So Porsche has officially said no to proposed hybrid versions of the 911 or the Boxster - hybrid components, they claim, would add too much weight, and sports cars aren’t meant for city driving anyway. Debatable point, but whatever. The good news is that Porsche does want to make an all-electric sports car, assuming it could meet the performance standards of a regular engine. Or, more likely, when the corporate yuppie fartbags who drive Porsches can be convinced to go electric.

But hybrids are making progress elsewhere. Peugeot is still in production for its 2011 diesel-hybrid vehicle, the 3008 Hybrid4 Concept, and both Mercedes-Benz and GM are following suit. “Both cars are mild hybrids,” says Fox News’ website, “meaning the electric motor adds power to that of the combustion engine, as well as restarting it from stops. But they are not capable of running in all-electric mode, like…the Toyota Prius.” That was…surprisingly vitriol-free for Fox. Huh.

Anyway, hybrids and other green cars have been a hit for American automakers, whose finances are still delicate after Detroit’s 2007-08 freefalling crash - The Daily Green reports that “Ford’s hybrid sales were up 147% for the year,” adding that “the Ford Fusion Hybrid is a hit.” Ford has been recouping its losses, ending 2009 with a full percentage point gain in US market share, and their stock price is now 10 times improved. Their success could partly explain why GM is gunning for hybrid and diesel-hybrid vehicle production in the coming year - both GM and Chrysler are still struggling. Then again, Ford could go nowhere but up - owners of the ‘93 Taurus understand what we mean here.

Still, this is all promising news for 2010. Keep sending us stories, folks, and we’ll keep reporting ‘em. There might be a list in the works, too…

Back to China for the bajillionth time, as they’re building, according to NPR, “the world’s biggest wind power project,” which will produce 12 times the power of Texas’ Roscoe Wind Farm upon completion. NPR notes the curious paradox of China supplementing their wind power with coal-fired power stations, but also notes the intense pride shared between the business interests behind the project and the locals building it; they really do feel like this work is important, and that China has a real chance to lead the renewables industry. Granted, their government would probably have them killed if they felt any differently, but the fact remains that they’re taking “going green” much more seriously as a longterm prospect than we are.

So is France, for that matter. French President Nikolas Sarkozy is staking his political career on taxing businesses and individual households “according to their carbon footprint.” France is the largest European country to implement a carbon tax, and the tax (set for January 2010) is already weathering fierce criticism. Planting it in the middle of a global recession was questionable timing, certainly, but Sarkozy’s speeches defending the tax are ripe with the concession that we don’t have the choice of ignoring global warming and conservation anymore. He also claims that the taxes will be refunded directly or subsidized through other tax reductions, but time will tell whether or not he means that. Ours aren’t the only politicians who lie, after all.

Our recent look at international efforts to conserve energy and lower dependence on oil isn’t an attempt to fear-monger, by the way, nor is it our intention to shit on America from within. But it is an attempt to get readers to understand what serious, proactive stances on alt. energy look like, and they are models that the US is fully capable of adopting and molding to its specific needs and geography. We’re also not guaranteeing that every foreign idea will work, either. But the fact that they’re trying at all instead of dicking around and stalling at the behest of their corporate overlords, which they also have, is very telling of how seriously we’re taking renewable energy innovation.

For a look at what India’s been up to, Click the Car.

Short update today, but a worthwhile one: the New York Times has an interesting and sobering article (free registration required) on America’s sluggish green energy development. While some geothermal and wind stuff is being done, overall progress is lagging behind Europe, China, and India (as we all know), and it’s reaching the point where mud hut-dwelling peasants in the ass end of nowhere are going to beat us to a workable green energy program.

Part of the problem is money - banks aren’t lending to alt-energy projects, and existing companies don’t want to invest in new equipment before relevant legislation kicks in. And part of the problem lies at the feet of contentious fartbags like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who still doesn’t believe that greenhouse gases hurt anything and calls any regulations on them “onerous” and based on “manipulated data.” What will convince him of something that’s already demonstrably true is a mystery. And unfortunately, his fellow Republicans aren’t much more reasonable - their tendency towards anti-everything political hypochondria is just clouding the issue.

The Apollo Alliance’s Cathy Calfo puts it best; “As a country, we need to make a decision that we do or don’t want to be a leader in this area.” Right now, it’s looking like we don’t. And that’s going to cost us dearly in the future. Hell, it already is in the present.

But to cheer us all up, Click the Car for an article about Denmark’s electric car ambitions.

Well, Baltimore officially welcomes December by possibly seeing its mayor lose her office over $630 worth of stolen gift cards. If only there were some way to convert her myriad indictments into ethanol…

Oh well. We’ve got bigger fish to fry today, and the heat might be coming from outer space: Japan is investing in space-based solar technology, which is something we mentioned a while ago with great excitement, because we are basically children when it comes to the idea of things beaming down from space. This isn’t totally surprising, though, as Japan is a tiny country with few domestic energy resources, and they’ve been longtime proponents of solar energy.

But this is especially ambitious; their proposed Space Solar Power System (SSPS), would put huge photovoltaic dishes “in geostationary orbit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.” They would capture solar energy there (to quote researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, “the sun’s rays abound in space”), and beam it down through clusters of lasers or microwaves. Like China and India, Japan is investing heavily in new ideas to reduce their country’s carbon footprint, and this is yet another sign that America needs to spearhead some innovation of its own.

