Wow, it’s been a while since the last update. Sorry about that! Finals and one of us having to throw hours of his life into the Pit of Eternal Suck that is the Maryland Film Festival kinda got in the way of the blog for a minute there, but we’re back! And we’ve got some interesting news this time.

Electric cars are whisper-quiet compared to conventional automobiles, which poses a unique hazard to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. The scenario of an impaired pedestrian walking right in front of a car because he or she didn’t hear it coming has been brought up a lot, and while one would think people would help keep each other safe in situations like that, the sad truth of it is that investments in human kindness rarely see returns.

So electric car manufacturers are going for the next best thing: Star Wars. Yep, the Daily Mail reports that “regulators in the European Union, Japan and the United States are considering allowing manufacturers an array of sounds - from the conventional [engine noises] to sci-fi sounds from Star Wars” so pedestrians can hear them coming. There’s even talk of allowing manufacturers to create their own “signature sounds” for their electric vehicles, which strikes us as a potentially terrible ringtone-for-your-car situation, but the basic idea is (pardon the pun) perfectly sound. Car noises alert people to oncoming cars, and also inform drivers of whether or not the car is accelerating or decelerating. Plus, all the hopeless dorks at Corn Car HQ want our cars to sound like the Millennium Falcon.

What other sound packages would be cool to include with electric cars? Anyone?

Here’s a brief but important update: Purdue University scientists have been tinkering with their original analysis of ethanol, and “have cut about 10 percent of the total emissions expected from an increase in corn ethanol production.” Taking shifts in land use over time into consideration, ethanol is better for reducing greenhouse gas emissions than they’d previously thought. Purdue agricultural economist Wally Tyner told reporters that “the difference between this report and previous reports is advances in science. With any issue, your first cut may not be the best, but when you get new data and new methods, you improve.”

One of the consistent problems we find with media coverage of ethanol, and other green energy efforts, is ignorance of the very thing Tyner was talking about. Distillation technology has improved over the past few years, with cellulosic ethanol making particularly impressive leaps and bounds, and researchers are more than happy to get right back in the lab and figure out how to make them even better. That spirit of frontier innovation is evident throughout green energy projects these days, especially ethanol, solar power, and wind, which makes it endlessly frustrating when the media reads one study by one research team and then parrots those results for years afterwards. This revision might not get much coverage, and certainly not enough to break through the Phil Spector-esque wall of noise about how supposedly wasteful and inefficient ethanol is.

But this is all stuff we’ve said before, and this is supposed to be a happy update. So we’ll leave off here, with a big thumbs up to Purdue and a picture of kittens to sustain good cheer.

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved, in a controversial decision, plans for the Cape Wind project, an offshore wind farm near Cape Cod. The project has been stalled for something like nine years, so this decision is being hailed as truly groundbreaking, possibly because no one in the media feels comfortable calling it windbreaking.

In any case, opposition to Cape Wind was varied - people were concerned about the turbines’ effect on tourism, fishing, aviation, harm to local marine life, and disturbance of Wampanoag Indian ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed. The Cape Wind project has since been altered to preserve the integrity of Nantucket Sound, and Salazar says his approval is tied into Cape Wind conducting “additional marine archaeological surveys and…other steps to reduce the project’s visual impact.”

Still, the project’s 130 turbines could produce “enough wind power to handle three-quarters of the electric needs of the Cape and Islands,” which they estimate as “equivalent to that of a medium-sized coal-fired power plant.” The project will also create 1,000 new construction jobs and significantly reduce carbon emissions in the area. None of this is stopping people like Scott Brown, who claimed to support wind energy, from bitching and threatening to litigate Cape Wind back into nonexistence, but their NIMBYism has stood in the way of progress long enough. Here’s hoping the Cape Wind project goes right on ahead!

Obama’s “White House to Main Street” tour is taking him to ethanol plants in Iowa and Missouri this week, hoping to drum up support for his $862 billion economic stimulus program and the now-gridlocked energy and climate legislation in the Senate. He told an Iowa Siemens AG wind-turbine plant that a greener economy “generates good jobs right here in America.” He’s really pushing the jobs aspect of his energy platform, in part because the job market still sucks pond water and in part because he wants to avoid being called a hippie by assholes like Lindsey Graham.

He’ll be saying much the same thing at POET Biorefining in Macon, Missouri, although he’ll be encountering opposition there: The Missouri Republican Party is joining forces with the Macon County Patriots for a protest down the road from the plant. We’re guessing they’re angrier at his economic policies than his environmental ones, but Tea Party events (the MCP are teabaggers and the Missouri GOP might as well be) are pretty much an incoherent mush of angry platitudes, so who really knows what they’re specifically mad at this week.

