 |
| Lollapalooza made rock 'n' roll history in 2003, by running all its generators on B100 biodiesel. |
 |
|
Green Fuel All-Stars
By Jason Daley
Being green is getting easier and easier each year as prices for alternative fuels drop and enviro-friendly products flood the market. Renewable power sources are beginning to run everything from snowmobiles to construction cranes across the U.S., and California's Governor Ahnold has even talked about retrofitting one of his Hummers to run on hydrogen. Here, we give kudos to companies and organizations at the forefront of the alt-fuel revolution. These are folks who currently power vehicles on a large scale with renewable, environmentally friendly resources, and who are working to develop new fuel technologies to keep us mean and green long into the future.
Lollapalooza: Rock stars are known for their offstage environmental commitments, but rock concerts can be loud and sooty. Last summer's revived Lollapalooza, however, tried its best to green up its act. The plan was to run the generators at the festival's second stage with B100, but executive director Perry Farrell and his fellow musicians decided to make the whole concert go green. In the cities where biodiesel was available, the entire show—amps, spotlights, and all—ran on generators powered by the greasy green fuel. In fact, the company that ran the generators, Entertainment Services, found biodiesel easier and safer to work with than regular diesel, and hopes more concert organizers opt to use it. www.lollapalooza.com
Rocky Mountain Institute Hypercar Initiative: Implementing green fuels is a great idea, but only if there are actual vehicles to fill up with them. That's why Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute, an organization trying to incubate commercially viable green initiatives, has worked for the past decade to create lightweight composites for autobodies to help green-fuel vehicles lighten up and increase efficiency. So far, Hypercar has designed and tested vehicles with ten times the fuel efficiency of regular automobiles, and hopes that in the next 20 years the majority of cars on the road will be Hypercars. www.hypercar.com
United States Postal Service: Besides harnessing Lance Armstrong's pedal power, the United States Postal Service is getting in on the green fuels revolution, running the country's biggest fleet of alternatively powered vehicles. Of the agency's 200,000 or so light trucks, over 30,000 run on alternative fuels, including over 21,000 that run on E85 ethanol, 500 electric vehicles, as well as 7,000 natural gas vehicles, and a handful of propane trucks. And it doesn't stop there. The service is committed (actually, required by Congress) to buy alternative vehicles in the future, and has already voiced its intention to scoop up hybrids and fuel-cell mail wagons when they become available. www.usps.com
Iogen Corporation: One of the main problems with E85 ethanol is that it uses up food-grade corn, soybeans, and wheat in its manufacture. But the Iogen Corporation in Ottawa, Canada, is hot on the trail of a new type of ethanol, which they've dubbed bioethanol, produced from farm wastes like wheat straw, corn stover, and other sources of plant cellulose. The company's demonstration plant already produces 700,000 liters of bioethanol each year, and hopes within a few years to produce enough of the good green stuff to sell it commercially. www.iogen.ca
Ballard Power Systems: When you finally have a chance to buy a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle— probably around 2010, according to the Department of Energy; chances are the thing will be purring along with a PEM (or proton exchange membrane) fuel cell from Ballard Power Systems under the hood. The company was founded in 1979 by geophysicist Geoffrey Ballard, who pledged to make internal combustion engines obsolete. While most fuel cell researchers haven't gotten past lab work, over the past 20 years Ballard has led the way in commercial fuel cell development, and has been aggressively trying to put fuel cells on the market, negotiating research deals with Ford and DaimlerChrysler, and is already powering the Honda FCX. www.ballard.com
|
