News Roundup
News Roundup for December 30
HYDROGEN BUS
Hydrogen bus
Visitors to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado are being transported around the lab’s campus using the latest technology. The Department of Energy has underwritten leases for a dozen hydrogen-powered shuttle buses, and NREL is the first facility to receive one. The bus employs a system similar to a gasoline-powered engine, but its fuel is hydrogen, created when electricity from a NREL wind turbine splits hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. The vehicle is 25 percent more efficient than similar gasoline-powered passenger vans.
NEW APPOINTEE
President Obama is appointing a Republican with Capitol Hill experience to the Surface Transportation Board, which oversees utilities’ complaints about freight railroad practices. Ann D. Begeman is minority staff director for the Senate Commerce Committee and a former aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. She will succeed Charles D. “Chip” Nottingham, who is leaving the panel when his term expires Dec. 31. By law, the three-member board can have no more than two representatives from one party, and Chairman Daniel R. Elliott and Commissioner Francis Mulvey are Democrats.
GENERATION SOURCES
Fossil fuel-based power still accounts for more than three-quarters of U.S. energy production, according to the Energy Information Administration’s latest calculations. The agency said in a Dec. 22 study that fossil fuels contributed 78 percent of primary energy production through the first nine months of 2010. That was essentially unchanged from similar periods in 2008 and 2009. Nuclear energy and renewables, including hydropower, each kicked in 11 percent of 2010 production. Biomass is the top renewable and accounts for more than half of all renewable energy production.
BUILDING BIOMASS
Perhaps that’s why a Colorado-based market research firm sees the biomass market registering an uptick in the next five years, with a 17 percent increase in investment in biomass infrastructure to $33.6 billion. Pike Research, which specializes in clean energy analyses, said in a Dec. 27 report that the biomass industry shows signs of shrugging off an investment slump of the last few years. The rally will be led by biochemical products, such as plastics, and bioenergy initiatives, such as landfill-to-gas projects, according to the research company.
―Based on news and wire reports
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