Source: Yahoo!
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

Washington, USA. August 5, 2009. Cars and light trucks sold in July got more miles per gallon than those sold in previous months, say researchers, who credit the Cash for Clunkers program.
The average mileage for new vehicles rose from 21.4 miles per gallon in June to 22.1 mpg in July. That may not sound like much, but it's the highest mileage researchers at the University of Michigan have seen since the Environmental Protection Agency reconfigured mileage estimates in October 2007. It's also the biggest one-month jump.
Study co-author Michael Sivak noted the improvement came even as gas prices fell and unemployment levels shrank somewhat. Normally, those factors lead to the purchase of more gas guzzlers. The higher mileage shows the effect of Cash for Clunkers, Sivak said, and he expects the jump to be even bigger when August figures come out. That's because the trade-in rebate program only got going late in July.
The clunkers program gives people trading in certain vehicles up to $4,500 if they increase their mileage by at least 5 to 10 mpg. A lasting trend showing a large increase in mileage for new cars sold would be unusual for this country.
"We have made very little improvement over 84 years. Therefore, the changes we are seeing now are huge," Sivak said.
Those are only figures for new cars sold. Most cars on the road are older and it takes about 20 years for the fleet on the road to turn over completely. The new figures are a first step toward less pollution and less gasoline used, Sivak said.

