Editor’s note: Congratulations to our friends at Ecotality on the beta launch of their new blog, Ecotality Life (and for snagging our own Michael d’Estries as Senior Editor). We’ll be continuing our Friday post swaps with Ecotality, and we’re very impressed with the quality and direction of the new blog. Today’s post was originally published on September 6, 2007.

A company in China just came out with a new hydrogen bike. The company, Shanghai Pearl Hydrogen Power Source Technology Co, unveiled its creation at the 9th China International Exhibition on Gas Technology, Equipment and Applications. How they have gone 9 years with a name that long, I have no idea. You would think they would have learned from The InterUniversal Meeting of Those Who Like to Attend Expositions in Foreign Countries and Star Systems, but are too Afraid to Leave Their Respective Houses (IUMTWLAEFCSSALRH). At any rate, the bike seems to be a bit of a hit at the show. They already have some orders for it, and for a cool $2,600, who could resist? Never fear: they expect to have the price down to about $500 as soon as they can start mass producing them. No word on when that will be, but have faith.

The bike is clearly superior to electric bikes…with the exception of the price tag it has right now. It runs on renewable hydrogen, using a fuel cell. The tanks, conveniently located behind the seat for you convenience, take about half an hour to recharge, compared to a battery’s three hours. The tanks are also significantly lighter than the standard lead batteries on electrics. I’ll have to check in with my research team, but preliminary guesses are pointing to the LEAD for the extra weight. It is a delicious snack, but lead is not all that practical when trying to reduce weight. The bikes have a cruising speed of about 15 mph, for about 60 miles. That’s pretty good; I mean it is no Lance Armstrong, but I doubt you could buy Lance to pedal you around for under $2,600.

Editor’s note: This week, Ecotality’s Bill Hobbs takes a look at the Automotive X-Prize, a competition to develop a 100mpg automobile. This post was originally published on August 2, 2007.

The Automotive X-Prize has announced the first 31 teams accepted into their competition to create a commercially viable car that gets at least 100mpg. Among the teams accepted: Tesla Motors, Zap, Phoenix Motorcars, Fuel Vapor Technology and Team Velozzi. According to organizers over 300 teams have expressed interest in the competition and are considering jumping in. Commercial viability is a key criteria for picking the winner - the teams must demonstrate not just performance but also business plan showing that they can sell at least 10,000 of their vehicles annually.

Here’s the press release…

The Automotive X PRIZE (AXP), a competition designed to inspire a new generation of viable, super-efficient vehicles to help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change, announced today that over 30 teams have signed a letter of intent to compete once the prize is officially funded and launched.

The international competition, in which qualified teams will compete head to head, aims to dramatically increase consumer access to ultra-efficient, clean, affordable and desirable vehicles. The 30 plus teams include diverse groups from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. More than 300 additional teams have inquired about joining and are actively considering entry.

“We are thrilled with the wide variety of teams and technologies from around the world that have expressed an interest in joining the competition,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, CEO and Chairman, X PRIZE Foundation. “We are confident that the Automotive X PRIZE will motivate and bring visibility to a range of non-traditional solutions from both traditional and non-traditional players. The time for incremental change is over. We need radical breakthroughs to stem the consumption of fossil fuels. An X PRIZE can help make this happen.”

The independent and technology-neutral AXP competition is open to teams from around the world to prove they can design, build and bring to market 100 MPG or equivalent fuel economy vehicles that people want to buy. Industry experts will scrutinize team plans. Those that qualify will race their vehicles in rigorous cross-country stages that combine speed, distance, urban driving and overall performance. The winners will be the vehicles that exceed 100 MPG equivalent, fall under strict emissions caps and finish in the fastest time.

The Automotive X-Prize is from the same folks who created the Ansari X-Prize for the first successful private-sector rocket launch to reach space.

The competition is intended to be technology-neutral, meaning the vehicles don’t have to run on gasoline, and indeed many of the teams entering the competition are proposing vehicles that don’t use gasoline at all. As the presser explains, the winning vehicle must get “100 MPG or equivalent fuel economy,” though how equivalence is calculated isn’t explained.

