Tapping Offshore Wind

  • Offshore wind farms have the potential to create jobs in struggling states like Michigan, but uncertainty in the permitting process continues to slow projects down.(Photo courtesy of the US DOE)

It’s been nine years since developers first proposed a wind farm off Cape Cod. You can now find offshore wind proposals in just about any state with a coastline. But these are still just proposals. Dustin Dwyer has a look at what needs to change before the U.S. can tap into its offshore wind potential:

Transcript

It’s been nine years since developers first proposed a wind farm off Cape Cod. You can now find offshore wind proposals in just about any state with a coastline. But these are still just proposals. Dustin Dwyer has a look at what needs to change before the U.S. can tap into its offshore wind potential.

One of the newest plans for offshore wind in the U.S. is in Michigan, a state that’s desperate for the kind of jobs that an offshore wind project could create.

But local landowners don’t want to have to look at the turbines – it’s the same problem Cape Wind confronted nine years ago. And the process for getting offshore wind projects approved remains murky.

Steve Warner is CEO of Scandia Wind, which is proposing the Michigan project. He says the response from state government so far has been confusing.

“In the absence of understanding the process and what it entails, people want to hesitate and we understand that.”

There is an effort underway in Michigan to clarify the permitting process for offshore wind. But as that effort drags in many states and at the federal level, developers are left waiting.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Tesla Motors Shoots for Bigtime

  • Tesla's Roadster Sport - a 2-seat sports car priced at $100,000 (Photo courtesy of Tesla Motors)

If you want a clean electric vehicle to cruise the highway today, you really only have one option – a small, Silicon Valley company named Tesla. Tesla has plans to be a big player in the auto industry, but so far the company has only built a few hundred cars. Dustin Dwyer looks at whether Tesla can make it in one of the toughest industries around:

Transcript

If you want a clean electric vehicle to cruise the highway today, you really only have one option – a small, Silicon Valley company named Tesla. Tesla has plans to be a big player in the auto industry, but so far the company has only built a few hundred cars. Dustin Dwyer looks at whether Tesla can make it in one of the toughest industries around:

If you’re trying to get attention for a new vehicle, a big auto show is one of the best places to get it.

And even this year, as GM and Chrysler hobbled into the Detroit auto show on federal life support, and all carmakers scaled back, there was still a lot of hype.

Here’s GM’s introduction for the Chevy Volt.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the future of automotive transportation has entered the building.”

That’s how the big players make their announcements.

Tesla is not a big player.

CEO Elon Musk made his big announcement in a hotel conference room in front of a bunch of geeky auto analysts.

“A big announcement that I’ve just gotten this morning permission this morning to make is, um” (takes drink)

Here he takes a drink of his water.

“…that Daimler has given us permission to acknowledge that they are the automotive partner that we’re working with.”

That means Tesla is going to help make an electric version of Daimler’s tiny Smart Car.

Musk is not much of a salesman. But maybe he doesn’t have to be. While all the big carmakers are seeing huge sales drops, Musk says Tesla sales keep going up.

“And, well, actually we can’t produce them fast enough and we’re sold out through November of this year.”

Now, Tesla – at most – makes 30 vehicles a week. And its only car, a sporty roadster, sells for more than $100,000.

A company like GM sells thousands of cars a week, and people who aren’t movie stars can actually afford some of them.

But Musk says he wants Tesla to be more than just a small time player.

So now the company is working on a four-door sedan that will sell for about $50,000 – still pricey for most of us, but half the price of its two-seat roadster.

Here’s the thing though, right now, Tesla has the electric vehicle market all to itself. But all the big companies are working on their own electric cars.

So when Tesla comes out with its four-door sedan, the competition will be much tougher.

Michael Robinet is an auto industry analyst with the firm CSM Worldwide. He says Tesla’s small size is a problem.

“Economies of scale is one of the main drivers of this industry to get cost out of the vehicle and be competitive. And that’s where the major vehicle manufacturers are going to have a leg up in the future.”

Some who follow the auto industry think Tesla’s future could be as more of a partner to existing companies, like what Tesla is doing with Daimler.

But Elon Musk insists Tesla will continue to make its own cars. And it can succeed.

“You go through sort of stages of denial, I guess. You know, when we first said we’d make this car, people said you can’t make this car. It’s not going to work, the technology’s not going to work, and even if the technology works, nobody’s gonna buy the damn thing. And we’ve shown, hey, we can make the technology work and people really want to buy it. So, okay, then they go to the next stage, ‘Oh, well, sure, okay, people will buy that car, but they won’t buy a sedan.’”

