Tag: university of california

Flex-Fuel Economy Questioned

If you plan to buy a new car or truck this
year, you might find some showrooms filled with
vehicles that run largely on ethanol instead of
gasoline. Car companies are pushing these corn-fueled vehicles as environmentally friendly.
Julie Grant takes a look at those claims:

Transcript

If you plan to buy a new car or truck this
year, you might find some showrooms filled with
vehicles that run largely on ethanol instead of
gasoline. Car companies are pushing these corn-fueled vehicles as environmentally friendly.
Julie Grant takes a look at those claims:


More people are considering buying cleaner, more fuel-efficient
cars now that gas prices and global temperatures are on the rise. The gas-
electric hybrids made by Toyota and Honda are becoming popular. And
American car companies are also jumping on board and offering alternative-
powered vehicles.


General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner has put much of his company’s stock in
ethanol:


“At GM, we believe that the bio-fuel with the greatest potential to
displace petroleum-based fuels in the US is ethanol, and so we have
made a major commitment here to vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol.”


E85 is a blend that’s 85% ethanol with 15% gasoline. GM’s not the only company offering cars that run on them:


(Sound of vehicle introduction)


Angela Hines is from Green Bay, Wisconsin. She’s taking notes as she looks at one
flex fuel car. The E85 only matters to her if it’s going to save her a
few bucks:


“I drive anywhere from 80-200 miles
a day for work, so yeah, gas is important.”


Gui Derochers is looking at a Chevy Silverado pickup truck:


(Grant:) “Does it matter to you that it’s a flex fuel?”


“I think it’s a good thing… flex-fuel. Particularly, we know there are some ethanol plants in Michigan coming, right? Isn’t
that what flex fuel is? Ethanol?”


Derochers works on engines and transmissions:


“You have to remember, I work for Daimler-Chrysler. But we have flex fuel as well. It’s a good thing. It’s wonderful.”


But not everyone thinks the move toward ethanol-fueled cars is
wonderful. Tadeusz Patzek is a professor of civil and environmental
engineering at the University of California in Berkeley. He says
ethanol is not cheaper and it’s not any better for the environment than
regular gas.


Patzek says each gallon of ethanol burned might emit less greenhouse gas
into the air, but you have to burn more fuel to go the same distance:


“So, mile for mile, emissions of CO2 are exactly the same for gasoline as
they are for ethanol. Because they are proportional to the energy stored in
the fuel.”


When it comes to gas mileage, Patzek calls claims that ethanol is any
better then gasoline an imaginary economy… and he’s not alone. When
Consumer Reports magazine tested a Chevy Tahoe that runs on gas mixed
with only ten percent ethanol, the truck got 14 miles per gallon. But
it got less than 11 miles per gallon when the ethanol content was
raised to 85%, as in E85. That’s a 27% drop in fuel economy with E85.


Consumer Reports concluded that to go the same distance, you wind up paying more than a dollar
extra per gallon on E85 then on regular
gas.


Patzek says it’s not a good deal for consumers or for the environment:


“You emit less because you have oxygen but you burn more, so it comes as a wash.”


Patzek says ethanol has other environmental costs. To grow the corn needed to make it, farmers have to use more fossil fuel-based fertilizers, tractor fuel, and then more fuel to truck the fuel to gas stations.


Even so, many scientists say ethanol still provides an energy benefit over fossil fuels and some auto engineers say ethanol cars
are just a stop-gap measure until a better technology comes along, but Patzek disagrees with that logic:


“So, you’re saying the following: why don’t we have a terribly bad
solution and call it a stop-gap solution because it’s politically
convenient. I’m saying is, if I’m an engineer, I have to, essentially, if I’m honest with myself and others, do I want a
better technological solution or do I want to say, let’s do probably the worst possible solution
that delays other solutions 10-15 years into the future… while the
world is running out of time?”


Patzek says the real reason American car companies are moving toward
vehicles that run on E85 is that the federal government rewards them
for it.


