ALTERNATIVE FUELS * USA - UPS Begins Using Renewable Biodiesel at Major U.S. Hub

The United Parcel Service began using biodiesel blends at its hub in Louisville, Ky., this month

Jefferson City.MO.USA -PRNewswire/USNewswire -May 23, 2011:    ...   UPS recently installed a biodiesel fuel tank and fueling station at its Worldport facility. It will allow fueling operators to blend specified percentages of biodiesel on the fly, starting with 5 percent biodiesel, B5, and working up to 20 percent biodiesel, B20. The 30,000-gallon biodiesel tank and station at Worldport fuels nearly 200 vehicles and diesel equipment, most of which help load packages on and off the planes...  Biodiesel blends of up to 20 percent can be used in any diesel engine without modifications, says the National Biodiesel Board, and can reduce greenhouse gas production by up to 80 percent...  Worldport is the single most important point in all of UPS's global operation. The facility processes 416,000 packages per hours and is the size of 80 football fields. Worldport turns around 100 aircraft per day... (Picture, Aerial view from wikimedia.org/wikipedia: UPS' Worldport)

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * USA - Big Dogs of the Oil Patch Tangle Over Gas Subsidies

New York,NY,USA -The Wall Street Journal/Hartford Gas Prices -25 May 2011: -- Investor T. Boone Pickens has a vision of American highways in which trucks are powered by natural gas—and nudged along by government subsidies. Charles Koch, one of the richest men in the country, is gunning hard to block taxpayer money from boosting his fellow billionaire's dream...  The oil-patch titans are brawling over a congressional bill that would provide tax breaks to trucking companies for 18-wheelers that run on natural gas instead of oil...  Mr. Pickens, a limelight-loving, veteran energy investor who owns part of a company that installs natural-gas fueling stations, has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting an energy plan he says would help shift the U.S. off imported oil...   Mr. Koch, an intensely private but prominent donor to conservative causes, opposes the bill... (Image from ecopolitology.org: Waste management CNG truck)

ALTERNATIVE FUELS WORLDWIDE * USA - Biofuels Can Be Very Clean Transportation Fuel, Sometimes Not

How green is that biofuel: It depends where it came from ?

Cambridge,MA,USA -GreenBiz, by Jonathan Bardelline -May 12, 2011: ... Researchers at MIT looked at life cycle GHG emissions related to 14 conventional fuels and biofuels... Biofuels usually come out on top, but a few bring bigger footprints... Palm oil from forests or rainforests that were clear-cut, soy oil from former rainforests. Can cause up to 10 times more carbon emissions than jet fuels. Researchers say all fuels have range of possible life cycle emissions... But on low end, all other biofuels are lower than conventional fuels... Fuels from switchgrass, salicornia, and palm oil from land not converted have lowest carbon footprints of all. Coming nowhere near emissions of normal fuels... Others lower their footprints by creating byproducts that can be used elsewhere. When jatropha oil produced, remaining shells, husks, meal used as animal feed, fertilizer, or burned to produce energy...  (Picture from roadtransport: Biodiesel pump)

* USA - Survey: Americans Tired of Gas Prices, Ready for Fuel Standards to Double

Detroit,MICH,USA -The Detroit Bureau, by Paul A. Eisenstein -May 17, 2011: -- Americans are weary of watching gas prices soar and want near doubling of automotive fuel standards from 2016 targets... Nearly two-thirds polled by Opinion Research Group favored raising CAFÉ standard to 60 mpg by 2025... Despite strong opposition from auto industry, the White House it's considering bump to 62 mpg...  Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers asking EPA to wait until new studies have been completed Significant Points... Automotive executives have asserted going to 60 mpg or above could cost $5K or more per vehicle – and would likely require significant shift towards battery power...  But what consumers also don’t expect is to have to keep paying more and more for fuel, said Mark Cooper of Consumer Federation of America, which commissioned survey...  Both industry and government leaders have fiercely fought proposals that would allow hodgepodge of standards in individual state...

* Brazil - Ethanol bio-fuel Iveco Trakker tractor on a roll in

Ribeirão Preto,SP,Brazil -BigLorryBlog -May 17, 2011: -- Word reaches Biglorryblog that Iveco, Fiat Powertrain Industrial and Bosch presented this rather splendid Iveco Trakker Bi-Fuel Ethanol-Diesel vehicle at the recent Agrishow, in Ribeirão Preto, the largest agricultural fair in Brazil...  Anyroadup this Trakker tractor is equipped with an FPT Industrial Cursor 9 (yes that's the bigger capacity version of the Cursor 8) engine which can run on an ethanol/diesel mixture with lower fuel costs when compared to a conventional diesel engine...  Designed to be used by sugar-cane and ethanol producers on their specific agricultural and industrial operations, the vehicle has been using a 40-60% ethanol-diesel average fuel mix on early tests, which contributes to reduce fossil-fuel use and allows for an improved environmental proposition, since ethanol is a fully renewable fuel. The vehicle has been developed in Brazil with the institutional support of UNICA, the Brazilian association of sugar-cane producers under a program to promote "green policies" in the sugar and ethanol business...

