Tag: fuel efficiency

Green Travel Series: Airlines

  • Airplane manufacturers such as Boeing are working on improving the fuel efficiency of planes. But it might take some airline companies a while to upgrade their fleets. (Photo courtesy of The Boeing Company)

Getting somewhere by airplane used to be a luxury. Now many of us wouldn’t know life without it. As air travel gets more and more popular, there’s been more concern about the environmental impacts of our flying habits. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what’s happening in the skies:

Transcript

Getting somewhere by airplane used to be a luxury. Now many of us
wouldn’t know life without it. As air travel gets more and more
popular, there’s been more concern about the environmental impacts of
our flying habits. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what’s happening
in the skies:


Air travel still takes a backseat to car travel as a way to get around.
But it’s growing by about 5 percent a year. There are more low cost
carriers these days, and plane tickets are cheaper, in real dollars,
than they used to be.


Airplanes have gotten a lot more efficient, but they’re not off the
hook, either. They burn fossil fuels, so they emit carbon dioxide.
CO2 is almost universally agreed to be the main culprit of global
warming.


Planes are responsible for about 3% of man-made CO2 emissions.
Compared to cars and coal-burning power plants, that looks like a
pretty small percentage.


But there’s something else unique to planes that has scientists
concerned.


Gidon Eshel is a climate scientist at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. He
says planes also emit nitrous oxide and water vapor. That’s the
contrail you see. Both of those gasses can trap heat in Earth’s
atmosphere:


“The emissions associated with aviation are very important – roughly
twice as important as CO2 alone because they occur in such high reaches
of the atmosphere.”


Eshel says the effects of nitrous oxide and water vapor are stronger
than when they’re released near the ground.


There’s not much planes can do about flying so high up. But the
airline industry says it’s hard at work to make its planes more fuel
efficient.


Bill Glover directs environmental strategy for Boeing Commercial
Airplanes:


“The distance we could fly on a gallon of gas 50 years ago, we can now
do on less than a quart of gas. What we have ahead of us is more
improvements in materials, engines, aerodynamics, all of those are
going to contribute to fuel efficiency.”


Both Boeing and Airbus have unveiled shiny new planes that get more
miles to the gallon. So airlines should rush out and get the latest
models, right?


Well, it’s not that simple.


For starters, there’s the price tag: anywhere from about 14 million all
the way up to 300 million dollars.


Gueric Dechavanne is an airline industry analyst with OAGback Aviation
Solutions. He says it’s definitely in the airlines’ best interest to
upgrade their fleets. He says the cost of fuel has risen dramatically
over the past couple of years. But Dechavanne says even if airlines
can afford the newest model, it’ll be a long time before they can get
it:


“It’s not as easy as placing the order and getting the airplane today.
From the standpoint of the 787, the latest and greatest, 2014 or 2015
is the earliest delivery you can get it if you place an order today.”


Generally, the younger the airline company, the more fuel efficient
their fleet will be. Dechavanne says that means newer low cost
carriers such as JetBlue, Skybus and Spirit have the newest planes.


He says the so-called legacy airlines – such as Northwest and American
Airlines – have older fleets because they’ve been around for a while.
They have a much harder time upgrading their fleets. Dechavanne says
airlines don’t want to retire a plane before they’ve squeezed a full
life out of it:


“For the majority of U.S. carriers the fleet is still fairly young;
it’s tough for them to replace all of the inefficient airplanes just
because of the fact that fuel has gotten out of control.”


Dechavanne says, instead, some carriers are looking at less expensive
fixes – such as adding winglets to the plane to make it more
aerodynamic.


The experts have advice for travelers, too: Try to avoid connecting
flights.


Climate scientist Gidon Eshel says direct flights are better than
flights with several stops. And although it sounds counterintuitive,
it’s more efficient to take one really long flight a year than a bunch
of shorter flights.


That’s because airplanes have an ideal cruising height – about 30,000
feet up:


“To get there they need to climb a whole lot which makes short flights
relatively inefficient, sometimes very inefficient compared to long
flights.”


Another thing the experts recommend is lightening the load: pack light
and leave the hardcover books at home.


