Turns out that your average plasma TV sucks more electricity from the grid than those fancy new plug-in hybrid cars that are coming on the market. According to officials at the Electric Power Research Institute who were quoted in a recent Associated Press article, big-screen plasma TVs drain about four times as much power as plug-in hybrids.

Why should you care? It means that the U.S. power grid is capable of handling a few million plug-in hybrids without blowing its gigantic, irreplaceable fuse. The logic goes something like this: Consumers have purchased millions of big-screen plasma sets during the past few years. They’ve all plugged them in and probably leave them on for HOURS each day. Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, will likely be plugged in during off-peak hours, late at night while most people sleep and when the grid isn’t being taxed. 

The grid may be able to handle plug-in cars, but we’ll still need to generate more electricity to meet their demands. Hopefully that energy will come from solar and wind rather than coal-fired power plants.

Link to GlobeAuto story.

Volkswagen’s 1-liter concept car has been winding its way through the twists and turns of the automotive news back roads lately. British auto mag Car has reported that the 600-pound streamlined fuel sipper will go into production in 2010, sporting a hybrid diesel drivetrain and sequential motorcycle-style gearbox. The original concept ran a one-cylinder, 1-liter petrol engine wrapped up in a carbon fiber body. The microcar features tandem seating like a fighter jet, but performance promises to be less than stellar.

The fact that small, fuel-efficient cars are making a comeback fills my heart with a warm fuzzy feeling that’s not unlike the buzz one gets from huffing gasoline fumes.  

Link to Jalopnik article.

Photo: It failed the global warming test.

Soon every new car in California will be rated based on how much greenhouse gas it spews into the atmosphere. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) plans to roll out a window sticker that will feature two scores, one to rate a car’s smog emissions and another to gauge global warming. The scores will fall on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best possible score.

The agency will compile emissions data for all new 2009 cars. Average polluting cars will be given scores of 5, the least polluting will earn perfect 10s.

CARB says it’s a good way for consumers to compare automobiles and encourage more eco-friendly vehicles. It’s a step in the right direction, but it seems like a round-about way to force manufacturers to produce more efficient, cleaner cars. 

“This label will arm consumers with the information they need to choose a vehicle that saves gas, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps fight smog all at once,” board chairman Mary Nichols said in a statement. “Consumer choice is an especially powerful tool in our fight against climate change. We look forward to seeing these stickers on 2009 model cars as they start hitting the showrooms in the coming months.”

CARB has launched a website that will feature new-car ratings: http://www.driveclean.ca.gov

Craig Venter etched his name into the annals of history by decoding the human genome (his own genome, in fact) in less time than it takes the ebola virus to replicate. Now he has his sights set on oil. In a recent Newsweek interview with Fareed Zakaria, Venter outlines his plans to genetically engineer bacteria that will suck up C02 and spit out ethanol or biodiesel. The bug could solve two of humanity’s biggest problems—global warming and a dwindling supply of fossil fuels. From the interview:

Zakaria: How are you going to create the fuel of the future? 
Venter: We think multiple fuels of the future are going to come out of biology, by manipulating the genetic code of simple organisms to convert things like sugar or sunlight or carbon dioxide into fuels that people are very familiar with, like diesel fuel and gasoline.

What would a “refinery” that uses microorganisms to create fuel look like? 

They’re just large, bacteria-processing fermenters. People are familiar with this: that’s how wine and beer are made. We’re using similar processes, but ones that are designed to produce much more complex molecules than ethanol, and therefore fuels that will be much higher in energy content, and will work well with the existing energy infrastructure.

How close are you to creating an organism that can produce fuels in this way? 
We think the first fuels are maybe one to two years away. We’re definitely thinking in terms of years, not decades.

It’s a must-read interview that’ll fill even the most pessimistic doomsday prognosticators with warm fuzzy optimism. Kinda like wine and beer. All hail our genetically modified bacterial overlords!

Link to Newsweek article. 

The Bloom bicycle accessory concept spews seeds as you ride, littering your local concrete jungle with tiny plantlets that will inexorably smother blacktop and pavement, turning your city into a green paradise. Or that’s the concept, anyway. The curious little attachment latches onto your bike near the rear wheel like a lamprey. You load it with water and seed-laden soap lumps. As you pedal, the soap lumps dissolve into seed-filled bubbles that bounce gleefully in your wake. 

The concept is one of many from Design 21’s “Power to the Pedal” competition. It’s a neat idea, one that would likely gain traction among Whole Foods shoppers (myself included) and card-carrying members of LOHAS.

Link to Gizmodo article.

