In a wide-ranging and candid interview with The Globe & Mail’s Editorial Board, Canada’s Environment Minister has admitted what environmental activists have been saying for years — that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology probably won’t work at the Alberta Tar Sands. Nevertheless, over the last 18 months, the provincial and federal governments have offered the Alberta oil industry and power utilities almost $3 billion in funding to establish CCS demonstrations in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Most oil producers have shown little interest, but a few coal-fired power demonstration pilots will likely be approved.

“CCS is not the silver bullet in the oil sands,” said Prentice. “It’s important, but it is really in the upgrading of bitumen that CCS has more promise, rather than in the mining or in situ production.”

Minister Jim Prentice said that he is watching several projects closely that are testing solvents — instead of natural gas — in the extraction process to see if they cut GHG emissions. The Alberta oil sands are the fastest growing source of carbon pollution in Canada, and a big reason why the government is only promising to cut CO2 emissions by 2% by 2020 over 1990 levels.

Prentice does believe that CCS holds promise for capturing emissions that are produced by upgrading bitumen to a usable product. The problem with this acknowledgment is that most tar sands oil is sent to the US for refining.

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I have to say that this is the very first time that our Environment Minister has actually sounded like an Environment Minister. I’m still trying to figure out if he went off-script.

For more current news on the Alberta Tar Sands, have a look at Clearing the Air of Oil Sands Myths at the Pembina Institute.

In introducing tough new CAFE measures the Obama administration is hoping to kill three birds with one stone: Resolve outstanding litigation by the Big Three automakers; enhance the administration’s international credibility in the fight to slow climate change; and offer struggling US automakers a chance at salvation by embracing cutting edge technologies.

And it appears that it’s going to work. US automakers are lining up behind President Obama’s initiative to set CAFE standards for new cars at 42mpg by 2016 — even though it means that they must improve fuel efficiency by 5% per year over the next six years. That’s a formidable challenge for an industry that has been all about power and speed decades. But automakers seem heartened by having a roadmap, stimulus funding, and an ally in the President who is working to help them meet the challenges of a low-carbon economy.

More money will help. In the Waxman-Markey bill, House Democrats have proposed doubling the federal loans meant to spur fuel-efficient vehicles to $50 billion. The bill also grants cap-and-trade credits to US automakers that could be worth $20 billion.

Now the hard work begins. “There’s no mystery here as to how manufacturers could achieve the standards that have just been announced using known technologies,” says Therese Langer, Transportation Program Director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “Five percent is a lot [but] it’s doable.”

“We will need to use every engineer we have and every investment dollar available to make our vision of sustainable mobility a reality,” says Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Environmentalists have been overjoyed by the news, and it’s easy to see why. A senior official with the administration suggests that this move will cut GHG emissions by 900 million tons over the program’s life cycle — which would be the same as closing 194 coal plants.

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* For critics who think a low-carbon economy means that we all have to wear Birkenstocks and eat granola, take another look at the Fisker Karma (photo). It isn’t cheap, at $89,000, but it is a plug-in hybrid that can travel 50 all-electric miles before an engine kicks in to recharge the batteries. It has a 403 hp powerplant, and putting the pedal to the metal will give you 0-60 time that will knock your socks off. It rolls off the production line later this year.

If you’re like most Americans, driving less than 40 miles per day, the Karma will sip less than one gallon of gas each week.

Researchers from the University of California, Merced and Stanford University have determined that EVs charged on biomass-fueled electricity emit far fewer GHG emissions than ethanol-fueled cars. The researchers examined the life cycle of plant-based electricity and ethanol technologies to find which delivered more transportation per acre; they found that biomass electricity provided about 80 percent more miles per acre. Part of this result can be chalked up to the internal combustion engine’s inefficiency, but EVs still only emit one-half the total GHG of ethanol-fueled cars.

“We found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues: transportation and climate,” says co-author David Lobell of Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment. “But we also need to compare these options for other issues like water consumption, air pollution, and economic costs.” The results of their study will be published in the May 8 edition of Science.

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The photo shows a jatropha plantation.

The Holy Grail: Carbon-Capturing Cement

Plus other writers on Shell, starting an ecodriving school, and much, much more.

An Affordable Salvation

By Paul Krugman

The 2008 election ended the reign of junk science in our nation’s capital, and the chances of meaningful action on climate change, probably through a cap-and-trade system on emissions, have risen sharply.

But the opponents of action claim that limiting emissions would have devastating effects on the U.S. economy. So it’s important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics.

Yes, limiting emissions would have its costs. As a card-carrying economist, I cringe when “green economy” enthusiasts insist that protecting the environment would be all gain, no pain.

But the best available estimates suggest that the costs of an emissions-limitation program would be modest, as long as it’s implemented gradually. And committing ourselves now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump.

