American Automakers Go Small

  • The new Ford Fiesta will get 40 miles per gallon on the highway. (Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company)

After years of dominating the market for big trucks and SUVs, Detroit automakers are getting into the small car business. Tracy Samilton reports they don’t just aim to compete with Toyota and Honda – they aim to beat them.

Transcript

After years of dominating the market for big trucks and SUVs, Detroit automakers are getting into the small car business. Tracy Samilton reports they don’t just aim to compete with Toyota and Honda – they aim to beat them.

The new Ford Fiesta will get 40 miles per gallon on the highway. That’s several miles per gallon better than the Honda Fit and the Toyota Yaris. Chevy’s Cruze Eco could also hit that magic 40. Erich Merkle is President of Autoconomy dot com – an auto consulting firm. He says Detroit’s new small cars will also be loaded with high-tech features. That could grab the attention of Gen Y, a group of 67 million young Americans.

“And it’s gonna have to be affordable, low-cost of ownership and yeah, if you wanna get them into your vehicle, it’s gotta be cool and have some sex appeal.”

Asian car companies won’t give up their former territory without a fight. Honda may postpone the new Civic in order to boost its fuel efficiency.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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Predicting the Oil Spill With Supercomputers

  • Pete Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.<

Transcript

Oil from the big spill in the Gulf of Mexico is starting to turn up in places people did not expect.
That’s making it tough for cleanup crews to stay one step ahead of the oil.
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope supercomputers might help.

Scientists want to put together a 3D picture of what the gulf oil plume looks like, and they’re using new computer code and supercomputers to do it.

The numbers are getting crunched at Argonne national laboratory outside Chicago.
Pete Beckman runs the computing center there.

He says satellites and water samples give us some information, but we could really use a more complete picture.

“If we know for example that, because of eddies and currents, that things will accumulate at a particular map location, well, that’s where you would send the booms to soak up the oil. If you can concentrate your resources in one place, you’re much more effective.”

Beckman says even with some of the fastest computers in the world, the model of the spill could take days to finish.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Protecting Beaches From Gulf Oil Spill

  • Volunteers are combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from
a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico.
As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many
coastal communities are scrambling to
prepare for the oil that threatens their
shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in
Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:

Transcript

It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many coastal communities are scrambling to prepare for the oil that threatens their shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:

Within days of the oil rig explosion, Casi Callaway’s phone started ringing off the hook.

“I have hundreds of volunteers calling every minute.”

Okay – well maybe not every minute. But Callaway’s group, Mobile Baykeeper, has been very busy organizing volunteers. In the past week more than 7-thousand people have flocked to the white sands of the Alabama coast hoping to help.

They’re combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. So volunteers are working round the clock to move the material. Tom Herder is with the Mobile Bay Estuary Program. He says they have to be careful because this is nesting season for wading birds like Plovers and Terns.

“You know we were the dumb transgressors the first day. I was throwing stuff in the dunes. And we were just moving stuff up and I wasn’t looking for Plover nests and the Audobon Society kinda got on my case – and it’s good, they educated us. And we’re educating our volunteers.”

They’ve been training volunteers on how to remove debris without disturbing wildlife. But Herder says the clock is ticking and there’s still lots of work to do. So they’re balancing the need to protect wildlife with the need to get the beaches ready. Herder says to do that they’ve been bending the rules a little bit.

“People have to be 18 years old to take part in our volunteer efforts. Shoot – that’s, that’s not necessarily the way people do things here. And we tell people, if you live on the Western shore of Mobile Bay don’t wait for us. Get down there and clean it up yourself. You know. And that’s not rogue.”

While volunteers work to get the beaches ready for oil, BP says it’s working to keep the oil from reaching the shore. It’s using what are called chemical dispersants – basically it’s industrial detergent – to break up the oil deep under the surface. But critics say the chemicals could kill off the larvae of fish that use the Gulf of Mexico for spawning grounds… fish like the Atlantic bluefin tuna. It could also hurt oysters and mussels. But BP’s Steve Rinehart says there’s always a tradeoff.

“Nobody wants an oil spill. We have an oil spill. You need to make judgments about limiting the damager where you can.”

Rinehart says a group of state and federal spill responders, including environmental scientists, has determined that dispersants pose the least risk.