Tesla plans to unveil the new sedan later this month (March 26). The car is expected to go on sale in 2011.

In the meantime, Tesla has not been completely immune to all the problems facing the auto industry. Tesla had trouble raising money last year to finance the new sedan. So it turned to the federal government for a 350 million dollar loan.

At least in that one sense, Tesla is already acting like a major player.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Small Car Trend to Stay?

  • Since gas prices have dropped, some buyers are showing more interest in big vehicles. (Photo courtesy of the US Department of State)

When gas prices went up, car
companies cut their production plans for
making big vehicles, and made new plans
for more fuel efficient cars. The question
now is, with gas prices falling, will those
plans change again? As Dustin Dwyer
reports, the experts say probably not:

Transcript

When gas prices went up, car
companies cut their production plans for
making big vehicles, and made new plans
for more fuel efficient cars. The question
now is, with gas prices falling, will those
plans change again? As Dustin Dwyer
reports, the experts say probably not:

It’s not as easy to make money on a small car as it is on an SUV.

Small cars are cheaper, and they have lower profit margins. But as gas prices went up earlier this year, auto
executives insisted they’d find a way to make money on small vehicles.

Since gas prices have dropped though, some buyers are showing more interest in big vehicles.

Michael Robinet tracks the auto industry for the firm CSM Worldwide. He says the long term trend still
points to smaller vehicles.

“There may be a ratcheting down by some consumers in terms of the size of vehicles that they’re looking
for, irrespective of where fuel prices go in the future.”

Robinet says the bad economy is forcing many people to downsize. And the federal government has new
rules that mandate cleaner cars, so Robinet says getting smaller will be the big trend for years to come.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Food Prices to Stay High

  • Corn production in Colorado. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

Food prices are expected to keep rising in the
coming year. That’s at least partly because farmers plan
to plant less corn. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Transcript

Food prices are expected to keep rising in the
coming year. That’s at least partly because farmers plan
to plant less corn. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Jim Hilker is an agricultural economist at Michigan State University. He says the
demand for corn is high right now.

“Ethanol’s probably the biggest driver of it, but there’s also been very strong corn
exports.”

Hilker says those exports are going to countries where the wheat crop has
come in lower than expected.

But with all the demand for corn, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says
farmers across the country are planning to plant about 8% less
corn this year, compared to last year. Last year farmers did plant more corn
than they had in more than 50 years. This year, corn production should still
be high, but it might not keep pace with demand.

Hilker says that could mean higher prices for food.

But he says there are a lot of other factors to consider when it comes to
food prices. He says gas is a big one, since food has to be transported.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Hydrogen Powered Buses

Ford Motor Company is rolling out a small fleet
of hydrogen powered shuttle buses in the US and Canada.
The company says its one small step toward a future
without oil. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Transcript

Ford Motor Company is rolling out a small fleet
of hydrogen powered shuttle buses in the US and Canada.
The company says its one small step toward a future
without oil. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Ford will have a total of 30 hydrogen powered shuttle buses spread around North America, from Florida to
Vancouver, British Columbia.

Most test projects with hydrogen vehicles these days involve a fuel cell. But Ford is using hydrogen to
power a mostly conventional internal combustion engine.

Ford says that means there’s less research to be done, and the buses could be mass produced
earlier.

But Ford’s John Lapetz says the problem is still: where would you fill it up?

“Realistically, you gotta look at the infrastructure to refuel these kind of vehicles, you gotta look at the public policies that go around those kinds
of things, because you’re talking about not a significant change in the vehicle, but a significant change in
the way the vehicle is received in the community.”

Another problem is cost. Ford says each of its hydrogen buses now cost 250 thousand dollars.

For the The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Carmakers Race Toward Next Hybrid

  • The powertrain of the Chevy Volt. This concept image shows the lithium ion battery pack running down the center of the vehicle. (Image courtesy of GM)

If you’ve been thinking about buying a hybrid
vehicle sometime in the future, 2010 might be your
year. General Motors and Toyota have been battling
to be the first to build the next generation of hybrids.
And both say 2010 is the year it will happen. Dustin
Dwyer reports:

Transcript

If you’ve been thinking about buying a hybrid
vehicle sometime in the future, 2010 might be your
year. General Motors and Toyota have been battling
to be the first to build the next generation of hybrids.
And both say 2010 is the year it will happen. Dustin
Dwyer reports:

GM engineers and executives more or less admit that the first round of
hybrid vehicle development went to Toyota. The Prius is by far the best
selling hybrid on the road.

But GM has been racing to win the second round on hybrids.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner says his company will have a new kind of
hybrid battery, and a more powerful electric motor ready by 2010.

