Drivers may face ethanol decision at the pump

For U.S. drivers, motoring has always been about freedom. Now some folks are saying pumps that offer drivers whatever blend of ethanol they like mixed into motor fuel will increase demand for the biofuel. ”The future for the entire country is going to be blender pumps. And that will give the consumer the option to put the blend of ethanol they’d like into their car,” Jeff Broin, the CEO of private ethanol company POET said at the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuel Summit this week.

Broin, whose company is the top U.S. ethanol producer, said the so-called blender pumps offer drivers the choice of motor fuel mixed with either 10, 20, 30 or 85 percent ethanol. Currently there are a few blender pumps in his home state, South Dakota, as well as Minnesota.

But the great majority of U.S. drivers only have the option of filling up with E10, while some fuel stations, mainly in the Midwest and Texas, offer E85.

Unfortunately for bargain hunters, ethanol’s lower energy content compared to gasoline makes E85 blends more expensive than regular gasoline.  But other drivers may like to pay up because ethanol has higher levels of octane than gasoline.

More choices could boost U.S. demand for ethanol, an industry whose capacity has grown 45 percent this year, amid government mandates and incentives, he said.

Some blends may even be more economical. A study last month said E20 and E30 blends give drivers better fuel economy than either E10 or E85. 

And the pumps have powerful friends.  U.S. Presidential hopeful Democrat Barack Obama and several other Midwest lawmakers last year threw support behind more freedom of ethanol choice.  

While others say regulations would prevent the pumps from spreading nationwide, Broin  holds out hope, in part because the pumps could make him a tidy profit.  “It allows the ethanol plant to haul the ethanol directly to the station… rather than take it to the terminal and pay the extra freight on it… It is a bonus for station owner as well as the producers,” he said.

Of course, to burn anything higher than E10, you need to drive a “flex fuel” car, which auto makers are producing more of these days.

Would you buy more ethanol blended fuel if there were more choices?

from Reuters DealZone:

Blogs have been abuzz for a while about a bubble forming over the cleantech sector — what with all the dollars flowing into the sector’s search for clean-and-green power, energy, transportation — and whether a dotcom-like burst is likely. But venture capitalists take a rather more nuanced view, although two out of three believe the sector is getting overvalued.

Cleantech will see the same “waves of enthusiasm” that other darling sectors for venture capitalism, like information technology, have seen, said John Denniston, partner at Kleiner Perkins, the storied Silicon Valley firm most recently in the news for bringing Al Gore on board to focus on its green investments. “It’s the nature of the venture industry and wouldn’t surprise me if we see the same waves in the greentech sector,” Denniston told Reuters at the agriculture and biofuels summit.

Rodrigo Prudencio, a partner at cleantech-focused VC Nth Power, said bubbles may be forming over solar energy and biofuels, areas where too many dollars are chasing too few deals. But it’s too early to tell whether there will be a “pandemic” across the diverse cleantech sector, he said.

Pandemic or not, it’s definitely something VCs were discussing at a venture summit last month. Mohr Davidow Ventures general partner Erik Straser said at the summit there will be “flameouts” in the cleantech sector this year. “And a lot of capital has gone into a lot of companies.”

Despite these niggling concerns, VCs are assured of cleantech’s long-term potential and this year, the industry is expected to put even more money into these startups. After all, the global market for clean technologies is expected to reach $1 trillion in 25 years, and VCs wouldn’t be VCs if they didn’t outlast the blips, blogs and flameouts.

(We updated this blog post to fix the spelling of Rodrigo Prudencio’s name. As you can see, it is not “Prundencio.”)

King crabs, favoured by Stalin, cause stench

Former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin played a distant role in causing a stench from hundreds of rotting crabs dumped around Norway’s parliament in Oslo.

It was under Stalin that the king crabs — some spanning more than a metre from claw to claw – were brought to the north-western Soviet Union from their natural habitat in the Pacific Ocean as a new source of food during the Cold War.

For some unexplained reason the crabs had a population explosion in the 1990s and are now advancing west along the Arctic coast of Norway — and no one knows where they will stop.

Environmental group Greenpeace say the crabs are taking over the seabed and threaten other species.

Greenpeace staged a protest outside the Norwegian parliament with decaying crabs, saying that Norwegian fishermen hundreds of kilometres west of the Russian border were getting crabs tangled in their nets — many of them too small to be sold for their meat. The stench of the crabs — caught a month ago — filled the city centre.

The crab meat tastes great – when fresh — but is an expensive delicacy.

