After debuting the world’s first hybrid tugboat in 2009, the Port of Long Beach is partnering again with Foss Maritime Company to retrofit an existing tugboat with hybrid technology.

The ship called the Campbell Foss is a conventional dolphin tugboat assisting ships in the San Pedro Bay. It will be fitted with motor generators, batteries and control systems by Foss at one of their shipyards.  The retrofit should cut 1,340 tons of CO2 emissions and save 100,000 gallons of fuel per year.  Foss and the Port plan to introduce more hybrid tugs over the coming years and see more retrofits in the future.

The Port of Long Beach received a $1 million grant from the California Air Resources Board for the retrofit project.

via Press Release

It sounds like a good idea: Use electricity to compress air, stuff it in a tank and use the power expelled by the air’s release to power a vehicle. Seems like a good idea, certainly a lot easier to understand than nano-constructed cathodes on a lithium ion cell. And several companies have been actively attempting to build cars powered by conpressed air for quite some time. We at EcoGeek have been excited about them. The two biggest of these companies are MDI, a French company and Tata Motors, India’s largest car company.

But I have bad news. Today, here at EcoGeek, we are declaring the air car dead. It’s a question of physics, every conversion from one type of energy to another decreases efficiency. With battery electric vehicles, energy is converted into electricity and electricity is converted to motion. With air cars, energy is converted into electricity, electricity into compressed air and then compressed air into motion. Because of this, compressed air cars will always be less efficient than electric vehicles.

Even more problematic, no air car has ever been developed that can reach highway speeds and no air car has even been demonstrated to have a range of more than 10 kilometers. Promises were made, and with the entrance of Tata Motors to the fray, we thought there might be some truth to the claims.

But Tata’s goal of a 2008 release of an air car has, obviously, not been met. In 2009, Tata stated that the short range of the cars and issues with keeping them from freezing up (when compressed air is decompressed, temperatures drop dramatically) were proving them impractical.

So, I’m sorry my friends, we’re all going to have to be happy with the much more technologically confusing (though also much more efficient) battery electric vehicles. The good news is, with the Leaf and the Volt already hitting the road, that’s one technology that definitely isn’t vaporware.

More on the disadvantages of air cars.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a color filter that could boost the efficiency of LCDs, the power hog of all your gadgets, by more than 400 percent, and no, I didn’t add an extra zero there.

The researchers made an optical film that colors and polarizes the light that passes through an LCD, taking the place of the several layers of optical devices that typically serve the same function in an LCD.  Those multiple layers give rise to inefficiencies:  the best LCDs out today only emit eight percent of the light their backlights produce. The researchers found that the film allowed 36 percent of the light to make it through – a huge increase.

The color filter is made up of three ultra-thin layers — two layers of aluminum enclosing a layer of insulating material — and it only measures 200 nanometers thick.  The filter is etched with slits that produce different colors when illuminated by the backlight.  The slits are matched in scale to the wavelength of visible light and their length and distance apart determine the color produced.

This grating pattern is where the efficiency boost comes in.  In current LCDs, a polarizing filter absorbs half the light (the part with the wrong polarization).  The grating on the new filter doesn’t absorb the light with the wrong polarization, it instead reflects it back towards a mirror that flips some of its polarization, letting more light pass through the filter.

Researchers are trying to improve the efficiency further and are coming up with ways to mass produce the filters, like with roll-to-roll printers.

via MIT Tech Review

The U.S. Coast Guard has set a goal of a net zero carbon footprint for housing at their Southwest Harbor Base in Maine.  The base is using solar panels, solar hot water heaters and now a wind turbine for their energy needs.  Efficiency-boosting retrofits will also be done, including new electrical systems and better insulation.

The newly-installed wind turbine sits atop a 70-foot tower and provides power to a duplex housing unit located on the base.  The upgrades and retrofits will begin in October.

The Coast Guard is looking to install wind power at other bases in Maine and around the country.  This push toward renewable energy is part of a bigger program by the Department of Defense to get 25 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2025.

As Capt. James McPherson of the Coast Guard said, “We want to be good stewards of the environment and we want to be careful how we spend tax payer dollars, but we also think the debate is over whether we need to go to alternative energy.”  Yes, it is.

via Inhabitat

The US Environmental Protection Agency has released its new vehicle fuel economy labels which are proposed to replace the current vehicle labels starting with the 2012 model year. The new labels provide consumers with additional information and a comparative ranking for new cars, with a comparison bar (not unlike what is now provided on appliances like refrigerators and clothes dryers) showing where the particular vehicle falls along the line from best to worst in fuel efficiency, greenhouse gasses, and other pollutants. Two alternative forms of labels (plus a third option which is not proposed for use at this time) are now open for public comment.

The new labels will help provide more useful comparison information for the increasing variety of vehicle options that are available. In addition to labels for gas and diesel vehicles, there will also now be labels for electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, compressed natural gas vehicles, and flexible fuel vehicles. This will allow more direct comparisons between different vehicles with different kinds of fuels.

The proposed labels will still show the MPG, but will also include a fuel consumption value (which, instead of miles per gallon, is a better measure telling how many gallons of fuel per 100 miles are needed). Putting the extra information on the label is simple, and makes comparison of efficiency that much easier. But the familiar MPG number will still be there, too.

