News > June

California to Boost Ethanol Content in Gasoline to 10% by 2009
Under a new resolution adopted by the California Air Resources Board, all refineries making gas sold in the Golden State will have to blend 10 percent ethanol into their gas starting Dec. 2009, to meet new fuel standards set by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Industry groups said the ruling will almost double demand for the biofuel in California, which last year used about 1 billion gallons of ethanol, or nearly one-fifth of the total consumed nationwide. Blending more ethanol into gasoline will improve air quality in California and reduce dependency on foreign oil, Schwarzenegger said. Ethanol in the United States is produced mainly from corn, but many environmental groups, who support its increased use because it lowers greenhouse gas emissions, advocate producing the fuel out of the cellulose in plant materials rather than corn.
Source: California gas will be up to 10 percent ethanol by 2009, San Diego Union Tribune

GM to Aid in Developing Natural Gas Vehicle Market in Spain
GM Spain and Spanish gas supplier Gas Natural are collaborating to develop the market for natural gas vehicles (NGV) in Spain. The two companies agreed to promote the use of natural gas vehicles in both the public and private sectors, to introduce new natural gas vehicles into the market, and to create the refueling infrastructure. Spain currently has very few NGVs, but GM’s Opel has successfully offered natural gas vehicles in other European markets since 1999, and has sold more than 40,000 units into Italy and Germany, the leading European users.
Source: GM and Gas Natural Team to Develop Market for Natural Gas Vehicles in Spain, Green Car Congress

B.C. and Scandinavian Hydrogen Highways Join Forces to Address Challenges
British Columbia’s Hydrogen Highway Steering Team and the Scandinavian Hydrogen Highway Partnership signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formalizing their intent to collaborate on development of “hydrogen highways” in B.C. and Scandinavia.
The MOU links the two participants in jointly addressing the common barriers to commercial deployment of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. The objectives of the partnership include: supporting the development of codes and standards; sharing learning and best practices; coordinating product specifications; increasing public awareness and encouraging collaboration in the application of new hydrogen and fuel cell products. 
Source: British Columbia and Scandinavian Hydrogen Highways Join Forces, FuelCellWorks

Oregon Transit District Tests Biodiesel Blend in its Buses
The Lane Transit District (LTD) in Eugene, Oregon is testing biodiesel in its buses. The district has begun adding a 5 percent blend of plant-based biodiesel to its low-sulfur diesel in 10 of its older buses. If no major problems surface, LTD hopes to increase the biodiesel blend incrementally to 20 percent for its entire 110-bus fleet. Opting for a biodiesel blend will reduce fuel costs for LTD. The district consumes 1 million gallons of fuel a year, and is paying about $2.25 per gallon for biodiesel. LTD is joining other transit districts that have already experimented with biodiesel blends, such as Portland's TriMet bus system, which uses a 5 percent blend in all its buses
Source: LTD rolls out test of biodiesel blend in its older buses, The Register Guard

Chinese Project Encourages Energy Alternatives for Vehicles
Chinese auto manufacturers will use more resources to develop commercial vehicles that use alternative fuels such as natural gas, mixed fuel and fuel cells, as part of the new Energy Vehicles Project from the High-Tech Research and Development Program of China. China already has a robust natural gas infrastructure with 220,000 natural gas vehicles and over 700 gas stations, which help save 1.5 million tons of gasoline per year. Hybrid cars are predicted to become more popular in China in the near future, whereas fuel cell vehicles are not expected to be produced on a large scale until 2020.
Source: Energy alternatives for vehicles, China Daily

Peru Enables More Motorists to Convert to Natural Gas
Peru's Minister of Energy, Juan Valdivia, has announced the inauguration of three new fuel stations to service a growing number of natural-gas vehicles — including a station in northern Lima that is able to service 100 cars per hour. Valdivia stated that each station can serve 800 vehicles and more stations will be opening soon. The Minister gave consumers the assurance that the price of natural gas will remain fixed for the next five years and will only increase by a maximum of five percent after that.
Source: Peru's Natural Gas Solution, Living In Peru

GAO Projects 30% Use of Corn Crop for Biofuel
A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns that within five years, almost a third of the U.S. corn crop will be used to produce fuel ethanol, possibly raising animal feed costs for farmers and meat prices for consumers. Assuming U.S. ethanol production continues to expand to the Energy Department's projected 11.2 billion gallons by 2012, the GAO projects that about 30 percent of the corn crop will be needed for fuel supply. Separately, the GAO said the push to expand E85 fuel, made from 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, could make the demand for corn grow even more as ethanol is not a gallon-for-gallon replacement for gasoline.
Source: Ethanol to take 30 pct of U.S. corn crop in 2012: GAO, Reuters

