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That is the relevant question, when you read alarmist stories about ice melt in Antarctica. On March 25th, for example, the BBC dutifully reported “Antarctic Shelf Hangs by a Thread” in a report by science correspondant Helen Briggs. Here is the tag line below the title: “A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate.” A few paragraphs below that another tag line, also in boldface type, reads “Unprecedented Warming.” Similar alarming snippets characterize the entire report.

What this report doesn’t make terribly clear, however, is the fact that this breakup is in the Antarctic Peninsula, a finger of land that stretches for several hundred miles into the South Atlantic. There is evidence the ocean in this region is somewhat warmer in recent years – true enough – but this fact is dwarfed by the mounting evidence the overall ice mass of Antarctica is increasing.

Will the Cedar Waxwing summer northwards or southwards?

Here are the comparisons – the Isle of Man is 227 miles in area – which means that if this ice shelf were a mile think (and it isn’t), it would have a volume of 227 cubic miles. Antarctica, by contrast, has an area of 5.0 million square miles.

More recently, on April 15th, the BBC ran another story entitled “Forecast for Big Sea Level Rise.” The story referenced a study by “a UK/Finnish team” – we couldn’t find the actual study online – that concluded “Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half metres by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis… substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year’s landmark assessment.”

Other news sources offered similar stories – alarming headlines with a shallow exploration of the underlying facts: Reuters “World sea levels seen rising 1.5m by 2100,” New Scientist “Sea levels ‘will rise 1.5 metres by 2100′,” The Tech Herald “Report says sea level rise worse than feared,” and so on.

Accompanying the BBC story was a photo of a young woman and her infant child standing waist deep in water. But was there any further explanation of how the study reached it’s findings? According to one of the study’s authors, Svetlana Jevrejeva from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), near Liverpool, UK, “…by the end of the century, we predict it will rise by between 0.8m and 1.5m,” and “The rapid rise in the coming years is associated with the rapid melting of ice sheets.”

Ok, rapid melting of ice sheets is the cause. And the data? Here is all the article offered us in that regard: “The latest satellite data indicates that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass, though the much bigger East Antarctic sheet may be gaining mass.”

If you wade through this material, what comes out is the following: If temperatures increase sufficiently in the polar regions, “melt water” on the surface of land based ice sheets may drain into fissures in the ice, undermining the stability of the ice and possibly causing it to slide into the ocean at a rate far faster than if it were to simply melt from the outside inwards. Fair enough. So is Antarctica warming up?

We contacted Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., a renowned climatologist with a nuanced position on global warming – he believes, as we do, that the role of CO2 in driving climate change is grossly overstated, and the role of land use changes is grossly understated. His online blog Climate Science is an excellent source of informed and balanced data on global climate trends. Here is the gist of his findings, filed online on April 7th in a post entitled “Recent Data on Surface Snowmelt in Antarctica:”

“In the March 25 2008 issue of EOS, there was a News item by Marco Tedesco titled “Updated 2008 Surface snowmelt Trends in Antarctica” (subscribers only). It reports the following:

Surface snowmelt in Antarctica in 2008, as derived from spaceborne passive microwave observations at 19.35 gigahertz, was 40% below the average of the period 1987–2007. The melting index (MI, a measure of where melting occurred and for how long) in 2008 was the second-smallest value in the 1987–2008 period, with 3,465,625 square kilometers times days (km2 × days) against the average value of 8,407,531 km2 × days (Figure 1a). Melt extent (ME, the extent of the area subject to melting) in 2008 set a new minimum with 297,500 square kilometers, against an average value of approximately 861,812 square kilometers.”

This evidence suggests that Antarctica, where 90% of the land based ice in the world resides, is increasing in mass. And this fact is ignored or downplayed in virtually every mainstream report available today, and indeed the mainstream press continues to infer that Antarctica is melting at an alarming rate. But on balance, the ice mass in Antarctica is not melting, it is probably getting bigger.

As Pielke wrote me earlier this week, “My views have not changed… I agree that the alarmist view being widely disseminated is not supported by the science.”

Petroleum (crude oil) is a vital part of our society. Billions of cars are dependant on the fuel drilled out of the ground, but petroleum also constitutes the base for many industries including plastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and even fertilizers. Unfortunately, getting petroleum is a dirty process and until now, has involved wasting millions of gallons of water (used to force oil to the surface).

The shiny black oil is found in porous rock formations underneath the earth’s crust. These petroleum reservoirs are made up of the crude oil, the natural gases that float on top of the oil and saline water that flows underneath. Extracting the petroleum involves drilling through the crust which then allows the oil to flow upwards through pre-made tubing.

Natural pressures under the oil are not always enough to induce the black liquid to ooze and sputter upwards, and in these cases, the oil needs to be helped along. In a ‘water drive’ oil field, for example, water is injected into the pre-existing brine below the oil forcing it to the surface. The water that bubbles up with the oil must be disposed of.

GeoPure – a company specializing in oilfield wastewater purification – states that “the oil and gas industry must dispose of approximately 6.3 million barrels of water per day at a cost exceeding $2 billion annually. At the same time, the availability of fresh water for oilfield operations continues to be a concern.”

Company President, David Crowe, together with his partners at the Texas A&M University Dept. of Petroleum Engineering, launched GeoPure in September, 2006. Since then, GeoPure has licensed the technology to transform the brine produced during petroleum production into quality drinking water through a specialized pretreatment and reverse osmosis (RO) filtration process.

