Happy March, everyone! Say goodbye to universally crappy February and hello to the month when Coca-Cola, pancakes, the rubber band, and the parachute were invented. None of those things directly relate to ethanol or green energy, granted, but the world would be in pretty sad shape without pancakes. Or rubber bands, quite frankly.

As it is, we’re living in weird times. The relationship between Democrats and Republicans has gotten more caustic and spiteful than ever, to the point where ANY legislation sent to Congress will run aground, energy legislation being no exception. But state governments, hoping to reverse a wheezing economy and ballooning unemployment, “are increasingly courting renewable energy companies with stringent new rules mandating that a share of their state’s electricity come from renewable sources.” Generally, these “renewable portfolio standards” require that utilities either produce or buy renewable energy. Specific percentages and timelines are left to the individual states: New York wants 24% green energy by 2013, while Michigan only wants 10% by 2015. Maine, ever the overachiever, has its sights set on 40% by 2017.

This move towards green energy is rooted in studies finding that “almost 300,000 clean energy jobs could be created nationwide by 2025.” It’s not quite the 800,000 jobs we lost a year ago, but it’s still an impressive figure from a field wide open for innovation and growth. The most common sources of green energy are wind and solar power, but everything from ethanol production (yay!) to dredging up geothermal energy to torching biomass is being considered. Even the clean coal people are still building castles in the air. It’s so wide open that CO Democrat Max Tyler and FL Republican Lee Constantine are pushing for almost the exact same green energy bill for their respective states - their mandates only differ by 10%.

Finally! We’ve been cheerleading the economic benefits of green energy production for what seems like ever, and so have a lot of other, more prominent bloggers and public figures and people with good sense. Hopefully Washington won’t let things get too desperate before acting on the states’ momentum.

This hasn’t been a good winter for a lot of people, but Tesla Motors has had a particularly rough 2010 so far. First they cease operations on their Roadster, then three of their employees die when their plane crashed into high-tension power lines. CEO Elon Musk identified the three victims of the crash as “plane owner and pilot Doug Bourn, 56…Brian Finn, a 42-year-old senior interactive electronics manager…and electrical engineer Andrew Ingram.” Finn reportedly lived a couple of blocks away from the crash site; Doug Bourn “shared responsibility for the design and testing of the power electronics module for the Roadster.”

Since we’ve covered Tesla in the past, and rooted for them as a potential developer of mass-market electric vehicles, we at Corn Car send our condolences to the families and friends of Doug Bourn, Brian Finn, and Andrew Ingram.

Wow! We meant to post much sooner than today, but our Internet was put out of commission by the Snowpocalypse, remnants piled up in 2-foot-high dunes all around Baltimore. All we could do was sit around and prepare for the inevitable Yeti attacks - the naked fear present in most of that week’s weather forecasts suggested they were on the way. But now our connection to the rest of the world is restored, so we thought we’d gather a few tips on how to deal with snow cleanly and greenly (assuming greenly is even a word).

1. Shoveling might be a pain in the ass, and back, and shoulders, and knees, but it’s the most environmentally sound way of moving snow around. A close second, however, is the Wovel, a snow shovel on a wheel that utilizes your body weight to push snow without much energy expenditure. It’s won all sorts of green awards for its design, which is equal parts shovel and olde-tymey bicycle, and it costs less than a snow blower. So if you absolutely need to update your hardware, try one out.

2. Use sand or kitty litter for tire traction instead of salt; salty runoff is bad for the water table. Relatedly, some cities in upstate New York are mixing recycled glass in with their salt loads to fix this problem, and found that the mixture is both less expensive and more potent than salt alone. The glass, ground fine enough to pose no danger to car tires, bounces enough sunlight around to melt snow and ice quickly. We’re hoping Baltimore catches wind of this idea, since we’re already used to seeing glass in the street and wouldn’t put up much resistance to it finally doing us some good.

3. If you’re just a snow blower kind of person, Toro makes an electric snow blower that’s cleaner, quieter, and doesn’t require as much engine maintenance as a conventional model. It’s also lighter, which is an obvious benefit - our backs were sore enough after digging cars out.

4. Do nothing, which uses no energy, gives off no emissions (excusing the occasional blast of methane), and might keep you from feeling like an idiot if we end up getting even more snow this week. Curse you, Ullr!

Anyway, that should be enough to get our Mid-Atlantic readers started. Godspeed, and steer clear of Yetis.

Good news and bad news to start off the week. The bad news is that the Tesla Roadster, one of the sweetest electric cars ever built, won’t be built for much longer - according to Eco Auto Ninja, “the Tesla Roadster will cease to be produced in 2011 for the simple reason that Tesla won’t have anywhere to build the high-end electric sports car.” So if you were planning on getting one, uh, now’s the time. It’s a shame, not only because it’s something else for electric car haters to gloat about, but we wanted to see those Roadsters take off just for Elon Musk’s response. He’s more than weird enough to have delivered something hilarious.

