Automakers Join Forces Against Climate Change, For Fuel Efficiency

There's been a sea change for industry in the last several months. More and more, companies are looking to jump in and tackle the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

The transportation sector is a top cause of emissions, and automakers are looking to do their parts to increase fuel efficiency and cut emissions.

That's the reason Isuzu Motors Ltd has joined with Toyota Motor Corp to team to enhance the development of diesel engines.

Isuzu is the maker of the popular ascender SUV. Work such as this is aimed at making SUVs and other passenger cars that are environmentally friendly and more efficient overall.

Isuzu is also one of the largest diesel engine manufacturers in the world, producing about 1 million diesels each year for a variety of industrial and vehicle applications.

Yoshinori Ida, president of Isuzu, feels the research alliance with Toyota is a positive one for the diesel engine industry. Ida states, “By teaming up with Toyota, I am certain that we will be able to create the world’s best diesel engine. This business tie-up will not only strengthen the two companies’ competitive edge, but will also contribute to the global environment.”

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Video: U.S. Outsourcing Emissions, Too, Resarchers Say

Increased trade with other nations over the last decade, including China, has caused the United States to outsource more of its greenhouse gas emissions, according to two Carnegie Mellon University researchers.

"We've seen that although our consumption level has gone up considerably over the last decade, our greenhouse gas emissions have not gone up accordingly, which is mostly due to the fact that these emissions have been outsourced to the other countries who are making all the goods we are consuming here," says Christopher Weber, Carnegie Mellon researcher, Civil & Environmental Engineering.

The percentage of emissions from imports has nearly doubled over about the last decade, says H. Scott Matthews, associate rofessor, Civil & Environmental Engineering/Engineering & Public Policy.

Emissions from international trade, therefore, need to be better taken into account in global negotiations over climate, they say.

Watch a quick, five-minute video clip of Weber and Matthews describing their work on demand on Energy Policy TV. Visit the Climate Change Channel and click on "Trade Emissions."

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Volkswagen Shows Off Advanced Fuels Vehicles

Volkswagen of America is showing off advanced fuels models of some VW cars at the Designing Sustainable Mobility Summit, being held at Art Center College of Design in Southern California.

Summit attendees and Art Center students are being provided the experience of driving VW models running on biodiesel, ultra low sulfur diesel, hydrogen, and highly efficient gasoline engines on public roads.

"It's important to demonstrate that raising the bar in such important areas as fuel efficiency and emissions reduction isn't just accomplished with exotic or future-oriented technologies," says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal, which is hosting the summit's ride-and-drive. "Volkswagen's demonstration of its clean diesel and twincharger engines provides real-world examples of environmentally positive technologies that are operating on highways today."

At the event's Green Cars/Pasadena ride-and-drive, VW is fielding a Touareg V-10 TDI running on B5 biodiesel, a mixture of conventional ultralow sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel and renewable biodiesel. Diesel fuel that includes a mix of biodiesel burns cleaner and also helps displace fossil fuel use, contributing to energy diversity. VW has extended warranty protection to its models operating on B5 biodiesel as a way to encourage use of this cleaner fuel.

An advance look is also being offered of a highly efficient, twincharger gasoline engine Jetta in development. This Jetta's TSI engine provides higher power output from a smaller displacement engine while also achieving greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions. The TSI is popular in Europe and now is being considered for use in the U.S. It uses asupercharger to provide engine boost at lower rpms and an exhaust-driven turbocharger at mid-range rpms and higher.

At the summit, VW's Touran HyMotion hydrogen fuel cell vehicle not only shows Volkswagen's interest in this zero-emission fuel, but also showcases the company's breakthrough high-temperature fuel cell.

A decade of VW hydrogen vehicle development has led to a high-temperature fuel cell that provides a more compact, lighter, and more durable fuel cell system. This technology holds great promise to make fuel cell powertrains more economical, key to future mass production, the automaker says.


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Bush Climate Plan Called 'Very Small Step'

President Bush laid out a plan in his State of the Union address that the White House says will confront climate change by stopping the projected growth of carbon dioxide emissions from cars, light trucks, and SUVs within 10 years.

President Bush used his State of the Union address last night to call for a 20 percent reduction in gasoline consumption by 2020.

"America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment -- and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change," Bush says.

However, more must be done, says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Claussen was one of 14 corporate and environmental CEOs who called on Congress to enact mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions this week in order to address the climate change problem.