And as much as we all hate jam-packed planes, putting a lot of people
on one flight is actually better for the environment than having extra
legroom.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Epa Cites Improved Fuel Economy

The Environmental Protection Agency says cars and trucks are starting to get better gas
mileage. That comes after a long period of worsening fuel economy.
Dustin Dwyer reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency says cars and trucks are starting to get better gas
mileage. That comes after a long period of worsening fuel economy.
Dustin Dwyer reports:


The EPA says over the past three years, average vehicle fuel economy has improved by
about five percent, but that’s a small reversal after 20 years in which gas mileage only got
worse.


Jim Kliesch is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says the problem is that
getting more miles per gallon has not been a priority for automakers:


“The industry has been improving their vehicles for years. It’s just that they’ve been
applying their technical innovations to performance and not to fuel economy.”


Automakers say they’re now working to make cars more fuel efficient. In part that’s
because they have to under new fuel economy rules for trucks. And lawmakers in
Washington are debating new rules that could force even higher fuel efficiency.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Suv Makers Digesting New Fuel Standards

Automakers say meeting the government’s new fuel efficiency standards for light trucks will be a challenge. The final standards were issued last week (Wednesday, March 29th). For the first time, the largest SUVs will have to meet the standards. The GLRC’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

Automakers say meeting the government’s new fuel efficiency standards
for light trucks will be a challenge. The final standards were issued
last week (Wednesday, March 29th). For the first time, the largest SUVs
will have to meet the standards. The GLRC’s Tracy Samilton reports:


The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers calls the new standards the
most sweeping change to fuel economy rules in 30 years. Light trucks
include SUVS, minivans, and pickups, and account for more than half of
all new vehicles sold in the U.S.


Alliance spokesman Charles Territo says the set of rules will take weeks
for automakers to digest.


“Which happens to be about the size of a major city phone book. It’s
about 550 pages.”


Territo says one change is big SUVs like GM’s Hummer and Chevy
Suburban will no longer be excluded from fleet wide averages. And that
will probably mean more alternative technologies on the big trucks, like
hybrid and diesel engines and fuel cells. That isn’t enough for many
environmental groups, who say the changes won’t do much to reduce the
nation’s dependence on foreign oil.


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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New Car Mileage Estimates Overstated

  • Some federal lawmakers are concerned that the EPA's estimates on different cars' gas milages may be misleading consumers. (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)

Some federal lawmakers, along with a few environmental and consumers’ groups, want the Environmental Protection Agency to change the way it calculates a vehicle’s miles-per-gallon. They say your actual mileage will probably vary from the EPA’s figures. More from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland:

Transcript

Some federal lawmakers, along with a few environmental and consumers’ groups, want the Environmental Protection Agency to change the way it calculates a vehicle’s miles-per-gallon. They say your actual mileage will probably vary from the EPA’s figures. More from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland:


According to the EPA, my Ford Escort should get 33 miles per gallon. I wish. With the Fuel Efficiency Truth in Advertising Act, Congress could soon force the EPA to revise its fuel economy tests to reflect real-life conditions. David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists is among those who say a change is long overdue. He says the EPA created its current tests years ago.


“You wouldn’t evaluate how a student knows current events based on a test from the early 1970’s. So, it doesn’t make sense to be testing the fuel economy of our cars and trucks based on tests that are 30 years old.”


The EPA says your actual mileage depends on a number of factors, like how you drive and how you maintain your car. It says its carefully controlled lab tests are helpful in comparing one vehicle model to another.


For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.

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Study: Suv Sales Slowing Down

A study by an auto analysis firm says that sales of sport utility vehicles are beginning to slow down. That’s because consumers are demanding more cars and car-like SUVs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:

Transcript

A study by an auto analysis firm says that sales of sport utility vehicles are beginning to
slow down. That’s because consumers are demanding more cars and car-like SUVs. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:


The report from J.D. Power and Associates says inventories of SUVs are building up on
dealer lots, prices of SUVs are falling, and sales incentives are rising. The biggest
decline is taking place among the largest and least fuel efficient SUVs. Tom Libby with
J.D. Power says more people are demanding vehicles that look like SUVs, but are built
more like cars. He calls these crossovers.


“In the second quarter of 2004, crossovers actually reached 40 percent of all SUVs, and
that was a record. So we’re approaching the point where crossovers will be every other
SUV sold.”


And in certain cases, crossovers have better fuel efficiency than comparable traditional
SUVs.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.

