not in compliance with Energy Star requirements because LG had used a testing procedure that did not account for the energy used to power the in-door icemaker.

In the District Court opinion (pdf), Judge John D. Bates reminded LG that for most refrigerators and freezers to qualify for the Energy Star program, they must be at least 20% more energy efficient than the minimum efficiency standards set by law.

The Energy Department says it directs manufacturers to run the energy tests while the ice-maker and its components are on, but “inoperative,” or not in active operation. According to Green Inc. LG allegedly understood “inoperative” to mean turning the ice-maker and its components off altogether. Previously, LG’s measured energy usage was based on a common approach in interpreting DOE’s test procedure. This test procedure requires, among other things, that the ice maker be disabled but that all temperature controllable compartments, including ice storage bins, be set at their coldest temperature — the last part of which, LG was not doing.

To effectively measure the savings associated with the Energy Star program, DOE says that all partners must report energy consumption data based on the same standardized test procedures.

For its part, LG has agreed to take several steps to remedy the situation including: Offering to modify consumers’ refrigerators to make them more energy efficient; Making a one-time cash payment for past energy usage to cover the difference between the new measured energy rating and the amount listed on the original; And making cash payments for future energy usage each year over the expected useful life of the product to cover the difference between the new measured energy rating and the old one.

Energy Department welcomes the decision, remediation from LG

“DOE believes that the actions LG plans to take will benefit consumers and help ensure that the Nation’s energy conservation goals are met,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy John Mizroch said.

In a company press release, LG said it was “disappointed in the ruling and continues to believe that it properly followed the correct DOE test procedures,” but that it will “work with its retail partners to remove the Energy Star label on the affected models.”

The energy rating has been changed for LG “French Door” models with ice and water dispensers in the door: LFX21975ST, LFX25975SB, LFX25975ST, LFX25975SW, LFX28977SB, LFX28977ST, LFX28977SW, LMX25985SB, LMX25985ST and LMX25985SW.

Reprinted with permission from Earth & Industry

by Heather Lammers

When it comes to fostering new biofuels technology during a recession, a big barrier can simply be cash. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu recently gave the industry a boost when he announced the selection of 19 integrated biorefinery projects that are eligible to receive up to $564 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to accelerate the construction and operation of pilot, demonstration and commercial scale biofuel facilities.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is partnering with five of the winning companies — Algenol, Amyris, Clearfuels, Gas Technology Institute, and the Renewable Energy Institute International — to help launch pilot scale and then commercial scale development of biomass based second generation fuels in the U.S.

"NREL was approached by approximately 20 companies asking us to partner with them for this DOE solicitation," said John Ashworth (left), NREL Team Leader for Partnership Development at the National Bioenergy Center. "DOE wanted private firms to be the lead organizations in any proposal, so we partnered with a number of different companies on a variety of projects."

According to Ashworth, DOE has been consciously trying to stimulate innovation in converting non-food biomass into fuels. The government is putting up risk capital to attract private investors to put their money into pushing technologies forward. "It's a forward thinking approach," Ashworth said. "It's taking risk, but it's working. Billions of dollars are being committed to these scale-up activities, helping to cut down the timeline for when these fuels are in the marketplace."

In DOE's request for proposals, companies were encouraged to develop pilot facilities to convert cellulosic mass into biofuels or to use existing small scale facilities to test various processes for using many types of biomass for fuels creation. "DOE deliberately supported a number of different technologies in an effort to move these technologies to the point where they can be tested at scale," Ashworth said.

NREL's Expertise and Tools Add Value

Companies interested in applying for the DOE grants had a variety of reasons for wanting NREL on their team. General themes from the winning proposals included having NREL look at the techno-economics of their proposals to leveraging the existing tools and expertise at the lab.

In the case of technoeconomic modeling, NREL examines a company's biomass conversion process to better understand what the economics would look like at scale once they have data from a pilot scale run. "We have very good modeling capabilities at NREL," Ashworth said. "We have some existing models for some processes and for some we will have to develop new models plugging in data from various pilot scale runs to get a better sense of what the resulting fuel would cost."

NREL's tools also are highly valued by the private sector. For instance, companies researching the thermochemical conversion of biomass want to have access to NREL's molecular beam mass spectrometer (MBMS). "There aren't many like it in the world," Ashworth said. "It allows us to look at the gas composition, in real time, to see what's going on inside the reactor." NREL recently developed a transportable version of the MBMS, which NREL researchers can take on the road.