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * Brazil - Petrobras ethanol target tripled

São Paulo,SP,Brazil -FT, by Joe Leahy and Ed Crooks in New York -May 8 2011: -- Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, has been ordered to triple its share of national production of ethanol as Latin America’s biggest economy struggles with a shortage of the biofuel... The plan comes as the US is poised to overtake Brazil as the world’s largest ethanol exporter... Petrobras will increase its share of Brazil’s national output from 5 per cent to 15 per cent, said Edison Lobão, mining and energy minister, after Brazil was forced to import large amounts of the fuel from rival producers in the US. “The fact is that we need to produce more ethanol,” the minister told reporters... Brazil was a pioneer in establishing ethanol as a viable alternative to petrol. Most of the Brazil’s cars today can run on both fuels... Brazil last year imported 70m litres of US ethanol – up from only 1m in 2009, according to the US commerce department. To date this year, imports have been even stronger... Industry estimates suggest worldwide US ethanol exports could reach 3bn litres this year, about double the Brazilian exports forecast by Unica, the country’s sugar cane industry association... (Image from biglandsbrazil: ethanol plant in Brazil)

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * USA - Renewed interest in natural gas as fuel prices soar

Dallas,TX,USA -Land Line Magazine, by Clarissa Kell-Holland -April 12, 2011: -- When fuel prices soared to above $5 per gallon three years ago, Texas billionaire, T. Boone Pickens, unveiled his plan aimed at curbing the country’s dependence on foreign oil by switching to liquefied natural gas as an alternative fuel source...  Later, when fuel prices dropped, so did momentum for the Pickens Plan as a domestic fuel source to power the transportation industry...  However, as fuel prices again soar above $4 per gallon, there is a renewed effort to support the use of natural gas. On Wednesday, April 13, Pickens and U.S. lawmakers plan to attend an event in Washington, DC, to educate the public about the importance of natural gas-powered vehicles, including heavy trucks, sponsored by the Natural Gas Vehicles for America organization...  A bill designed to wean the U.S. from its dependence on foreign oil was introduced in the U.S. House on April 6. The bill, which promotes the purchase and production of natural gas-powered vehicles, has gained bipartisan support and 133 cosponsors... (Photo from treehugger: UPS natural gas)

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * Canada - CTA to Feds on biodiesel: "Fail"

The Canadian Trucking Alliance, calls the mandate a "fuel tax increase"

Ottawa,ONT,CAN -Today's Trucking -5 April 2011: -- Now, as fuel prices soar through the ozone layer, is not the time to make Canadian truckers buy biodiesel... Think fuel prices are high now? Just Wait until July 1st when the national two-percent (B2) biodiesel requirement kicks-in... It’s only going to make everything more expensive and research shows it won’t help the environment, says the CTA ... In a prepared statement, CTA President David Bradley says mandating the biodiesel will not only drive up prices for truckers and thus consumers, it might end up fouling truck engines. In other words, it’s going to cost... According to the Federal Government’s own research, the feds have doled out over $2 billion in subsidies to the renewable-fuels industry in recent years. And over the next 25 years, there will be a $2.4-billion net cost to taxpayers with only an incremental reduction (a mere 1 MT CO2 per year) in GHG... In the U.S., where there is a somewhat more mature biodiesel market, prices are one-to-eight-cents-per-liter higher than regular diesel fuel... For Canadian truckers this could mean a fuel-price boost in the range of between $2,100 and $6,000 per truck, depending where biodiesel price increases fall in Canada...  CTA is calling upon the federal government to introduce amendments to its proposed regulation that will provide a level of protection for consumers...

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * Europe - Generalization of alternative fuels by 2050

Brussels,Belgium -Truck & Business, by Michael Buck -1 Feb 2011: -- According to the report of an expert group on future fuels for transport presented to the European Commission, alternative fuels could replace fossil fuels in Europe by 2050. These alternative fuels has the potential for that. It would be possible, according to the report, the answer to the expected demand for all modes of transportation through a combination of electricity and biofuels as key solutions...

* UK - TRaC offers services for electric vehicle charging design

Thirsk,North Yorkshire,UK -Transport Engineer, by Brian Tinham -8 Feb 2011: -- Independent automotive test outfit TRaC says it is ready to help electric vehicle charging system manufacturers with design and standardisation... Last year, the European Commission issued a mandate to the European standardisation bodies (CENELEC, CEN and ETSI) to develop a common European solution for electric vehicle charging – so that charging facilities are not only safe, but also interoperable with electricity supply systems...  Issues will range from the straightforward – defining and enforcing common charging connector, for example – to more complex matters, such as ensuring that the equipment causes no electro-magnetic interference, or disturbance to the electricity supply grid...

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * UK - Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

Didcot,Oxfordshire,UK -Gizmag, by Mike Hanlon -January 26, 2011: -- UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification...  According to Stephen Voller CEO at Cella Energy, the technology was developed using advanced materials science, taking high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying...  The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK...  The development team is led by Professor Stephen Bennington in collaboration with scientists from University College London and Oxford University...

ALTERNATIVE FUELS * USA - Public CNG fueling station opens in Albany, NY

New York,NY,USA -Fleet Owner -Nov 29, 2010: -- The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and National Grid have opened a compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station in Albany, NY, that will serve both the general public and National Grid’s fleet... Supported by more than $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Clean Cities funding National Grid is expanding its clean vehicle capacity with the purchase of 33 compressed natural gas vehicles (CNG) and the opening of two new CNG fueling stations in Albany and Syracuse... These investments will help reduce tailpipe emissions from National Grid’s corporate vehicle fleet and offer motorists in the public access to fueling stations. National Grid’s natural gas fueling station is one of twelve projects in New York State’s Capital Region receiving federal ARRA support... (Photo from apachecorp: Apache is equipping more than 40 of its field vehicles to use CNG)