Taxpayer money which was meant to be used to improve the nation's gas mileage, was spent on SUV's and pickup trucks like the Hummer H3T

The poster child of gas guzzlers, the Hummer, was among the vehicles purchased under the taxpayer funded Cash for Clunkers program.

Of the nearly 700,000 vehicles sold under the program, more than 32,000 of those were Chevy Silverado and Ford F-150 pickup trucks. 15 Hummer H3T four-wheel-drive vehicles were also purchased as part of the Cash for Clunkers program.

For consumers to receive the federal rebates of up to $4,500, the new vehicle they were purchasing had to have a better average miles per gallon than the old car they were trading in. In order to purchase a new SUV, minivan or pickup truck, the difference required was 2 miles per gallon. For passenger cars it needed to be at least 4 miles per gallon better.

The fifth most purchased vehicle was the Ford Escape, with 21,894 being sold. Honda’s SUV’s also did remarkably well, with upwards of 20,000 of their CR-V crossover models being purchased.

While the number of SUV’s, and other vehicles generally considered to be gas guzzlers, only made up a fraction of the total amount sold as part of the Clunkers program , it puts a stain on a program that was touted by the Transportation Department as having brought about vast improvements in fuel efficiency.

The Hummer, the poster child of heavy gas guzzling vehicles, is the most ironic of the lot, even considering the very few that were sold.

The Ford Escape was the fifth most purchased vehicle in the Cash for Clunkers program.

According to some consumer experts, the Cash for Clunkers plan was faulty to begin with in terms of helping the environment and conserving fuel. They contend that the nearly $3 billion of taxpayer money could have been much better spent elsewhere.

The cost to U.S. taxpayers came to more than $4,000 per car for each of the 700,000 vehicles sold in the program.

“For that much money, we could have gotten a lot more,” says Lisa Margonelli, who directs the New America Foundation’s Energy Productivity Initiative. “Consider this: Cash for Clunkers only required a fuel economy increase of 2 mpg over the original car, so the total mandated gas savings was about 38 million gallons of gas. The auto companies can raise the fuel economy of cars on the assembly line by that much at a cost of $500 per vehicle. So, we could have given our $2.87 billion to the auto companies to upgrade 5.5 million cars by 2 mpg or more, and bought ourselves a yearly fuel savings of 303 million gallons of gas.”

“If we’d made only cars getting 32 mpg or more eligible for the loans we could have saved 855 million gallons of gasoline a year. Much much more than 38 million,” she said.

A recent survey conducted by CNW Research, a firm specializing in automotive marketing research, revealed that more than 17 percent of new-vehicle customers who participated in the Cash for Clunkers program now harbor “some” doubt or “serious” doubt about letting a government subsidy convince them to go further into debt.

The Chinese are purchasing oil fields across the world in an attempt to rival the major oil companies, such as, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron.

Chinese oil consumption is expected to grow by 20% in the next 6 years, and the country already imports more than half of what they currently consume.

The firms are taking a couple of steps toward getting a solid foothold in the market, such as extending loans to foreign companies. Rosneft, a Russian company, has made a deal with China to accept a $10 million loan in exchange for a percentage of the company’s output. Also, Petrobras (Brazil) has worked out a similar deal with China. Currently Petrobras is creating a new major oil field just off the coast.

In addition to extending loans to foreign oil companies, China has also expressed an interest in purchasing either part of Argentina’s YPF or the whole company for $14.5 billion, although the deal is far from set in stone. There is also speculation afoot that China may be looking to purchase a majority of the Rumaila oilfield in Iraq, a field that produces over 1 million barrels of oil each day, from BP.

There are several different reasons that China has been making moves to gain more control in the oil production business. First, China has managed to accumulate a large amount of cash. There is speculation that the unbridled spending from the United States government will have a serious negative pact on the value of the cash, so China is attempting to purchase these stakes in order to diversify their portfolios quickly without causing further destabilization of the US dollar.

Another reason that China has been making purchases is that they do not have much faith in free market economies, spurred by their failed attempt to purchase Unocal.

Currently, China imports over half of the oil used in their country, and they project oil consumption to grow by almost 20% in the next six years.

As for being a rival to western companies, China National Petroleum Corporation already has a production rate that is nearly equal to that of Exxon. With a growing stake in worldwide production, China is poised to be a serious contender in the global market.