GeoPure has confidence in their product and the rigorous testing done at various drilling sites in Texas showed impressive results: “The RO pilot system has been put through extensive testing in the Texas A&M laboratory as well as 12 separate field locations in Texas, and results show that dissolved solid levels up to about 50,000 mg/L can be reduced to the level of fresh water. Chloride levels are low enough that the fresh water may be discharged, or used as a base for fracturing fluid, drilling fluid, or oilfield chemicals…The process uses a uniquely staged pre-filtration approach to remove suspended solids and macromolecules before the stream is fed through the final RO filtration stage. This pre-filtration approach prolongs system life and performance, and reduces cost. The RO process paves the way for surface discharge of fresh water under a TRRC permit, or the sale of fresh water to end-users.”

Voted one of the top 100 private green companies by the GoingGreen panel at the GoingGreen executive event, GeoPure’s innovative technology has left many impressed.

Food & Fuel – Corn becomes more prized than ever.

CORN GROWING AREAS IN CHINA

Source: USDA Joint Agricultural Weather Facility

China is the world’s second largest corn producer, but a growing appetite for grain combined with ambitious fuel ethanol targets may make the country a net corn importer, possibly as early as this year.

China may become net corn importer despite move away from grain ethanol. At present, grain accounts for about 80 percent of biofuel feedstock, and consumers are finding themselves at increased competition with the country’s burgeoning energy needs for limited domestic resources.

Although China can essentially meet its own grain demand for the moment, it is a tight balance that could easily be thrown off. With 20 percent of the world’s population but only 7 percent of global farmland, the country’s grain supply is under long-term pressure from a growing population, and rising incomes, while urbanization gradually nibbles away at cultivatable land.

By 2010, China plans to consume 6.7 million tons of blended ethanol fuel gasoline and 11 million tons of bio-diesel-blended diesel annually, which would meet 10 percent of forecast demand for transport fuel. Government targets caused demand for corn from the ethanol industry to explode, which has raised concerns about how the policy will impact the country’s grain supply safety and price inflation.

Although the government has suspended the approval of new corn-based fuel ethanol projects and encouraged the use of non-grain feedstock for ethanol plants, industry insiders remain doubtful.

“China has just started on its mass plantation plans for cassava and sweet potato for industrial use, and it takes time for such crops to grow and mature,” said an official with a foreign equipment manufacturer whose products include those used in bio-fuel production. I believe that within three years time, grains such as corn and wheat will still be the leading feedstock for ethanol fuel.”

Henan Tianguan Enterprise Group Co. Ltd., one of the country’s four major ethanol producers, currently uses a mix of 60 percent wheat, 20 percent corn, 10 percent cassava and 10 percent sweet potato to produce the fuel.

China has just started large-scale production of crops such as cassava, sweet potato and sweet sorghum. However, the country lacks mature technology to produce cellulosic ethanol, which is seen as the future of large-scale ethanol fuel industry.

China’s concerns about rising food prices and grain supply concerns are not unique. A report published last year by the Sri Lanka-based World Water Management Institute said biofuel production will increase demand for land at the expense of the environment, and will also require large quantities of water, already a major constraint to agriculture in many parts of the world, including China. Other reports have said that ethanol production may severely impact upon the food industry, since, at excessive levels, it can use the food industry to feed energy needs.

The International Monetary Fund has said higher bio-fuel demand will push up food prices, especially for the world’s poor, and increase food import costs, thus curbing economic growth. In the last 15 years, China went from being the world’s largest soybean exporter to the world’s largest importer. With similar trends emerging in soy meal, edible oil, and grains, rising import costs will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

China began promoting the production of corn-based ethanol in 2001, when the country’s corn production was booming, and net corn exports increased from 10.47 million tons in 2000 to a high of 16.4 million tons in 2003. After peaking in 2003, imports began to fall rapidly. Last year, China’s corn exports reached 4.8 million tons, but this was mainly due to the fulfilling contracts signed in 2006.

CHINA’S GRAIN OUTPUT: 1997 – 2007

Source: China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)

The dramatic reduction of export quotas for this year from 3 million to 1 million tons, the ongoing introduction of stricter usage policies, and the cancellation of all tax rebates on grain exports belie the official stance of grain security, especially insofar as corn.

Consumption in 2008 is estimated at 141.5 million tons, of which nearly two-thirds is for animal feed. In January, pork prices surged 58.8 percent year-on-year. Further rapid price growth, coupled with government support to the industry, may see pig production increase at a faster-than-anticipated rate, which means livestock feed estimates are likely too conservative. An increase of 5 percent in this area could put severe strains on domestic supply. Corn and soy meal are used to produce approximately 70 percent of animal feedstuffs. Note that these figures have not yet been adjusted for damage and losses caused by the current snowstorm crisis that has battered China since mid-January.

CHINA’S GRAIN DEMAND: 1997 – 2006 (million tons)

Source: China Customs, Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, Interfax research. (In this report, Interfax uses the sum of domestic grain output and net grain import to estimate total domestic demand for grain.)

The USDA estimates China’s state corn stockpiles are in the region of 35 million tons, but it is difficult to verify this figure. However, given China’s aggressive state auction policy designed to stabilize market prices, this figure may be optimistic, although it could serve as a cushion in the event of a production shortfall.