"Across the United States, scientists, CEOs, environment groups, stategovernments, and members of Congress, are seeking a comprehensive approach to global climate change and what the president is proposing is really onlya very small step in that direction; his plan only affects the transportation sector, which accounts for roughly one-third of US greenhouse gas emissions; and it is unclear how real this commitment is," Claussen says. "If we hope to deal with climate change in a reasonable manner, we needan approach that is both economy-wide and mandatory, and that will put us on a path toward significant greenhouse gas reductions."


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DaimlerChrysler Chief Highlights Next-Gen Biodiesel Vehicles

The international head of automaker DaimlerChrysler is calling U.S. attention to his company's new line of cleaner diesel vehicles to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.

Today at the Washington (D.C.) Auto Show, Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of DaimlerChrysler AG and the head of Mercedes Car Group, called attention to the new generation of clean diesels -- branded BLUETEC-- while encouraging U.S. lawmakers to set regulations that support adiversity of approaches to reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil.

To emphasize the point, he introduced the 2007 Dodge Ram 2500 and 3500 with 6.7-liter Cummins turbodiesel engine offered with B5 and B20 biodiesel, available to consumers in March. The first to do so and three years before the deadline, the heavy duty truck will meet stringent 2010 truck emissions standards in all 50 states, the automaker says. He also announced the Dodge Ramclean, light-duty turbodiesel engine that will provide up to 30-percent improved fuel economy, meet 50-state, 2010 emissions standards, availableafter 2009. With fuel economy improvements of 20 to 40 percent and a reduction of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) by as much as 90 percent, Zetsche stressed that clean diesel technology is a viable solution to reducing dependence on oil and improving air quality.

Zetsche also urged U.S. policymakers to stimulate greater demand and consumer choice for fuel-saving technologies --such as diesel -- by providing equal incentives on powertrains that achieve lower fuel consumption with clean emissions.

"American policy-makers must adopt a new and unique formula ... that encourages more technologies and more [customer] choice," says Zetsche."I've always thought CAFE -- in the country that is the world's model for a free- market economy -- to be a bit of a contradiction. It's an attempt to regulate supply and not to use market forces to stimulate demand for more fuel- efficient vehicles."

Zetsche says that "trying to sell people what they don't want is not a winnable business proposition. And it is that 'anti-free market element' of CAFE that makes life difficult for us. We've learned to live with CAFE and its modest increases."

Zetsche says that the automotive companies should "look toinnovation, and to increasingly substituting petroleum products with biofuels." He pointed to the modern diesel engine which has "plenty of the former, and great potential for the latter."

The Mercedes brand has been pioneering BLUETEC in Europe, where it's been on the road for several years. Since 2005, the company has sold more than 40,000 BLUETEC Mercedes-Benz trucks and buses in Europe, "where they've performed exceptionally well in everyday heavy-duty service," adds Zetsche.

Mercedes-Benz intends to systematically broaden its BLUETEC portfolio. In addition to the recently introduced Mercedes E 320 BLUETEC, three additional BLUETEC models will join the line-up, the R-Class, the ML-Class and the GL Class that will all be assembled at the company's plant in Alabama.

He also says that DaimlerChrysler "is not pursuing diesel to the exclusion of other alternate fuel technologies." Zetsche lists many on-going initiatives including the company's fuel cell activities where DaimlerChrysler has invested more than $1 billion and has more fuel-cellvehicles on the road today than any other manufacturer.

BLUETEC represents the cleanest diesel vehicles in the world, accodring to the company. These next- generation vehicles meet the most stringent emissions regulationsworldwide, including emissions standards in all 50 U.S. states.

BLUETEC is the DaimlerChrysler-owned brand name that stands for the cleanest diesel engines in their respective classes, i.e., those that meet 50- state emissions standards, the automaker says. BLUETEC is just one of the many fuel saving technologies from DaimlerChrysler, including advanced gasoline, Flex-Fuel, hybrids and zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles, it adds.


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MIT Ethanol Analysis Confirms Benefits of Biofuels

Controversy over the benefits of using corn-based ethanol in vehicles has been fueled by studies showing that converting corn into ethanol may use more fossil energy than the energy contained in the ethanol produced. Now a new MIT analysis shows that the energy balance is actually so close that several factors can easily change whether ethanol ends up a net energy winner or loser.