“If the choice is oil going to shore or using dispersant off shore, using dispersant off shore causes less environmental impact. That’s not to say there won’t be some, but it’s less harmful to the environment than having the oil go to shore.”

So basically, it could be an “either/or” – protect the beach with dispersants and you might risk the fish. Tom Herder — with the Estuary Program — says it’s a no win situation.

“I’ve almost been making deals with God. And I can’t bribe God, but he knows I’ll follow through.”

Right now, Herder’s just praying for good weather – and more time – to get the coasts prepared.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Oil Spill Cleanup Seeks Volunteers

  • Until they work out the logistic challenges that go along with hosting out-of-town volunteers, organizations are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

Transcript

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a consortium of environmental groups trying to coordinate volunteers to help clean up the environmental damage to hit the coast.

Steven Peyronnin is Executive Director of the group.

“There is the potential that we may need volunteers for extended periods of time–for weeks, but certainly there are challenges to arranging logistical and housing support for that. So, in the interim we are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.”

Right now they’re in need of people with HazMat training, but anyone can register to volunteer. The website is crcl.org.

You can also volunteer for clean-up at volunteerlouisiana.gov.

They’ll likely be looking for volunteers for months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Making Biodiesel Kosher

  • Glycerin is a common ingredient in foods. It's made from fat from animals, or oil from vegetables. So automatically, there's kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. (Photo courtesy of Wakefern CC-2.0)

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

Transcript

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

The world of futuristic alternative fuels got tangled up in ancient Hebrew food laws.
To understand how, I talk with a rabbi in the know … Sholem Fishbane of Chicago’s Rabbinical Council.

To start, I admit I don’t understand the key word: ‘Kashrut’ in Hebrew … or ‘kosher’ in English.

“How about your Yiddish?”

“Not so good.”

“Not so good, OK.”

“The word kosher means straight, correct. So when it comes to consumer items, and especially food, how does this play out?”

“The basic concept is that you are what you eat. You become the character of what you’re consuming.”

For example, in the Hebrew Bible, pigs are unclean, so pork’s not kosher.
But even some ‘clean’ foods are not kosher if you mix ’em …

“A very big thing in kosher is not to eat, uh … milk and meat together. meat representing death. milk representing life. Those are things that shouldn’t be coming together.”

So, you separate kosher food foods from non-kosher foods and even each other at times.

Well, Rabbi Fishbane’s job is to keep all this straight at big food factories.
He inspects food equipment and ingredients.

If everything’s kosher, he lets factories use the little “K” character on packages.

So, a few years ago, Rabbi Fishbane was at this factory, inspecting paperwork.

“All of a sudden you see an increase amount of glycerin receipts and hey, what’s going on? You usually have X amount a month and now it’s tripled.”

Glycerin is a common food ingredient, so Rabbi Fishbane thought, ‘no big deal.’
Until … he saw glycerin prices plummet, and his factories substituted it for more expensive ingredients.

“This is now a pattern. When we see a pattern, that’s when we get nervous.”

So, Rabbi Fishbane dialed up a teleconference with other rabbis.

They noticed the same thing … loads of cheap glycerin hitting the market.
The rabbis started sweating.

“glycerin has always been a kosher-sensitive item.”

This is one of the other rabbis on that conference call – Abraham Juravel of the Orthodox Union.

Glycerin keeps food sweet or moist.

It’s a clear, slick goo … and it’s made from oil or fat.

“The fat can be from animal or that fat can be from vegetable. and so automatically, there’s kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. As a food ingredient it’s very common in all kinds of products. They actually use glycerin as a sweetener in certain candies.”

Rabbi Juravel started tracking down the source for all this new glycerin.
After some detective work, he found it was coming from factories that make biodiesel.

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from oil or fat.

You chemically process the fat … and you get fuel for cars and trucks, but …

“What you’ll also get is very crude glycerine, which is the waste product.”

Several years ago, new biodiesel factories were popping up and they looked for whatever fat they could find … kosher or otherwise.

“So, they buy used oil that you fried french fries in, and who knows what else you fried in there. if you made french fries and then you also made southern fried chicken in that oil, then that oil’s not kosher.”

Again, if the oil’s not kosher … neither is the glycerin and whatever food glycerin goes into.

