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.

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!

Say what you want about Henry Ford (Hitler-admiring, right-wing extremist asshole is a good place to start), but the man knew cars. He practically invented them, in the American sense of it. And as it turns out, he was an early and passionate advocate of biofuels, according to the Examiner. An article about Ford’s support of biofuels, specifically hemp, was posted on their website back in September, and it links to excerpts of Ford’s fuel philosophies (provided by Hempcar).

“The fuel of the future,” Ford told a NYT reporter, “is going to come from…apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything…there is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented.” Ford is talking about cellulosic ethanol here, and this interview was conducted back in 1925. That’s like hearing Clara Bow predicting celebrity sex tapes or something.

Similar sentiments (about hemp fuel, not sex tapes) have been espoused by ex-Dead Kennedys frontman and political gadfly Jello Biafra, whose “Grow More Pot” speech gives an entertaining summary of American hemp culture and highlights its use as a sustainable fuel source (pt. 1 and pt. 2, courtesy of Youtube).

Granted, the discourse has been hijacked by goofy stoners since Ford’s time and Jello panders to that element a little much, but the larger point is that sustainable fuels are not a trivial, passing fad; they were, in Ford’s time, part of a larger proposal for a broad movement for scientific research to revitalize a then-struggling economy on the verge, as it turned out, of a major depression. We’re kind of in the same position now. But it’s a new year, and that means new opportunities to promote biofuels and sustainable energy that were seriously considered even at the birth of the automobile.

Sorry this post is so late, but for the uninformed, the Southeast/Mid-Atlantic areas were mercilessly pummeled by snow over the weekend. Virginia, which is where we were, got 20 inches of snow in a little more than a day. And since most cities in VA aren’t prepared for anything except the Rapture, plowing the roads took forever. So did digging our cars out of that miserable hellfrost - it might as well have been archaeology, considering how long we were out there.

But! We’ve still got some last minute holiday tips for those planning on a green Christmas this year. First up are some fun pro-ethanol gifts courtesy of CafePress - shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and even clocks abound. You could also grab some LED holiday lights for around the house and yard; we personally think LED lights look awesome. Finally, here are some tips from Renewable DIY Energy about keeping Christmas fun, and good for the planet.

It’s been an interesting, and often disappointing, year for biofuel/renewable energy supporters, but the idea that we should conserve and protect our environment keeps gaining momentum among ordinary people. That it took a near collapse of the world economy to bring this stuff into sharper focus is unfortunate (and many current woes in the ethanol industry come from sudden lack of available funding), but the transition from people being aware of renewable energy to actually caring about it is being made right now. Whether the legislation to back us up appears or not has yet to be determined, but there’s certainly a lot of dirt stirring up on the ground, both literally and figuratively.

And the ethanol industry is preparing to come back hard in 2010, backed by improving operating plant margins and the EPA’s tentative approval of a higher ethanol blend in gasoline; Click the Car to read more about that. For now, we’re going to drink more organic egg nog and offer tribute to Ullr, Norse god of snow, so that he might spare us another freak blizzard. Merry holidays, all!

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.

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!