The following 30 teams have signed a letter of intent signaling their intent to apply for the AXP competition:

• Aptera Motors - California, USA
• Commuter Cars Corp. - Washington, USA
• Cornell University - New York, USA
• DEHyds - Washington, USA
• Delta Motorsport - Northants, UK
• Desert Fuel - Arizona, USA
• Disruptech - California, USA
• Dragonfly Technology LTD - Northhampton, UK
• Fuel Vapor Technologies - British Columbia, Canada
• GreenIt! - Oregon, USA
• Herf Duo - Berlin, Germany
• HyKinesys - California, USA
• Kinetic Vehicles - Oregon, USA
• Kuttner Doran Inventions - Virginia, USA
• Loremo AG - Munich, Germany
• Maine Automotive X - Maine, USA
• MDI, Inc. & Zero Pollution Motors LLC - New York, USA
• Michigan Vision - Michigan, USA
• MotoTron Corporation - Wisconsin, USA
• Phoenix Motorcars - California, USA
• Porteon Electric Vehicles, Inc. - Oregon, USA
• Prometheus Systems, LLC - Arizona, USA
• Psycho-Active - Georgia, USA
• Roane Inventions - Texas, USA
• Society for Sustainable Mobility - California, USA
• Spirit One - Alberta, Canada
• Valentin Technologies - Wisconsin, USA
• Tesla Motors - California, USA
• Velozzi - California, USA
• X Tracer - Winterthur, Switzerland
• ZAP Motors - California, USA

The prize: an as yet unannounced sum of millions of dollars. The Ansari X-Prize for space flight was $10 million.

Editor's note: This week, Ecotality's Bill Hobbs points to an interesting new development: Algeria, a member of OPEC, has plans for exporting solar power. This post was originally published on June 20, 2007.

A member of OPEC jumps into the solar energy business? Gotta be from The Onion, right? Wrong. Algeria, which earns $1 billion every week exporting oil, is developing a plan to generate solar power for both export and domestic use, reports Reuters.

Algeria plans to make use of its hot southern desert to develop solar power for export and domestic consumption, the Opec member country said on Monday. The scheme is due to be completed by 2015 in Africa’s second-largest country, where most of the 33 million people live in the northern coastal strip. Temperatures in the desert south are high. “Algeria has a huge sunny area with big potential to be exploited. It has also financial and human resources. It lacks nothing. We can compete with other countries,” Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil said.

Here’s some analysis from the Gulf Times of Qatar.

Opec member Algeria’s plan to generate solar power for export and domestic use is an excellent innovation that other Arab states would do well to emulate, a renewable energy advocacy group said yesterday. Wolfgang Palz of the Germany-based World Council for Renewable Energy said Arab states had been “left behind a bit” in the Western-led race for alternatives to fossil fuels but could catch up because they had the necessary educational base.

“For modern types of renewable energies like wind energy, the leadership is right now in Europe, California and Texas,” Palz, an engineer and physician by training, told Reuters. “Arab countries have been left behind a bit, and it’s very important now that political decisions are being taken to catch up with the rest of the world because Arab countries have resources - the intellectual resources - to do this.”

“We think that in the long run all renewable energies will be greatly needed because fossil and atomic energy will be progressively exhausted and disappear.” Palz praised Algeria’s plans to develop power for its domestic market as well as for exports from a hybrid solar-gas plant in the Sahara desert due to come on stream in 2009, with exports of power to Europe due to start up by 2015.

Algeria reportedly has enough oil to last it for 23 years and enough gas for 50 years at current production rates. But the country of 33 million people also has a fast growing population, high unemployment and booming demand for power.

Algeria’s move into solar energy is a very foreward thinking business move - it recognizes that Algeria’s economic future isn’t in the oil business but the energy business. Algeria isn’t the only oil-producing country that could make this kind of move. Much of the Middle Eastern oil nations are also blessed with an abundance of sunshine beating down on vast stretches of wide-open arid land and deserts. I don’t know, but I’m guessing there’s also incredible potential there for generating wind power, provided you could design wind turbines that would not be degraded by sandstorms.

As an American, I’m not entirely enthralled by the idea of the world becoming more dependent upon the Middle East for energy, but at least such diversification would benefit the environment and also lessen the dependence on the region’s abundant but ultimately finite underground energy resource.

Solar and wind power might also hold promise for parts of the Middle East and North Africa that have plenty of sun and wind but lack oil.

Editor's note: This week, A Siegel at the Ecotality blog takes a look at a new initiative from some major players in the home computing industry. This post was originally published on June 12, 2007.

Most people are unaware just how many kilowatt hours their computers burn and how many pounds of CO2 they help pump into the atmosphere. Interested in learning about this, there is no better place to start than Michael BlueJay’s Saving Electricity site.

Reducing energy use when you turn on your computer looks like it is going to get much, much easier. Earlier today, Climate Savers smart computing was announced at the Google campus. This initiative targets a 50% reduction in computer electricity usage by 2010.

From the press release:

Intel Corporation and Google Inc. joined with Dell, EDS, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, PG&E, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and more than 25 additional organizations today announced the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (www.climatesaverscomputing.org). The goal of the new broad-based environmental effort is to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting aggressive new targets for energy-efficient computers and components, and promoting the adoption of energy-efficient computers and power management tools worldwide.

