The Senate global warming bill is up for debate this week, so here are some relevant news items for what could be the start of a new era of energy consumption for America. Firstly, scientists warn that cellulosic biofuel production could encourage deforestation. Princeton University’s Tim Searchinger worries that “even if you were to cut down the world’s forests and turn them into a parking lot, and take the wood and put it in a boiler — which obviously releases enormous amounts of carbon from the trees — that is treated as a pure way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

He’s right to worry, given Brazil’s zeal for replacing rainforests with sugarcane/ethanol stock, but his fears can be put to rest if the Senate simply rewords the bill to discourage deforestation. He’s also ignoring the fact that cellulosic ethanol can be made from weeds like switchgrass and hemp, which can grow practically anywhere and don’t need any room made for them. Searchinger’s own solution - making participating nations dole out carbon credits based on whether or not biofuel sources are destructive - isn’t bad either.

Meanwhile, natural gas, electrical utilities, coal companies, and the renewables industry are scrabbling for leverage over energy legislation. Some people see this fragmentation as a good thing - without oil and gas companies presenting a united front, the marketplace of ideas functions better. Others roll their eyes at the squabbling and the inability of alternative energy suppliers to work together on anything. We’re in the latter camp; while it’s good that all possibilities are getting floor time, the dialogue is being hijacked by shortsighted regionalism, which just puts us that much farther behind nations like India and China, who are putting a lot of time, effort, and money into their alt-energy initiatives.

There’s a lot up in the air right now, so rather than speculate any further, we’re going to wait and see what happens in the Senate. Hopefully they won’t drop the ball on this.

All right! Now that the Solar Decathlon is officially over and the solar houses on display are being shipped back to their places of manufacture, we can write up a more substantive post about it. We’re still waiting for our pictures to come back, but we do have our notes and individual house propaganda handy for reference. Click the Corn Car logo for Treehugger’s awesome photo/video slideshow of the event.

Last Saturday, the 10th, we got to DC in enough time to see three of the houses. First up was Team Alberta’s house, provided by students and researchers from the University of Calgary, SAIT Polytechnic, Mount Royal College, and the Alberta College of Art and Design. They built a Western Canadian timber frame house, with vaulted ceilings and strategic keyholes to let in as much of Alberta’s abundant natural sunlight as possible. They also put in a logic controller that automatically lowers blinds, a solar-assisted GSHP, an energy recovery ventilator, LED lighting in the bathroom, and an audio system that isolates itself from the house’s AC power and runs on DC instead. They also had a Mountie greeting people at the door. Cool, huh?

Next was Team Arizona, from the University of Arizona, who built a “SEEDpod” house (SEED stands for Solar Energy-Efficient Dwelling) that can be easily assembled and modified to the regional climate and tastes of whoever bought it. The angle of the house’s roof is adjustable, and the house itself can be rearranged, thanks to its unique segmented construction. One of the coolest elements of the house is the water conservation - it has a greywater filter for the greenhouse, and rainwater is collected in tanks to use for gardening and landscaping. In addition, the outdoor deck is made from water-permeable material, allowing it to run through into the ground below. We could spend all day explaining the vacuum-tank walls and solar-heated water systems, but their 8.6-kW solar energy system relies on bi-facial solar panels that allow daylight to pass through them and has cavities underneath to catch ambient light and ventilate the panels. It was probably the most cleverly designed house, environmentally speaking.

Finally, we hit up Team Wisconsin’s house, brought to us by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They were especially proud of their house’s “inverted butterfly” roof that channeled water into a reflecting pool for irrigating plants on the deck. The entire house was built out of locally collected materials, including Paperstone, a wood product made from recycled paper. Heating and cooling are controlled by multiple sensors that take temperature measurements and relay the information to the house’s two heating/ventilation/HVAC zones. The solar panel system is grid-connected, sending excess energy back into the grid, and can be adjusted to follow the changing angles of the sun. Finally, the house’s energy monitoring system is very cool; a live Web interface displays energy consumption and production.