Source: Yahoo! News

By Kimberly S. Johnson, AP Auto Writer

Warren, Michigan. USA. AP. August 11, 2009. General Motors said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt electric car could get 230 mpg in city driving, making it the first American vehicle to achieve triple-digit fuel economy if that figure is confirmed by federal regulators.
But when the four-door family sedan hits showrooms late next year, its efficiency will come with a steep sticker price: $40,000. Still, the Volt's fuel efficiency in the city would be four times more than the popular Toyota Prius hybrid, the most efficient car now sold in the U.S. Most automakers are working on similar designs, but GM would offer the first mainstream plug-in with the Volt, which seats four and was introduced at the 2007 Detroit auto show.
The Volt will join a growing fleet of cars and trucks powered by systems other than internal combustion engines.
Unlike the Prius and other traditional hybrids, the Volt is powered by an electric motor and a battery pack with a 40-mile range. After that, a small internal combustion engine kicks in to generate electricity for a total range of 300 miles. The battery pack can be recharged from a standard home outlet.
Hybrids use a small internal combustion engine combined with a high-powered battery to boost fuel efficiency. Toyota's Prius -- which starts at about $22,000-- gets 51 mpg in the city and 48 mpg on the highway.
The number of all-electric vehicles available to U.S. consumers remains limited.
The Tesla Roadster, a high-end sports car with a range of 224 miles, is perhaps the best known. But its $100,000-plus price tag keeps it out of reach of all but the wealthiest drivers.
The company is working on an electric family sedan that will be priced considerably less.
Nissan Motor Co. unveiled its first electric car, the Leaf, earlier this month.
Nissan said the vehicle will go on sale in Japan, the U.S. and Europe next year.
Edmunds.com, an auto Web site, cast doubt on whether drivers can expect 230 mpg from the Volt since fuel efficiency also depends on driving style.
Volt drivers who cruise sensibly on smooth roads without much cargo -- and who avoid exceeding 20 or 30 miles between charges -- might fill up only rarely. But "for most people, it is not realistic to expect that kind of mileage in real-world driving," said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with the Web site.
General Motors Co. is touting the 230 mpg figure following early tests that used draft guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency for calculating the mileage of extended-range electric vehicles.
The EPA guidelines, developed with help from automakers, figure that cars such as the Volt will travel more on straight electricity in the city than on the highway. If drivers operate the Volt for less than 40 miles, in theory they could do so without using a drop of gasoline.
Highway mileage estimates for the Volt based on the EPA's methodology have yet to be released.
"We are confident the highway (mileage) will be a triple-digit," GM CEO Fritz Henderson said.
The EPA conducts testing to determine the mileage posted on new car stickers.
The agency said in a statement Tuesday that it has not tested a Volt "and therefore cannot confirm the fuel economy values claimed by GM."
The EPA is working with the Society of Automotive Engineers and state and federal officials to develop testing procedures to measure the fuel efficiency of advanced vehicles, according to a draft outline of the proposal obtained by The Associated Press.
The plan could be released later this year.
It was not immediately clear how GM reached the 230 mpg in city driving, but industry officials estimated the automaker's calculation took into consideration the Volt traveling 40 miles on the electric battery and then achieving about 50 mpg when the engine kicked in.
Although Henderson would not give details on pricing, the first-generation Volt is expected to cost nearly $40,000, making it cost-prohibitive to many people even if gasoline returns to $4 per gallon.
The price of the sporty-looking sedan is expected to drop with future generations of the Volt, but GM has said government tax credits of up to $7,500 and the savings on fuel could make it more affordable, especially at 230 mpg. "We get a little cautious about trying to forecast what fuel prices will do,"
said Tony Posawatz, GM's vehicle line director for the Volt. "We achieved this number, and if fuel prices go up, it certainly does get more attractive even in the near-term generation."
The mileage figure could vary as the guidelines are refined and the Volt gets further along in the manufacturing process, Posawatz said.
Chrysler Group, Ford Motor Co. and Daimler AG are all developing plug-ins and electric cars, and Toyota Motor Corp. is working on a plug-in version of its gas-electric hybrid system.
GM has produced about 30 test Volts so far and is making 10 a week, Henderson said during a presentation at the company's technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren.
Henderson said charging the Volt will cost about 40 cents a day, at about 5 cents per kilowatt hour.
GM is nearly halfway through building about 80 test Volts that will look and behave like the production model, and testing is running on schedule, Posawatz said.
Two critical areas -- battery life and the electronic switching between battery and engine power -- are still being refined, but the car is on schedule to reach showrooms late in 2010, he said.
GM is simulating tests to make sure the new lithium-ion batteries last 10 years, Posawatz said, as well as testing battery performance in extremely hot and cold climates.
"We're further along, but we're still quite a ways from home," he said. "We're developing quite a knowledge base on all this stuff. Our confidence is growing."
The other area of new technology, switching between battery and engine power, is proceeding well, he said, with engineers just fine-tuning the operations. "We're very pleased with the transition from when it's driving EV (electric vehicle) to when the engine and generator kick in," he said.
GM also is finishing work on the power cord, which will be durable enough that it can survive being run over by the car. The Volt, he said, will have software on board so it can be programmed to begin and end charging during off-peak electrical use hours.
It will be easy for future Volt owners living in rural and suburban areas to plug in their cars at night, but even Henderson recognized the challenge urban, apartment dwellers, or those who park their cars on the street might have recharging the Volt. There could eventually be charging stations set up by a third-party to meet such a demand, Henderson said.

Source: Fuel Cell Today
August 5, 2009. Toshiba plans to launch an external battery charger based on a DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) in the next two months, its new president said on Wednesday.
The charger will be a portable device that can be used to charge the batteries in portable gadgets such as cell phones, music players and portable game devices instead of plugging them into an electrical outlet.
DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction between methanol, water and air. The only by-products are a small amount of water vapour and carbon dioxide, so DMFCs are often seen as a greener source of energy than traditional batteries. Another advantage is that they can be replenished with a new cartridge of methanol in seconds.
The new charger will be on sale before the end of the first half of Toshiba's current financial year, which is the period from April to September. The launch, when it comes, will represent a roughly 6-month delay for the product, which was originally promised in the first quarter of this year.
Following the launch of the portable charger Toshiba will look at commercializing DMFCs for cell phones and laptop computers, it said.
Toshiba is targeting sales of ¥160 billion (US$1.68 billion) for its fuel cell business in 2015.
No other details on the device were immediately available.