“Today, the average desktop PC wastes nearly half of its power, and the average server wastes one-third of its power,” said Urs Hölzle, senior vice president, Operations & Google Fellow. “The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is setting a new 90 percent efficiency target for power supplies, which if achieved, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year — and save more than $5.5 billion in energy costs.

The initiative is promising tools to help users reduce electricity use. And, they make the case for investing to cut that electricity use by 50 percent …

Even at modestly higher prices (about $30 per system), more efficient computers will pay for themselves in reduced energy costs. It’s a win-win situation for you and for the environment.

For example, a savings of just 20–30 watts in power consumption translates to a savings of $7.20 per year in direct energy costs at a price of $0.12/kWh for electricity. In an air-conditioned home, the total savings increases to approximately $10/year, which means the high-efficiency system will pay for itself in 2–3 years. Systems that remain turned on all the time typically pay for themselves within the first year of use. …

Reducing the power consumption of PCs and servers has secondary benefits throughout the larger community. It reduces electrical and air-conditioning loads in office buildings, data centers and homes, thus reducing the strain on regional generation facilities and the electrical grid. Last but not least, it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Climate Savers smart computing initiative looks like a serious effort to provide a path toward more energy efficient, greener computing … A path toward greener blogging …

Editor's note: This week, Ecotality blogger Steve Caratzas takes a look at a recent New York Times article that outlines Thomas Edison's green thinking. This post was originallly published on June 3, 2007.

The New York Times has a terrific article about Thomas Edison, and his unparalleled impact on our daily lives, as well as our current (you should pardon the pun) environmental situation.

No individual deserves more credit, or blame, for America’s voracious electricity consumption than Edison, who conceived not only that generating station but also the notoriously inefficient incandescent bulb and a slew of volt-thirsty devices.

However, Edison was also a green visionary of sorts, whose ideas about sustainable energy encompassed windmills and an energy-self-sufficient home.

Edison also, like other scientists of his day, was beginning to understand even then that fossil fuels wouldn’t last forever.

Makes you wonder how the global warming denialists would have dealt reacted: “Electricity? Balderdash! Nothing will ever replace the tallow candle! I deserve the right to live in a state of perpetual semi-darkness! Progress be damned!”

In 1931, not long before he died, the inventor told his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Sorry, Mr. Edison. We let you down.

Editor's note: Ecotality's Steve Caratzas takes note of another idea to green the world of sports: reconfiguring the format of hockey's Stanley Cup finals. This post was originally published on May 30, 2007.

Sports Illustrated’s Michael Farber has written an open letter to Al Gore, pleading with the former Vice President to help green up the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup finals format.

Farber is concerned with the NHL’s current 2-2-1-1-1 system, wherein two games of the best-of-seven final series are played on one team’s home ice, followed by two games on their opponent’s home ice, returning back to the first team’s home ice, then to the opponent’s again, and finally – if seven games are required – one final game in the rink where the whole thing started. Confused? Perfect! Consider yourself a hockey fan.

Farber is seeking a more environment-friendly configuration:

You see, a 2-3-2 final would be a blessing for the environment. The NHL would be doing its patriotic best to be green — beyond its recycling of Anaheim Ducks defenseman Sean O’Donnell.

Lame jokes aside, Farber’s assessment is sound, and he has the math to support his supposition:

Under the current system, and if the series goes the full seven, you will fly to Anaheim for Game 1, back to Ottawa for Game 3, back to Anaheim for Game 5, back to Ottawa for Game 6, back to Anaheim for Game 7 and then, finally, home. That is six cross-continent flights, which is a lot of jet fuel…. But if this were an ecologically-sound 2-3-2 final, Ottawa would fly to Anaheim for Game 1, home for Game 3, back to California for Game 6 and then back to Canada’s capital when it’s over. Two trips would have been averted….

The NHL, Farber points out, used the 2-3-2 format exactly twice before in the mid-1980s, but abandoned it – as it tends to do with most innovations, stuck forever in an old-school mentality that hockey purists prefer. Farber believes Al Gore is the sport’s best hope for a green change.

Canada generally seems to get behind green initiatives, so perhaps the Stanley Cup finals could be the next step. Or at least one of the next steps, for as Farber reasons, there’s always room for environmental ingenuity:

My next thought: fuel-efficient Zambonis.

by Ecotality blogger Bill Hobbs. Originally published today, April 6, 2007

If solar power is going to play a significant role in the energy equation of the future, there must be advances in technologies to store that power and more investment by manufacturers, concludes a new federally funded study by University of Massachusetts Amherst scientist Erin Baker. But in New Zealand researchers have developed new solar energy-collecting dyes that promise to make solar energy much easier and less expensive to collect.