Information about greenhouse gas emissions and other exhaust pollutants would also be listed on these labels. Upstream emissions, such as the emissions from a power plant generating electricity to recharge a vehicle, would not be listed on the label, although a website with more information about these impacts would be included on the label.

The dual fuel label (for vehicles able to run on either gasoline or E85 ethanol) distills everything to a single number, rather than presenting alternatives for each fuel. Because a gallon of E85 ethanol has less energy than a gallon of gasoline, the miles per gallon number will be different.

But overall, we like the trend towards including more information on the labels. The new labels should address the gap in the current labels for dealing with ‘advanced technology vehicles’ and should help consumers evaluate the differences and the options that are now available.

EPA Press Release

via: GM-Volt.com and Treehugger

American automakers, as well as foreign manufacturers selling in the US have a few full-size pickup trucks with diesel engines, but for years a small pickup with a diesel engine has not been available. That is set to change as Indian car maker Mahindra & Majindra has received EPA approval to sell its small pickups in the US.

The company is producing small pickups with a 2.2 liter common-rail turbo diesel engine that has 140 horsepower and gets up to 30 miles per gallon. Mahindra trucks have features including 6-speed automatic transmission, electronic stability control, traction control, active rollover mitigation, and 4 wheel ABS brakes. Although these are small pickups, the company claims a cargo capacity of 2,765 pounds (1,254 kilograms), which is greater than the cargo capacity of many other full-size pickups. The company has a two-door model, which has a 7.5 foot (2.29 meter) long cargo bed, as well as a four-door version of the pickup.

The price for the pickup is set to start around $22,000. The company expects to begin selling its trucks in the US by the end of the year, and plans to follow that with a diesel SUV in 2011 and a hybrid SUV in 2013.

via: 40mpg.org

A Colorado company is introducing a system that will allow wind turbines to generate power even when the wind is not blowing. The SmartGen hybrid gas-wind turbine enables wind turbines to produce energy at periods of low wind, by turning the turbine with compressed air generated at the base of the tower from a turbo-compressor that is run on natural gas or biogas.

Even more importantly, the SmartGen system can be retrofitted into existing wind turbines, allowing existing facilities to increase their performance. This is likely to be particularly compelling for installations seeking to extend their production while remaining free of fossil fuels. In areas where biogas production is also available nearby, a wind power facility that is generating renewable energy credits could likely also produce power from biogas in this manner as another form of renewable power and thereby remain 100% renewable energy based.

A smart clutch disengages the wind blades from the machinery when the compressor is engaged. The company also notes that the exhausted air from the air motor cools dramatically when it is released, which can help provide cooling for the generator nacelle and may even help prevent fires in the housing.

“Large wind turbines, even in good wind resource areas, typically generate rated power only 30% of the time because the wind blows intermittently or at a low wind velocity,” according to the company. Utilizing other fuels to keep the turbines generating power means that the system better employs the investment in equipment, instead of having it sit idle for much of the time.

via: North American Windpower

EV charging stations are starting to spread around the nation, but so far there’s been a concentration of these installations in cities — especially when it comes to more cutting-edge stations, like the first public quick-charging station installed in Portland.  But one Tennessee town is proving EV charging needs to happen in more rural areas too.

The town of Pulaski has just installed an EV charging station powered by a 20-kW parking lot solar array from Outpost Solar, the first of its kind in the Southeast.  The station is from EV-Charge America and has two level one plugs and two level two plugs, the type designed to charge the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt.  It’s available for use by anyone with a plug-in vehicle.

Smyrna, TN will become the home to a LEAF production facility soon and as that EV hits the roads, this station will likely see a bit of traffic.  Beyond Pulaski, 14 more solar EV charging stations are set to open in Tennessee in the next three years, including locations in Nashville and Chattanooga.

via Autoblog Green

New York City has done a good job in recent years to encourage cycling instead of driving in the city.  Bike lanes and paths have been created and new policies have been instituted to protect cyclists and pedestrians, but the city may be planning the biggest encouragement yet:  a huge bike-sharing program.

The proposed program, created by Mayor Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, would start with 10,500 bikes availabe for rent and then quickly spread to 49,000 bikes, similar in scale to the successful Paris Vélib’ program.

Other details like station locations, timing, etc. aren’t available yet, but we’ll be excitedly awaiting more news.

via CBS News New York

The Heliotrope solar-powered home created by German architect Rolf Disch rotates to follow the sun’s rays.  The design generates enough energy to fully power the home and feeds surplus energy to the grid, making it the world’s first energy positive solar home capable of producing five times the energy it uses.

The cylindrical-shaped Heliotrope has a series of balconies covered with vacuum-solar thermal collectors and features one large 6.6 kW roof solar panel called the Sun Sail that pivots (in addition to the house’s rotation) to match the angle of the sun.  The pivoting motion allows the Sun Sail to produce about 30 to 40 percent more energy than a static solar panel.

The roof houses a hand railing system that doubles as solar thermal tubing for water heating.  The house also features triple-paneled thermal-insulated glass on the side of the house facing the sun so that the light streaming into the home is maximized throughout the day.

The design also includes rain-water collectors and a waste water purification system.  Currently, three Heliotrope homes have been built.

via Good Clean Tech