There is a happy ending here.

Rabbis worked overtime to keep non-kosher glycerin out of the kosher food supply, but they actually made biodiesel operations part of the solution.

Some factories switched to all-kosher oils, so now their waste guarantees a steady supply of religiously pure, kosher glycerin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Budget Trimmers Target Ethanol

  • CEO of Growth Energy, Tom Buis argues ... we spend plenty of money for overseas oil ... why not support home-grown ethanol?(Photo courtesy of the NREL)

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Transcript

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Congress is looking to cut the federal budget and one target is a key ethanol subsidy.

It’s a tax credit of about 4 and a half billion dollars, and it runs out by the end of the year.

Ethanol trade groups are fighting to extend that credit.

Tom Buis is CEO of Growth Energy.

He argues … we spend plenty of money for overseas oil … why not support home-grown ethanol?

“We create jobs, jobs that can’t be outsourced. I don’t know why we want to fund economies of foreign governments. We should be looking at spurring our own economic development here in the United States.”

Last year the Government Accountability Office questioned whether we need this particular ethanol tax credit, since the government requires gasoline refiners to blend-in billions of gallons of ethanol anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Using NAFTA to Restrict Canadian Oil Imports?

  • In their submission, the environment groups charge that oil extraction processes leach contaminants into both surface and groundwater in the Athabasca watershed. (Photo courtesy of Aude CC-2.0)

You might think about imported oil and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela come to mind. But, the single biggest source of imported oil to the U.S. comes from Canada. And half of that comes from a dirty form of oil called tar sands oil. Lester Graham reports environmentalists are trying to use NAFTA to get restrictions on tar sands oil:

Transcript

You might think about imported oil and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela come to mind. But, the single biggest source of imported oil to the U.S. comes from Canada. And half of that comes from a dirty form of oil called tar sands oil. Lester Graham reports environmentalists are trying to use NAFTA to get restrictions on tar sands oil.

Environmental groups say extracting tar sands oil causes a lot of water pollution. Matt Price is with Environmental Defence Canada:

“We keep on presenting the evidence to the government, and they just sort of keep on ignoring it which is why we filed this citizens’ complaint.”

They’ve filed the complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The say oil companies in Canada are not complying with Canadian environmental laws and that might be a violation of the NAFTA treaty. So, his group and others are taking the fight to Canada’s trading partners.

They’re hoping the U-S and Mexico will step in.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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New Bi-Partisan Climate Change Bill

  • Darren Samuelsohn says the bill will also include a national renewable electricity standard, requiring more power to come from sources other than fossil fuel such as coal. (Photo courtesy of NREL)

A long-awaited climate change bill in the Senate is to be released next week. A prominent Republican says the bi-partisan bill won’t pass. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A long-awaited climate change bill in the Senate is to be released next week. A prominent Republican says the bi-partisan bill won’t pass. Lester Graham reports.

Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, Joseph Lieberman, an independent and Lindsey Graham, a Republican have been working behind closed doors for six months to draft a climate and energy bill. They’re supposed to release it next Monday.

Darren Samuelsohn covers Washington for ClimateWire. He says no one knows everything the bill will include… but some points have been revealed.

Samuelsohn: Price on carbon emissions across multiple sectors of the economy: power plants, heavy manufacturing and transportation and then trying to ramp up a range of domestic energy supplies from nuclear to natural gas to oil.

Samuelsohn says the bill will also include a national renewable electricity standard, requiring more power come from sources other than fossil fuel such as coal.

Samuelsohn speculates this bill could pass in the Senate… but it will require some arm twisting and deal making by President Obama.

The Senate’s chief climate change denier, Republican James Inhofe told Fox News the bill won’t get half the votes it needs to pass.

For The Environment, I’m Lester Graham.

