To get to the root of this, I decided to seek out an expert opinion and contacted MIT professor, Mark Drela. Dr. Drela is a professor of fluid dynamics in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has been an adviser to MIT’s Vehicle Design Summit regarding vehicle aerodynamics. In a response via email, Dr. Drela had this to say:

“All common cars, including the Prius, are aerodynamic bricks. The lowest drag shape that you can wrap around a passenger cabin resembles the front half of a sailplane fuselage. The Aptera comes pretty close, assuming they designed it properly.”

To read more visit Gas2.org

We covered the brilliant work of Bioregional before, such as the BedZED eco-housing project and the Laundry, a paper recycling system. Bioregional has developed another recycling scheme at a more local scale, specifically for London and has also applied it to Surrey so far. Local Paper for London is based on the simple principle of cycling the paper locally.

How does it work? (graph after the jump) The company sends their paper for recycling at a local mill in Kent. Then it buys back their own, now recycled, paper for the office. It is less hassle and cost saving for the company and guarantees a buyer of the recycled paper. Bioregional explains that “it is important, not only to recycle your waste paper, but also to close the loop by buying paper made from your recycled waste. This is because there needs to be a stable market for recycled products so that it is economically viable to collect and recycle the waste. So the more people who buy recycled products – the cheaper it becomes to get your waste recycled”.

With this scheme, the environmental impact of the paper used can be reduced by 85%. Another advantage of joining the scheme is that it encourages companies to use less paper, which saves them money at the same time. Recycling paper in general has many other advantages such as reducing the amount of waste, protecting biodiversity by not having to cut as much of the world’s forests, reducing the amount of fossil fuels used for the transportation of wood pulp and paper, avoiding the cutting of virgin rainforest and reducing the amount of chemicals used when making virgin paper.

Bioregional has noticed that joining Paper for London can “improve staff morale as employees are keen to see their organisations actively seeking to reduce their environmental impact”. Local Paper for London

all images by Bioregional

It was another strong year for green transportation, but a lot of potential pitfalls in the industry became more apparent.

Just ask ethanol producers for the evidence. In 2005 and 2006, investors flocked to traditional ethanol makers, allowing companies like VeraSun Energy to go public. The high prices for the fuel, combined with the relatively low price of feedstocks it’s made from, made the industry look attractive.

Then the price of corn shot up, budding profits turned to losses, and ethanol makers started to merge.

GreenFuel Technologies, meanwhile, had problems of a different kind. The company wants to capture carbon dioxide, feed it to algae, and then turn the algae into biodiesel. A pilot plant in Arizona proved adept at capturing carbon dioxide and growing algae. The problem was that it grew more algae than it could handle, and scientists are still trying to figure out ways to economically convert the green slime into fuel.

Makers of electric cars didn’t have it as rough, but the story was similar. Consumers and investors got intrigued by the category in 2006. In 2007, though, Tesla Motors, Think, and Phoenix Motorcars had to push back the release of their cars until 2008. Tesla also changed CEOs and postponed its battery business.

But let’s look at the bright side of the green-car business. Biodiesel refiners, both large and small, began construction on large-scale plants. Biodiesel still requires subsidies to stay competitive in the U.S., but larger plants and new feedstocks will help eliminate the price gap over time. Scientists and venture investors also continued to collaborate on concocting cellulosic ethanol start-ups.

And the auto industry saw a wave of new entrants on the manufacturing side, including Venture Vehicles, Fisker Automotive, and Miles Automotive. More importantly, large, established manufactures like Nissan and Mitsubishi announced plans for eco-friendly cars. If history is a guide, the eco car market could follow the path of the PC market. Although most will fail, a few of the start-ups and some of the established manufacturers will make it and transform an industry.

If you want to pimp the outside of your house with a ton of Christmas lights but don’t want to spend a small fortune on the electricity bill, consider Solar-Powered Lights.

When Popgadget compiled their Christmas gift guide, she added these versatile lights to the list. With 102 bright LED bulbs on each string, these solar-powered lights can be used on trees or on your front porch. You don’t even need to put them on timers since they have day and night sensors that will turn them on automatically. On a full charge, the lights will last up to eight hours. Priced at $75 each.

What do you think? Would you ever go solar with your Christmas lights?