Let’s talk first about those costs.

A cap-and-trade system would raise the price of anything that, directly or indirectly, leads to the burning of fossil fuels. Electricity, in particular, would become more expensive, since so much generation takes place in coal-fired plants.

Electric utilities could reduce their need to purchase permits by limiting their emissions of carbon dioxide — and the whole point of cap-and-trade is, of course, to give them an incentive to do just that. But the steps they would take to limit emissions, such as shifting to other energy sources or capturing and sequestering much of the carbon dioxide they emit, would without question raise their costs.

If emission permits were auctioned off — as they should be — the revenue thus raised could be used to give consumers rebates or reduce other taxes, partially offsetting the higher prices. But the offset wouldn’t be complete. Consumers would end up poorer than they would have been without a climate-change policy.

But how much poorer? Not much, say careful researchers, like those at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even with stringent limits, says the M.I.T. group, Americans would consume only 2 percent less in 2050 than they would have in the absence of emission limits. That would still leave room for a large rise in the standard of living, shaving only one-twentieth of a percentage point off the average annual growth rate.

To be sure, there are many who insist that the costs would be much higher. Strange to say, however, such assertions nearly always come from people who claim to believe that free-market economies are wonderfully flexible and innovative, that they can easily transcend any constraints imposed by the world’s limited resources of crude oil, arable land or fresh water.

So why don’t they think the economy can cope with limits on greenhouse gas emissions? Under cap-and-trade, emission rights would just be another scarce resource, no different in economic terms from the supply of arable land.

Needless to say, people like Newt Gingrich, who says that cap-and-trade would “punish the American people,” aren’t thinking that way. They’re just thinking “capitalism good, government bad.” But if you really believe in the magic of the marketplace, you should also believe that the economy can handle emission limits just fine.

So we can afford a strong climate change policy. And committing ourselves to such a policy might actually help us in our current economic predicament.

Right now, the biggest problem facing our economy is plunging business investment. Businesses see no reason to invest, since they’re awash in excess capacity, thanks to the housing bust and weak consumer demand.

But suppose that Congress were to mandate gradually tightening emission limits, starting two or three years from now. This would have no immediate effect on prices. It would, however, create major incentives for new investment — investment in low-emission power plants, in energy-efficient factories and more.

To put it another way, a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction would, in the short-to-medium run, have the same economic effects as a major technological innovation: It would give businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities even in the face of excess capacity. And given the current state of the economy, that’s just what the doctor ordered.

This short-run economic boost isn’t the main reason to move on climate-change policy. The important thing is that the planet is in danger, and the longer we wait the worse it gets. But it is an extra reason to move quickly.

So can we afford to save the planet? Yes, we can. And now would be a very good time to get started.

Brilliant!

Better Place began with a $200 million venture capital investment, and the company has easily garnered that much again in enthusiastic publicity. Since its founding in late 2007, barely a week goes by without the electric vehicle-and-infrastructure project cutting a new deal that makes business headlines in newspapers across the world.

Why? Certainly, founder Shai Agassi is the consummate salesman, and a photogenic, charismatic, and literate entrepreneur. But at the end of the day, it comes down to this: What Agassi is promoting could revolutionize the automobile industry just as surely as the Model T did a century ago.

Agassi hasn’t invented a fuel-efficient 100 mpg-engine, or a powerful new battery technology that will propel EVs for more than 250 miles on a single charge. Instead he’s bringing stakeholders together to create the electric car infrastructure that will power the first generation of EVs and plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs).

The Better Place principle is actually quite simple, and it seeks to circumvent the classic chicken-and-egg scenario that was dogging the EV industry for years before the first Tesla rolled off the production line.

The story begins in Israel, a country with a vested interest in slowing climate change and weaning its economy off the fossil fuels that enrich hostile regimes. Shai Agassi must be very good at what he does. First he wrangled a commitment from the Knesset to enact preferential tax rates for zero-emission vehicles. Then he convinced Renault’s Carlos Ghosn that it was in his company’s long-term interests spend a small fortune to create a full-featured, mass produced EV for the Israeli market by 2011. And then, working with utilities, Better Place unveiled plans to build 500,000 charging points and battery swap stations across the country. Early EV adopters in Israel will be able to travel across the country as easy as kiss my hand.

Since that noteworthy first success it’s just been a matter of replicating this good model in other countries, and other regions, often hand-in-hand with Renault-Nissan. Denmark, as a leader in renewable energy, signed on in early 2008, and they’ve since been joined by Australia, Portugal, Hawaii, Ontario, and the Bay Area. That’s not a complete list, as high level talks are also occurring in several other countries. Perhaps even more importantly, the idea has created a great deal of excitement among progressive governments, and countries like Ireland and the United Kingdom are planning to build similar cross-country charging schemes.