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David Orr Speaks Out About Oil Consumption

Many Americans don’t see a connection between the war in Iraq and the price of gas at the pump, but a leading environmentalist says they should. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Many Americans don’t see a connection between the war in Iraq and the price of gas at the pump, but a leading environmentalist says they should. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Soon after George W. Bush took office, David Orr was asked to join a presidential committee aimed at improving environmental policies. They wanted the Oberlin environmental studies professor because he was considered a quote “sane environmentalist.” The group’s recommendations were supposed to be presented to Administration officials in September 2001, but after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, committee members felt their report was shelved.

“And the essential message of it was that this really is one world and what goes around comes around. And things are connected in pretty strange, ironic, and paradoxical ways and the long-term future isn’t that far off. So you really cannot make separations of things that you take to be climate, from economy, ecology, fairness, equity, justice, and ultimately security.”

But Orr says the Bush Administration and much of the nation weren’t ready for that message. People felt the need to retaliate against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Many political analysts also agreed with President Bush, that the United States had an important role to play in ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But Orr believes the U.S. invasion of Iraq was less about terrorism than it was about America’s need for Middle East oil.

“If you remove the fact that Iraq has 10-percent of the oil reserves in the world and Saudi Arabia has about 25-percent, that’s about a third of the recoverable oil resource on the planet, take the oil out, would we be there? And that’s a major issue. We’re there, in large part, because we have not pursued energy efficiency.”

Orr says reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil would make the nation more secure than spending billions of dollars in military costs to fight for those oil reserves.

Some lawmakers say reducing dependence on Middle East oil is one reason to drill for oil at home, in places such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But Orr says political leaders and citizens should instead find ways to use less oil and reduce the need for it. He says the federal energy bill should force automakers to build cars that get better gas mileage.

“If we bumped our energy efficiency up from 22 miles per gallon to 35 or 40, which is easily achievable, that’s not difficult. The technology already exists to do that. We wouldn’t have to fight wars for oil, we wouldn’t be tied to the politics of an unstable region.”

“But the car makers aren’t being forced to…”

“No – the CAFEs? no. If we had a decent energy policy, it would be a strategy not of fighting oil wars, but using in America what is our long suit: our ability with technology to begin to move us toward fuel efficiency, and that process is actually well under way. It just doesn’t get the support of the federal government.”

Instead of trying to encourage fuel efficiency, Orr says Congress is thinking about short-term answers. With the price of gas at the pump more than two dollars a gallon, the Senate recently approved a tax break package to encourage further domestic oil and gas production.

Orr wants consumers to push for energy alternatives, rather than finding more places to drill, but Americans like their big SUVs, and Orr says few politicians would risk asking them to forgo the comfort, luxury, and perceived safety of big trucks as a way to preserve energy for future generations.

“Everybody knows gas prices have to go up, everybody knows that. The question is whether we have somebody who is say a combination of Ross Perot and Franklin Roosevelt who would sit down and level with the American public. We have got to pay more.”

Orr says even if you don’t mind paying the price at the gas station, there are higher costs we’re paying for oil consumption.

“You pay for energy whatever form you get it, but you pay for efficiency whether you get it or not. You pay by fighting oil wars. You pay with dirty air and you pay at the doctor’s office or the hospital or the morgue, but you’re gonna pay one way or the other, and the lie is that somehow you don’t have to pay. And sometimes you don’t have to if you’re willing to offload the costs on your grandchildren or on other people’s lives, but somebody is gonna pay.”

And Orr says that payment is going to be either in blood, money, or public health. He outlines his thoughts on the motivations for the war in Iraq in his new book “The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror.”


For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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Automakers Scoff at “Suv Tv”

An environmental group has designed a safer, more fuel-efficient Sport Utility Vehicle. Now, it’s trying to get you to write the government to get the big automakers to make SUVs a lot like the one it designed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

An environmental group has designed a safer, more fuel efficient Sport Utility Vehicle. Now, it’s
trying to get you to write the government to get the big automakers to make SUVs a lot like the
one it designed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The environmental group, the Union of Concerned Scientists started with a Ford Explorer and
then looked at ways to improve the SUV to solve what the group saw as some design
problems.


“The Union of Concerned Scientists has developed a blueprint for a safer and more fuel efficient
SUV.”


On its website, the group lists about a dozen improvements to the SUV ranging from better,
stronger materials to keep passengers safer during a rollover to engine and transmission designs
that would mean much better gas mileage.


David Friedman is the Research Director for the Clean Vehicle Program at the Union of
Concerned Scientists. He says consumers should have those choices.