GM and the others get extra credit for meeting fuel efficiency
standards just for making cars that can run on E85, even if those cars
aren’t more fuel efficient.


Patzek knows he’s become unpopular among many farmers, engineers,
scientists and politicians who want easy answers. He wants people to
start reducing their energy-use rather than waiting for technological
magic bullets.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

New Power Plant Makes Light Out of Leftovers

With ongoing concerns about over-reliance on fossil fuels, researchers and entrepreneurs are looking for alternate ways to generate energy. One university scientist has created a power plant fueled by organic waste, including table scraps from restaurants. Tamara Keith reports:

Transcript

With ongoing concerns about over-reliance on fossil fuels, researchers and entrepreneurs are looking for alternate ways to generate energy. One university scientist has created a power plant fueled by organic waste, including table scraps from restaurants. Tamara Keith reports:


At Boulevard, an upscale restaurant, diners lunch on seared sea scallops, paella and grilled escolar among other options.


Back in the kitchen cooks are careful to keep all food scraps out of the trash.


(Kitchen sounds, scraping sounds)


The food scraps from this restaurant and 2,000 others in the San Francisco Bay Area are already being collected to turn into compost.


But now some of that food, about 8 tons a week, is going to a new biogas power plant at the University of California Davis. Tim Quaintance is a chef at Boulevard. He says he’s pleased that his leftovers aren’t just going to a landfill.


“It’s nice that in the past things that have basically been thrown away are now actually being used, and with this technology really contributing to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.”


(Generator runs in background)


In Davis, the table scraps are being converted into fuel at an experimental power plant known as the Biogas Energy Project. With its four large steel tanks and 22 kilowatt generator, this plant is the first real-world demonstration of a technique called anaerobic phased solids digestion.


Rayhong Jha is a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of California Davis. She first developed this technology on a smaller scale in her lab.


“What you see here is 20,000 times larger than the reactor system I use for laboratory testing.”


It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, leftovers into power, but Dave Konwinski says it’s real. He’s CEO of Onsite Power Systems Incorporated which licensed the technology and operates the plant.


“Every ton of collected food waste will provide enough either electrical or thermal energy to run an average of 10 California homes.”


Konwinski sees this test plant as the first step to commercializing biogas power plants. Here’s how it works: the food waste as well as grass clippings and other would-be-trash go into a sealed tank where bacteria break the mush down into water and organic acids… kind of like what happens if you leave lettuce in the fridge too long. When that’s done, the organic acids are pumped into another tank where different bacteria convert the soup into methane gas.


“Biogas can be used to run a generator, we have a generator we’ll be running here, or we can use it in the boiler to offset natural gas heat, and we’re looking at taking the gas and converting it into vehicle fuels.”


The trash and recycling company that serves San Francisco, NorCal Waste Systems, is providing the raw materials. Robert Reed is company’s director of corporate communications.


“This research and other research like this is very important because it could be a double or a triple. What I mean by that is it could produce new energy. It could reduce the amount of material going to landfills. And it could help reduce the creation of greenhouse gasses.”


And Reed says if this technology proves to be commercially viable, the results could be huge. In just California alone, 38 million tons of garbage is sent to landfills each year. He says half of that could be converted to power, and that’s enough energy to continuously power the entire city of San Francisco.


Suddenly leaving a little broccoli on your plate doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Taxpayers Subsidizing Record Ethanol Profits

The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:

Transcript

The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:


ADM’s profits on corn processing, which includes ethanol production, more than doubled in its latest quarter. Total profits for the period were about $400 million.


Daniel Kammen studies energy policy at the University of California – Berkeley. He says while ADM is making lots of money from corn-based ethanol, future profits could go to companies that make ethanol from switchgrass and other woody products.


“It’s really the first companies that switch into cellulosic sources that I think are going to be the big winners, because they’re going to capture the environmental prize as well as the offsetting gasoline prize.”


ADM executives have laid out a new strategy that includes plans to expand ethanol production from fuel sources other than corn.