Source: Yahoo! News

Doha, Qatar. (AFP). August 12, 2009. Qatar's RasGas company announced on Wednesday that it has increased its capacity to about 28.5 million tonnes per annum (Mta) of liquefied natural gas after its news Train 6 produced its first LNG.
"The new train is capable of producing 7.8 million tonnes of LNG per annum, boosting the overall LNG production capacity of all RasGas Companies to approximately 28.5 Mta," the company said in a statement.
It said that Train 6 was one of a new generation of "mega-trains", each capable of producing 7.8 Mta, up from the 4.7 Mta that RasGas Trains 3, 4 and 5 each produce.
The company is owned jointly by the public sector company Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil. It operates production facilities to treat, liquefy and export LNG to countries across Asia, Europe and North America.
It produced more than 20 mta of LNG with five trains in operation, and forecasts output of approximately 37 Mta when a seventh train comes on line.
Qatar boasts natural gas reserves of 900 trillion cubic feet (25 trillion cubic metres), the third largest in the world.

Source: Alternative Energy
August 11, 2009. Imagine a parking lot that keeps your car cool and charges it while you do whatever you need to do after parking your car. That's what the new solar forest designed by designer Neville Mars aims to achieve.
Electric-powered automobiles are a great way of reducing pollution levels but the main hurdle in the way of them becoming mainstream vehicles is long duration of time they need to recharge. Even to cover small distance you need to recharge your vehicle for hours. One solution is to speed up the recharging process, and another is recharging the cars while they stand unused, like in a parking lot
Sometimes vehicles are left in the parking place for hours while people take care of their chores or work in their offices. This is the perfect time to charge the vehicles. The trees of the solar forest are made of photovoltaic leaves mounted upon poles that are like giant power strips for electric vehicles. You can simply plug in your vehicle to charge it. To increase efficiency the solar panels adjust themselves according to the position of the sun. The vehicles also remain cool under their shade.
Just like any other new innovation there are naysayers for this project too, like, there is not going to be enough sun for every tree, or it is going to be very costly to build such panels, and, it will be very difficult to take your vehicles in (as it happens in the natural forest) and then take them out, but the basic idea is the thought that goes into such projects. We are sure to find new solutions as more and more people pitch in instead of just pointing at things that cannot be achieved.

Source: Yahoo! News
By Krittivas Mukherjee Krittivas Mukherjee

New Delhi (Reuters) August 10, 2009. The global financial crisis is hurting India's hopes of attracting about $21 billion worth of investments in renewable energy by 2012, but a new solar plan expected to be rolled out by December could provide a boost.
Renewables energy officials said on Monday they had already received more than $3 billion worth of investment since 2007, which could generate about 3,000 megawatts (MW) of power, almost half of it from wind energy alone.
Domestic and foreign companies such as Tata group and Reliance Industries as well as state-run utilities are among hundreds of companies vying for a stake in India's emerging green energy sector.
But the global financial crisis may have slowed investments and India could find it difficult to meet its target of generating 14,500 MW of green power by 2012.
"We were quite hopeful but it may not be possible to do so (now)," Deepak Gupta, the most senior civil servant in the renewables ministry, told reporters. India aims to generate 25,000 megawatts of power from renewable energy over the next four years, more than double the current generation level of 12,000 MW.
PLAN'S THRUSTS
Only three percent of India's total power mix is now from renewables, and developing this sector is at the centre of India's national plan on climate change which does not commit to any emission targets.
One of the thrusts of that plan is developing solar power and India has plans of generating 20 gigawatts of solar power by 2020.
"We hope to roll out the plan by the end of this calendar year," Gupta said.
Debashish Majumdar, chairman and managing director, said once the solar plan took off it could become a game changer for India's green energy sector, as top global companies were waiting for an opportunity to invest.
The target, which would help India close the gap on solar front-runners like China, is part of an ambitious $19 billion, 30-year scheme that could increase India's leverage in international talks for a new U.N. climate pact in December, one of several measures meant to help cut emissions.
If fully implemented, solar power would be equivalent to one-eighth of India's current installed power base, helping the world's fourth-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions limit its heavy reliance on dirty coal and assuaging the nagging power deficit that has crimped its growth.
Majumdar said India was also shifting from a policy of investment-based incentive to generation-linked incentives for renewables projects.