Obama pissed us off by okaying offshore drilling - which might very well turn hilarious when Republican oil states bitch about their coastlines and try to overturn it - and his newfound “hardline” stance against Republicans on one or two issues is meaningless when he caves on five or six. And with cellulosic ethanol’s future uncertain, now would be the time for him to drum up support for it, and other green energy sources. He’s right about there being no “silver bullet,” even though we think he meant magic bullet, but he needs to back those words up with something, and soon.

Cars.com just put out a list of 2010’s greenest American cities and, whaddaya know, seven out of the top ten are on the West Coast (mostly California and Oregon). The top twenty branches out a little bit to include Charlottesville (VA), Fairbanks (Alaska), and several cities in the Midwest. Baltimore, sadly, is #103, in spite of all the recent green efforts - rooftop gardening, hybrid buses, etc. - we’ve undertaken. It’s even more depressing when you consider that Washington DC, a mere 30 minutes south of us, is #20. We’re at a loss to explain why that is; DC has a lot of the same problems Baltimore does in terms of corruption and money being scarce for things that actually matter and wealthy suburbanites leaving the city’s urban center to rot. Perhaps DC’s status as the federal government’s company town keeps enough money flowing to start up green city projects.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Detroit, which is turning green in the most literal sense of the word, at #140. Detroit certainly doesn’t have the money to buy hybrid buses or solar paneling - they can barely sustain a population - and city services have been cut to the point where parts of the city are becoming “rejungled,” AKA overtaken by weeds and plant life and, in some extreme cases, impromptu marshland sprouting from large puddles. It sounds and is horrible, but people are looking at Detroit as a site for urban farming efforts because of this, and entire abandoned neighborhoods are being bought to turn into greenhouses and communal farms. The response of Detroit’s remaining population will certainly be interesting, and varied, but the green movement’s eye for opportunity is one of its better qualities, and since everyone else has abandoned Detroit, kudos to them for thinking something can still be done there.

We’ve gone a little far afield from our original topic, but it’s also worth noting that this listing defined “green cities” by how many of their residents are “researching hybrid cars, crossovers and SUVs” thus far in 2010. Hybrids are great and all, but that’s not a complete sample of green efforts by any stretch of the imagination. Taking more green projects into account, we wonder how those numbers might change.

Ethanol has, quite literally, gone commercial; Growth Energy is putting $2.5 million into a pro-ethanol marketing campaign, which will unfold over the next six months. The TV spots are en route, and former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley K. Clark. is acting as a spokesperson of sorts, seeing as how he’s co-chairman of Growth Energy and all. The ads, and doubtless everything else in the campaign, will pitch ethanol as an American-made renewable fuel that lessens dependence on foreign energy sources. Why does that sound so familiar?

Of course, some foreign energy sources want us to be dependent on them. Brazil, for instance, has also launched an ad campaign, complete with a website - Sweeter Alternative - geared to an American audience. It’s also, according to Gas 2.0, trying to drum up support against the tariffs that have kept Brazilian ethanol out of American gas tanks thus far. Gas 2.0 pushes the Brazilian ethanol industry a little too hard, we think - yes, they’re doing much better than us regarding flex-fuels, and yes they are a democracy with whom we could trade, but pushing their ethanol too hard would discourage us from making any of our own. The whole point, after all, is self-sufficiency, which is not achieved by galloping after foreign countries with things we want at the expense of our own manufacturing sector. That said, if Brazil wants to lobby for lower tariffs, let ‘em. We just need to make sure we aren’t heading into a frying pan/fire situation.

And credit where it’s due, “cane in the tank means money in the bank” is a cool slogan. “For drivers, competition means even regular gasoline would cost less” still needs some work.

We’re taking a break from solar/wind/electric/green power for this post to update everyone on our first true love: ethanol. And not a moment too soon. For an ethanol blog, it feels like forever and a day since we discussed ethanol in any detail.

Our news is promising, too. Both DomesticFuel.com and Hoosier Ag. Today are reporting that 2010 started off with record ethanol production; January alone saw more than 800 thousand barrels a day. That’s nearly 200k more than January 2009, and according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the demand is rising to meet it. But there’s still work to be done. RFA president Bob Dinneen, who looks like what would happen if the Brawny towel guy let himself go, says the future would look even rosier for the ethanol industry were it not for “antiquated regulations” keeping the American consumer at arm’s length from ethanol and ethanol blends. Granted, he is the president of the RFA and that slants his take on things, but in the face of renewed calls for an American industrial economy and Brazil taunting us by lifting their ethanol tariff until 2011, his is not an unreasonable opinion.