Better Place has many delightful synergies. On one hand, having thousands and then millions of mobile battery units — also known as EVs — is vitally important to electrical utilities, for EVs will help smooth demand and make it much easier to add renewables to the grid. Using sophisticated Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) communications, electric cars will be able to provide reserve power to the grid when demand is high, and recharge overnight when utilities have excess energy, and nowhere to put it. It’s also expected that when EV batteries reach their end of life, they can be employed for years at wind farms and the like as backup power supplies.

Better Place is also good for consumers, as most EVs are costly simply because lithium-ion batteries are dear. Under the Better Place business model, consumers will buy their EVs, but rent the batteries and pay a monthly fee, much like graduated cell phone plans, to recharge them. When gasoline prices start climbing again, perhaps as early as next year, it will be much, much cheaper to drive an EV.

Of course, Better Place is good for the environment, even when coal-fired power plants are used to recharge an EV’s batteries though, admittedly, that’s not ideal. Initiatives like Better Place will improve the air in our cities, and cut medical bills substantially.

So the Better Place revolution is real, but it’s hardly the only way to go. It might not even be the best way. Many analysts think that plug-in hybrids make a great deal more sense than all-electric cars for the foreseeable future. And certainly governments would be wise to invest heavily in public transit, to make it fast, convenient and comfortable for people to leave their cars at home — even when that car is electric. Finally, the Agassi plan to create complex battery swapping stations seems needlessly complex and expensive when the technology to build efficient fast-charging sites is already upon us.

Nevertheless, Better Place has changed the name of the game. Shai Agassi has opened the flood gates and created a business model that is good for beleaguered industry, good for consumers, and good for the planet.

And that’s why we’re paying attention.

Cross-posted at Triple Pundit

In the wake of the AIG scandal, it’s refreshing to see that some companies are tying company bonuses to significant achievements for both the corporation and society. National Grid — a London-based utility company — has has become the latest and biggest UK firm to link the company’s success in reducing its carbon footprint to executive remuneration packages. The company will also implement carbon budgets across its entire operations starting next month, and incorporate the cost of compliance within those budgets.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t cut it, so National Grid has been conducting a detailed greenhouse gas emissions inventory over the last 12 months to provide senior management with the tools to track each division’s carbon footprint, and take the necessary steps necessary to improve the overall environmental performance. Although the remuneration committee still hasn’t decided what weight to give carbon reductions in compensation packages, a National Grid spokeswoman expects that it will become an increasingly important metric.

And that’s because National Grid has decided to cut their GHG emissions by 45 percent by 2020. The company will also apply a $40 per metric ton shadow price to carbon — as recommended by the UK government — to future investment decisions, including electricity and gas network construction projects and fleet and facilities’ management. When you price carbon at a significant rate, improving energy efficiency, purchasing plug-in hybrids and electric trucks, and investing in renewable energy becomes as easy as kiss my hand.

This new policy won’t only reduce emissions across the pond. In the US, National Grid distributes electricity to nearly five million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island, and delivers gas to 3.4 million customers in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

It will be interesting to see how many American companies take note. This could be the best British Invasion since The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.

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It’s not just a UK thing. A number of business in other countries — including Japan — are cutting emissions in the exact same way.

Cross posted at Triple Pundit.

I first learned about Gordon Murray, a former Formula 1 designer, about eight months ago, when his team was half-way through the 24-month developmental cycle for his novel T25 city car – a cute little bug that could spark a clean transportation revolution. Reports now suggest that the T25 design and engineering work has already been completed, well ahead of schedule. They’re ready to build the prototype.

The T25 will be small, but safe; it will boast a lightweight chassis — built from carbon fiber composites — mated to a three-cylinder engine. These two factors combine to create a car that is expected to cut CO2 emissions in half when compared most European cars — which are already far more efficient than their North American cousins. In other words, the T25 should do better than 85 mpg.

Murray has 15 potential clients — from a dozen countries — who have expressed interest in buying franchises to manufacture and sell the T25. Murray has created a streamlined manufacturing process — dubbed the iStream — so the T25 factories will only be one-fifth the size of standard automobile plants, and require just one-fifth the investment.

But a good story could get even better. The basic platform underpinning the T25 is flexible; it will be able to accommodate future designs coming from Murray’s engineering team, including a passenger car, a pickup truck, and a mini-van.

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Murray’s company is operating in stealth mode, so details are slim, and most of what we know about the T25 is conjecture and rumor. But Gordon Murray has enjoyed a distinguished career, and I expect we’ll be hearing more about the T25 and its siblings in the next two years.

I love cool little technology stories like this one.