Planting intentions, while difficult to predict as farmers tend to delay decisions, may be affected by corn ethanol restrictions. The tendency may be to shift to wheat and, where possible, soybeans which are more profitable, and China may have to resort to significant corn importation, possibly this season. This may be a continuing trend, given the scarcity of arable land and water resources.

If China does become a net corn importer this year, the impact on the price, both domestically and globally, will be dramatic and a price of $6 per bushel, up from current price of $5 is probable. The question now is how China will impact other agricultural commodities, like wheat, soybean and edible oils, in the year ahead.

Edited by Erik Dahl with contributions from Victor Wang, Tinko Hua, Yang Jing, and David Harman. This article was originally published by Interfax-China, and is republished with permission.

Findings in the article are based on extensive research from the Interfax-China China Commodities Report Grains & Softs 2008 industry report. Interfax-China’s team of in-country analysts track China’s industries and markets, providing comprehensive daily coverage of China’s energy sector. Learn how more about these markets and the opportunities they offer your business. Learn about energy in China through our China Energy Weekly and focused energy reports carbon trading, clean & renewable energy, CTL, oil & gas, and power generation. Free Trial: Contact Andrew Billard; andrew@interfax.cn or by phone at 86-10-8532-5021 (Beijing, China).

Additional EcoWorld reports on China:

- China’s Coal

- Cleaning Up China

- China’s Energy Demand

- China’s Renewable Energy

- Wind Power in China

- China’s Energy Outlook

- Fuel Cell Development in China

- China, Canals & Coal

Earlier this month, General Motors hosted about 90 journalists from around the world to provide an update on progress with the Chevy Volt, an extended range electric vehicle they announced as a concept in January 2007. On third of the way between announcement and planned launch in November of 2010, the Volt appears to be on track to be the fastest launch of a production vehicle in GM’s history, and the first time ever GM has managed a technology program (the EREV technology) and a vehicle program (the Volt) simultaneously.

If you read our recently published feature “The Chevy Volt EREV” you can access a lengthy report on our trip to Detroit on April 2-4, including several photos. One of the photos released by GM during this briefing was the one shown below, revealing GM’s plans for the interior of the Volt in more detail than previously disclosed.

The interior of the Chevy Volt. (Photo: GM)

We have been waiting for an EREV, or series hybrid, for a long time, and GM appears to be likely to be the first major automaker to deliver one. In an EREV, traction is provided exclusively by an electric motor, but a gasoline engine and onboard generator can power the car when the battery is depleted. The car has a range of 40 miles on a fully charged battery (which can be plugged in at home), and a range of 400 miles (at 50 MPG) using gasoline only. We think this car is a breakthrough – it long-range capacity, but it can run on plug-in power for nearly all local or commute duty cycles.

Other EREV technology utilizing an onboard gasoline powered generator are Fisker and Aptera, but it is unlikely these startup companies will produce vehicles in the quantities GM is likely to deliver. Among major automakers, Volvo has announced the C30 concept car, which is similar to GM’s Opel “Flextreme” concept, that is, an EREV series hybrid just like the Volt, but using an onboard diesel instead of an onboard gasoline engine.

Our money is on the EREV series hybrid technology to deliver the next generation automobile, because it is practical now, should be affordable, and combines the only the best attributes of gasoline cars as well as 100% battery powered cars.

The ideals of unions are noble and pure. The rights of the ordinary worker are indeed worth fighting for. But there are unions and there are unions.

In the competitive private arena, unions that ask for too much will eventually derail their company’s financial success. For example, unions negotiated defined retirement benefits decades ago with America’s major automakers, that, especially as these companies started to face global competition, became fiscally unsustainable. The phenomenon was self accelerating as well, because as these companies struggled to meet their pension obligations, they became less competitive, which caused them to shrink in size, which made them even less able to meet their pension obligations. The funding projections that applied when American automakers enjoyed nearly a monopoly position in world markets became hopelessly inaccurate as the auto industry globalized, and unions representing auto workers had to negotiate a new deal that reflected the new competitive reality.

In the government sector, however, there are not the same checks that force unions and management to negotiate in good faith in the private sector. Governments are by definition a monopoly. Who else gets to collect taxes? Who else enacts and enforces laws? The government has no competition. In the government sector, union negotiated collective benefits can be agreed to and the taxpayer will pay. Compounding this is the intrinsic conflict facing all government agencies – success is failure – in the important context whereby if you solve a problem, you don’t need the same staff, troops or experts to fight the problem any more.

UNIONS IN THE PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE SECTOR

In the above chart, the vertical axis represents the degree of regulation on a scale of 1 to 10, and the horizontal axis represents the degree of competitiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. Appropriate levels of regulation of unions is represented by the blue diagonal bar, and the actual levels of regulation of unions is represented by the red bar. As the blue “should be” bar indicates, in a highly monopolistic environment, unions should be heavily regulated but as the environment becomes more competitive, unions can be less regulated. But as the “current status” red bar indicates, today there are far too few checks on the power of unions within monopoly environments, and as a result there are not adequate self-correcting mechanisms on the power of unions. This is most true of all with respect to unions representing government workers.

In California since 1978, when then Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation granting full collective bargaining rights to public employees, public employee unions have essentially taken over the public sector, negotiating for government workers a package of holiday/vacation, health and retirement pension benefits that are, on average, far better than what workers get in the private sector. And there is a cost for this – higher taxes and lower services. Politicians who challenge the unions, such as Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005, are spent into the ground by the public sector unions. They can pretty much spend as much as they need to in order to get what they want. They have literally billions of dollars annually in dues they collect from their members working in government. This is taxpayers money.