Clearfuels (awarded $23 million under the ARRA solicitation) and Renewable Energy Institute International (awarded nearly $20 million) are examples of industry working with NREL by leveraging the lab's tools to improve their technical processes. Specifically, NREL will take the portable MBMS to their operating biomass gasifiers to measure their gas stream in real time and provide suggestions to help optimize their process.

Partners to Explore Varied Technologies

While both companies have a need for NREL tools, their projects are quite different. Clearfuels will produce renewable diesel and jet fuel from woody biomass by integrating two different conversion technologies. Their facility also will evaluate the conversion of sugar cane bagasse and biomass mixtures to fuels. Renewable Energy Institute International is looking to produce high quality green diesel from agriculture and forest residues using advanced pyrolysis and steam reforming. The pilot plant will have the capacity to process 25 dry tons of feedstock per day.

Mirroring DOE's desire to explore varied technologies, NREL's other partners are tackling the biofuels challenge in completely different ways.

Algenol ($25 million) is proposing to make ethanol directly from carbon dioxide, sunlight, and seawater using algae. Their facility will have the capacity to produce 100,000 gallons of fuel grade ethanol per year. "Algenol has a unique process — no one has anything quite like it," Ashworth said. "They have an algae species that produces ethanol and they can take ethanol out of the water or out of the water vapor above their growth chambers." NREL researchers will work with Algenol to remove scientific barriers to help increase the yield and optimize the way the algae process carbon dioxide gas provided by a power plant or industrial user.

Amyris ($25 million) will produce a diesel substitute through the fermentation of sweet sorghum. The pilot plant also will have the capacity to co-produce lubricants, polymers, and other petro-chemical substitutes. In addition to science-based work, NREL also will assist Amyris with technoeconomics modeling for their chosen method.

NREL will support Gas Technology Institute's ($2.5 million) unique thermochemical hydropyrolysis/hydroprocessing system by undertaking technoeconomic analysis of their process configuration to determine fuel costs from the pilot plant data.

"In all of these cases, our job is to facilitate industry in the scaling up of their technology," Ashworth said. "Our hope is to help drive the industry forward, help get the plants built, get the technology tested. We are trying to help everyone out as best we can so that they can prove the technology, prove that it is cost effective, and then they can get money to help scale up the technology to commercial size."

Working with Industry Benefits NREL, Too

The benefit to teaming is not just a one-way street with all of the perks going to industry; NREL also benefits greatly from working with the private sector. The National Bioenergy Center (NBC) at NREL was designed to be a user facility and is charged with helping industry scale up technology. "The great advantage to NBC and NREL is that we get to become a part of the latest technology that's evolving," Ashworth said. "We get to know what industry is working on from the inside out and it helps us broaden our base and the kinds of things we can work on as well. For instance, we will get to work on different feedstocks such as switchgrass, sweet sorgum or other feedstocks that are going to be important to the future."

Heather Lammers represents the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in its Public Affairs Office. She splits her time between communicating with the media and writing stories that feature the work of the lab, which is vital in providing energy solutions to the nation. NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

by Timothy B. Hurst

Colorado State Representative Claire Levy (D-Boulder) is planning on introducing a bill this session that would legalize community “solar gardens”, allowing renters, condo owners, or people who live in otherwise unsuitable locations for solar, to take advantage of local solar incentives and take part in the burgeoning residential solar industry.

The bill would allow people to buy into a solar array not on their property and receive credits from the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, for the resulting electricity. As it stands currently, homeowners must install solar systems on their own property to qualify for rebates.

“The intent of (the bill) is so people can have the benefit of what they would get if they had solar panels on their rooftops,” Levy told the Boulder Daily Camera. “It’s for people who are renters, who live in condominium projects and don’t have rooftops, people whose lots are shaded, people whose houses aren’t the right orientation — a whole variety of things.”

The idea for the bill came from stricter green building standards in Boulder that requires many new buildings to generate some portion of their own renewable energy. “The idea is that if somebody cannot meet the renewable energy requirements on site, and if there are solar gardens available within Boulder County, that they would be able to put their renewables at the solar gardens as a way of meeting the requirement,” Commissioner Will Toor said.