Considering the environment for auto sales in Honda’s (HMC) two largest markets, Japan and North America, company chief Takeo Fukui looked remarkably relaxed as he delivered his outlook for the year ahead in Tokyo Dec. 19. It didn’t take long to understand why. During the address in Tokyo’s Shinagawa district, a confident Fukui predicted another year of overall expansion at the automaker in 2008, including a 3% increase in U.S. auto sales to 1.59 million vehicles despite concerns about the sub-prime crisis and stubbornly high fuel prices. He also predicted spectacular growth in several other key markets.

And in another sign of the Tokyo-based automaker’s burgeoning strength, Fukui also promised to give Toyota (TM) a tougher run for its money in the battle for eco-supremacy in the years ahead. Honda was an early mover in hybrids. But so far it hasn’t been able to benefit with a breakthrough like Toyota’s Prius, which dominates the hybrid sector. For instance, Toyota had 79% of hybrid sales in the U.S. in November, compared to just 10% for Honda, the No. 2 hybrid maker. The Prius alone accounted for 50% of all hybrid sales in the U.S. last month.

That’s why Fukui says that the battle is only now beginning. According to the Honda chief executive, the last decade was just the first phase for hybrids, a time when automakers focused on marketing a green image. The next phase, he argues, will focus on improving the economics of buying a hybrid. “The price needs to be reasonable and fuel efficiency higher so the [premium] the consumer pays [for a hybrid car] can be returned in a short period of time,” he says.

New Hybrid Model Announced

To achieve that goal, he confirmed that Honda will launch a long-awaited, hybrid-only model in 2009. Honda plans on producing 200,000 of the new hybrids per year from the company’s Suzuka plant in western Japan and will sell them initially in North America, Europe and Japan. They’ll be equipped with a new lightweight motor which will assist the gasoline engine and be offered at a “more affordable price level” than currently available hybrids such as Honda’s own Civic and Toyota’s Prius.

That’s just the beginning. Fukui also said that Honda is planning to launch its first-ever hybrid sports car, based on the CR-Z concept car that Honda first unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October. “The real full-scale hybrid competition will start from now,” Fukui told reporters. He added that by 2010 around 10% of Honda’s sales would come from hybrids.

Further into the future, the company continues to look to fuel cell technology. Next summer the company will also begin leasing a small number of it’s FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in Southern California. For $600 a month, customers will be able to drive the emission-free vehicle, which has a range of 270 miles.

One clean hybrid tech that Honda remains at best ambivalent about is plug-in hybrids, which can be charged overnight using a home electricity supply. Echoing comments made by Honda execs at the Tokyo Motor Show, Fukui reiterated that Honda doesn’t have high expectations for the tech. [See: 11/20/2007, GM's Plug-In Push] One problem, Fukui points out, is that while an electric car is possible with a “dramatic evolution in batteries” a plug-in hybrid “requires a full size engine and fuel tank on top of that.” That’s something which would increase weight, decrease fuel efficiency and add to the cost. “I’m not convinced why you would want to have that in the first place,” he says.

Growth Everywhere But Japan

Even without the hybrid assault, Honda is lining up plenty of growth for 2008 and beyond. Indeed, the company is projecting growth in 2008 in every market except Japan, where Honda sales are set to close the year down by 12% at 620,000 units this year. Honda expects its overall auto sales to rise 6% to 3.76 million vehicles during 2007.

In November, it produced more cars in a single month, 363,532, than at any time in its history. “We think Honda looks attractive from a long-term investment perspective,” Tatsuo Yoshida, an analyst at UBS (UBS) noted in a recent research note. Yoshida, who projects Honda’s net earnings will rise 9.6% to $7.9 billion this year, rates Honda a “buy”.

In the U.S., which accounts for about 41% of Honda’s global auto sales, the new Accord, introduced in September, and the opening of new factory in Indiana next fall (the company’s seventh U.S. plant) will help Honda continue to gain sales in an otherwise shrinking market. One factor: stubbornly high gasoline prices will help sales of Honda gas sippers. “If you look at the overall trend there’s a shift towards smaller cars and fuel efficiency. Those are the customer requirements that will support our products,” says Koichi Kondo, Honda’s North American chief, who sat alongside the CEO at the Shinagawa conference. Fukui also reiterated that Honda will introduce its new, clean, diesel engine technology into the U.S. in 2009—around the same time it begins launching new hybrids.