This is the genuine “two Americas,” those of us in the private sector who have to be wealthy in order to retire with any sort of financial security, and public sector workers, who earn as much or more than private sector employees during the years they work, then retire early with an income for life that dwarfs what they might have eventually gotten under social security. Not only is this unjust, but it has become totally unsustainable from a financial standpoint.

In the next few years, don’t be surprised if virtually every public agency in California faces insolvency due to the requirement they represent as an expense each fiscal year the cost to fund the future retirement benefits of current employees. The statewide impact of this is in the tens of billions of dollars every year. This relatively recent financial reporting requirement came too late, and in any case may yet be skewed by optimistic assumptions on the part of California’s pension fund accountants.

The intrinsic conflict of interest that faces government agencies – success is failure – is challenging enough when determining the appropriate scope of government. But when you combine this with the unfair advantage enjoyed by government employee unions collecting often mandatory dues, engaging with decisive impact in political campaigns, and negotiating benefits for their members far better than the benefits that taxpayers fund for private sector workers – you have a government sector with grossly undermined credibility. The noble ideals of unions should include all workers, not just public sector workers. Hence unions in the public sector should be strictly regulated. As it is, unions no longer bargain with the government, they are the government.

As local and state agencies face insolvency, rather than confront the reality of union control of our government, the 2008 version of Jerry Brown is as California’s Attorney General, busily trying to be greener than his Republican counterpart Governor Schwarzenegger. Brown has started being the tough guy with California’s city and county governments, not telling them to quit giving their employees benefits no private sector taxpayer might even dream of having, no, he’s threatening to sue our cities and counties under CEQA, on the grounds of contributing to global warming. This of course will allow municipal entities to collect carbon offset funds, no matter whether the money comes from auction, trading credits, taxes or fees.

We all want to squirrel away a little something for retirement. (Photo: EcoWorld)

This is a lot of tough love, and the emphasis belongs on “love.” Taking away the ability of one landowner to work with one homebuilder to build a house, instead imposing an “urban service boundary,” does nothing to encourage pluralistic economic opportunity. But it keeps building fees within existing local jurisdictions and artificially inflates housing values. This raises the quantity and the amount of property tax and fee assessments. It also allows the municipalities to collect “carbon credits” because they will calculate the annual CO2 emission reductions attendant to dense infill vs. “sprawl.” The potentially billions in new funding to public entities based on new ordinances enacted to supposedly combat global warming is not being noted anywhere in the mainstream press. Under the pretext of combatting global warming, California’s Attorney General is preparing a new source of funds to feed the monster he created, and nobody is noticing the hidden agenda.

Even if CO2 were pollution, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled, why should this money go to public entities to fund public employee benefits no private sector working taxpayer can enjoy? When every worker gets Social Security and Medicare, then we will reform and improve these vital programs. But as long as 30% of the electorate is either working for the government or depends on someone who does, reform will be perfunctory at best. And entitling every working citizen to the same formula when calculating taxpayer funded health and retirement security would also encourage employee crossover between the public and private sectors, allowing more diverse talent to enrich the hiring pools of both. And, of course, it would help America’s manufacturing sector compete globally.

Crucial linkages would engage and require resolution if public employee unions were again regulated and retirement and health benefits were normalized between the public and private sectors; we would have to define what taxpayer funded health & retirement security formula would apply equally to all citizens, and we would have to define who qualifies for benefits entitled to citizens. This fulfills the ideals of a union, but does so for all workers. The role of government can increase – and perhaps it should – but first it has to stop dealing only to its own, and give every American worker the same deal. Carbon credits might even be a currency of some utility, but only if integrity is restored to our democratic system, by regulating public employee unions, and using our taxes to provide decent health and retirement security to every American worker, and not just government workers.

The Chevy Volt – In Showrooms by November 2010?

The Chevy Volt is an integral part of GM’s strategy to “take the car out of the environmental equation,” according to GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz.

Only 67 weeks ago GM announced the Volt concept car, and if all goes according to plan, in only 138 weeks this revolutionary vehicle will be in dealer showrooms. Is this for real? Will they be ready?

Last week, GM hosted about 80 journalists from around the world to provide an on-site update on the progress of the Volt, guiding us through several venues at their Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.

The significance of GM’s Chevy Volt is not easily overstated. Referred to as an “EREV” (extended range electric vehicle), the Volt has an all-electric drive train, can travel up to 40 miles on plug-in battery power only, but has an onboard gasoline engine turning a generator in order to extend the range up to 440 miles if necessary. Because the Volt is designed to operate on gasoline power only, it will not end up being underpowered once the battery is largely depleted, which can happen with conventional hybrids. And since typical commutes are under 40 miles, most of the time the gasoline engine will never be turned on.

The Chevy Volt is intended to provide the best of all worlds – the zero-gas and zero-emission function of a pure EV, along with the range and versatility of a standard high-mileage gasoline powered car. It is also likely the EREV will eventually cost less than a conventional hybrid – unlike the standard hybrid which has an incredibly complex transmission, the EREV requires no transmission at all. Most other components are common to both designs.