Reprinted with permission from Ecopolitology

by Nick Chambers

In a move that clearly signals Toyota’s future intentions, the auto manufacturer, acting through an intermediary, has secured a deal with Argentinian lithium mining company, Orocobre, to supply a large amount of the lithium required for advanced electric car and plug-in hybrid batteries. The deal was shuttled through one of Toyota’s sister companies and main suppliers, Toyota Tsusho Corp, which is 22% owned by Toyota.

Toyota’s hybrids currently use nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, but those batteries, although less expensive, don’t pack enough punch when used in fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. As the company switches over to plug-in versions of its popular hybrids in the coming years it will need to also switch over to advanced Lithium Ion batteries.

Although there is plenty of Lithium available in the world to produce all the EV batteries required for a long time to come, competition for the raw material is expected to be fierce as automakers and suppliers start to ramp up production to meet demand. Locking in supply now shows a clear long-term plan on Toyota’s part.

The deal calls for Toyota Tsusho to initially invest $4.5 million in Orocobre to fund feasibility studies and pre-development activities in the Salar de Olaroz Lithium-Potash mine. Upon completion of those items, Toyota Tsusho will become a 25% owner in the project. The deal also makes the Argentinian project eligible for low cost Japanese government development loans.

“The size and quality of the deposit is world–class and we believe will produce high purity, battery grade materials required for the global battery industry, at a cost that is competitive with existing lithium brine producers in South America,” Toyota Tsusho said in a statement.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by Susan Kraemer

Scientists around the world have worked for a decade to solve one of the most apocalyptic aspects of climate change: that heat kills crops. This work is needed because, even just in the US, an 82% drop in corn and soy is predicted by the end of the century because there will be too many days over 86 degrees Fahrenheit in the Corn Belt, if we keep on adding greenhouse gases at the current rate.

Now, Philip Wigge and Vinod Kumar, two Norwich-based scientists at the John Innes Centre have just had the necessary breakthrough. They subjected grain plants to drought stresses that normally kill them, and isolated genes from survivors to create new variants, and just published their findings in the current edition of the US-based peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell.

They located the “thermometer” gene that helps plants sense temperature; even variations of just one degree Celsius, “and yet no one had asked how plants were able to do this”says Wigge.

They took the lab rat of plant research; the Arabidopsis (mustard) plant and studied all its genes to see which were affected by warmer temperature. It took five years for them to create a mutant plant that had lost its ability to sense temperature correctly. It grew as if the temperature was optimal all the time. The sensitive genes were then used in new plants.

It is possible that these scientists will be able to get it working just in time; within the next ten to fifteen years. In ten years, climate change impacts will be already widespread. Temperatures in the American West and Southwest could average nine degrees Fahrenheit hotter by the end of this century. Australia had to stop irrigating 40% of its crops in 2007.

The worldwide scientific consensus, as summarized in the papers at the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that food production in some regions could be severely compromised by 2020.

Whenever plants are subjected to extreme stress, such as very high or low temperatures, they do not flower and grow because they divert their food to their embryo.

“Their instinct is to protect the next generation,” said Wigge.

Plants are better adapted to survive, than people are, in that respect. They might outlive us. But then they have had a million or so more years to learn that clever trick.

Reprinted with permission from Cleantechnica

Wind energy could provide 20 percent of the electricity for the eastern half of the United States by 2024, but only if the nation makes a significant financial investment, according to new government report.

About $90 billion would be required to install a network of land- and sea-based wind turbines and about 22,000 miles of new power lines, according to the study published by U.S. Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The report said that the government would have to provide a significant portion of that investment through programs such as loan guarantees. “We can bring more wind power online, but if we don’t have the proper infrastructure to move that power around, it’s like buying a hybrid car and leaving it in the garage,” said David Corbus, project manager for the study.

To reach the 20 percent goal, wind power in the eastern U.S. would have to expand 10-fold from current production. Most new wind projects should be located in federal waters from Massachusetts to North Carolina, and across the Midwestern states, the report said.

The Obama administration has earmarked billions of dollars for renewable energy projects, and recently stepped in to accelerate the permitting process of a long-disputed offshore wind proposal in Massachusetts that would provide electricity for 400,000 homes.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

by Timothy B. Hurst

The addition of 245 natural gas-powered delivery vans adds to largest private fleet of alternatively-fueled vehicles in the shipping industry.

While oil baron-turned clean(er) energy crusader, T. Boone Pickens, reinvigorates his national energy campaign to ramp-up wind and convert trucking fleets to run on compressed natural gas (this time, with a much smaller role for wind energy), several well-known fleets are moving forward with plans to implement large-scale fleet conversions to the cleaner-burning fuel.