But other regions of the world will be Honda’s biggest source of growth in the months ahead. In Europe, Asia and South America, the company is set to post strong gains this year and, aided by numerous new plants, expects to do so again in 2008. In China, where sales rocketed 30% this year, the company projects further growth of 17% to 490,000 units in 2008. In the rest of Asia, not including Japan, it’s a similar story with sales predicted to rise 20% to 415,000. In India, Honda doubled capacity at its plant in Bangalore to 100,000 this year and has begun building a second auto plant, which will be operational from 2009. Another new plant in Thailand will begin production in the second half of next year.

In Europe, fueled by rising demand in Russia and Central Europe, sales are expected to end 2007 23% higher than a year earlier at 380,000 and should reach 420,000 by the end of 2008. And in South America, where sales are projected to rise 30% in 2007 at 118,000, Honda is adding capacity at its Brazilian plant and, last month, began construction of new factory in Argentina. With so much activity across the globe, the Honda chief’s vision of overall growth despite localized weakness makes a lot of sense.

Rowley is a correspondent in BusinessWeek’s Tokyo bureau .

With the portfolio of commercial and urban green building projects happening across the globe right now, how is it possible to see them all? For those of us who are construction fanatics we like to see them in person but flying to location is definitely not the most or even a sustainable way to do things. Well, as with so most everything these days, there is a solution. To increase our remote access to ongoing and completed green building projects nationwide, Building Green Inc. has teamed up with Google and the Department of Energy to bring us an interactive way to view these projects.

The information is presented in Google Earth (must be downloaded) through a layer called the High Performance Building Layer, which is something that you have to download as well. Once you have both of them, you can choose from the 96 different projects they have highlighted thus far through the collaboration. Most of the projects selected reside in the United States, but there are a couple others around the globe. The models are created in Sketch-up and are completed with a full project description. Each building in the High Performance Building Layer also provides links to detailed case studies on the buildings performance. These studies are located on the web through different databases- AIA, USGBC, Building Green…

As this layer develops maybe it will be possible to take a virtual tour of the building with clickable narration. In this, green-building elements will be highlighted and further described as you virtually pass by spots throughout the building.

Currently the models aren’t as visually descriptive as one might ask for. But, at least there now exists a place for one to update or educate him or herself on current green building and LEED certified commercial projects around the globe. By sacrificing the desire to physically travel to and fro to visit these green feats, one can interactively see the building from all four corners. Relatively free from environmental impact (provided power consumed by your computer is something) and free to the user, this is a high tech way to get educated and gain exposure.

Craig Webb, a partner and project designer at Gehry Partners, discusses several of the challenges and the innovative solutions involved in the creation of New York’s Inter­ActiveCorp headquarters. The full story from our June issue can be found here.
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On most of our buildings we start with a very cut and dry program analysis of the pieces and do relationship diagrams based on those. Most of our buildings are more complex in program; this is an office building—nine floors of typical office space that need to get subdivided and laid out. Because of that, the process was truncated a bit.

We started with the New York City zoning envelope. When we have tight sites like this, we build a kind of cage that is the outside of the zoning envelope. Anytime we make a model, we had to be able to put the cage over the model. Then we started exploring different ways the façade might articulate. Basically, we wanted to keep as economical of a building as we could possibly build, with the biggest floor plates that would fit in the envelope, in order to conserve as much money as possible to spend on the façade—that’s the trick, right? We made probably 20 or 30 different models very quickly that explored different ideas about how to fit in the zoning envelope.

First there was a box, then there was a parallelogram; they were all very platonic, simple shapes, and then we explored some very curvilinear shapes. Pretty early in the process, we also looked at some that were brick facades, stone facades, stainless steel facades with punched windows through them. We were building three or four models at a time, working as quickly as we could, then we would show them to Barry Diller and Marshall Rhoades [of Georgetown company]. We’d have meetings at pretty short intervals with them and show them models, and they’d go ‘I like that, I don’t like that.’ These happened about once a month.