But the good news is that GM is setting up electric motor production in, of all places, Baltimore. It’ll create around 200 jobs, which we desperately need, and it puts GM in the enviable position of being the only US electric car manufacturer to build its own engines. Apparently the Baltimore plant will be used to build “a new version of GM’s two-mode hybrid system destined for pickups, SUVs and rear-wheel drive cars,” which means they’re refining their current, heavier model into a better fit for consumers. They picked a good city for this, too - despite its other problems, Baltimore is making a lot of big steps towards sustainable living.

But that leads us to wonder: what other cities could use a shot in the arm from green industry, and which ones are the best prepared? Sounds like a list idea to us…

There’s a lot to be said about Timothy Geithner, and little of it is complimentary at this point; many see him as the the banking/financial industry’s chief administrative finger puppet. But he’s also one of Obama’s point men in the president’s renewed drive to take his ideas on the road, which is why Geithner toured Minnesota’s much-touted “green economy” yesterday.

Indeed, the Land of 10,000 Lakes has capitalized on the fact that it’s essentially a desolate, windswept prairie by building turbines and developing a solid wind energy industry. It was also one of the first states to push ethanol as an additive for motor fuel, which surprises people who don’t realize that Minnesota is a progressive-minded state with high numbers of healthy, literate people, a demographic that tends to support renewables. And while no one’s immune to economic woes - the company Joe Biden endorsed as a triumph of stimulus spending laid off 300 people last year - hopes are still high that green jobs will prevail in 2010. Which, we imagine, is what Geithner was there to determine. Hopefully he’ll decide that funding growing companies is as important as eternally propping up their badly-run counterparts. Our hopes aren’t high - nor should they be, to judge by his performance as Treasury Secretary up to now - but both Obama and Joe Biden have pledged money towards green jobs and high-speed rail, so he can only backslide so far.

For more about high-speed rail plans, Click the Car. As a bonus, you’ll see a typically childish, obstructionist response from the Wisconsin GOP. Seeya next week!

Finally, some real ethanol news. It’s nice to find some actual news stories to comment on instead of cantankerous op-ed pieces that might as well have been written five years ago, for how relevant they are now. We’ve got cantankerous covered, thanks.

Anyway, auto supplier Ricardo Inc. has built an ethanol-burning engine that, they claim, has better fuel economy than a traditional gas engine. Using diesel engines as a model, Ricardo built one that runs on a 30% to 50% ethanol blend that tops off at 15 mpg and weighs between 400 and 500 pounds. Meant for heavy trucks, their engine costs less than a comparably-sized diesel engine. The problem, of course, is that Ricardo’s optimum blend isn’t available anywhere yet, but Oil Price Information Service’s Tom Kloza points out that “people are agnostic” when it comes to fuel prices, and we don’t see gas getting much cheaper any time soon. It also helps that the U.S. Energy Information Administration is projecting improvements for the ethanol industry this year, based on a reversal of gasoline consumption dips that will boost demand for biofuels, and the rising requirements of federal renewable fuels standards.

And for what it’s worth, 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark supports ethanol. In fact, he was on hand for Ricardo Inc.’s engine test at today’s Washington, D.C. Auto Show, where he talked up ethanol’s job creation and environmental benefits, as well as the role it could play in national security. Clark may have been the laziest presidential candidate this side of Fred Thompson, but at least something can stir him to action. We’re glad it’s ethanol.

We’ve been looking for ethanol news all afternoon, but unfortunately all we can turn up are cranky blog entries about corn being yanked from the mouths of starving orphans and ethanol is a waste of time and money and other Republican hand-waving. Same with electric cars, only that topic brings out the whiners who want their glorious electropia now now now and are pissed off that a magic wand hasn’t been waved over the energy grid yet. It’s maddening. So we decided to not completely bum ourselves out and find something fun to post on the blog instead, and it just so happens that we found a fun little cartoon about how ethanol is actually made. Bonus points for the use of clip art and ubiquitous 1950s instructional video music. Click the Car to watch it, and we’ll see you next week when, hopefully, there will be something besides meaningless conjecture on the Internet.

Hello? Is this thing on? We’ve been without Internet for a couple of days, but it looks like we’re back, and with a stronger Mbps rate, to boot. We’ve also been slacking on the cool, eco-friendly things Baltimore has been doing as of late, so let’s pause for an update.