We were surprised by the levels of regionalism shown in the houses, but it was nice to see such practical measures literally built into these houses - every team we spoke to was very community-minded. It’s also worth noting that they had their most photogenic team members on hand to give tours. In fact, we noted that several times during the day, often by nudging each other and grinning stupidly. Also, Dell was a Decathlon sponsor this year, which puts our list of potential sponsors into new perspective.

We’re back from the Solar Decathlon! Overall, it was awesome and very educational, even if you’re like us and have no practical background in engineering. There’s a much more substantive post on the way, but here’s some reconnaissance from one of our readers, who also attended:

1) German women are hot; 2) Canadian women are hot; 3) University of Ohio women are hot; 4) Many of the houses were regionalized: built using local materials in response to local weather/environmental conditions. A tourist from Iowa was overheard saying that the house built by a German research team “looked like it wouldn’t be able to withstand an Iowa hail storm.” Take THAT, Deutschland.

More later, once we get our pictures developed!

The Solar Decathlon is this weekend! Yaaay! We’re heading down there on Saturday to check out the proceedings and take some pictures for a full report here on Corn Car, so keep your eyes here for that.

In the meantime, we promised a list of ways to introduce cellulosic ethanol to the mainstream. This was before we realized that we’d previously made a list of how to sell automakers on the idea, which is pretty similar. But we’ve still got some ideas that break away into their own category:
1. Park cellulose-fueled cars at Wal-Mart, Target, and other discount department stores. Wal-Mart and its ilk are where Middle America shops, if their corporate propaganda tells it right, and flex-fuels are still seen as uppity for reasons we’re still not clear on. Regardless, it wouldn’t hurt for people to see those cars around places where “ordinary” Americans go, just to prove the point that this technology isn’t leverage in some weird, beside-the-point class struggle.

2. Establish that pot and beer can fuel cars. This was the intern’s idea, so blame him, but there is merit in explaining that cellulosic ethanol can be made from nearly anything. Molson Coors already used their waste beer to fuel vehicles for the last Democratic National Convention, so the precedent has been set. Inserting pot into the equation will draw crazy people, but it’s still an ordinary facet of American life that can make cellulosic ethanol more approachable, and it deflates the anti-corn people who think we’re stealing ethanol stock from famine-ravaged Africans.

3. Hot girls. Another intern suggestion, but he’s right; hot girls can sell anything.

4. Auto racing, which has been underway for more than a year now. Racing is a great venue for showcasing flex-fuels, and Indy cars have been using methanol since the 1960s. Switching over to cellulosic ethanol would help out a lot, and already has: a biobutanol/ethanol blend car was raced at Petiti Le Mans last month.

5. No, seriously, hot girls.

Looks like a sudden, multi-million dollar set of tariffs on foreign solar panel imports might hamper the delicate solar energy market, and strain US/China trade relations in the process. Awesome.

Solar panels coming in from China have been deemed too sophisticated to count as duty-free, and are being taxed like electric generators, a decision made on the heels of new higher tariffs on Chinese tires. Which wouldn’t be terrible, except that “virtually no one in the industry became aware of [the tariffs] until the last few weeks…unpaid duties piled up, along with penalties that are likely to double the cost.”

China has been ramping up their solar panel production to the detriment of other manufacturers (which we already knew), so this might be an attempt to keep them in check lest they glut the market with solar panels and ruin their overall trade value. But the Solar Energy Industries Association “argues that American tariffs on solar panels could lead other countries to impose tariffs on American exports.” Granted, their board chairman works for Suntech, China’s biggest solar panel maker, but that’s still a valid point. And really, there had to be a better course of action for dealing with China than putting them on double secret probation.

Frankly, it’s a wonder that the world ever got oil off the ground, given how quickly any new energy source gets clamped onto by assholes trying to skew it to their personal advantage. We’ll keep an eye on this as it develops, but as it stands, things are shaky.