Meanwhile, normally pacifistic Sweden is having something of a rabbit problem - rabbits are not native to their country and have been, as is customary for them, overbreeding and feasting on Stockholm’s local crops. And while it’s more than legal to hunt the little bastards, it’s definitely illegal to toss them into landfills once they’re dead. So Sweden has been turning dead rabbits into fuel. Apparently they, and other dead animals, are “crushed, ground and then pumped into a boiler where it is burned together with wood chips, peat or other waste to produce heat.” Critics of this system think it’s disgusting and claim that it doesn’t solve the basic overpopulation problem; rather, it tries to build an industry from it. And we agree with them - although it’s hard to condone their idea of using rabbit-repellent pesticides, comments like “we can’t give them bunny birth control pills, so we have to put the rabbits away,” come off as cold, rapacious, and sociopathic, even from people who think lye is a garnish.

Anyway, enough about dead bunnies. Click the Corn Car logo for a more pleasant article about how some American scientists want to turn trees into carbon banks. Happy December, everyone!

Well, while Democrats try to force the global warming bill through the Senate and Republicans threaten to kill it in committee with a boycott, F.O. Licht’s World Ethanol 2009 12th annual conference is being held in Paris this week. Countries like the United States, Brazil, India, France, and Nigeria are being represented and sharing their views on global ethanol development. One of our representatives, Renewable Fuels Association CEO/President Bob Dinneen,  will look at “expanding ethanol markets and addressing unsubstantiated claims about the environmental impact of ethanol.” So at least SOMEONE can address the topic like an adult.

Meanwhile, the rest of us get Barbara Boxer and George Voinovich interrupting each other over a retarded semantics disagreement and conservative pundits smearing anyone who speaks up about the issue as a fanatic hippie moonbat. And that’s not even counting the Midwestern contingent who can’t debate this issue for more than ten seconds without tripping over their own dicks trying to monopolize it for political points.

Anyway, now that we’ve thoroughly bummed ourselves out, we’re gonna stop here and hope for the best. But we need something to cheer us up. Some hot chicks posing next to an electric car should do it.

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!

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.

We’ve posted about China’s embrace of alternative fuel sources before; clean coal and widespread electric car usage are but two of their longterm energy goals. But China’s protectionism concerning its energy program is starting to worry the rest of the world, particularly Europe and the US.

For example, China built the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing industry and exported nearly everything they made to the West, but 80% of the equipment in China’s first solar power plant is required to be made in China. Their government also denied wind turbine contracts to every multinational company that submitted a bid, often for unclear reasons. But what comes off at first as just more Chinese bureaucratic arrogance is, in fact, heavy investment in domestic renewable energy industries. Whether they’ll agree to reductions in greenhouse gases is anyone’s guess, but they’re certainly committed to greener energy consumption at a national level.

Which is more than can be said for America. Like the labor movement, the energy debate is being hampered by stupid bickering. In response to President Obama’s call to update the grid by installing new power lines where solar and wind farms can be built. The best spot for these is widely considered to be the Midwest, where there’s tons of empty land waiting to be put to use. So of course, an influential coalition of East Coast governors and power companies…is…trying to block a mandate for transcontinental lines” because they don’t want their constituencies to miss out on the economic opportunities of solar/wind farm construction. And this isn’t even considering energy companies who like a weak grid because it means they can charge more in remote areas, or the Cato Institute types who suggest a “free market” solution, whatever that would be.

One of our readers made a good point on this subject; this divergence between American and China officially shuts up anyone who claims that “the Chinese and the Indians don’t take investing in renewable energy seriously.” They do. And they’re banking on U.S. complacency to allow them to dominate a burgeoning renewables market. In other words, we’d better get started on that Urinator.

…wait, I thought that was Earth Day…

Whatever. Hug a corn cob!

Man, China just can’t stay out of the news, can they? This time it’s about clean coal, specifically that they’re miles ahead of us in both using and refining the process. According to the New York Times, “China has begun building such plants [more efficient, coal-fired power plant that use extremely hot steam] at a rate of one a month,” while the US is still dithering around with the prospect of building one.

This sounds worse than it actually is, though. If cellulosic ethanol technology is still in a state of infancy, clean coal is a zygote. And even if it wasn’t, China still burns more coal than pretty much every other country on earth combined, and still hasn’t begun regulating emissions yet. Plus, “even an efficient coal-fired power plant emits twice the carbon dioxide of a natural gas-fired plant.” As far as clean fuel technology goes, they’re not as far ahead as they may seem.

Even so, we shouldn’t allow them to get one up on us in the energy race. In his book, American Theocracy, former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips theorizes that superpowers decline when they fail to adapt to new sources of energy. The Dutch became a superpower in the days when wood, water, and wind were the high points of energy production. However, they didn’t latch onto coal fast enough and were usurped by the British, who powered an empire on the stuff. Phillips further explains that when initial sources of innovation stagnate (i.e. when countries become too dependent on them), newer ones can cause a shift in global leadership almost single-handedly.

China’s progress does expose how little we’ve addressed what to do with industry, though. Most of the biofuel/cleaner energy talk has been about cars and occasionally home use, but what about our own heavy industry? We haven’t outsourced all of it, god knows, and we haven’t spent much time outlining what’s going to replace oil on that scale yet. We vote ethanol. But we always vote ethanol. What do you think?