This revolutionary design for an EREV has also been called a “series hybrid,” because the gas engine turns the generator which powers the electric motor in a series configuration, whereas by this logic conventional “parallel” hybrids have both the gasoline engine and the electric motor involved to provide traction. The EREV has also been referred to as a member of GM’s “E-Flex” family of vehicles, since eventually the same design could accomodate, for example, a fuel cell to provide electricity instead of an onboard gasoline engine and an electric generator. With E-Flex, as GM’s VP of Global Program Management Jon Lauckner put it, “the only thing we’re ruling out is steam.”

Jon Lauckner GM VP Global Program Mgmt. “The only thing we’re ruling out is steam.”

So will GM deliver the first EREV designed for mass production? According to Frank Weber, GM’s Chief Engineer for E-Flex Systems, “we are working with incredible speed, and this is the number one priority project we have at GM.” Weber went on to say “all project plans we have now are targeting November 2010. We’ve never before had a technology program and a vehicle program moving forward simultaneously.”

During the day-long guided tour of GM’s research facilities, it appeared most if not all of the top engineers and managers involved with the Volt program were available to speak with the journalists. And after a brief initial briefing on the morning of April 3rd, not one of the venues we visited was a standard press briefing room. Everywhere we went, we were taken to actual work areas where we could see work in progress on the Volt.

During one of our first stops, we sat in an engineering visualization studio where, using 3-D glasses relied on by GM’s engineers, the Volt was built for us one component at a time, starting with the battery and stopping just short of the final exterior shell. Many technical specifications were revealed for the first time.

The Volt’s battery will hold 12 kWh of charge; it will weigh 170 kilograms and be 1.8 meters long. The bottom of the battery is strengthened to improve the overall strength of the car, and is designed to be integrated with GM’s standard next generation compact car underbody. The gas tank will have a special unit to reprocess evaporation, something important to manage since the gas in many cases will rarely be used.

The battery pack was designed to allow the Volt to do zero to sixty MPH in 8.5 seconds, have passing capability, deliver a 40 mile range in city driving, have a cycle life of 150,000 miles (in mixed 100% EV and “charge sustaining” mode), and last 10 years. The Volt will have no transmission, and will have a top speed of 100 miles per hour. The engineers would not comment on the top RPM of the electric motor, nor would they reveal the reduction gear ratio. They would disclose that the electric motor-generator that will provide traction for the Volt will deliver 120 kilowatts of peak power and 370 newton meters of torque.

The E-Flex Extended Range Electric Vehicle Operation Modes

From 100% battery power, to using the gas generator, to recharge.

The Volt’s power consumption profile is a good way to see just how brilliant – and practical – the EREV (using an onboard gasoline engine turning an electric generator) design really is: As the table indicates, in the pure electric vehicle mode, the battery charge is gradually depleted as the car runs on power exclusively from the battery. The upward spikes on the overall downward slope represent energy returned to the battery by the dual-mode motor-generator whenever the car brakes or deaccelerates. Once the battery is depleted to a certain minimum – not the absolute minimum because by keeping charge in the battery a buffer resource for surge power is maintained, and the battery life is prolonged by not being totally depleted each cycle – the gasoline engine is turned on. In this state, the battery’s state of charge alternates between a minimum level and a somewhat higher level created by the gasoline engine’s generator power delivering more electricity than the electric traction motor requires, wherein at a certain point the gasoline engine shuts down again to let the battery drain back to the minimum. This cycle repeats itself until the duty cycle of the vehicle is over, and the vehicle is parked and plugged in. This third mode, of course, is the charging mode, where the vehicle is shut down and the battery is recharged from a stationary source.

Volt production design battery packs in testing.

The next stop for us on the tour was the battery testing lab, where production versions of the final battery packs for the Volt were being subjected to a variety of tests – essentially designed to simulate ten years of wear into a two year testing cycle. The batteries were subjected to cycle, calendar, temperature, vibration, longevity, road conditions; all conceivable forms of abuse and normal wear were being simulated in this lab.

Possibly the most unforgettable sight on this tour was in the back of the lab, where one of the Volt battery packs was on display next to a battery pack from the legendary EV-1. The comparison was dramatic – both battery packs store 12 kilowatt-hours of charge, but the Volt battery pack weighed 400 pounds (170 kg), and the EV-1 battery pack weighed 1,200 pounds. Both battery packs were in the shape of a “T” – where the long center portion forms the spine of the vehicle, and the somewhat shorter top section ran from side to side in the rear of the vehicle. But the EV-1′s battery pack dimensions were 2.35 meters (7’8″) by 1.38 meters (4’6″), compared to the Volt’s battery pack dimensions of only 1.63 meters (5’4″) by .83 meters (2’9″).

These recent improvements in battery technology cannot be overemphasized, because it is the reason the series hybrid – or EREV – technology wasn’t viable sooner. As John Lauckner patiently explained, the comparison between batteries using lithium ion chemistry (used in the Volt), nickel metal hydride (used in conventional hybrids), and lead acid (used ten years ago in the EV-1) is a best explained by the ratio 3:2:1, i.e., for the same amount of stored energy, the battery pack in the Volt has 1/3rd the volume and mass of the battery pack used in the EV-1, and 1/2 the volume and mass of typical battery packs used in conventional hybrids. Moreover, the ability of the lithium ion battery to provide surge power is significantly higher than that of the nickel metal hydride batteries, and this is the only way the gasoline engine can be disconnected from the drive-train, while still enabling a car to display normal acceleration while in all-electric mode. Based on their current progress and projections, it is possible that GM and their partners have the most advanced lithium ion battery packs in the world today for automotive applications.