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Subsidizing Solar Power

  • John Wakeman of SUR Energy says government and utility incentives have lowered the costs of a solar installation for consumers.(Photo courtesy of Mark Brush)

Sources of renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric are still just tiny players in a world powered by fossil fuels. Most of the power for your light switch comes from burning coal and natural gas. Mark Brush reports the government is trying to change that. There are state and federal programs that will pay you to put solar panels on your house:

Transcript

Sources of renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric are still just tiny players in a world powered by fossil fuels. Most of the power for your light switch comes from burning coal and natural gas. Mark Brush reports the government is trying to change that. There are state and federal programs that will pay you to put solar panels on your house:

John Wakeman was laid off from his factory job eight years ago. So, for him it was, “well… Now what?” He’d always been interested in solar panels and wind turbines. So he decided to go into business helping homeowners put these things up. It’s been eight years, business was slow at first, but he says these days, business for solar panels is picking up.

“There are a lot of people that have always just dreamed of it. You know, they thought it was really cool, they looked into it in the ‘70s. In the 70’s it cost, you know, ten times as much for the same energy. The costs have really come down.”

But it’s still really expensive for a lot of people. Wakeman says a typical solar job costs around sixteen thousand dollars these days.

But now – you can get help from the government.

There’s a federal tax credit that will pay for 30% of the cost of new solar panels on your house. So you spend sixteen grand – you get $4,800 off your next tax bill. And on top of that, there are a bunch of state and utility operated programs that will help pay for the up-front costs.

In fact, more than half the states in the country are forcing utilities to make more renewable power.

So more utilities are paying people to install things like solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal heat pumps.

In many places, it costs less to install these things than it ever has.

Wakeman says these incentives have been good for his business.

“I can actually build a business somewhat on that. I can hire some people and get them trained. You know we can go out and sell some systems.”

But some say these subsidies are not a good idea:

“The sunlight may be free, but solar energy is extremely expensive.”

Robert Bryce analyzes the energy business for the Manhattan Institute. It’s a conservative think tank. Bryce says solar power is enjoying big subsidies from the government right now, but it’s not translating into a lot of power going onto the grid:

“Solar energy received 97 times as much in subsidies per megawatt hour produced as natural gas fired electricity; even though the gas-fired electric sector produced 900 times as much electricity as solar. So how much subsidy are we going to have to give them to make them competitive. And I think the answer is going to be… It’s going to have to be a whole, whole lot.”

Bryce agrees – there are some big environmental costs to traditional fossil fuel sources. Costs that are not always paid for. But in the end – he says renewable energy sources like solar just can’t compete with traditional fossil fuels.

But others say the subsidies for renewable power are boosting an industry that is trying to get a start.

Rhone Resch is the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. He says the subsidies renewables are getting today just make the game fair:

“We’re starting to get the same kinds of support from the federal government that the fossil industry has enjoyed for the last 75 to 100 years. And when you do that, the cost of wind comes down, the cost of solar comes down, the cost of geothermal becomes more cost competitive.”

If you look at the numbers, traditional power sources have always gotten more money from the government. In 2007, the federal government gave out 6.7 billion dollars in subsidies to support electricity production. Most of it went to coal, natural gas, and nuclear.

Today, renewable energy sources, like solar, are getting a little more help. And supporters hope that help doesn’t disappear – like it has in the past – when the political winds change.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Shareholders Press Big Oil for Risk Information

  • The major risks with tar sand include dealing with pollution, and with lawsuits from native tribes that live near the oil sands.(Photo courtesy of the US DOE)

Several investors’ groups want four major oil companies to reveal the risks of getting oil from Canadian tar sands. Rebecca Williams reports shareholders will be considering this at BP’s general meeting this week:

Transcript

Several investors’ groups want four major oil companies to reveal the risks of getting oil from Canadian tar sands. Rebecca Williams reports shareholders will be considering this at BP’s general meeting this week:

Tar sands are kind of like they sound: they’re sand or clay soaked in oil. Canada’s tar sands are the second largest oil reserves in the world, so oil companies are all over them. But it’s a dirtier source of oil.

Several investors groups have filed shareholder resolutions with BP, Conoco-Phillips, Shell, and Exxon-Mobil. They want companies to reveal the risks to stockholders of getting oil from tar sands.

Emily Stone is with Green Century Capital Management.

“We want these companies to be more forthright about what they see as the big risks and how they’re mitigating those risks.”

She says risks include dealing with pollution… and lawsuits from native tribes that live near the oil sands.

BP did not want to be recorded for this story. But in a statement to shareholders, BP told them to vote no. BP says Canada’s oil sands are a proven and secure source of oil.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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