“And because our new system is three times more powerful, we’ll also
be able to use it in a wider range of powertrains, and that’s exactly what
we plan to do.”

Wagoner says the more powerful hybrid system will save more gas. And
applying it to more vehicles will make the system cheaper.

Toyota says it’s also working to have its next generation of hybrids ready by 2010.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Green Cars: A Tough Sell

  • Hybrid cars like this Honda Insight look good to consumers at first...until they see the price tag. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

We’re hearing a lot more from automakers these days about new
technologies that will save you gas. Most of the technologies they talk about
are not in showrooms yet. So when will they be? And which technologies
will find their way to your car first? Dustin Dwyer has some answers:

Transcript

We’re hearing a lot more from automakers these days about new
technologies that will save you gas. Most of the technologies they talk about
are not in showrooms yet. So when will they be? And which technologies
will find their way to your car first? Dustin Dwyer has some answers:


There is already one kind of car out there that will save you a lot of gas. You’ve heard of
it before. It’s a hybrid. And it seems like everyone says they want one. They say they do:


“I live in the world where I don’t deal with what people say they think, or what they give
to a survey. I live in the world where they write the check.”


That’s Mike Jackson. He’s the head of the country’s largest chain of car dealerships –
Autonation. Jackson is pretty much the prototypical, no-nonsense businessman. He’s also
somewhat of an unlikely environmentalist, but Jackson doesn’t have much faith in today’s
hybrids:


“70% of our customers want to talk about hybrids when they walk through the door.
They’re aware of it. They think it’s a great idea. And they’re predisposed to buy hybrids.
You then get them at the table.”


Jackson says that’s when the customer asks how much extra the hybrid costs, and how
long it takes to make that money up by saving at the pump. That’s when the deal falls
apart:


“And we have a two percent closing rate.”


Jackson says, plain and simple, most people just aren’t willing to pay the extra money to
get a hybrid. So he says to really cut gas use, the industry still needs mass market
solutions, and the first technology that he’s looking out for is something that Ford
announced earlier this year. Ford’s chief marketing guy, Jim Farley calls it Ecoboost:


“Which uses direct fuel injection and turbocharging to get big engine power and all that
low end torque we love from smaller, inherently more fuel efficient engines.”


Direct injection and turbocharging have been around,
but mostly as a way to make cars go faster. Now the idea is to use them on small engines
so that when a customer comes in and wants a big powerful engine, Ford can give them
Ecoboost, which promises the same power with 20 percent less gas, and 15 percent fewer
CO2 emissions. Ford plans to put Ecoboost in more than half a million cars per year
within the next five years.


In that same time frame, you can also expect to see more diesel engines coming out from
all the automakers. Diesel will get you better mileage, and it’s now cleaner in some ways
than gasoline. But it can create more smog-forming gases such as nitrous oxide.


Ethanol is also still out there. But at best, most people say today’s corn ethanol really
doesn’t save any fossil fuels when you look at what it takes to raise the corn. So the big
hope is cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from grasses, or even used tires.


Nobody’s found a good way to make it yet and Mike Jackson, the no-nonsense car
salesman, says he’s not holding his breath. Instead, he’s looking for the real game
changer – hybrid vehicles that can be charged through a wall socket and run on electricity
alone for miles before a gas engine has to kick in. Jackson expects those plug-in hybrids
on the road within five years:


“The cost-benefit ratio is going to be so compelling, and people are going to be so
enthralled at the idea they don’t have to go to the gas station, just go home and plug it into
the socket, this idea will win over American consumers.”


The auto companies are scrambling to make a plug in hybrid. Right now the race is
basically between General Motors and Toyota. Both say they might be able to build a
plug in hybrid by 2010.


The problem is the battery. To get the higher charge, hybrids need a new kind of battery –
something called a lithium ion battery. It’s the same kind of battery, it turns out, that’s
used in your cell phone, but there are some challenges scaling that up for an automobile.
Lithium ion batteries can overheat, and right now they’re more expensive than the
batteries in today’s hybrids.


But Bob Lutz at General Motors says you can bet those problems will be solved:


“Every manufacturer in the world is hot on the trail of lithium ion technology, and the
battery manufacturers all say it’s going to work.”


And once you have viable lithium ion batteries, you’re talking about cars that can get
more than 100 miles to the gallon or better.