“When you step into a showroom, sure, you can choose the cup holders, you can choose the color
of your SUV. But, you can’t choose the fuel economy. You’re stuck between 16, 17, 18 miles
per gallon. What we’re talking about is taking technologies that the automakers already have to
save thousands of lives every year and to save on the order of $2,500 on fuel.”


Friedman says all the options the Union of Concerned Scientists have suggested are off-the-shelf
technology.


The auto industry says those options are available in SUVs. But nobody’s asking for them. Eron
Shosteck is a spokesperson for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade association.
Shosteck says most people want more cargo space, more power, and more towing capacity from
their SUVs. They’re not clamoring for the added safety and efficiency features that the
environmentalists are pushing.


“For consumers who wish to have better fuel economy than other attributes, automakers offer
more than 30 different models of vehicles that get 30 miles per gallon or better. They are very
poor sellers.”


That statement sounds a lot like a video cartoon satire of the auto industry on the Union of
Concerned Scientists website, SUV-TV.org.


“Look, if you want fuel economy, go drive a compact.”


The auto industry is portrayed as a cigar puffing fat cat who offers lots of excuses for why SUVs
have to be made the way they’re made. The cartoon declares satirically it’s all because “Industry
Knows Best.”


The auto industry actually says the chief reason SUVs are made the way they’re made is: that’s
what consumers want.


The Union of Concerned Scientists’ David Friedman says he doesn’t see it that way.


“They’re saying they’re responding to the marketplace, but when consumers say they want an
SUV that gets higher fuel economy, they literally do tell them to go drive a compact.”


So, the Union of Concerned Scientists is launching a campaign called the SUV-TV Challenge.
It’s trying to get 50-thousand people to visit the website and then write to the government and
automakers, demanding better fuel efficiency standards for SUVs and other vehicles.


“Well, what we’re trying to do is show consumers they have a choice and have consumers contact
the U.S. government, who’s responsible for taking care of consumers, and let them know they
want better SUVs. They want a real choice when they step into the showroom.”


The auto industry says those choices are there if you order them. But most people buy vehicles
on the showroom floor. The Auto Alliance’s Eron Shosteck says the demand for the SUVs there
is strong.


“We respond to consumer demand, not to publicity stunts by special interest groups.”


The environmentalists hope demands for safety and fuel efficiency are felt through the SUV-TV
challenge. But the real demand for fuel efficiency is more likely to come from rising prices at the
pump, which are expected to reach record highs this summer.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Enviros List Greenest and Meanest Cars

A Canadian environmental group has released a list of the greenest and meanest vehicles on the road. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

A Canadian environmental group has released a list of the greenest and meanest vehicles on the
road. The Great lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


It’s no surprise that hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius, the Honda Insight and the Honda
Civic hybrid topped the list of environmentally-friendly cars.


As for gas guzzlers, Environmental Defence Canada rated the Volkswagen Touareg, the
LandRover Range Rover and the Lexus LX 470 as the worst.


Jennifer Foulds is with Environmental Defence Canada.


She says traditionally, the green list has been dominated by Japanese automakers.


“The big three hasn’t really cracked the green list yet. They tend to have vehicles that aren’t quite
as fuel efficient, don’t have the same level of tailpipe emissions as some of the foreign made
vehicles.”


This year, the Ford Focus did qualify for the green list.


Foulds says it may soon be joined by other American cars as Ford, GM, and Daimler Chrysler
prepare to release their own hybrid vehicles.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

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The Debate Over a Corn-Based Hydrogen Economy

  • Researchers are looking at ethanol from corn as an environmentally-friendly way to power fuel cells. However, some studies show corn-based ethanol takes more energy to produce than the fuel provides. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Researchers are looking at ways to use corn-based ethanol as a way to power hydrogen fuel cells. It would appear to be an environmentally friendly way to get into the hydrogen fuel economy. However, ethanol might not be as environmentally friendly as its proponents claim. Backed by the farm lobby and ag industries such as Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has plenty of political support. But some researchers say corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports:

Transcript

Researchers are looking at ways to use corn-based ethanol as a way to power hydrogen fuel cells.
It would appear to be an environmentally friendly way to get into the hydrogen fuel economy.
However, ethanol might not be as environmentally friendly as its proponents claim. Back by the
farm lobby and ag industry such as Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has plenty of political
support. But some researchers say corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports…


This reactor is in a laboratory at the University of Minnesota ticking as it converts ethanol into
hydrogen. Researchers here envision thousands of these inexpensive reactors in communities
across America using ethanol to create hydrogen, which would then be used in fuel cells to
generate electricity.