Also present at GM’s battery lab was an intact – and very polished – EV-1, one of the few remaining. It was inspiring to view this legendary vehicle, an engineering feat that was not ready for mass production but nonetheless an icon that will never be forgetten. GM learned a great deal from the EV-1 program that they are applying to their Volt program, increasing the likelyhood that the Volt will be a breakthrough, rather than a footnote, in the pages of automotive history.

Volt cross-section. Electric traction motor & gasoline motor for the generator are all under the front hood. The battery runs down the spine and to each side behind the rear seats. The gas tank is in the rear.

Probably most significantly, in GM’s battery lab for some tests were two “mules,” prototype Volts that had Volt components installed and running, yet each of them used a 2005 Malibu shell for their bodies. According to GM’s Mickey Bly, Director of Hybrid Vehicle Integration and Controls, this month the first lithium ion battery packs will come off of the testing floor and go into the mules. These prototypes, the first EREV’s ever built, have already been on the track, where GM engineers reported they were “a great handling, spirited car.” Bly stated there would be three more prototypes on the track by summer, using “production intent design” batteries.

Another unforgettable moment was the tour of GM’s wind tunnel, directed by Ken Carbon, GM’s Chief “Aerodynamicist.” One of the largest in the world, GM’s wind tunnel operates 24 hours per day, five days per week, testing every vehicle GM makes as well as many vehicles manufactured by competitors. In the testing section of the wind tunnel, a 1/3rd scale version of the Volt was standing – with tape covering much of the body in order to avoid revealing design details. The wind tunnel has two turntables; the smaller one that the 1/3rd scale model sat on was able to rotate 360 degrees, in order to allow the engineers to evaluate the aerodynamic profile of the vehicle from all angles. The larger turntable was much larger, about 25 feet in diameter. Not only did this turntable rotate 360 degrees, but embedded in the turntable were four smaller turntables, approximately five feet in diameter each, that also had full rotation. Embedded on each of these four smaller turntables was a scale – itself able to rotate. The purpose of all these adjustable turntables is to allow a vehicle of any size to sit with each tire resting on one of the scales, wherein the vehicle can be subjected to wind from any angle, with the the effect of the wind on the weight displacement of the vehicle precisely measured.

GM’s Wind Tunnel Rotor – 43′ diameter, six blades of laminated spruce.

After assuring us that the motor could not be accidently activated, Carbon escorted our group around two turns – filled with huge curved vertical “turning vanes” that provided for smooth airflow – of the circular wind tunnel to view the fan. Built in 1980, this almost unreal rotor is 43 feet in diameter, with six blades constructed from laminated Spruce. Until surprisingly recently, Spruce was the best choice for a fan of this size. The material has a high strength to weight ratio and is very durable. Unlike virtually all materials short of recently developed composites, it is not subject to hardening or fatigue. The rotors had balsa tips to absorb impacts from any objects that conceivably could make it through the many screens covering turns one and two in the tunnel and hit one of the tips. The orange center nacelle, 18 feet in diameter, almost the size of a blimp, was designed to smooth the flow of air over the rotor and protect the motor. The 4,500 horsepower DC electric motor has an RPM of 270 and is able to bring the airspeed up to 400 MPH. Once this the air travels around turns three and four to enter the testing section, it can still reach a maximum of 138 MPH.

Chief Engineer Frank Weber would not reveal the aerodynamic drag coefficient of the Volt; he would only say they are targeting under .295. He also noted the Volt has been spending a lot of time in the wind tunnel as the body contours undergo their final refinements. The EV-1 had a drag of .19, which remains the lowest in history for a production vehicle.

Aerodynamic drag is referred to as counts by Bob Boniface, director of both exterior and interior design for the Volt. “Computer Artists” can direct specifications into simulations of aerodynamics, then scale models are milled using a Taurus SC-67 3-axis computer guided milling machine cutting into a clay covered wood and styrofoam armature. Clay can be added later if a particular edge needs to be higher, and the drill can precisely re-render the edge.

“We can go from a foam armature to a finished car in two days, said Boniface, but a car’s exterior only begins there. The many interactions between Boniface’s exterior designers and the wind tunnel tests created a language – every .01 degree change in the vehicles drag coefficient equates to ten “counts” of drag. To shave just a few counts of drag off a vehicle, designers will send a new model into the tunnel, with, for example, the cross-section of the side mirrors reduced slightly. We only saw a glimpse of one corner of the front and rear of the latest exterior version of the Volt, and Boniface had added a special heavier underlayer of covering onto the design prototype in order to prevent a “wardrobe malfunction.”

Inside the Volt. Center shift lever, concave door interiors.

The interior of the Volt is a good mix of next generation controls and traditional features. The Volt is designed to be driven by someone completely unfamiliar with the Volt, but who knows how to drive a car. In a way, the Volt benefits from coming in after many new standard new interfaces, such as GPS navigation, have already been added. The Volt is adding its uniqueness as an EREV onto a mature grouping of next-generation interfaces. The center spine – where the battery adds a low center of gravity mass and structural strength – also adds spaciousness to the cab, since the four seats are necessarily further apart. This center spine also makes feasible a more spacious driver interface, with plenty of room for a navigation console and a center-placed ignition and shifting lever. The impact of a widened center is countered somewhat with negative (concave) surfaces on the doors to allow the Volt to have a roomy interior while retaining an excellent drag coefficient.