Over the past month, UPS has deployed 140 new compressed natural gas (CNG) in Denver and another 105 across four cities in California: San Ramon, Fresno, West Los Angeles and Ontario.

The CNG truck bodies are identical externally to the signature-brown trucks that comprise the UPS fleet. The trucks are expected to yield a 15 percent emissions reduction over the cleanest diesel engines available in the market today.

“The greening of our fleet demonstrates the effectiveness of harnessing multiple technologies and applying the right vehicles to areas where they will provide the best advantage,” said Bob Stoffel, UPS senior vice president of supply chain, strategy, engineering and sustainability. “Compressed Natural Gas continues to be a sustainable technology for UPS’s fleet because natural gas is cost effective, clean-burning and abundant.”

UPS operates one of the largest private fleets of alternative fuel vehicles in the industry — more than 1,900 propane, electric, electric hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell, compressed natural gas and hydraulic hybrid vehicles.

In another project, UPS is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a hybrid-diesel delivery van that cuts emissions by up to 30 percent.

Reprinted with permission from Earth & Industry

by Tina Casey

The U.S. Army proudly showed off its new Clandestine Electric Reconnaissance Vehicle (CERV) at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week, and let’s just say that on looks this diesel-electric hybrid can’t compete with eye candy like Toyota’s new FT-CH Prius concept. But, at least it gets you where you want to go - with a 25% reduction in fuel consumption.

As the owner of the world’s largest fleet of vehicles, the U.S. Army is on an all-out drive to adopt sustainable new fuels and hybrid technologies to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The CERV is just one part of a U.S. military research and development program that includes energy storage, power and thermal management, robotics, and survivability as well as vehicle design.

The U.S. Army and Hybrid Electric Vehicles

It can’t be emphasized enough: according to our own U.S. Army, the whole “drill baby, drill” mentality is so 2000-and-late. As the Army sees it, the problem is not our dependence on foreign fossil fuels, it’s our dependence on fossil fuels, period. If this is news to you, that’s probably because the media coverage has been low key, but the Army has been trying to get the word out in a variety of other ways. For example this past fall the Army co-hosted the Hybrid Truck User Forum in Atlanta to discuss the benefits of hybrid technologies (pdf), including how reducing fossil fuels would result in fewer Army vehicles on the road hauling fuel, and fewer soldiers placed at risk on the road. They also discussed how soldiers could operate more effectively in “austere environments” when freed from the constraints of conventional fossil fuel supply.

The CERV Diesel-Electric Hybrid

All right, so it looks like a mash-up of various IKEA shelving units, but the CERV can do 80 mph and climb grades of 60%, thanks to its all-wheel-drive diesel hybrid electric powertrain called Q-Force, developed by Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide, Inc. The CERV was a joint effort between Quantum, TARDEC (the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center), and the U.S. Special Operations Command. It also features a lightweight chassis that gives it high torque rating for its class (torque refers the strength of rotation around an axis).

Off-Road Vehicles and Diesel Electric Hybrids

It seems that at least for passenger cars, trucks and buses, the public is accepting that the future will run on more sustainable vehicles. Aside from familiar names like the long-awaited Chevrolet Volt and the Prius, brands like Volkswagen and Mercedes are diving into the hybrid pool. With its push for hybrids, the U.S. military is also opening up the doors to public acceptance of more sustainable off-road vehicles, even for heavy duty equipment like diesel-electric hybrid tractors. That includes ships, too; for example, the Navy’s first hybrid electric assault ship saved 900,000 gallons of fuel on its maiden voyage alone.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by SustainableBusiness.com News

The US Department of Energy announced more than $37 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support high-efficiency solid-state lighting projects.

  Solid-state lighting, which uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) instead of incandescent bulbs, has the potential to be ten times more energy-efficient than traditional incandescent lighting. 

Lighting accounts for approximately 24% of the total electricity generated in the United States today--by 2030, the development and widespread deployment of cost-effective solid-state lighting could reduce electricity use for lighting by one-third nationally. 

The 17 projects selected include funding for solid-state lighting core research, product development, and domestic manufacturing.

The awards will be leveraged with nearly $28.5 million in private industry cost share, for a total project value of more than $66 million. 