Analysts Forecast Oversupply of Biofuel
Wall Street sees challenges ahead for the rapidly growing ethanol industry. Some Wall Street and university analysts predict the ethanol boom is about to stumble on a supply glut and shrinking profit margins. Lehman Brothers analysts estimated the surplus at about 1 million gallons per day starting in the second half of 2007. The firm’s report attributed part of that to the ethanol plant construction boom, but said transportation bottlenecks are a bigger problem.
Source: As ethanol production grows, some industry watchers forecast oversupply, Boston Herald

China Blocks Use of Food Crops for Biofuel
Fears of food shortages and price rises due to biofuel demand has prompted the Chinese government to mandate that biofuel producers should only use non-food crops. Corn, which currently accounts for 90 percent of Chinese ethanol manufacture, has risen sharply in price over the past few years and last year the price of pork, China's principal meat, rose 43 percent due to increasing feed costs. "Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China," said an official of the National Energy Leading Group. To counter the demand for food crops, China’s first cellulosic ethanol plant should be in operation by 2008 — cellulosic ethanol can be produced from almost any organic matter, including agricultural waste, grasses and sewage. China is the world's third largest producer of biofuels, after the United States and Brazil.
Source: China blocks food for biofuel, Food Production Daily

Ford Rolls Out First E85-Fueled Hybrid SUVs
Ford has delivered the first of its E85-powered Ford Escape Hybrid SUVs. The three vehicles — the world's first hybrid vehicles capable of operating on blends of fuel containing as much as 85 percent ethanol — were delivered to the US Department of Energy, the Renewable Fuels Association and the Governors' Ethanol Coalition. A total of 20 Ford E85 Escape Hybrids will be delivered to select fleet customers in six states. The E85 version produces about 25 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a gasoline-fueled Escape Hybrid. Ford has committed to making half of its annual vehicle production capable of running on alternative fuels by 2012.
Source: Ford Makes History As Demonstration Fleet Of Ethanol-Fueled Hybrids Hits The Road, World-Wire

Toyota’s Global Hybrid Sales Top One Million
A decade after the first Prius went on sale, Toyota's global sales of hybrid vehicles have hit a landmark one million, underlining the automaker's lead in green technology. Toyota Motor's cumulative sales of gas-and-electric-powered vehicles totaled just over one million as of the end of May. Of those, nearly 345,000 hybrids were sold in Japan, while 702,000 were sold abroad. Sales of Toyota hybrids have climbed from just 18,000 in 1998 to 312,500 last year, with the Prius as the overwhelming leader in the category, selling a total of 757,600 units since its 1997 introduction in Japan. In 2000, Toyota began selling the Prius in North America and Europe and last year the model made up more than 40 percent of hybrid sales in the United States.
Source: Toyota sells 1 million hybrids, San Jose Mercury News

Indian Government Plans for One Million Hydrogen Vehicles by 2020
The Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has launched a National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap to build a hydrogen energy infrastructure, and is aiming to have one million vehicles using the fuel by 2020. As part of the new initiative, a demonstration project will set up a hydrogen-dispensing pump at a fuelling station in New Delhi. The pump will dispense both neat hydrogen and CNG blended with hydrogen (H-CNG) as fuel for vehicles. The H-CNG blends, which are already being used in modified CNG vehicles today, help to further reduce emissions from CNG vehicles. The government project will also generate operational experience in handling hydrogen as an automotive fuel.
Source: Plan to use hydrogen as vehicle fuel, Times of India

Enterprise Rent-A-Car Shows Leadership in Fuel-Saving Initiatives
Enterprise Rent-A-Car has implemented a comprehensive environmental stewardship platform that features several long-term initiatives, including a fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles, FlexFuel vehicles and gas/electric hybrids, as well as a commitment to alternative fuels research. Enterprise's founder recently funded the creation of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels with a $25 million gift. The Company currently operates more than 3,000 gas/electric hybrid vehicles and has more fuel-efficient cars on the road than any other rental car company in the world, with 47 percent of its rental fleet (more than 334,000 vehicles) averaging at least 28 miles per gallon.
Source: Enterprise Rent-A-Car touts fuel-saving initiatives, St. Louis Business Journal