Volt interior designer Tim Greig emphasized how the Volt will incorporate a “human machine interaction” that will take advantage of modern technology along with traditional automotive signals that humans intuitively associate with operating a vehicle. Accordingly, the car will recognize the key from a distance, preparing the car for operation in anticipation of being occupied by the owner – per a user-defined program. “The entire driver experience is being carefully choreographed,” said Greig, “sight, smell, sound, lighting.”

It is clear the Volt design, interior and exterior, is nearly ready to take the next steps towards production. As Boniface put it, “We are starting to freeze surfaces.” Also being finalized is the interior power management system. The Volt’s state of the art systems will be extremely efficient. As Weber puts it, the “baseload electricity budget of the Volt is only about 50% of the typical modern car.” Yet the Volt designers also paid attention to affordability – to get that extra mile of efficiency, for example, they did not go to LED headlights – nor an alumnium frame, for that matter.

Frank Weber GM Chief Engineer E-Flex “We are working with incredible speed.”

It is also clear GM isn’t kidding. In response to criticisms that to meet a 2010 launch, production version prototypes should be on the road right now, Frank Weber said “You will not see a final Volt with a final propulsion system until 2009, it isn’t necessary.” The Volt, again, is the first time GM has ever had a technology (EREV) program and a vehicle (Volt) program moving forward simultaneously – but the design and development tools available today make this feasible while ten years ago it might not have been. As GM’s Jon Lauckner put it, “GM is spending a lot of talent and treasure on the Volt.” Is this the most expensive development project GM has ever done? Without answering specifically, Laukner compared the Volt program to the 1979 “X-Car,” which introduced unibody construction and front wheel drive, two revolutionary and enduring innovations.

Can the Volt “take the car out of the environmental discussion?” It certainly appears a car like the Volt could shift primary reliance from gasoline to electricity for most passenger transportation miles, if not more. EREV technology offers affordable cars that can run on cheap electricity, only requiring gasoline for infrequent longer trips. In late 2006, Vice Chairman Lutz instructed VP Global Product Development Jon Laukner to “lead development of a game-changing concept car to announce in January 2007.” With the Chevy Volt EREV, GM delivered the announcement, and at about one-third of the way between announcement and the planned November 2010 launch, GM is still playing for keeps. The Volt’s EREV technology, arriving alongside smart-car features and enhanced safety features – all parts of GM’s “new automotive DNA” – is going to change how we think of cars forever.

Machines driven by wind are nothing new: Windmills date back to as far as 200 B.C where Persian farmers used these mesmerizing contraptions for grinding grains. Windmills are still popular today, especially in Europe where it is impossible not to see a windmill when touring areas like Denmark. Wind energy has been manipulated for centuries and with demand for electricity constantly peaking, it is no wonder that companies are throwing ideas around for more advanced and ecologically friendly ways of generating wind power.

Airtricity develops wind turbines that are dispersed throughout Europe. These wind farms, made up of as many as 100 turbines have been built on hills, coasts and offshore sea beds where the 1MW of power generated by one of these contraptions can supply 700 homes with electricity. The idea of these giant turbines in the way of an otherwise pristine ocean view might be of concern to some, but the location of these turbines is carefully thought out to put minimal stress on the environment while also maintaining the aesthetic appeal of a specific area.

Turbines are typically located in areas with predictable winds powerful enough to turn the massive blades that start the whole process of generating electricity. Generally speaking, wind turbines are best suited in areas with constant winds of 10mph or more. Wind generated power is not consistent in one area, however, and with Airtricity’s plan of arranging wind farms throughout Europe, and not just in one region, energy flow is constant. Airtricity explains that “by connecting and integrating geographically disperse wind farms across Europe, each experiencing a different phase of the region’s weather system, electricity is produced wherever the wind is blowing and transported to regions of demand, ensuring a reliable and predictable source of energy.”

The most impressive aspect of the company is their goal to implement the offshore “Supergrid”. Wind turbines are most efficient offshore, since environmental impact and noise is minimal, and wind speed is typically higher over water than on land.

Airtricity explains that “The first step in the Supergrid programme is the development of a 10GW* Foundation Project to prove both the concept of the Supergrid and the technologies to be employed. Located between the Germany and the Netherlands, the 10GW Foundation Project will consist of around 2,000 wind turbines covering 3,000 km ² with a capacity of 5MW each, delivering output to all three countries…10GW is enough capacity to power over 8 million homes.”

A major benefit of using wind generated power is that the cost is predictable. Frustratring fluctuations in prices, currently seen with fuel costs, do not apply to wind turbines making the clean, reliable and efficient energy generated by these wind farms very cost competitive.

The brochure explaining the details of the power grid-”Building a More Powerful Europe”-can be found here.

If you want to make money, you better have a contingency for a future where there’s global cooling, and brokers populate the streetcorners with signs that say “will trade carbon credits for food.” No rational investor fails to prepare for likely eventualities – and the precautionary principle that informs global warming alarm will not help your portfolio when global temperature trends are on the downside of even. The true believers will rejoice that Polar Bears lived, and you will paper walls with green stocks, pasted right on top of the internet stocks, and the membership units in the condo complex that flipped ten times and crashed before it was built.

California probably is the green capital of the world. But what surprises will California deal?