Projects have been selected in the following three areas:

• Core Technology Research ($4 million) – Three projects will focus on advancing the technical knowledge base of solid-state lighting for general lighting purposes.  The projects will target improved efficiency and performance with reduced costs, which are all critical to the widespread deployment of solid-state lighting.

• Product Development ($10.3 million) – Six projects will support the development and improvement of commercially viable solid-state lighting source, component, or integrated lighting products. This activity will promote the market introduction of viable SSL products.

• SSL Manufacturing ($23.5 million) – Eight projects will focus on achieving significant cost reductions and enhanced quality by improving manufacturing equipment, processes, or monitoring techniques.

These projects will address the technical challenges that must be overcome before prices fall to a level where solid-state lighting will be competitive with existing lighting on a first-cost basis.

This is the sixth round of DOE funding for solid-state lighting core technology research and product development, and the first time that DOE has funded solid-state lighting manufacturing projects. This expanded focus is part of a new DOE initiative to accelerate the adoption of SSL technology through manufacturing improvements that reduce costs and improve quality.

The projects announced today include:??Core Technology Research

• Cambrios (Sunnyvale, CA)

• University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

• WhiteOptics, LLC (Newark, DE)

Product Development

• Cree, Inc.  (Durham, NC)

• General Electric (Niskayuna, NY)

• Lightscape Materials, Inc. (Princeton, NJ)

• Osram Sylvania Products, Inc. (Beverly, MA)

• Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, LLC (San Jose, CA)

• PPG Industries (Cheswick, PA)

U.S. Manufacturing ($23.5 million total)

• Applied Materials, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)

• GE Global Research (Niskayuna, NY)

• GE Lumination (Valley View, OH)

• KLA Tencor Corporation (Milpitas, CA)

• Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, LLC (San Jose, CA)

• Ultratech, Inc. (San Jose, CA)

• Universal Display Corporation (Ewing, NJ)

• Veeco Instruments (Somerset, NJ)

The final details of the award contracts will be finalized in negotiations between DOE and each grantee. Read more information about the grant selections in the pdf, linked below.

Website: www.energy.gov/news2009/documents2009/SSL_Selections_011510.pdf

Reprinted with permission from Sustainable Business

Ford’s goal of electrifying its fleet appears to be running on all cylinders. The company is creating battery electric versions of both of its award winners –2009 Car (Focus) and Truck (Transit Connect Van).

Because energy storage will make or break the arrival of electric vehicles, Ford has joined GM in bringing the battery pack assembly and management under its tent.

Ford is investing nearly $1 billion in manufacturing facilities in Michigan that will include hybrid, battery-electric and plug-in vehicles as well as the lithium ion battery packs. Ford manager of global electrified fleets Greg Frenette explained that “there’s a strong tie-in marrying battery control…. to the rest of propulsion, and we’re in the best position to manage that.”

He said that in addition to wanting to develop the software that controls battery performance and thermal management, the company also felt that managing pack assembly was also key to vehicle performance. “Packaging is significant part of installed cost. Doing it ourselves will enable the quality of execution to be more consistent across battery packs."

Ford, like GM, wants to control much of the intellectual property around its battery and propulsion systems. The company is using batteries from Johnson Controls-Saft for its current fleet of test plug-in hybrid Escapes and also for a plug-in hybrid due out in 2012. But for the 2011 Focus BEV, Ford turned to another unnamed battery vendor. Frenette said the company will continue to look for more battery partners.

This is a smart strategy as it will force battery suppliers to compete aggressively on price, and safeguards against any supplier having production problems. The same goes for considering multiple battery chemistries, which are evolving so quickly that any commitment to a single chemistry is likely to be premature. “Battery chemistries and development are fluid and dynamic, and [multisourcing] gives us the capability to go with cutting edge."

Ford has not announced any target volumes for battery production when the facility goes online in 2012, but manufacturing the packs internally will enable the company to eliminate some of the margin that normally goes to battery manufacturers. Pike Research expects the installed cost of batteries to drop by about 10 percent during 2010 as manufacturing across the industry ramps up.

Ford is starting to live up to being the green company that Bill Ford (along with Kermit the Frog) promised several years ago. Ford is coming out with a new smaller turbocharged EcoBoost engine that is expected to improve fuel efficiency by 20 percent when compared to large engines with similar horsepower. Ford has shifted its turbocharger partner as well, having used Honeywell in the past, but now incorporating a Borg-Warner product.

John Gartner is an Industry Analyst at Pike Research and the Editor in Chief of Matter Network.