Most people say the next step is hydrogen fuel cells. With the fuel cells, you put
hydrogen in, and the only thing that comes out of the tail pipe is water vapor.
Some in the industry say fuel cells could be ready for the mass market in the 2020s.
Mike Jackson isn’t so sure. He pegs the arrival of fuel cells at somewhere between not in
our lifetime and never.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Autos Part 2: Carmakers Slow to Adopt New Battery

  • The powertrain of the Chevy Volt. This concept image shows the lithium ion battery pack running down the center of the vehicle. (Image courtesy of GM)

Car companies are making plenty of promises these days about future
cars that will save you gas. To make them happen,
automakers are counting on a new kind of battery. They’re called lithium ion
batteries. These batteries could bring about a revolution in automobiles.
In the second part of a two-part series on green cars, Dustin Dwyer reports it could take a while for the revolution to get
here:

Transcript

Car companies are making plenty of promises these days about future
cars that will save you gas. To make them happen,
automakers are counting on a new kind of battery. They’re called lithium ion
batteries. These batteries could bring about a revolution in automobiles.
In the second part of a two-part series on green cars, Dustin Dwyer reports it could take a while for the revolution to get
here:


Lithium ion sounds like a complicated term. And you don’t necessarily need to know
what it means. But it might help to know that you already use lithium ion batteries every
day:


“It’s being used now in video cameras, personal phones, it’s in iPods, it’s in a lot of small
electronics and in, of course, laptop computers.”


That’s Jim Hall. He’s a consultant to the auto industry. His company is called 2953
Analytics. Hall’s had some experience working on battery powered cars. He says lithium
ion batteries are attractive because they can store a lot more power than the batteries in
today’s hybrid vehicles, and Hall says in the race to get lithium ion batteries into cars,
there are two leading companies: General Motors and Toyota.


They have different approaches to getting the batteries ready, but they both depend on
contractors outside the company to figure out the complicated chemistry. Hall says the
problem is right now, they need a breakthrough:


“And the breakthrough could come from an entirely different source. It could be from
another company that neither company is dealing with. It could. That’s the thing with
breakthroughs. You can’t predict how and when they happen.”


As we mentioned, battery engineers have already invented ways to make lithium ion
work in small things like cell phones, laptops and power drills. But it’s not as easy to
make the batteries work for something big, like a car.


Hall says one problem is cost. Lithium ion batteries are expensive. Another problem is
heat. The more energy you store in a lithium ion battery, the better the chances that the
battery could become unstable. If it becomes too hot, the battery could explode. That’s
already been a problem in some laptops.


Bob Lutz is the Vice Chairman of General Motors. He says his company has already
solved the heat problem with lithium ion batteries by using a different chemistry than
what’s in laptops:


“We’ve cycled ’em in hot rooms, maximum discharge rate, and cut out the cooling system
to simulate a cooling system failure in the car, and we’ve had a temperature rise of maybe
eight degrees centigrade, I mean, just not enough to worry about.”


GM expects to put the batteries in test cars and start running them on roads late this
spring. The goal is a lithium ion powered hybrid car named the Chevy Volt. It will go
forty miles on battery power alone, before a gas engine has to kick in. Lutz says he has no
doubt that the Volt will be ready to go by mid-2010, but officially, GM has not
set a production date.


Toyota says it’s also shooting to have the technology ready by 2010. But no other
automaker will even mention a date for lithium ion batteries. Not Ford. Not Honda. Not
Chrysler. Chrysler President Tom Lasorda says there’s a reason for that:


“When you’re trying to predict when a technology is going to be ready for mass market,
it’s very tough. Because you don’t know what the surprises might be.”


In the next few years, you can expect auto executives to make a lot of references to
lithium ion batteries. And basically anyone you talk to in the industry says these
batteries are no doubt, the next big thing that will save you gas.


The question is when. When will lithium ion batteries actually be in your car? Maybe
2010. Maybe a lot later. No one can really say for sure.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Teen Builds Electric Pickup

  • 16 year old Andrew Angellotti turned his gas-powered pickup into an electric-powered pickup. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)

People have been talking about electric cars ever since cars first hit the road. But nobody’s mass
producing an electric car right now. General Motors says it’s working on a gas saving electric
vehicle that could be ready in 2010. But some people aren’t waiting around. Dustin Dwyer
recently met someone who converted his pickup to run on batteries:

Transcript

People have been talking about electric cars ever since cars first hit the road. But nobody’s mass
producing an electric car right now. General Motors says it’s working on a gas saving electric
vehicle that could be ready in 2010. But some people aren’t waiting around. Dustin Dwyer
recently met someone who converted his pickup to run on batteries:


You don’t have to be a mechanical expert to build an electric car. I recently caught up with a 16
year old who did it on his own.