“Norway has to do more to stop the advance of the crabs,” said Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace. “The fishermen should get a bounty for every crab they deliver. As it is now the smaller crabs are worthless.”

The crabs are one of many “alien” or “invasive” species that have got a foothold far from their original habitat — like rabbits in Australia, or zebra mussels in the Great Lakes of North America.

Experts say it is almost impossible to eradicate “alien” species like the crabs.

Any good ideas about how to get rid of them?

What do we want? Separated waste collection for recycling! When do we want it? Now!

It’s not an issue that often brings thousands of people into the streets – but recycling is a hot topic in Naples, the southern Italian city which has run out of landfills to put household waste which has accumulated in huge, stinking mounds in the streets.

Locals are resisting the emergency re-opening of dumps that are officially full and a giant incinerator won’t be ready for months or perhaps years.

The answer, some say, is recycling which would vastly reduce the volume of waste being dumped or burned. But for recycling, you need to sort trash into categories that can be reprocessed – like glass, paper and metal – from that which can’t. Despite the presence of recycling skips around Naples, only 10 percent of waste there is collected separately from the general waste stream, compared with 38 percent in northern Italy.

“Door-to-door collection of sorted waste now!” read a banner at a protest in Naples this week.

The question is: after 14 years officially in a waste “state of emergency” where politicians have failed to create a system that can handle waste disposal – a sector heavily infiltrated by the Camorra mafia – will the city ever be able to organise a workable recycling scheme?

“Where’s the beef?” Senator Boxer asks EPA

“Where’s the beef behind this decision?” U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer asked, waving an empty white box labelled “EPA Documents” in front of California state officials and reporters at Los Angeles City Hall on Thursday.

The California Democrat, who chairs the Senate’s environment and public works committee, lashed out at Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Stephen Johnson during a field briefing for his decision last month to deny California’s attempt to set tough new standards for auto emissions.

“I know this is a little bit showbusiness, but I don’t know how else to make my point,” Boxer said as she turned the box upside down.

The showbusiness was lost on Johnson, since he declined to come to California to answer questions from the Senator and hear testimony from her allies. Boxer nevertheless insisted that an empty seat be left in the middle of the room to symbolize the absence of any EPA representative.

“The bottom line is the chair is empty, there is no excuse for this decision,” said Boxer.

Johnson has agreed to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in Washington on Jan. 24, Boxer said.

During the briefing, Boxer heard testimony from California Attorney General Jerry Brown, California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols, Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Climate Advisor Fran Pavley, and Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, all of whom side with Boxer on the issue.

Brown, who along with 15 other state attorneys general is suing EPA over its decision, said he couldn’t be sure whether the courts would act swiftly to decide the case.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if the case is till pending as Bush leaves town,” Brown said.

See Naples and…hold your breath

By Robin Pomeroy 

The old adage advises travellers to “See Naples and die”.

While the origins of the phrase are unclear, its meaning isn’t: the ancient Italian city on a gulf in the sparkling Mediterranean, in the shadow of the volcano Vesuvius, is well worth a trip.

Maybe now might not be the moment however. Parts of Naples are piled high with split rubbish sacks spilling rotting garbage and letting off foul smells.

Although the city centre is relatively clear, a suburb called Pianura – a non-descript residential area which would not be on most tourists’ itineraries – has become a no-go zone.

If police allow you into the area, you then have to clamber over piles of trash deliberately put in the streets by locals along with metal and concrete barriers and felled trees to stop refuse trucks getting to an old waste dump which authorities want to reopen.

Enjoy the smell of rotting food, burning trash and tyres and be careful not to slip on slick roads covered in slime.

During the day the locals are reasonably friendly, but at night watch out for gangs of youths, often travelling three-to-a-scooter, who have attacked outsiders.

Naples already had an unenviable reputation for street crime and the shameful trash crisis is the latest blow to the reputation of a city whose history, art and natural beauty should make it a must-see.

from Ask…:

Would you — should you — buy a car for just 1,300 pounds. 

This week, India’s Tata motors unveils the world’s cheapest car at around that price.

The prospect  of a motor that costs less than half of the most basic model on the market in India has generated a lot of excitement. The so-called “people’s car” looks set to liberate the masses in the same way that Volkswagens did in Germany and the Fiat 500 did in Italy.  No more puttering about on scooters.

But the more environmentally minded in India are troubled.

Not only will the traffic get even worse if everyone goes out and buys cars but the impact on the environment of potentially millions of new exhaust pipes belching out fumes can only be imagined.

What do you think? Is it ecologically irresponsible to make a car that sells for so little?