Everybody has one crazy uncle who, through mysterious circumstances, managed to secure the secret schematics for a car that runs on water. Maybe he ordered them from the back of an old Popular Science magazine, or even got them from the inventor himself; a man who is doggedly pursued by oil industry henchmen. Well, those plans have been leaked, to Japan. A Japanese company dubbed Genepax claims it has invented a car that runs on nothing but air and water.

The car uses their mysterious “Water Energy System,” or “WES” for short, to generate electricity from splitting water into its component parts. The deus ex machina seems to be an ingenious Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) that can do the job with a simple chemical reaction.

Details are still under wraps, but Genepax says that WES doesn’t require any hydrogen reformer, high-pressure hydrogen tank or exotic catalysts. It still requires platinum, but no more than other current hydrogen fuel cells.

The company has wired their WES system into a Reva electric car, made by Takeoka Mini Car Products Co Ltd. The car runs on a supply of water and air, fed to the WES system with a pump. It doesn’t emit any carbon dioxide.

Right now the WES system costs about $18,000 to build, but Genepax hopes to get the price down to around $4,600 through mass production.

The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 stalled in the Senate yesterday like a carbon-encrusted engine running on fumes. The Senate blocked the bill (H.R. 6049) by a vote of 50-44, preventing its advance to the floor for consideration. The move could cut the flow of $18 billion in incentives for investment in renewable energy, carbon capture, energy efficiency improvements and conservation efforts.

So why did the bill run out of gas? Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on the degree of incentives.

A summery of the bill can be found here. It would, among other things, do the following:

• Extend tax credits for wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energy plants.
• Extend tax credits for residential solar property for six years.
• Provide $2 billion in new Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) for wind; closed-loop biomass; open-loop biomass; geothermal; small irrigation; hydropower; landfill gas; marine renewable; and trash combustion facilities.
• Provide $1.5 billion in tax credits for coal-fired electrical plants “that demonstrate the greatest potential for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology.”
• Fund new bonds for state and local governments to explore ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Extend tax credits for energy-efficiency modifications made to residential homes.
• Extend tax credit for energy-efficient appliances.
• Tax credits for plug-in hybrids or electric cars.
• Government-subsidized employment fringe benefits for bicycle commuters.

The bill also hauls some heavy tax cuts (or extensions of current tax cuts) related to capital gain dividends,  education expenses, motorsports entertainment complexes, new development in Washington D.C., economic development in Samoa, veterans, soldiers’ salaries and much, much more. 

Link to Treehugger article.

Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Photo by naitokz

Another bulletin from the whirring, buzzing, blinking techno-future that is Japan: Japan Post announced last week that it plans to replace its entire fleet of 21,000 mail delivery trucks with electric vehicles during the next eight years. They also plan to install more than 1,000 charging stations at post offices across the island nation. And if that doesn’t get your green bean buzzing, this will: They just might make those charging stations available to the public. The move could spark an electric motoring revolution in Japan and shock other countries into using more EVs.   

No word yet on which Japanese automaker will be honored with the ginormous government contract. 

Link to treehugger article.

President Bush recently signed a bill that would funnel $45 million to build a high-speed maglev train between two great pillars of Americana: Disney Land and Las Vegas. The 300-mile-an-hour train would blast across the 250-mile route in less than an hour, granting upper-middle-class Americans more time to squander their retirements and kids’ college funds at both entertainment super-complexes.  

It would be the first maglev train in the U.S. and would simultaneously appease kneecap-breaking casino owners, the Disney Empire and environmentalists. But there’s a catch: Maglev trains are absurdly expensive. Japan’s 5.5-mile Linimo maglev train cost more than $380 million to build. China’s 19-mile Shanghai maglev train cost about $1.3 billion. Going off those numbers, the Disney-Vegas train would cost about $17 billion to complete.

So what does $45 million buy? An environmental study and, with any luck, something positive to say about the Bush reign.

Photo: Shanghai’s Maglev Train, from Wikipedia.

Link to Gizmodo article. 

Tesla Motors made green transportation sexy and fast. Now other manufacturers are edging into the niche market of green super cars, including the greenhorns at Hybrid Technologies. The company’s engineers have come up with one sexy super car, a sleek sportster reminiscent of the famed Porsche Carrera GT that will come in all-electric and hybrid configurations. Their goal is between 150 and 200 mile range for the electric and 220 mpg plus for the hybrid. Performance? Expect it to be on par with the Tesla Roadster—blisteringly fast. 

The car is still in the initial stages of design and only exists as a CG rendering, but the mockup looks hot. 

Link to Treehugger article.