Today was the last day of the Green California Summit at the Sacramento Convention Center, and nearly the entire main hall in the sprawling building was filled. Of the many exhibitors, our absolute surprise winner had to be Miles Electric Vehicles, a company that has stealthily accumulated sales of what is now thousands of all-electric cars, sold and being operated by customers. Miles Electric Vehicles has been doing a lot of fleet sales; they offer trucks; their unit sales of freeway-capable EVs have started to climb beyond a pilot phase. Why isn’t this company front page news?

At the 2008 Green California Summit there were inspiring displays of biodegradable utensils and plates and cups made from sugar cane or corn from Nature Friendly Products and Stalk Market. There were inexpensive, solar-friendly rooftops from Carlisle, and turf rooftops from GreenGrid. There were photovoltaic panels you can unroll onto a roof and walk on from Solar Integrated, building-deployable vertical-axis windvanes that look like giant corkscrews from Helix Wind, and two of the most efficient residential solar installers to-date, the meteoric Solar City and Akeena Solar.

Not to be ignored, there were a couple of companies who have developed and are selling green urinals, Zurn and Falcon, which use nearly negligible water. Moreover, unlike wave power devices, urinals do not have a lot of embodied energy. And along with Miles, and Zap, and Zenn, there were the photovoltaic powered golf carts (the flat shade roof is covered with photovoltaics) from Cruise Car; some models collect about 1.5 miles of range each day in full sun – greatly supplementing the onboard battery.

Exciting progress is being made in integrated walls, cheap, incorporating all structural elements, and employing green materials. Perform Wall manufactures (approximately) 1′ x 1′ x 2′ bricks of a foam and concrete mixture that can be stacked like Legos, the hollow interiors filled with rebar and concrete. Sipcrete manufactures structural panels with steel web reinforced, fairly thin concrete exteriors, and a foam-filled interior space interlaced with a steel frame. Connecting the sides and enabling great structural strength, this interior frame consists of numerous diagonal steel I-beams that lock into the embedded steel web inside each of the concrete exteriors.

Another next generation wall manufacturer, exhibiting at Green California, was ARXX, with a structural wall solution equally unique and innovative. ARXX’s approximately 1′ x 1′ x 2′ interlocking rectangular blocks have rigid foam exteriors (roughly 2″ thick foam exterior walls) that are set about 6″ apart; the interiors are linked with plastic diagonal struts that include snap-in indentations for quickly and easily inserting rebar. Once these blocks are assembled with rebar, they have concrete poured in and can have various surface treatments. Structural block designs show extremely interesting progress.

If you care about the rivers and springs, along with using desalination plants to pump water back into aquifers who desperately need positive water inflow to guarantee their future viability, you would want to see concrete that could allow water to flow through it to facilitate aquifer replenishment. Enviro-Crete has porous concrete that allows rain and runoff to drain through its surfaces into the earth. Such a surface might often dramatically reduce runoff if it were used for parking lots, or roads and driveways, or any suface ordinarily surfaced with nonporous concrete. Porous road surfaces is an excellent idea.

In a thermal management system, when there’s fire, there can be frost, and two companies managing building-scale thermal energy storage and management with very interesting technology are Ice Energy and Calmac. Companies able to offer battery solutions to load balancing and energy storage included U.S. Energy, Discover, and Johnson Controls. But where are the rooftop solar thermal innovators such as Soliant, who are developing 2 axis photovoltaic concentrators in a rooftop array? Or taking it one step further, where are the companies who integrate rooftop 2 axis photovoltaic concentrators with a thermal management system, which has the salutory effect of also providing solar hot water?

And of course at Green California this year there were still prominent booths for those subsidized darlings of public-private partnership, fuel cell cars. Can they work? Who can say? Can biofuel businesses funded by international corporations using carbon credit subsidies buy-up and eradicate the rest of the developing world’s rainforests and locally-owned farmlands, evicting the dwellers, to plant oil palms, sugar cane? The savanahs with jatropha? Farms with fuel crops? Where are the climate cops now? And where are the bioreactor innovators, creating biofuel in a tank using algae, or high-rise hydroponic farmers who grow food crops using treated sewage for fertilizer, while also using dehumidifiers to harvest transpirated pristine drinking water? Might they out-compete the new plantation land-grabs, rendering land fallow again, and let rainforests return with the Orangutan?

Bet on competitive business solutions to genuine environmental and energy challenges. Because while Antarctica’s 5.0 million square mile interior freezes more than ever, and where 90% of the world’s land-based ice resides the overall ice mass increases, our media covers one calving shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. And while spring thaws bring fractures on Greenland’s perimeter that nearly rival Jack London’s perennial descriptions of the annual breakup of frozen rivers in the Klondike, it is normal for ocean currents to cycle warmer for decades, then cool again.

What destruction to our liberties and wildland will linger, long after the science quietly does its inevitable duty, and confirms that CO2 meant nothing but life for the trees?

Butterflies still fly the slopes of Kilimanjaro.

If you want to make money, find the green businesses that address energy security and free market economic viability in equal measures. Only a pure libertarian would suggest that government shouldn’t assert policies to encourage green technology. But energy and resource security, and genuine environmental protection, should be the goals of government policy – not CO2 boondoggles, reliant on flawed and futile logic, that essentially reallocate higher prices charged to the consumer into new funds for public entities including their privileged retirements, the cartels with whom they collude, and green brokers who change the money.

Let all workers have retirement security, and let green be green again, instead of new taxes hiding behind CO2 fundamentalist extremism. This will inform green finance; this is sustainable. These are the businesses to find.