Over four hundred stimulus grant proposals have been received by the United States Department of Energy for the purpose of setting up the proposed smart grid system. The DoE is planning to choose which proposals to go with in November, but right now they are still in the process of adding up the total amount of money that has been requested.

According to Todd Arnold, Duke Energy’s senior vice president of smart grids, “What’s critical for industry is we get out of pilots, and start building smart grids.” Currently they are serving about four million Midwest customers.

The maximum amount of money that is allowed to be requested stands at $200 million for the proposals that were closed on August 6th. Duke Energy put in a request for the full $200 million, and their goal is to take their original plan of having smart meters and automation systems connected to over 1.5 million users in six years, and reduce the time frame to four years. The users in their target area are from Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Duke Energy also has plans to send off another proposal for advanced pilot systems to the tune of $14 million by late August.

A few days ago, Echelon Corp. agreed to purchase just under $16 million Networked Energy Services systems from Duke, which are scheduled for delivery prior to October 2009. According to Echelon, this deal could be the start of what will be sales of its NES systems that push the $150 million mark. Representatives from Duke Energy say that they liked “how [the Echelon system] gets data out of the meter to where we have a collection point on the network. We like their design of their metering infrastructure and the NES system’s handling of data at head end, managing the network and handling updates and applications on the smart meter.”

State officials in Vermont made an announcement on Thursday that the state’s utilities and regulatory agencies are prepared to go ahead with establishing a ’smart grid’, with or without federal funding. Of course, without the extra $66 million, the project will take far longer to get up and running.

Setting up a ’smart grid’ is a daunting task, which requires the installation of specialized electric meters in homes, running fiber optic connections to them, and setting up systems for gathering data from the meters. The idea behind the system is to use the data that is gathered to help reduce both the cost and use of electricity.

One of the potential issues with the new ’smart grid’ is the use of electricity to heat water in homes and provide heating and cooling. These issues have been problematic when formulating a plan to slow the usage of electricity in homes around the state. With emerging technologies, the smart grid would allow homeowners to use power for these things while both reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the generation process and without increasing demand during peak usage times.

The project, which is projected to cost around $133 million, would be completed in approximately three years with the help of federal funding. About half of the cost would be shouldered by the utility companies, with the other half coming from stimulus funds.

According to Mary Powell of Green Mountain Power, customers in Vermont are already up to speed on the savings that they will see from the smart grid. By using the smart meters and tracking usage, a homeowner would be able to adjust their power usage to off-peak times.

Another advantage of the smart grid is that a company can easily integrate renewable power sources into the system and activate them when necessary, unlike nuclear or fossil fuel sources, which run constantly.

According to Fierce Telecom, the FCC has hired Nick Sinai of Polaris Ventures, a former venture capitalist, to be the energy and environmental director as well as establish a National Broadband Task Force, which aims to analyze the United States’ communications system to pave the way for establishing a smart energy grid.

The FCC plans to establish a set of rules for utility providers that will use broadband and wireless technology to gather data on energy consumption.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm and Verizon have agreed on starting a joint venture that aims to facilitate machine-to-machine wireless communication (designated as M2M) and begin establishing the use of smart services in a variety of markets. Although the joint venture hasn’t been given a name yet, the goal is to enable utilities to connect to items such as circuit breakers, sub-station equipment, and transformers and make them more interactive. By 2012, utility companies project that there will be more than 85 million connections around the world.

Verizon and Qualcomm plan to include cloud computing in order to provision devices automatically, monitor power usage, and manage equipment. Some other capabilities planned to be set up include applications that are specific to certain products, new performance monitoring tools, data collection, and OEM white label applications.

The market research firm Frost & Sullivan released a document that will allow building owners to see a list of challenges presented when it comes to automating buildings as well as how automation and IT systems can help owners have more control over energy demand while maximizing the amount of available space and keeping environmental impact to a minimum. The white paper, titled A New Facelift for Existing Buildings,  also serves as a plan for achieving the next level of control networking and information gathering.

A ruling that requires all cab owners in Boston to change over to an all-hybrid fleet has been overturned. According to US District Court Judge William G. Young, the one year old ruling that Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino instated was a violation of an act of Congress.