Just to lend additional perspective, Click the Car for a map detailing the economic and personal impacts of oil dependence by state, then try to sleep at night.

As we all know, the government is parceling out money left and right for some long overdue infrastructural maintenance - roads (which we’ll get to in a minute), education, and energy efficiency are three higher-profile projects being tackled by the Obama administration.

Trouble is, all the energy efficiency targets are urban, and rural homeowners are afraid of getting lost in the dust. And whether they’re living off the land or just yuppies pretending to homestead, we can’t afford to ignore them. Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina realized this too, which is why they’re drumming up support for a bill to “finance energy efficiency upgrades on 1.6 million homes nationwide, including 225,000 in South Carolina.”

ECSC sees this as the next logical extension of the Rural Electrification program, and is trying to build on efforts made in other states, namely Virginia and Arkansas. Under those programs, “homes are audited to determine what improvements would be most cost-effective. Then a low-interest, no down-payment loan is structured with monthly payments on the customer’s power bill that come to no more than the savings achieved from the upgrades.” It’s a pretty sweet deal, especially when you weigh it against the usurious loaning practices of nearly every modern bank or credit company, but it hasn’t had many takers thus far. ECSC hopes to change that with better marketing, and it would be nice if some of the ideas we saw at the Solar Decathlon this summer caught on thanks to this program. SEEDpod Solar Housing in particular would be helpful, since it’s adaptable to whatever climate it’s built in.

Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood continues to impress us. He recently said on his blog that “people across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized,” sentiments he’d already made clear during a speech to bicycling advocates. Naturally, car manufacturers and their Republican puppets are pissed; The Big Money’s Matt DeBord said that “we can talk all we want about light rail and urban mass-transit and even flying cars and jetpacks—when push comes to shove, we’re Americans and we drive.” We found his quote particularly funny; as if other civilized places didn’t have well-maintained public transit/national rail services. But hey, the American taxpayer is ENTITLED to shitty unsustainable infrastructure, even if he or she actually wants to change it.

LaHood, a suburban Republican, is definitely an interesting character: while it’s not surprising that a Republican would dig his heels in like this, since Democrats can’t be relied upon to stand up for themselves, but it’s seriously hurting our heads that an outspoken Republican is on the correct side of an argument for once, especially given LaHood’s record of kicking back money to campaign donors. Still, green advocacy needs his kind of stubbornness, and we’re glad he’s here to provide it. Maybe some actual progressives will take note of his attitude and try it themselves.

We are busy people over here at Corn Car, so forgive us for leaving the blog unattended - hopefully our readers had a green St. Patrick’s Day in the environmental sense of it. Since we’re still digging our way up through mountains of work, here’s some reading material to keep everyone occupied for a while.

China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. - Yes, the Chinese are literally taking our jerbs. Specifically, engineers seeking jobs in a high-tech economy; according to the article, “companies are concluding that their researchers need to be close to factories and consumers alike.” Of course, China’s green energy/tech growth is due as much to unfair protectionism on their part as it is to the huge investment they’ve made in those industries, but they’re still a competitor and now the traditional flow of workers from east to west is reversing course. And after a certain point, the West can’t bitch about China locking out foreign companies when a) we’ve been stacking the deck against the developing world for decades, and b) many of American’s policy-makers are too stupid to see the potential in green energy.

Meanwhile, High-Speed Rail Gains Traction in Spain - A lot of EU members are trying to reduce their carbon footprints, and high-speed rail is a good start; “emissions per passenger on a high-speed train are about one-fourth of those generated by flying or driving.” But more importantly, Spain’s new rail system is upscale, convenient, and comfortable. Passengers get comfy seats, good food, polite service, and the new rail system chops the travel time between Barcelona and Madrid from 6 hours to two and a half. It’s basically what airlines used to be like in the 50s before they got greedy.

Speaking of, the American airline industry is miffed that Obama is investing federal funding into trains. But, according to Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood, that’s just tough shit for them. “We’re going to get into the high-speed rail business,” he told the the Federal Aviation Administration’s annual forecasting conference, following that up with “people want alternatives…people are still going to fly, but we need alternatives. So get with the program.” His candor is more than welcome. Airlines have been providing steadily worse, often frustrating service to passengers over the years, then bitching at the government when they lose money. They don’t seem to be able to connect those dots, or else they don’t want to. Either way, the entitlement from that industry has been rewarded for too long, and it’s nice to see someone tell them to suck it up and quit whining. Of course, the question of why it will take us 30 years to install high-speed rail when parts of the EU already have it is a question no one’s answered yet, but feel free to leave a comment if you have any ideas.

Any more links? No? All right, back to work.