Lanny Schmidt, a Professor of Chemical Engineering, directs the team that created the reactor.


“We’re not claiming our process is the cure-all for the energy crisis or anything like that. But it’s
a potential step along the way. It makes a suggestion of a possible way to go.”


Hydrogen is usually extracted from fossil fuels in dirtier and more costly refineries.


Schmidt says it’s much better to make hydrogen from ethanol.


“It right now looks like probably the most promising liquid non-toxic energy carrier we can think
of if you want renewable fuels.”


Not so fast, says David Pimentel, an agricultural scientist at Cornell University. For years,
Pimentel has warned about what he calls the cost and efficiency and boondoggle of ethanol.
Pimentel says ethanol is a losing proposition.


“It takes 30-percent more energy, including oil and natural gas, primary those two resources to
produce ethanol. That means importing both oil and natural gas because we do not have a
sufficient amount of either one.”


Pimentel says most research on ethanol fails to account for all the energy needed to make the fuel,
such as energy used to make the tractors and irrigate crops. Adding insult to injury, says
Pimentel, ethanol relies on huge government subsidies going to farmers and agri-business.


“If ethanol is such a great fuel source, why are we subsidizing it with 2-billion dollars annually?
There’s big money, as you well know, and there’s politics involved. And the big money is leaking
some of that 2-billion dollars in subsidies to the politicians and good science, sound science,
cannot compete with big money and politics.”


Pimentel also points to environmental damage of growing corn – soil erosion, water pollution
from nitrogen fertilizer and air pollution associated with facilities that make ethanol. But
Pimentel has his detractors.


David Morris runs the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis. Morris is not a scientist,
but he commissioned a study on ethanol. He says Pimentel relies on out-of-date figures and fails
to account for the fact that ethanol production is getting more efficient.


Morris’ findings – a gallon of ethanol contains more than twice the energy needed to produce it.
As for subsidies…


“There’s no doubt that if we did not provide a subsidy for ethanol it would not be competitive
with gasoline. But what we need to understand is that we also subsidize gasoline, and if you took
the percentage of the Pentagon budget, which is spent directly on maintaining access to Middle-
Eastern oil, and impose that at the pump, it would add 25- to 50-cents a gallon. At that point,
ethanol is competitive, under the assumption that you will not need a large military budget to
protect our access to Iowa corn.”


But more efficient than making ethanol from corn might be grass, or even weeds. David Morris
says that’s because you don’t have fertilize or irrigate those kinds of plants, the way you do corn.


“So if we’re talking about ethanol as a primary fuel to truly displace gasoline, we have to talk
about a more abundant feedstock. So instead of the corn kernel, it become the corn stock, or it
becomes fast-growing grasses, or it becomes trees, or sawdust or organic garbage. And then
you’re really talking about a carbohydrate economy.”


Pimentel scoffs at that idea.


“You’ve got the grind that material up, and then to release the sugars, you’ve got to use an acid,
and the yield is not as high. In fact, it would be 60-percent more energy using wood or grass
materials.”


While scientists and policy people debate whether ethanol is efficient or not, Lanny Schmidt and
his team soldier on in the lab undeterred in their efforts to use ethanol for fuel. Schmidt
understands some of Pimentels’s concerns, but he thinks scientists will find an answer, so ethanol
can be used efficiency enough to help power the new hydrogen economy.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Stucky in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Traffic Jams Waste Billions of Gallons of Fuel

Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the
upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


The latest report looks at 2001. It found that about half of the time we spend in traffic jams is due
to delays caused by accidents, vehicle breakdowns, weather and construction. But researchers at
the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A and M University found that people are driving
farther to work and they’re also making more trips. Instead of combining trips to the bank, the
grocery store and the cleaners, more and more drivers tend to make separate trips, putting more
cars on the road at a time. David Schrank is one of the researchers. He says it ends up being a
huge waste of fuel.


“In 2001, almost five-point-seven billion gallons of fuel — that’s with a ‘b’– were wasted in
traffic congestion in 75 urban areas in the United States.”


And the study estimates we all spent more time, three-and-a-half billion hours, stuck in traffic
during the year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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