The ruling caused a stir among taxi owners who were worried that having to switch over to hybrid vehicles would do serious harm to their business and cost them thousands of dollars. According to Judge Young, the Mayor’s decision went against the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. The act prevents local government officials from declaring their own standards, and also sets forth fuel economy standards.

The overturning of Mayor Menino’s ruling sent a feeling of relief through members of the Boston Taxi Owners Association. According to Paul H. Merry, the lawyer for the BTOA, “The cab operators have wanted from day one to support the city’s efforts to protect the environment. But those efforts need to be conducted in a way that does not deprive people of jobs.” Mr. Merry does expect that the city will attempt to take the ruling to the US Court of Appeals, but hopes that there will be a chance for talks between the Mayor and cab drivers.

“We’re always amenable to discussions,” says William F. Sinnott, who is the counsel for the city. “We appreciate Judge Young’s thoughtful consideration of the issue.” He also says that the city is “reviewing his memorandum and order, and we will meet with our clients shortly and assess our next steps.”

Merry also said that some of the cab companies might be willing to go green with their fleet if the city would be more flexible on several other rules that they have put in place, such as mandatory installation of certain types of credit card machines.

One of the major complaints against the mayor’s ruling is that the regulation would require the hybrids to be purchased as new vehicles rather than used. Requiring cab companies to purchase new vehicles would cost far more than buying used, putting even more unnecessary strain on cab owners.

With advanced development and high levels of energy efficiency, concentrated solar power could meet up to 7 percent of the world’s power needs by 2030 and fully one quarter by 2050, employing 2 million people along the way.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) can provide up to a quarter of the world's electricity needs by 2050, according to a new study.

Concentrated solar power (CSP), which utilizes mirrors to beam sunlight onto water, has the potential to generate massive amounts of electricity, according to a new study conducted by industry groups.

“Concentrating solar power could meet up to 7 percent of the world’s projected power needs in 2030 and a full quarter by 2050,” accroding to the joint report conducted by the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association (ESTELA), environmental group Greenpeace, and the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) SolarPACES group.

According to those estimations, massive investments will be needed in order to improve upon existing technologies. The 28-page report says that 174 billion euros ($243 billion) per year would need to be invested by 2050. Under that scenario, solar power plants would have installed capacity of 1,500 GW.

At the end of 2008 CSP capacity was around 430MW, and worldwide investment in the technology will reach 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion).

CSP uses arrays of hundreds of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays to temperatures between 400 and 1,000 Celsius (750-1,800 Fahrenheit) to provide energy to run a power plant.

Recently, a research expert noted that the Sahara Desert has the capacity to supply all of Europe’s electricity needs by installing an array of solar panels, due to the strong sun in the region.

“It [North Africa] could supply Europe with all the energy it needs,” Dr. Anthony Patt, a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, told scientists at this week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. “The Sun is very strong there and it is very reliable.

Sunshine in the Sahara, according to Patt, is twice as strong as in Spain and is a constant resource rarely blocked by clouds, even in winter.

By Jessica Berman- via VOA News

Scientists say electricity made from plant material, or biomass, is a more energy efficient and environmentally friendly way to power our automobiles than ethanol, a gasoline alternative that’s also made from biomass.

As public concerns increase over oil prices and global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have turned their attention to alternative energy sources created from plants.

So-called biomass technology is being hailed as way to make ethanol, a gasoline alternative to fuel combustion engines. But biomass is also attracting interest as a fuel for power plants to generate electricity that could then be used to charge the batteries for electric vehicles.

In a study published this week in the journal Science, researchers compared the energy efficiency of liquid ethanol made from corn and bioelectricity made from switchgrass, a wild, woody perennial, drought-resistant grass that can be grown in marginal or abandoned farmland.

Study co-author Elliott Campbell of the University of California in Merced says bioelectricity came out on top in a number of areas.

Campbell told a Science magazine interviewer that use of bioelectricity in transportation resulted in far fewer greenhouse emissions than internal combustion fuels.

Campbell added that cars powered by biomass generated-electricity drove 81 percent more kilometers per unit of land than cars fueled by corn-based ethanol.

“What we found is that if you burn this biomass to make electricity to power electric vehicles you can get a lot more transportation and a lot more greenhouse gas offsets than if you converted it to ethanol,” Campbell.