Daniel Kammen notes that there might not even be a market for ethanol if not for government subsidies, which also helped ADM reap its bigger profits.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Harnessing Energy From Food Scraps

Leftover broccoli, unfinished hamburgers, wilted salad… sounds like a stinky mess… but it also has the potential to generate electricity. A new power plant fired up this week and you won’t find any coal or natural gas fueling its generators. This plant is powered by leftovers. Tamara Keith reports:

Transcript

Leftover broccoli, unfinished hamburgers, wilted salad… sounds like a stinky mess… but it also has the potential to generate electricity. A new power plant fired up this week and you won’t find any coal or natural gas fueling its generators. This plant is powered by leftovers. Tamara Keith reports:


The Biogas Energy Project on the University of California Davis campus is the first real-world demonstration of a new technology that could change the way we think about trash.


Food scraps from San Francisco restaurants are loaded into large sealed tanks where bacteria go to work, converting the food into fertilizer and releasing hydrogen and methane gas. That gas can then be used to fuel cars, or create energy using a generator.


Dave Konwinski is CEO of Onsite Power Systems Incorporated, which operates the plant.


“We’re burying all this organic waste in landfills, but every one ton has enough power to provide the heat for 10 homes, so the numbers are staggering how much energy we can make.”


Konwinski says he hopes to make the trash to power system commercially available early next year.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Study Challenges Efficiency of Ethanol

  • A new study takes into account the resources used to grow the corn that is used to make ethanol. (Photo by Ian Dun)

Despite its political popularity, a study suggests ethanol from corn is not as environmentally friendly as its supporters claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Despite its political popularity, a study suggests ethanol from corn is not as environmentally

friendly as its supporters claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


A new study published in the journal “Critical Reviews in Plant Science” shows producing ethanol

from corn uses more energy than the fuel provides.


Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley looked at the amount of energy used to plant,

fertilize, harvest and process corn into ethanol. Some studies have shown a net energy gain, but

this research takes into account the water and nutrients used to grow corn as well as the pollution

caused by fertilizers and pesticides.


The researchers say that makes this study a more accurate assessment of energy consumed to produce

ethanol. Supporters of ethanol say it’s the most environmentally-friendly replacement for MTBE,

that’s a gasoline additive used to reduce ozone pollution.


MTBE is being phased out because of concerns that it can contaminated groundwater sources.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

New Report Highlights Ethanol’s Pitfalls

A new report shows Ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline that doesn’t contain the corn-based fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

A new report shows Ethanol is worse for the environment
than gasoline that doesn’t contain the corn-based fuel.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:


The study from the University of California at Berkley
concludes ethanol does more harm than good for the
environment when all factors are taken into account. The
report considers the amount of energy it takes to produce
the fuel, and the environmental cost of the soil and
water use needed to grow the corn to make the fuel.

The study also says ethanol does not produce less
pollution. The researchers say ethanol spills can
contaminate groundwater, and fertilizers and pesticides
used to grow the corn create additional strain on the
environment. The report’s author says when all factors
are included, ethanol is 65 percent less efficient to
produce and use than regular gasoline.


Ethanol advocates say the fuel reduces emissions and
is a safer additive than any other currently available.
They also say the production of ethanol is constantly
improving. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m
Jonathan Ahl.

Sleep Research Uncovers Surprising Finding

Sleeping too much might cut your life short. A new study in the journal Nature conflicts with the idea that you need to sleep eight hours every night. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

Transcript

Sleeping too much might cut your life short. A new study in the journal Nature conflicts with the idea that you need to sleep eight hours every night. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

A study of one million people by the American Cancer Society turned up some interesting new findings on sleep. Psychiatrists at the University of California, San Diego found that people with the longest lives get only seven hours of sleep each night. Excessive sleeping might increase your risk of an early death by up to 15-percent according to the research. It also found the average American gets about six-and-a-half hours of sleep. According to the Nature article, critics point out that there are trade-offs to consider, such as lack of sleep making it easier to get sick, and people who don’t get enough sleep are sometimes cranky. However, scientists familiar with the study say more needs to be explored about excessive sleep and shortened lives.