Before Mayor Dixon resigned, the city introduced a fleet of DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver buses called the Charm City Circulator as part of an on-going plan to revitalize the city’s public trans., and there’s lots of rooftop gardening and urban sustainability projects going on locally, as well. B’More Green, the Baltimore Sun’s environmental blog, brought up a recent interview with Gov. O’Malley where he talked about doing more to strengthen solar power development and offer tax breaks for electric cars. The article also mentions the major budget crunch hampering many of the state’s green efforts, so who knows how far any of O’Malley’s plans will go. Hopefully he’ll do better for Baltimore as a governor than a mayor, not that we have much room to complain about his mayoral legacy in light of our current, rudderless City Hall.
But before we all go patting ourselves on the back about eco-friendliness, there’s also a story about how far the city still has to go: turns out local woman Maxine Taylor was cited last year for “having a driveway and parking pad made out of wood chips.” The city’s zoning codes still insist that parking areas have to be “dustless” asphalt, brick, concrete or stone block,” even as Baltimore’s Sustainability Plan hopes to engage residents in making the city a cleaner, greener place. Oops.

We’ll stop here, just short of jinxing our repaired Internet connection, but we’ll post again later in the week.

We’re back, as promised, with more book suggestions for our dedicated readership. Most fiction with an alt. fuels focus is sci-fi, so we’re not sure what to tell you if that’s not your thing. But if you’re reading a biofuels/alt. energy blog, you’re essentially telling the world that it is, so we’re not worried about insulting anyone with more traditionally literary tastes.

First up is Ben Bova’s Powersat; Bova has always been pro-space exploration, and this book’s plot hinges around “a terrorist conspiracy…to sabotage Astro [Corporation]’s plans to put satellites in geosynchronous orbit capable of beaming solar energy in microwave form to earth.” Bonus: the villains have ties to oil barons. Bova isn’t the most sophisticated writer on earth, but his science is plausible and he’s certainly a passionate environmentalist, to the point that he was hired as a consultant for Repo Men.

Along the same lines is Fallout!, by Lawrence Dunning; it’s about a disgruntled, drug addict scientist who plans to blow up a nuclear power plant near Denver. Yeah. Not exactly Gravity’s Rainbow, but what can ya do? Anyway, said scientist and another character discuss the pros of combined solar/wind energy around page 170, and lament the campaign against considering energy sources beyond petroleum and nuclear power. Don’t we know it.

Moving on, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting has a plot devoted to the issue of global warming and resource scarcity - as Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “time will tell if the world has both the scientific know-how and the political will to reverse the ongoing rush toward an ecological precipice.” Discussions of environmental science abound without killing momentum in favor of a shiny hardware exhibition (an unfortunate tendency of hard sci-fi), and the idea that a Buddhist liberal eco-dork (the main character) could be elected president ever is just precious.

Finally, Lyle Estill’s Biodiesel Power: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel isn’t a novel, but it does focus on the people in the biodiesel movement, exploring tensions between grass-roots activists/co-ops and their agribusiness counterparts. It also touches on ethanol’s technical properties, but this is much more of a Howard Zinn treatment of the subject than ethanol usually gets.

So there you have it. That oughta keep everyone busy for a while, us included. We’ll be back on Tuesday with some news updates, and maybe a movie recommendation or two if we can think of any.

We read a lot here at Corn Car, and there are a number of books out there that deal with the issues we blog about, from the specificities of ethanol and alternative fuels to more general issues like environmentalism and conservation. Many of them are textbooks, yes, and they’re by definition on the dry side, but these issues have wormed their way into novels as well. Hell, there’s been plenty of dystopian sci-fi set in the wake of unsustainable consumption at the expense of finite natural resources. Here, then, is a reading list for anyone interested in the greener side of edutainment. And in case you’ve still got holiday gift cards to burn, we’ve included links to buy the books online.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, for example, is widely credited with bolstering the environmentalist movement. While there are occasional drawbacks to the book’s legacy, it got other authors thinking about ecological change and its consequences. Silent Spring focused on the use of pesticides and their role in pollution, and JFK directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate her claims, which were found to be legitimate. Take THAT, American Cyanamid!

One of the books taking Carson’s work to heart was Dune, by Frank Herbert, often referred to as “the first planetary ecology novel.” Characters must compromise with the ecosystems they live in, and Herbert’s depiction of a planet as a complex mega-organism synced up with the first images of earth from space being published at that time. Because of this, Dune strongly influenced environmental movements and reportedly had a hand in establishing the international Earth Day. Modern conservation efforts owe a lot to Dune. More recently, the Dune franchise has broadened into a series of books, movies, TV shows, board games, and other stuff that will brand you as a nerd forever, but the original novel’s legacy is not to be shrugged aside.

More on the informative side (and more relevant to this blog), permaculturist David Blume’s Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century is one of the most readable textbooks on the subject. It is also one of the only textbooks on the subject. It lays out the process of building and maintaining an ethanol plant, and summarizes the history of ethanol from the Whiskey Rebellion to about three years ago, outlining the century-old struggle between ethanol advocates and their petroleum-soaked opposition in an entertaining and provocative fashion. We’re pretty sure he’s not related to Judy Blume, but if it turns out that he is, expect Are You There, God? It’s Me, Ethanol to hit bookshelves soon.

There, that should get you started. We’ll add more to our reading list on Friday. Stay tuned!