It became very apparent very quickly that Barry preferred the all-glass buildings we were showing him, as opposed to some of the brick buildings. What was appealing to him was the simplicity of a building with a single material. It was very monolithic, single idea. He liked that idea and we liked that idea also, so we started just focusing on that. We had been exploring a lot of twisted shapes. We’ve worked on a lot of twisted tower ideas—one of them we actually built in Germany, in Hanover, a small, eight-story tower there. We’d been trying to create that kind of shape in glass. In Germany it was stainless steel with punched windows—so that was kind of in play all along. We started looking at curvilinear shapes that way.

Somewhere along the line, Frank and Barry started talking about ships, boats, sailboats, because Barry was in the process of building a sailboat, Frank’s a sailor and has a sailboat down in the marina. The Disney Concert Hall explores a lot of those kinds of shapes. It’s about the curved shape that’s really kind of pulled taut, catching the wind. Those kinds of shapes are really interesting to us, so that started filtering into the process.

We started building models for those shapes, and we arrived at a sketch model pretty similar to where we ended up. And it looked a lot like a sailboat, and then we get to the part of, ‘Ok, now, how do you make that?’ We had built a big glass roof in Berlin, over the atrium of our building on Pritzer Platz, which is a double-curved kind of fish shape, and that glass is triangulated. Basically, if you create triangles, you can cover any shape you want—they always resolve into a flat plane of glass. We knew we could do that, so we started creating computer models that triangulated, which meant you could curve the shape, do whatever you want. It created a very busy pattern though, because of all these diagonals all over the shape.

At some point fairly early, Permasteelisa entered the picture. We’ve worked with Permasteelisa, an Italian fabricator company in Venice, for the last twenty years—they’ve been really incredible engineers. They built the glass tower in Prague, the big fish in Barcelona, the façade on Disney Concert Hall, so we have a long history of them tackling these really complex engineering problems and solving them. The cost was really a prime factor: if we could get rid of the diagonals, the cost was going to drop.

We were doing mock-ups in our plant in Connecticut. They have all these robotics, glass caps that pick pieces of glass up and put them on the assembly line. As we’re watching, the machine would pick up a ten foot long piece of glass, they’d pick it up in the middle and the glass would just sag from it own weight. So we all started looking at that going, ‘Hey, it’s really flexible!’ We wondered: can we cold bend the glass? We’d experienced shaping glass, like in the Conde Nast cafeteria. You make a mold, put the glass in the oven and you slump the glass, but that’s hugely expensive. So now we asked, how about if we just bend the glass on site?

We started experimenting, made two frames of glass, fixed three corners and just started pushing, to see how far it would go in an aluminum frame. We found that we could push the corners of the glass six or eight inches without breaking it. So then we started talking to glass fabricators. The American fabricators just wigged out and said, ‘No way!’ Really the whole issue was whether they would warranty the glass. It’s insulating glass, so it’s a double unit and it has the seals on it. Over time, with the glass bent, it stresses the seals and it would break the seals on the glass, so over time the unit fails.

Then we started doing formal testing, all those things started lining up and we proved out the curved glass. The computer modeling that went on to make the final shape was quite complicated. There were parameters that were set, as far as how much you could bend each piece. The glass couldn’t lean back more than fifteen degrees—if it did it becomes a skylight for the building code. We set up all the rules, then we started manipulating the shape to meet the rules. We went through about three months of very slightly changing the shape to meet all those. The changes that were made at that point were not really that perceptible, three or four inches here, six inches here. Frank was looking at the models and he couldn’t even tell that we were moving it.

We were at many points over budget, which always happens. Originally the back part of the building was curved, then we said: ‘If we make this part a straight vertical flat curtain wall, we can economize.’ Now 30 percent of the backside is just plain old flat curtain wall. The rectilinear part of the building really started to lock the shape into the block. It really attached into the rest of the context and we started to like that. We were really opportunistic – we get forced into something, we really start to like it, we convince ourselves it’s a great idea.”

Frank Gehry’s first New York building, the new headquarters of Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp. Thomas Mayer

One of the many models created for the new building. Courtesy Gehry Partners

Gehry tested the all-glass facade, his first, by blowing hurricane-force winds against it with a turboprop engine. Eric Levin/courtesy IAC

Flat panels were bent to fit on-site and hoisted into place. Eric Levin/courtesy IAC

An old article on Hudson Valley Magazine lead me to singer Peggy Atwood’s site about her monolithic dome in the Catskills. She decided to have it built after nearly losing a house to a tornado in Tennessee and another near miss Upstate due to a forest fire.