“Can you just sort of introduce yourself on my recorder here, say your name and what you did ….
I’m Andrew Angellotti, I converted a Mazda pickup truck to electric power to run off of batteries.”


Angellotti’s pickup has 20 batteries in all – four of them are tucked under the hood of the red
Mazda B2200. There’s another 16 batteries in the bed of the truck.


Angellotti says these are basically golf cart batteries. He charges them through a cord that runs
from his garage and plugs into the front grille of the truck.


“Is it drivable now? Yeah absolutely. Can we take a ride? Yeah, sure.”


We jump into the truck, and here things are a bit weird. Pretty much all the knobs and vents have
been ripped out. Angellotti says this is because the heating system was all hooked up to the gas
engine, so he had to get rid of it. That means he has no heat.


But basically, this truck works just like your vehicle. Angellotti puts the key in the ignition and he
turns it.


“So that’s the vacuum pump running for the power breaks … that’s my radio … and that provides
vacuum for the brakes. It’ll cycle on and off. And, that’s what it sounds like.”


Once he gets it up to speed, the electric pickup drives, and rattles the same as any other old
pickup on the road. Angellotti says he decided to start this project one night when he was looking
around at stuff on the Internet.


“I saw this site about electric vehicle conversions, and as I was looking at it I saw how practical it
actually is. And how it’s not that complicated and how it’s not that expensive when you put it in
perspective, and I decided I wanted my first car to be an electric car.”


The conversion process took nine months. And it cost about six thousand dollars. Angellotti paid
for it himself with money he made as a lifeguard.


He says the work on the truck wasn’t always easy.


“There were quite a few points during the project, during you know, kind of a hard part, I’d start
thinking, you know, for six thousand dollars I could have a really cool car. But, you know, I woke
up the next morning and I’m like, ‘But nobody else is going to have an electric car. So I decided to
keep going with it.”


And this past summer, several months after Angellotti’s 16th birthday, the truck was finished. He
splashed neon green lettering on the side to let everyone know it’s an electric vehicle. And he says
now the truck draws a crowd wherever it goes.


Angellotti says, that’s kinda the point – to raise awareness, and let people know that there is a
more sustainable way to drive.


He drives me a couple of miles near his house, which is about an hour north of Detroit, and when
we get back to, Angellotti plugs the truck back in. He says he can get 40 miles between each
charge.


That’s 40 miles with no gas. And he’s doing it right now. Automakers say they won’t have any kind
of electric vehicle until 2010 at the earliest.


So I asked Angellotti, if a teenager can build an electric car in his mom’s garage, why can’t the big
automakers like GM do it?


“GM can build an electric car. In fact, are you familiar with the EV1? Yeah. Yeah, well they can do
it. And that’s a large part of the message I’m trying to send is, if a kid can build an electric car,
why isn’t GM doing it? They can do it. They’re just not.”


Of course, it’s not really that simple. Angellotti’s truck is not the kind of solution that would work
for everyone.


He’s making some big sacrifices to drive his electric truck. He spent more money on the truck to
begin with. And remember he’s got no heater. It takes 10 hours to get the truck fully juiced. Its
top speed is 55 miles per hour. Angellotti can never take it more than 40 miles from home
without recharging. And in three to five years, he’ll have to shell out more money to replace his
batteries.


So, really, how many of us would be willing to make those sacrifices?


As for Angellotti, he says the sacrifices he’s making are worth it. And he’s already started working
to convert his second electric car.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Beet Juice on the Road

  • The new de-icing product, GeoMelt, would use less salt than other methods of de-icing roads. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s been rising concern in recent years over the environmental impact of
road salt. The salt helps melt ice on the roads, but it corrodes cars and
damages bridges and concrete. Now, there’s a new way to help de-ice
roadways, and it comes from sugar beets. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Transcript

There’s been rising concern in recent years over the environmental impact of
road salt. The salt helps melt ice on the roads, but it corrodes cars and
damages bridges and concrete. Now, there’s a new way to help de-ice
roadways, and it comes from sugar beets. Dustin Dwyer reports:


The product is called GeoMelt, and it mixes with a salt brine to drop the freezing point
along roads. This method uses less salt than the traditional way of de-icing roads.


Chris Duffy is a GeoMelt salesman. He says it’s essentially de-sugared sugar beet
molasses. And it doesn’t require any new chemical processes:


“It’s considered a co-product of the sugar process. And, you know, what they were using
it for was a cattle feed. And we just have come up with a different use for it.”


GeoMelt also helps cut the amount of salt washing onto farmland where it can ruin crops.
Duffy says thousands of cities in every northern state are now using the sugar beet-based
product.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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