The UMASS researchers’ report “explores the viability of sun-fueled technologies through a combination of evaluations by experts and economic modeling, allowing the researchers to look at solar power’s role in the electricity sector in 15-year chunks through 2095,” says the UMASS-Amherst news release.

Baker has been invited to submit the article to Energy Economics as part of a special issue on Technological Change and Uncertainty in Environmental Economics. It is the first in a series; future reports will assess technologies that harvest wind, biofuels and carbon capture. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $347,000 to Baker’s team last year to investigate the costs and benefits associated with investing in alternative energies.

The research report might be interesting reading and should be released to the public for free, not stuffed into a research journal that can only be accessed with a subscription or fee. After all, you already paid for it as it was funded by tax dollars. Still, I wonder about the value of the report’s economic predictions for solar power given that economists can’t predict human ingenuity.

The same day that the solar economic forecast report hits the news comes news of yet another solar technology breakthrough.

Researchers at the Nanomaterials Research Centre at New Zealand’s Massey University have developed synthetic dyes hat can be used to generate electricity at one tenth of the cost of current silicon-based solar panels. The dyes work similar to natural photosynthesis - and even work in low-light conditions. Researchers say they soon will be able to be cheaply incorporated into common products, turning those products into generators of electricity. Think: roofing materials and window panes. Or clothing.

Here’s how the Manawatu Standard reports the breakthrough:

This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices. The breakthrough is a development of the university’s Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already - particularly from Australia and Japan. Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis.

Science Daily sheds more light on the potential of the “porphyrin dye” technology. Turns out that not only may the new porphyrin dye solar sells may not only be better at generating electricity from sunlight, even the manufacturing process to make , the itself be more environmentally friendly than making silicon-based solar cells:

Dr Campbell says that unlike the silicon-based solar cells currently on the market, the 10×10cm green demonstration cells generate enough electricity to run a small fan in low-light conditions - making them ideal for cloudy climates. The dyes can also be incorporated into tinted windows that trap to generate electricity.

He says the green solar cells are more environmentally friendly than silicon-based cells as they are made from titanium dioxide - a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic white mineral obtained from New Zealand’s black sand. Titanium dioxide is already used in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics.

”The refining of pure silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy-hungry and very expensive. And whereas silicon cells need direct sunlight to operate efficiently, these cells will work efficiently in low diffuse light conditions,” Dr Campbell says.

“The expected cost is one 10th of the price of a silicon-based solar panel, making them more attractive and accessible to home-owners.”

I’m going to make a prediction based not on economic modeling and data-crunching, but on 42 years of observing humans at work and more than a decade as a business and policy journalist: solar power is going to play a much larger role and much sooner than the UMASS-Amherst report predicts, and it will happen largely because innovators and entrepreneurs will make it happen.

Editor's note: Today, we're pleased to launch a content partnership with eco-friendly technology company Ecotality. Each Friday, we'll feature a post from Ecotality's blog; they'll return the favor to us.

By Ecototality blogger A Siegel. Originally published on Thursday, March 29.

Austin’s Mayor, Will Wynn, is a serious plug-in hybrid vehicle supporter. And, he has been a strong advocate of PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) from Austin to Washington, DC. ”We have made our intentions clear that we want to pave the way for the plug-in hybrid …”

In short, the concept is to develop

• A concentration of plug-in hybrid vehicles plugged into
• A smart(er) grid that enables powering the hybrid vehicles or, as necessary (and according to owners’ desires), draw power from the battery back into the grid to
• Help balance out renewable power intermittency.

Austin currently receives six percent of its electricity from wind sources. As this increases, the issue of covering power requirements when the wind isn’t blowing becomes an ever more serious issue. With enough penetration of PHEVs plugged into a smart(er) grid, the car batteries can serve as storage for the grid, storing power when the wind is blowing and feeding power back into the grid when the wind isn’t blowing (and the sun isn’t shining).

As Wynn puts it,

“Really, the true beauty of this system is the fact that vehicles charged by the electric system will run on alternative energy sources, such as West Texas wind, instead of Middle East oil”

Austin plans to give $1000 to the first 1000 PHEV purchasers in the city.

Wynn is approaching this truly as a campaign. His goal is “a mafia of 50 like-minded, large U.S. cities that are fed up with pollution and high fuel costs. … Armed with commitments for fleet orders … to buy the first round of vehicles … this mafia will tell automakers that the time for change is now.”

For more information, check out Plug-In Austin.