Granted, all dome homes are awesome, but when I came across the Solaleya website, I knew I had discovered my latest obsession. These homes, which have the added plus of totally looking like a spaceship, actually rotate with the sun. Need I say more? THE HOUSE ROTATES WITH THE SUN!

Solaleya homes are made with FSC wood and are insulated with cork. They are earthquake and hurricane resistant and can be equipped with solar panels. Unless I’m reading the brochure wrong, prices don’t seem to be insane. For $64k, you can get a 420 square foot “guest room”. $ 834k will buy you a 6307 square foot home with 25 foot ceilings. Of course, options and land not included.

Although I’d love to see one of these under my Hannukah menorah this season, I still can’t overlook the fact that, as green as this is, it is still new construction.

Monolithic
Earth Shelter

Phoenix Motorcars may just be the Next Big Thing in electric vehicles. And, these next big things will likely be produced in Mexico according to the latest reports. Last week, I talked about the promise for lithium iron phosphate batteries (LiFePO4) taking over the electric vehicle market.

But, there is a different kind of lithium battery, used by Phoenix Motorcarss that may mean massive change in the kinds of vehicles people drive. Lithium titinate batteries made by Altairnano allow the Phoenix Motors sport utility trucks (SUTs) to recharge in 10 minutes, travel 100 miles and achieve a lifespan of 250,000 miles.

The problem with lithium ion batteries in the past have been slow recharge times and operating at relatively low temperatures. If one tries to fast charge a lithium ion battery heating the units to higher temperatures, then fire and explosion become a real problem as with the laptop batteries that were recalled recently.

As I had talked about earlier Exxon has developed a thin film layer for lithium ion batteries that enhance safety. There are even some other battery manufacturers such as Altair that have made lithium ion batteries that are safe and stable and can be recharged quickly, but use 250 kilowatts of power to do so or the same power as five large office buildings at their peak usage.

But, the lithium titinate batteries used in the Phoenix Motorcars SUTs are claimed not use nearly as much juice as this (although probably still a sizeable amount). When any automaker starts setting up shop in Mexico, it’s a sign that mass production is right around the corner. Look for Phoenix Motorcars to make an impact on the market soon.

Advances in fuel desulfurization and reforming lead to a successful demonstration of a portable fuel cell system using JP-8 military jet fuel.

Two core technologies developed at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - a fuel desulfurization system and a fuel reforming system - were instrumental in the demonstration of an electric power system operating on JP-8, a fuel commonly used in military operations.

Portable fuel cell power units are quieter, more efficient and have lower emissions than standard diesel generators, but are challenged when used with JP-8 fuel because of its sulfur content. The fuel desulfurization and reforming systems developed at PNNL reduce the sulfur content of JP-8 and generate a hydrogen stream compatible with an integrated fuel cell.

“Running a noisy, hot generator in a war zone is inefficient and can give away your position,” said Dale King, project manager at PNNL. “Not running it can leave you without power for communications and other critical systems.”

Although currently under development for military use, the desulfurization and reforming technologies can be used with different liquid fuels to provide portable power almost anywhere that small size and high performance are important. Researchers at PNNL are also extending the desulfurization technology for use with diesel fuel.

The fuel cell-centric auxiliary power unit is modular and can be reconfigured for a wide range of uses. Researchers envision the technology being used to supply auxiliary power and heat for long-haul commercial trucks, which would replace the need to run less efficient internal combustion engines while the vehicle is stopped. Battelle, which operates PNNL for DOE, operated a prototype system demonstrating these technologies during the three-day 2007 Fuel Cell Seminar this fall. During the demonstration, an integrated 5-kilowatt electric power system successfully powered area lights and a commercial refrigerator.

A unique catalytic hydrodesulfurization process developed by PNNL removes sulfur from the JP-8 fuel using syngas as the co-reactant in place of hydrogen. Gas phase operation of the process allows for a significant increase in throughput and decrease in operating pressure compared with conventional technology. The process doesn’t require consumables or periodic regeneration. The system was developed with funding from the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center.

Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electrical energy with water and heat as by-products. The process is clean, quiet and highly efficient - potentially up to three times more efficient than internal combustion engines. Envisioned benefits include reduced emissions, increased reliability, multi-fuel capability, durability and ease of maintenance.

Adapted from materials provided by DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.