Regardless of the energy balance, replacing gasoline with corn-based ethanol does significantly reduce oil consumption because the biomass production and conversion process requires little petroleum. And further MIT analyses show that making ethanol from cellulosic sources such as switchgrass has far greater potential to reduce fossil energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bush administration is pushing the use of ethanol as a domestically available, non-petroleum alternative to gasoline. But most U.S. ethanol is now made from corn, and growing corn and converting the kernels into ethanol consume a lot of energy--comparable to what is contained in the ethanol produced. Making ethanol from corn stalks, other agricultural wastes and wild grasses would consume less energy, but the technology for converting them to ethanol may not be economically viable for another five or so years.

Does using corn-based ethanol in place of gasoline actually make energy consumption and emissions go up, as some researchers claim? Why do others reach the opposite conclusion? And how much better would ethanol from "cellulosic" feedstocks such as switchgrass be?
To answer those questions, Tiffany Groode, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, performed her own study, supervised by John B. Heywood, Sun Jae Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Using a technique called life cycle analysis, she looked at energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with all the steps in making and using ethanol, from growing the crop to converting it into ethanol. She limited energy sources to fossil fuels. Finally, she accounted for the different energy contents of gasoline and ethanol. Pure ethanol carries 30 percent less energy per gallon, so more is needed to travel a given distance.

While most studies follow those guidelines, Groode added one more feature: She incorporated the uncertainty associated with the values of many of the inputs. Following a methodology developed by recent MIT graduate Jeremy Johnson, she used not just one value for each key variable (such as the amount of fertilizer required), but rather a range of values along with the probability that each of those values would occur. In a single analysis, her model runs thousands of times with varying input values, generating a range of results, some more probable than others.

Based on her "most likely" outcomes, she concluded that traveling a kilometer using ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline. However, further analyses showed that several factors can easily change the outcome, rendering corn-based ethanol a "greener" fuel.

One such factor is the much-debated co-product credit. When corn is converted into ethanol, the material that remains is a high-protein animal feed. One assumption is that the availability of that feed will enable traditional feed manufacturers to produce less, saving energy; ethanol producers should therefore get to subtract those energy savings from their energy consumption. When Groode put co-product credits into her calculations, ethanol's life-cycle energy use became lower than gasoline's.

Another factor that influences the outcome is which energy-using factors of production are included and excluded--the so-called system boundary. A study performed by Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University in 2003 includes energy-consuming inputs that other studies do not, one example being the manufacture of farm machinery. His analysis concludes that using corn-based ethanol yields a significant net energy loss. Other studies conclude the opposite.
To determine the importance of the system boundary, Groode compared her own analysis, the study by Pimentel and three other reputable studies, considering the same energy-consuming inputs and no co-product credits in each case.

"The results show that everybody is basically correct," she says. "The energy balance is so close that the outcome depends on exactly how you define the problem." The results also serve to validate her methodology: Results from the other studies fall within the range of her more probable results.

Growing more corn may not be the best route to expanding ethanol production. Other options include using corn stover (the plants and husks that are left on the field), or growing an "energy crop" such as switchgrass. While corn kernels are mostly starch, corn stover and switchgrass are primarily cellulose. Commercial technologies to make ethanol from cellulose are not yet available, but laboratory and pilot-scale tests are generating useful data on processing techniques. So how do cellulosic sources measure up in terms of saving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Using her methodology, Groode performed an initial analysis of switchgrass and, drawing again on Johnson's work, corn stover. She found that fossil energy consumption is far lower with these two cellulosic sources than for the corn kernels.

Farming corn stover requires energy only for harvesting and transporting the material. (Fertilizer and other inputs are assumed to be associated with growing the kernels.) Growing switchgrass is even less energy intensive. It requires minimal fertilizer, its life cycle is about 10 years, so it need not be replanted each year, and it can be grown almost anywhere, so transport costs can be minimized.

Groode and Heywood now view the three ethanol sources as a continuum. In the future, cellulosic sources such as corn stover and ultimately switchgrass can provide large quantities of ethanol for widespread use as a transportation fuel. In the meantime, ethanol made from corn can provide some immediate benefits.

"I view corn-based ethanol as a stepping-stone," says Groode. "People can buy flexible-fuel vehicles right now and get used to the idea that ethanol or E85 works in their car. If ethanol is produced from a more environmentally friendly source in the future, we'll be ready for it."

The research was supported by BP America.


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