Scientists say electricity derived from switchgrass is the most efficient energy source they studied. They say it would take far less valuable farmland to produce energy from switchgrass than it would take to produce the same amount energy in the form of corn-based ethanol.

In the move toward biofuels to replace petroleum products, Campbell says cars powered with bioelectricity appear to be the way to go.

“If we’re going to anticipate that shift and think holistically about the best way to build up our bioenergy resources infrastructure, then we might want to start thinking about bioelectricity as a viable energy pathway,” said Campbell.

The authors of the study say they now need to consider other issues related to biomass energy conversion, such as water consumption, air pollution and the relative costs of converting biomass to ethanol or to electricity.

The story of one guy’s innovative usage of some smokin’ hot solar panels, and a dumb phone call from prison

A school in Chico, Calif., that had 46 rooftop solar panels valued at nearly $50,000 stolen from its rooftop in February, has now learned how –and why– the heist occured.

An attorney for 32-year-old Christopher Bess, who was identified on surveillance video taken in the area of the school, said that his client stole the solar panels because he needed them to buy drugs. Bess entered into a plea bargain in court on Tuesday, and because he has a prior assault conviction can face up to 7 years in prison for the crime.

But the story gets even more interesting.

Bess was in jail and awaiting sentencing for a felony drug charge, a result of the surveillance footage which allowed police only to arrest him on a drug-transportation charge –but not for the solar heist–, when he made a call from prison to a friend, asking him to “empty out” the solar panels from two rented storage units where they were being hidden. Needless to say, his calls were being covertly monitored and the police were immediately dispatched to the location where 17 of the solar panels turned up along with various other stolen property.

His lawyer said that Bess could have faced a 15 year sentence had he gone to trial and been convicted on all counts.

The storage shed, rented under his girlfriend’s name, also contained stolen bicycles, lawn-care equipment, plus cold-weather gear stolen from a local non-profit group that assists military veterans.

“What was found in the storage shed, his behavior, is indicative of a drug addict going on a run,” the suspect’s lawyer observed.

Bess was ordered held without bail pending next month’s sentencing.

To most of us, UFO’s solving our energy problem will sound, at best, like wishful thinking, and most likely will be dismissed as insane.

A solution to our energy problems from out of this world, or is it just insane?

But if energy lobbyist Stephen Bassett has his way, President Barack Obama will release information that the government is secretly hiding on “extraterrestrial vehicles” –according to Mr. Bassett’s claims– which can be used to solve the nation’s energy problem and limit climate change in one fell swoop.

The power source, he said, chronicled in a report Greenwire did on the subject, behind a flying saucer the weight of a tractor-trailer which hurtles through galaxies at 20,000 miles per hour is astronomical.

“What is the energy system operating that craft?” Bassett said. “They’re not burning kerosene. It eliminates oil. It eliminates coal. If it’s as good as we think it is, it transforms everything.”

Mr. Bassett is the founder of the Paradigm Research Group (PRG), which launched the “Million Fax on Washington” campaign, calling for the President to release all files, call for congressional hearings, and make available extraterrestrial (ET) derived technologies to the public domain.

Bassett claims that the government has flying saucers in its possession.

He is a firm believer in the cause, and is even working free of charge to lobby on behalf of the Exopolitics Institute, an educational organization which describes itself as “dedicated to studying the key actors, institutions and political processes associated with extraterrestrial life.”

Stephen Bassett is focusing his efforts on the White House, in an attempt to receive openness on the subject of ET's.

Believers that the truth regarding ET technology is currently being covered up, Bassett says, are eagerly awaiting for President Obama to declassify the information the government is holding on the subject.

He says that Obama ”has the intelligence to handle it,” while at the same time being “sensitive to the concerns of the military intelligence community.”

After lobbying for seven months on science and technology, defense and aviation, Bassett has now added, in a Senate filing, energy to his portfolio.

“The UFO phenomenon is real,” Bassett said. “The extraterrestrial presence is real.”

His theory is that the melting polar ice caps would be a thing of the past. There would be no more ozone hole, while the price of electricity would plummet to almost nil.

PRG says that there are “twenty million plus American citizens who are following the politics of disclosure with interest and concern.”