Quebec’s Government Provides Boost to Ethanol Industry
Quebec's government is aiming to have five percent ethanol content in gasoline used in the province by 2012 and Premier Jean Charest is committing $6 million in public funds towards that goal. The money will go to fund research and development on ethanol made from waste from the forest and agriculture sectors as well as urban waste. Another $19 million will come from the private sector and the University of Sherbrooke. The province has pledged to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Accord. Charest says this measure, along with a carbon tax that takes effect this fall, will go a long way to meeting those targets.
Source: Quebec to boost ethanol industry, Canada.com

Utah's Governor Makes Personal Choice to Switch To Natural Gas
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will soon be driving his own alternative-fuel vehicle — a 2005 Chevrolet Suburban he will be able to fill up for as little as 73 cents a gallon.  Huntsman's automobile will be powered by compressed natural gas, a readily available fuel that generates the same miles per gallon as gasoline with little pollution. Huntsman's decision to convert the state-owned vehicle he drives to natural gas — a $10,000 to $15,000 expense he is paying for out of his own pocket — comes in the wake of his meeting two weeks ago with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in which he pledged to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a multi-state effort. It also raises the prospect that the state soon may consider converting more of its substantial fleet of automobiles and trucks to run on the clean-burning fuel.
Source: More drivers, including Utah's governor, are switching to natural gas, Salt Lake Tribune

California and B.C. Agree to Forge Partnerships to Reduce Greenhouse Gases
California’s Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and British Columbia’s Premier, Gordon Campbell, have signed an agreement outlining key actions that the two regions will take to reduce greenhouse gases. As an example of a successful collaboration towards this goal, Schwarzenegger cited a current partnership between a pair of companies in California and B.C. that is helping the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach meet emissions standards. The ports are “buying trucks with natural gas engines made by a Vancouver company,” he said. "And a California company called Clean Energy has seized this opportunity to build stations to fuel those trucks. That's how we're working together."
Source: California's Schwarzenegger says partnerships vital to protecting environment, Canada.com

New Texas Biodiesel Plant Has Capacity to Produce 110 Million Gallons a Year
BioSelect Fuels and Chevron have opened one of the first large-scale biodiesel production facilities in North America. The plant, located in Galveston, Texas, will initially produce 20 million gallons of biodiesel a year and has the capability to expand operations to produce 110 million gallons a year, produced from soybeans and other renewable feedstocks. The biodiesel will be sold to the marine, commercial, trucking and industrial markets for use as pure biodiesel or biodiesel blended with off-road or on-road diesel.
Source: BioSelect, Chevron unveil Galveston biodiesel plant, Houston Business Journal

California Air Resources Board Awards $25 Million for Alternative Fuel Projects
The California Air Resources Board has announced that forty projects have won $25 million in grant money to encourage the early adoption of alternative fuels in California. A portion of the funding went to help the start up of several small biofuel production facilities. The innovative facilities will: convert cow manure waste into biofuel, produce methane from a dairy digester to power milk trucks and generate electricity, produce biodiesel from recycled waste vegetable oil, and convert landfill gas to LNG to power transit buses.
Source: $25 Million Distributed for the Advancement of Alternative Fuel Usage in California, California EPA Air Resources Board

Ethanol and Biodiesel Unable to Meet Bush's Alternative Fuels Targets
Leading producers of ethanol and biodiesel say their industries face serious barriers to meeting President Bush’s latest targets to reduce dependency on gasoline, which includes a goal of producing 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuel by 2017. “I've yet to meet anyone who thinks more than half could be from ethanol and biodiesel," Pearce Hammond, an analyst at Simmons & Co. International, says of the targets, stating that total production of ethanol and biodiesel may reach 17.5 million gallons by that time. Hammond says there could be other solutions to the huge challenge of changing the nation’s fueling habits — such as the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel.
Source: Biofuel Producers: Ethanol and Biodiesel Not Enough to Meet Bush's Targets, American Agriculturist

Beijing Public Transport Orders 250 More CNG Bus Engines
Beijing Public Transport Holdings, Ltd. has ordered 250 new Cummins Westport natural gas engines to power Beijing Jinghua Coach Co. buses. Running on clean-burning compressed natural gas, these buses will be added to the current fleet of CNG-powered buses to be operated during next year’s 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. More than 3,000 Cummins Westport natural gas engines are in operation in China today.
Source: Beijing Public Transport Co. Orders 250 CNG Bus Engines from Cummins Westport, Green Car Congress